Hi Garth,
In the early 1980s I was living in a housing co-op in Toronto, living out the tail-end of the 1960s hippie lifestyle. Before the co-op I'd rented a house in TO's east end, splitting the rent with buddies. And before that, I'd actually lived in a hippie commune - more accurately a squat in an abandoned hotel on the outskirts of London, England, after opposing the Vietnam War and skipping countries. Shoulda come straight back to Canada, where I was born, but then I wouldn't have written my book, Eel Pie Island Dharma - Amazon available - about the experiences. (and amazingly a movie script has just been written based on the book, yet another story)
The hippies stole from each other, my east end room mates kept moving out to go back to school, get married, and get away from living with a bunch of aging dudes in a pseudo fraternity. The co-op was OK for a few years, but some of the board members were bossy, and then I dated a woman who had bought her own little house. That she could afford to do so on a meagre income similar to mine sparked my curiosity, while the neo-socialism of the co-op began wearing thin.
I desperately looked around for advice, and lo and beholden, there was your financial column in The Toronto Sun. Of course I had to hide my interest in your column from my leftie friends, and even hid your book under a pile of Marxist-Lenist dogma to keep some shreds of my progressive reputation.
In the mid-1980s TO real estate took a major set back, and I was able to buy a rundown semi in a termite zone just west of The Beaches. Hard to believe now - I scooped it for $45,500 in 1985 when my salary was well under $20K a year as a desk clerk for Toronto Public Library.
Three years later the TO real estate market was booming again, and I sold my ratty little semi for $150K - triple what I'd paid for it. I'd also paid off the second mortgage through thriftiness and a few nice triactor wins at Greenwood Racetrack, and followed my poetic dream of retreating to rural Ontario. After that big score (for a Canadian poet) I haven't had a mortgage since. The neat little bungalow I bought for $60K north of Belleville has allowed me the freedom to write bad poetry (and hippie memoir), knowing I'd always have a place to live without fending off thieving hippies, shiftless room mates or bossy co-op board members.
The spin-offs from my minor real estate success have been quite the ongoing stories. Because I was the lowest paid staffer at the library, all the other staffers decided they had to buy houses if a lowly clerical could. At least two of those co-workers now own mansions in The Beaches worth millions (wish they'd kick a few bucks back to the hippie/poet clerical who'd pushed them so many years ago). Et tu my leftie friends, all of whom had scolded me for being a capitalist for buying - horrors - a house. My rebuttal to their socialist silliness was the rhetorical reply, "what's progressive about making some landlord rich?" After all, the basis of Marxism is owning the means of production. So why not ditto owning your own residence. Eventually the old comrades moved out of the co-ops and bought houses, and a few have actually thanked me in recent years for the wisdom I gleaned from your columns and books.
The success stories of real estate financial independence have continued in my rural existence. I helped convince a blue collar buddy to buy a bank power of sale, which he did over two decades ago for $30K. He's had an ongoing run of bad luck with factory jobs - getting laid off time after time as Ontario deindustrializes. But as I'd advised him, buying the small village house at such a low cost and then paying it off in a decade has assured him that he'll always have a roof over his head, even when he's unemployed. As a bonus, the bungalows in our village are on the outer rim of affordable housing for TO and Oshawa retirees, and our houses are now worth almost $200K.
My blue collar friend's bro is far more materialistic, and when he finished university he couldn't get a decent paying job in Canada. He moved to Japan to teach English, where he made a good salary. His initial investments with a distant relative were a disaster, so he desperately wanted financial advice. I told him to buy rental real estate, which he did. He invested in several multi-unit buildings in the closest small city, letting his tenants pay off the mortgage. I told him how to leverage his net worth from the first building to buy more buildings, and being a natural entrepreneur, he followed this advice. He also married a wealthy Japanese woman, and eventually inherited the family estate and business. With his Canadian real estate investments, he could have retired in his early forties. But he's the kind of person who could fall into a swimming pool of dog poop and find a way to prosper. He's now enjoying life and a new career promoting Japanese tourism and getting featured in TV ads in Japan.
So belated thanks, Garth! The advice I gleaned and then shared from your columns and books has literally enriched the lives of many of my friends and acquaintances over the decades.
peace, prosperity and poetry power!
Chris (Faiers)
In the early 1980s I was living in a housing co-op in Toronto, living out the tail-end of the 1960s hippie lifestyle. Before the co-op I'd rented a house in TO's east end, splitting the rent with buddies. And before that, I'd actually lived in a hippie commune - more accurately a squat in an abandoned hotel on the outskirts of London, England, after opposing the Vietnam War and skipping countries. Shoulda come straight back to Canada, where I was born, but then I wouldn't have written my book, Eel Pie Island Dharma - Amazon available - about the experiences. (and amazingly a movie script has just been written based on the book, yet another story)
The hippies stole from each other, my east end room mates kept moving out to go back to school, get married, and get away from living with a bunch of aging dudes in a pseudo fraternity. The co-op was OK for a few years, but some of the board members were bossy, and then I dated a woman who had bought her own little house. That she could afford to do so on a meagre income similar to mine sparked my curiosity, while the neo-socialism of the co-op began wearing thin.
I desperately looked around for advice, and lo and beholden, there was your financial column in The Toronto Sun. Of course I had to hide my interest in your column from my leftie friends, and even hid your book under a pile of Marxist-Lenist dogma to keep some shreds of my progressive reputation.
In the mid-1980s TO real estate took a major set back, and I was able to buy a rundown semi in a termite zone just west of The Beaches. Hard to believe now - I scooped it for $45,500 in 1985 when my salary was well under $20K a year as a desk clerk for Toronto Public Library.
Three years later the TO real estate market was booming again, and I sold my ratty little semi for $150K - triple what I'd paid for it. I'd also paid off the second mortgage through thriftiness and a few nice triactor wins at Greenwood Racetrack, and followed my poetic dream of retreating to rural Ontario. After that big score (for a Canadian poet) I haven't had a mortgage since. The neat little bungalow I bought for $60K north of Belleville has allowed me the freedom to write bad poetry (and hippie memoir), knowing I'd always have a place to live without fending off thieving hippies, shiftless room mates or bossy co-op board members.
The spin-offs from my minor real estate success have been quite the ongoing stories. Because I was the lowest paid staffer at the library, all the other staffers decided they had to buy houses if a lowly clerical could. At least two of those co-workers now own mansions in The Beaches worth millions (wish they'd kick a few bucks back to the hippie/poet clerical who'd pushed them so many years ago). Et tu my leftie friends, all of whom had scolded me for being a capitalist for buying - horrors - a house. My rebuttal to their socialist silliness was the rhetorical reply, "what's progressive about making some landlord rich?" After all, the basis of Marxism is owning the means of production. So why not ditto owning your own residence. Eventually the old comrades moved out of the co-ops and bought houses, and a few have actually thanked me in recent years for the wisdom I gleaned from your columns and books.
The success stories of real estate financial independence have continued in my rural existence. I helped convince a blue collar buddy to buy a bank power of sale, which he did over two decades ago for $30K. He's had an ongoing run of bad luck with factory jobs - getting laid off time after time as Ontario deindustrializes. But as I'd advised him, buying the small village house at such a low cost and then paying it off in a decade has assured him that he'll always have a roof over his head, even when he's unemployed. As a bonus, the bungalows in our village are on the outer rim of affordable housing for TO and Oshawa retirees, and our houses are now worth almost $200K.
My blue collar friend's bro is far more materialistic, and when he finished university he couldn't get a decent paying job in Canada. He moved to Japan to teach English, where he made a good salary. His initial investments with a distant relative were a disaster, so he desperately wanted financial advice. I told him to buy rental real estate, which he did. He invested in several multi-unit buildings in the closest small city, letting his tenants pay off the mortgage. I told him how to leverage his net worth from the first building to buy more buildings, and being a natural entrepreneur, he followed this advice. He also married a wealthy Japanese woman, and eventually inherited the family estate and business. With his Canadian real estate investments, he could have retired in his early forties. But he's the kind of person who could fall into a swimming pool of dog poop and find a way to prosper. He's now enjoying life and a new career promoting Japanese tourism and getting featured in TV ads in Japan.
So belated thanks, Garth! The advice I gleaned and then shared from your columns and books has literally enriched the lives of many of my friends and acquaintances over the decades.
peace, prosperity and poetry power!
Chris (Faiers)
No comments:
Post a Comment