The concept of Purposeful Planning is exceptionally powerful. Once the real estate investor understands its potential, the first thing they usually do is reassess their retirement goals.

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Transcript:   People hear me talk about purposeful planning, and I write about it all the time. It’s got a good ring to it. It sounds really nice. But it does mean exactly what it says. It’s the foundation of what I do for people. I tell them, you’ve got to have a plan, and you have to execute it on purpose. Now, that all sounds good, but then I turn around after saying that and tell them, flexibility’s got to be the number 1 factor in your plan. Like the bumper sticker says, mildly paraphrased, “Things happen.” One of the things I tell people is, they say what do you do Jeff? I get people, when they call me and I say, hi, this is Jeff. I take them from that point to retirement. One of the things we decide is, where exactly are you now? Because you can’t decide how to get to point B if you don’t understand not only what point A is, but where is it on the financial map. Because you can go to Hawaii, but you’re going to take a different route from Tokyo than you are from LA. You’re still ending up in Hawaii. So you’ve got to know point A and point B. Everybody gets hooked on Point B. Once you’ve established everything about point A, and that includes how much you make, how much you save, what future cash drains are going to come your way. That usually is spelled K-I-D-S. Then later on it’s college. I just got rid of my last, and the Bank of Dad is closed. But it costs money. You can save for it now. You can make part of your plan. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You just hope that you will have to pay for a nice college education for your kids. There’s all kinds of things that you have to plan for. So think about how you’re going to fund your first investments. What are you going to do? Are you going to buy locally? Probably not. It’s very rare that you’re luckily living in an area that makes sense to invest. My clients who live in San Diego where I live, and have since the 60s, they’re usually surprised when I tell them, “I’m not going to sell you anything here, and if you want to buy investments here, you have to talk to somebody else.” It’s horrible investing here. People in California don’t like it when I say that, but you have to go where the investing is good. There’s a lot of places. I prefer Texas, and I love Boise. But there’s a lot more places than that. Those are the two I favor, and I favor because I’ve done the work. I’ve put my own boots on the ground. I have found out all the factors that I needed to learn and made my decision. Purposeful planning sets out the arena. You know what game your playing, you know the rules, and you know the arena that everything’s happening in. Once you have that set out, then you’re just knocking dominoes down one at a time. Interest rates go down? Excellent, you can do something maybe before you had planned. Values rise a little bit and rents go up a little bit? Same thing. But you don’t plan for that. What you plan for is the flexibility to be able to respond to those things. Good, bad, and ugly. Purposeful planning is just that, and it’s serious as a heart attack. You have a plan that is based on a timeline that adopts a certain philosophy of investing. You’re trying to get to your retirement with X amount of income, which you can’t pinpoint exactly, but you can get in the range. You set out to see what you have to do along the way to make that happen. Add flexibility in it for seasoning, and the chances are highly likely that you’ll get ...