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- #1: The very first newsletter
#1: The very first newsletter
I hope you're having a good week! I want to start off by saying..
THANKS FOR SUBSCRIBING!
It means a lot to me that you decided to subscribe and it will help me share more content with you!
What you can expect
ContentThis newsletter will be more personalized and I'll share more specific details on my journey than I do on Instagram and on my website.
FrequencyI don't plan to send you a newsletter every week to bombard your inbox nor will they be sales pitches like others to join their program or sign up for their course. I HATE it when I get 5 emails that go "I have 10 slots left.." or "I decided to keep the sale going for another 24 hours so buy my course now!". I get them from big real estate influencers and I'm going to unsubscribe from their list if I get one more of those.
As I get the hang of these, feel free to send me a DM on Instagram on what you like or dislike about the newsletter. It'll help me gauge what kind of content you want to see and I wouldn't want you to unsubscribe before I master it.
A re-introduction of me
I forget that many people haven't been following me on social media since the beginning so I'm going to take this opportunity to reintroduce myself and my background:
2018 - I got out of the Army in August and I started my career in consulting. I was making ~$97K and by September, I started to regret my decision of getting out of the military because I hated my job, not because of the people or work, but because I was disappointed that this was all that it was. Day in, day out, I was wearing a suit to work, taking the train, and clocking out only to repeat the process. I also started a part-time T20 (top 20) MBA program two weeks after I left the military.
2019 - In Dec 2018, I learned about Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) from browsing the internet on ways to make money. Why? Because I was essentially living paycheck-to-paycheck since I bought a condo in DC but half my paycheck was going to my mortgage. After my expenses, I was saving $1-1.5K a month. I had no student loan debt (paid off) and no car payment (paid off), and I had a $100K net worth that I tracked on Personal Capital but I wasn't satisfied. I was getting paid more in the Army than I was at my consulting gig which is something a lot of working professionals envied. After finding some Instagram accounts of people who are part of the FIRE movement, I decided I'll create one in the new year.
2020 - MMV was born (actually it was Asian Millennial Veteran back then). I started to save more by spending less. I moved to LA and sold my condo for a $42K profit in one year after doing a bathroom renovation and Amazon HQ2 being announced. That got rid of my biggest liability with some profit and I subletted a bedroom in a 2-bedroom apartment in LA for $1,300 a month.
2021 - Bought a few real estate purchases over the years, but I didn't feel like I was going fast enough. I finished my MBA program and got recruited to a boutique consulting firm. I decided to take a risk and change my strategy by leveraging some of the equity in my portfolio to focus on short term rentals as I had one guest house making me $1500 a month consistently! I'll go over this deal in a future newsletter.
2022 - I sold 2 long term rentals to realize ~$330K in equity. I used portions of it to purchase 2 properties solely for short term renting.
2023 - So far, I've been stacking cash waiting for the right opportunity. With how things are going, I'm thinking that a "true" recession is in the works. The economy works slowly and as businesses are working to become leaner with layoffs, budgets in other areas will likely decrease. I'm not waiting for a recession to cash in on the downward home prices. I'm just being more diligent on my purchases. I have about $120K saved up in Marcus high-yield savings account for investments and I'm ready to go. I'm also looking to sell my rental in Florida that has a significant amount of equity in such a short time and do another 1031 exchange.
My insurance premium increased 86%!
If you didn't know, home insurance is a mess in Florida. Here's an article on why. Short version is hurricane-prone area, fraud, dishonest roofers, and litigious lawyers.
Not that it's related to home insurance, but I was on a project with the Center of Medicare and Medicaid once and we looked at claims data throughout the US to identify high-risk claims from physicians. And Florida had BY FAR the highest number of these high-risk claims.
I live in Florida now and even auto insurance is bad. I never paid so much for car insurance in my life.
My insurance premium for my Florida property went from $2,200 to $4,100 in one year! And I didn't even make a claim.
Thankfully, I used Steadily Insurance who got me a quote for $1,600. It's lower than what I would've gotten myself. I strongly encourage you to shop around for insurance. Get a quote from Steadily Insurance on one of your properties to see how much you can save.
I couldn't pass up on this credit card offer!
I signed up for the Chase Ink Business Unlimited for 90,000 Ultimate Reward (UR) points!
This is THE BEST offer they’ve ever done on these cards AND it doesn't have an annual fee!
I already have the Chase Ink Business Cash that I signed up for last year when it was 80,000 points so I had to sign up for this one.
I use my business credit cards for my real estate expenses. My properties are under my name so when I sign up for business credit cards, I’m applying as a sole proprietor.
While this sign up bonus is for 90,000 UR points, I need to spend $6,000 in 3 months of account opening. I won’t be able to do that through my real estate but because this is a sole proprietor card, any real estate expenses passes through me anyway so I’m going to use this credit card for my personal spending to reach the minimum spend in order to get the 90,000 points.
How valuable are 90K UR points?
If you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card (CSR), you can use 90K points for a minimum of $1,350 worth of travel!
If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card (CSP), it can be worth at least $1,125.
However, if your travel plans are flexible and far out enough, you can get way more value out of it. Here’s an example:
Let’s say you’re booking a room at Hyatt for 6 nights. Each night costs an average of $300. That’ll cost you $1,800 before taxes.
Hyatt and Chase UR is a 1:1 transfer. If each night was available for redemption and would cost 15K Hyatt points each, that’ll cost you 90K points. Therefore, your initial $1,350 worth of points with the CSR turned to $1,800 since that’s what it would cost if you were to pay for your stay rather than use points. This isn’t even a hard deal to find. I’ve seen people snag better deals.
What’s even better is to have multiple Chase credit cards that earn UR points so you can combine points you receive on one and transfer it to a travel credit card for more deals.
I have the Chase Freedom (now Flex), Freedom Unlimited, Sapphire Reserve, Ink Business Cash, and Ink Business Unlimited that all earn UR points.
Credit card hacking is a whole different topic, but I wanted to share this deal so that you can take advantage. This sign-up bonus has been available for a few weeks so I’m sure it’ll disappear soon. If you’ve been thinking about it, now is the time!
I booked a mini-vacay!
I received an offer from Hilton Grand Vacation to stay at their property and sit-in on their timeshare presentation.
I know... it's a dreadful sales pitch. But me and my fiance wanted to go to Universal Studios.
Hotels for our dates are currently going for $200 a night.
For $500 plus taxes (and suffering 2 hours for their presentation), I'm getting 4 day/3 night hotel stay, a $200 stay-on-us certificate at a future Hilton stay, AND a 4 day Royal Caribbean cruise.
We get to stay at a hotel for WAY cheaper than we would've.
We'll take an extra $200 to stay at another Hilton property (although I'm a Marriott person now, soon to be Hyatt). More on this in a future newsletter.
We live in downtown Miami (we can literally see the port from our balcony) so we don't have to fly to a port for a cruise.
And we've never been on a cruise so we might as well try it out for a short vacation.
Total cost of the trip is:
Hotel: $360 (originally $560 but I'm deducting the $200 certificate)
Parking: $66 (or $22 a night for 3 nights)
Travel: $50 of supercharging roundtrip (THANKS TESLA!)
1-day pass with express: $509 (for 2 people)
Total: $985
For the cruise, we can go to the Bahamas or Caribbean and they go from $220 to $590 a night for an interior room. Hopefully, we can upgrade it and get a balcony room and pay the difference but either way, it's a steal!
This is my second time using these deals. First time was for a Vegas MBA trip. I split it with some classmates and effectively paid like $100 for a 2 night stay in Vegas, got my $200 certificate for a future Hilton stay that I used, and won money in Vegas so WIN-WIN-WIN!
Some info on timeshares
Timeshares are usually not a good idea unless your travel style is very specific and repetitive and it's cheap relative to what it would normally cost you. You can find a lot of timeshares for sale. You usually don't own the property, just the right to use it and it may be restricted to certain times of the year.
There are a lot of nuances with timeshares and IMO, it's easier to just pay for your vacations wherever you want to go. But that doesn't mean you should skip out on these opportunities. Just say no at the end and be firm.
This was a long newsletter so if you made it this far, thank you! I'll try to keep it shorter next time.
Like I mentioned before, DM me on Instagram on what you'd like to see in this newsletter.
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