How Do I Apply The 4 Hour Work Week To Property Investing

How do I apply the four hour workweek to property investing? “The 4‑Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss (audio cd here) is an extremely influential book and has some great ideas in it, almost all of which apply to either your job or your business. How can you take those concepts and those ideas and apply them to your property investing and your real estate portfolio?

Today I want to get into the nitty gritty. How do I apply the 4‑Hour Work Week principles to property investing?

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I’m going to go through the main things that Tim talks about in his book. How we can apply them to our property portfolio, and how we can use that to improve our lives, improve our finances, and get on the right track.

1. Clearly Defining Your Financial Goals

One of the first things that he covers is clearly defining your financial goals. This is really key when it comes to investing in property.

I see so many people investing in property saying “I just want to make money” or “I just want to be rich” or “I want my property to go up in value”. But there’s no equation as to how that will fit into their lives, how that will improve their lives, and how they can use that money to better move forward.

Having clear defined goals is a very important step to have. That might be earning $60,000 in passive income per year from your property. It might be having a million dollars in equity in the bank so you can afford to go on a holiday.

It might be a myriad of things. You need to work out, what do I want property to do for my life?

Maybe that’s financial freedom. How do I get that, and what financial markers do I need to achieve that?

Let’s say I’m earning $60,000 a year in my job and I want to quit my job and live off my property investments. I need to find a way to pull $60,000 a year out of my property investment. I might be able to do that through positive cash flow, or maybe I can do that through a mixture of positive cash flow and pulling out equity as my properties go up in value.

2. Don’t Delay Your Life…Live It

Next, Tim talks about don’t delay you life, but find ways to live it. Live it while investing. For me when it comes to property, I think of investing in cash flow and positive cash flow properties. You can enjoy the benefits of that property now and not be working a job just so you can afford for your properties and hope that they go up in value in 20 years’ time.

Investing in positive cash flow means you get cash flow now which you can use to reinvest or pay off your mortgage, or you can use to live off. In line with cash flow as well, I think about investing using interest only loans because it minimizes my major expense which is my mortgage.

I think about investing in more than one positive cash flow property and leveraging my properties to do that so I can do it quicker. I also think about enjoying some of the fruits of my labor.

Rather than investing every single dollar that I make back into property, maybe I can pull some of that out and begin using that in my life.

Let’s say I’m making $1,000 a month from a few properties, I might invest $500 of that back into my mortgage or into new properties.

I might take $500 a month out to pay for my bills, or pay for my holiday, or things like that.

3. Elimination (eliminating distractions and becoming efficient at property investing)

Next Tim talks about elimination. For me when it comes to property, I think about eliminating the distractions and becoming extremely efficient and finding and investing in properties.

This is one of the reasons I created the advanced property calculator, was to be able to analyze property quicker and to be efficient and analyzing property. When I’m on realestate.com.au, I can analyze property quickly.

Before I even have to contact a real estate agent to find out about inspection times and things like that, I can look at the cash flow of that property. I can say no, that doesn’t fit in my needs or yes it fits in my needs. I’m going to take that to the next step.

Eliminate the distractions and find ways to become efficient and what you’re doing.

4. Automation

The next thing Tim talks about is automation. For me, that means automating your cash flow and the management of your properties.

Some people like to save their 6-8% of property management fees. That can be good, but if you’ve got multiple properties then you’re going to be spending a lot of time managing those properties. By automating it using a real estate manager, you’re actually removing a lot of that hassle.

That can free you up to focus your energies on buying and investing in more properties or juggling your finances to get a better return on investment.

5. Liberation

Lastly, in “The 4‑Hour Work Week,” Tim talks about liberation and being liberated by your place, and by commitments, and things like that.

For me, I think about structuring my property portfolio so that I can be liberated so that it’s generating me cash flows so that I can work from anywhere and I’ve got this cash flow coming in.

It also means setting up ways to liberate me from my property portfolio.

One of the things, we talked about automation and getting people to manage the property for you. Also, not necessarily investing all in the one area where I need to be around to do maintenance and things like that.

Investing all over and having that diversification and multiple properties so I can either travel the world, or I can travel to all those different places and inspect my properties as I need to.

That’s it for me of how do I apply “The 4‑Hour Work Week” to property investing?

If you haven’t read “The 4‑Hour Work Week” book, I suggest you read it – Buy it here at a discount. It is a great read, and it is one of the books that actually inspired me to start this website.

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