Thinking Big is the Best Plan

Years ago, when I was just starting my real estate investing career, I came across a property with a for-sale sign on it. I called the broker and asked, "What can you tell me about the property, and how much does it cost?"

The broker politely and patiently said, "It's a commercial building with six tenants. There's a chiropractor, a dentist, a hairstylist, an accountant, and a bail bondsman. The price is two million dollars."

Losing Big

I almost choked. "Two million dollars?! That's way too expensive!"

Thirty years ago, $2 million was a lot of money. And instead of looking at the property, I let the price frighten me off. I never looked at the deal, and just assumed that the seller was crazy, greedy, and out of touch with the market.

Today, there's a luxury hotel on the same site. It's spectacular. I estimate the property to be worth at least $150 million, and maybe more.

Cheap Lessons

Not seeing the potential of that deal taught me many lessons. Here are two important ones:

• Sometimes you learn more by being stupid and making mistakes.

• The person with the better plan wins.

In the above example, my plan was just too small. In fact, the only plan I had at the time was to collect the rent money from the tenants, cover my mortgage and expenses, and put a little in my pocket. And 30 years ago, I knew that the rent from six small tenants couldn't possibly pay for a $2 million property.

I later learned that the property's eventual owner bought it for full price -- with terms. He put $50,000 down as an option and asked for 180 days to put the rest of his plan together. During those 180 days, he gathered his investors, a builder, and his tenant, a major hotel chain.

If he hadn't been able to put his plan together, he would've lost his option money. Instead, before the 180 days were up, his investors paid the $2 million in cash, and he spent the next three years getting the project through the city planning commission and finally began construction. He won because he had a better plan.

Mind Expansion

Donald Trump often says to "think big." He definitely does so, but by nature, I don't. My excuse is that I come from a small town in Hawaii. My family wasn't rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think err on the side of caution. Over time, my thinking has become medium-sized when it comes to spotting opportunities, but I'd still like to think bigger.

One of the reasons I enjoy doing business in New York and having Trump as a partner on different projects is that he makes me do just that -- because if you don't think big in New York, you get kicked out. If I thought small, I wouldn't be on television, cutting book deals with major publishers, or talking in front of tens of thousands of people in arenas like Madison Square Garden.

Currently, I'm working on a real estate project to present to Donald. Consequently, I find myself pushing my thinking, expanding my context, and thinking of luxury, not just price. Even if Donald doesn't like the project and we don't partner on it, just preparing to present the project to him has required me to think bigger and come up with a better plan.

A Blast from the Past

About a year ago, someone called to say that there was a spectacular condominium that had just come up for sale. She wanted to know if I was interested in looking at it. Of course I said, "Yes." I wanted to see what her definition of spectacular was, and trust me -- it was spectacular. She then said, "And the price is only twenty-eight million dollars. But I believe you can pick it up for twenty-four million. At that price, this condo is a steal."

Once again, I heard myself saying what I said so long ago: "That's too expensive." But, as I said, that lesson from 30 years back proved to be priceless: After hearing the think-small person in me comment on the condo price, I took a deep breath and asked myself, "What's my plan?" Then I asked myself, "What's wrong with my plan?"

I didn't buy the condo, but I did come up with a better plan. Over the next few days, I realized that the reason I couldn't afford the condo was because my business was too small. If I wanted to afford such a luxury residence, I needed to come up with a better plan for my business. Today, I'm working harder than ever to improve it -- not because I want the condo, but to be able afford such a condo if I someday decide I want one.

Plan Ahead

In many of my Yahoo! Finance columns, I've written about my concern over the devaluation of the U.S. dollar. As the dollar drops in purchasing power, it often pushes up the prices of real assets -- quality real estate and equities. My fear is that many people may not be able to afford tangible assets and become poorer as the dollar declines. This drop in purchasing power also widens the gap between the rich and everyone else.

One method of staying ahead of rising asset prices and the declining dollar is to think bigger and come up with better plans. As important as financial and business planning is a plan for personal development and self-improvement. I'm often asked to invest in people's business plans, and one of the reasons I turn many of them down is because a big plan requires a big person who's spent time on personal development. In a lot of cases, a business plan is far bigger than the person with the plan -- that is, the dream is bigger than the dreamer.

Today, I'm glad I missed out on that $2 million property all those years ago. The best lesson I learned from it is that I can have a better life if I have a better plan -- and a plan to become better person. So what's your plan?

Think Rich to Lower Your Taxes

Tax season always means a deluge of tax advice. Unfortunately, most of it is futile and lightweight.

I say that because most people work for their money rather than have their money work for them. The problem with working for your money is that you pay more in taxes as your income goes up. In fact, if your income passes $65,000 as a W-2 employee, you may find yourself being double-taxed with the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT.

Working hard to earn more money and then giving it away in higher taxes isn't financially intelligent, even if you do put some of it into a retirement account. On the other hand, making your money work hard for you means your earnings are taxed less, if at all.

Better Financial Advice

Recently, on a popular morning TV show, a personal finance expert recommended putting half of your tax return into your IRA, which she claimed may yield (for the average person) a whopping $25,000 gain over 40 years.

The problem with this advice is the likely decline in the purchasing power of the dollar -- inflation -- over that 40 years. I estimate that in 40 years, $25,000 will probably have the equivalent purchasing power of $250 today. Try getting excited about living on $250 when you're old.

To me, it's better to inform people about who pays taxes and who (legally) doesn't pay taxes. If you can minimize taxes or avoid paying them altogether (again, legally), you can make a lot more money today instead of having to wait, with your fingers crossed, for 40 years.

Playing by the Rules of the Rich

Years ago, my rich dad told me, "When it comes to taxes, the rich make the rules." He also said, "If you want to be rich, you need to play by the rules of the rich." The rules of money are skewed in favor of the rich, and against the working and middle classes. After all, someone has to pay taxes.

There are many ways that the rich make a lot of money and pay little to no money in taxes, and anyone can use them. As an illustration, here's a real-life situation in which I played by the rules of the rich and minimized my taxes:

• 2004: My wife, Kim, and I put $100,000 down to purchase 10 condominiums in Scottsdale, Ariz. The developer paid us $20,000 a year to use these 10 units as sales models. So we received a 20 percent cash-on-cash return, on which we paid very little in taxes because the income was offset by the depreciation of the building and the furniture used in the models. It looked like we were losing money when we were in fact making money.

• 2005: Since the real estate market was so hot, the 380-unit condo project sold out early. Our 10 models were the last to go. We made approximately $100,000 in capital gains per unit. We put the $1 million into a 1031 tax-deferred exchange. We legally paid no taxes on our million dollars of capital gains.

• 2005: With that money, we purchased a 350-unit apartment house in Tucson, Ariz. The building was poorly managed and filled with bad tenants who had driven out the good tenants. It also needed repairs. We took out a construction loan and shut the building down, which moved the bad tenants out. Once the rehab was complete, we moved good tenants in and raised the rents.

• 2007: With the increased rents, the property was reappraised and we borrowed against our equity, which was about $1.2 million tax-free, because it was a loan -- a loan which our new tenants pay for. Even with the loan, the property still pays us approximately $100,000 a year in positive cash flow.

Kim and I are currently investing the $1.2 million in another 350-unit apartment house in Flagstaff, Ariz., a hot property market.

Move Money, Don't Park It

This is an example of an investment strategy known as the velocity of money. As I've written before, moving your money makes more sense than parking it in cash, bonds, equities, or mutual funds -- the strategy most financial advisors recommend.

Kim and I have several such scenarios active at any one time. We have lots of monthly cash flow, which we reinvest, but we rarely have any liquid cash sitting around to be taxed.

In the above example, we started with $100,000 we earned tax-deferred from another investment. The $100,000 eventually allowed us to borrow over $20 million from banks, tax-free. How long would it take you to save $20 million by parking your money somewhere, as most financial advisors recommend?

Chipping Away at Taxes

Clearly, one of the reasons the rich get richer is because they earn a lot of money without paying much, if anything, in taxes. They know how to use banks' tax-free money to become richer.

Anyone can do the same. For instance, instead of paying capital gains tax on the sale of our condo units, real estate laws allowed us to defer paying these taxes and invest them into another property instead. The cash that does come from this property goes into our pockets at a lower tax rate because there's no Social Security or self-employment tax to pay, and the tax rate is further reduced by the depreciation of the property.

On the flip side, the poor and middle class toil away for their money, pay more in taxes the more they earn, and then park their earnings in savings and/or retirement accounts. In the meantime, they receive little or no cash flow on which to live while waiting for retirement -- when they'll live on their meager savings.

Doesn't it make more sense to play by the rules of the rich, and earn more while paying less in taxes?

Educate Yourself into Riches

Many of Wall Street's elite firms were being required to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines to investors, according to media reports. The penalties are for alleged bad investment advice, courtesy of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

This brings me to one of my favorite quotes from famed investor Warren Buffett goes: "Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway."

I have been highly critical of the standard financial planning advice -- "work hard, save money, get out of debt, invest for the long term, and diversify" -- for a long time. Such guidance is often more a financial advisor's (subway rider's) sales pitch than a solid investment guide.

But while I think it's courageous that Spitzer slaps millions in fines on a few Wall Street firms for their bad investment guidance, I believe the investors who accepted that unsound advice have some responsibility, too. Isn't knowing the difference between good and bad advice part of knowing what you're doing?

The Difference Between Investing and Shopping

The problem is, most investors don't know how bad the standard investment advice is. This mantra of "work hard, save money, get out of debt, invest for the long term, and diversify" is followed by millions of investors -- who lost $7 trillion to $9 trillion between 2000 and 2004. Many are still following this bad advice today.

Not only did millions of investors lose trillions of dollars, many also missed the boom in real estate, oil, gas, and previous metals. Furthermore, despite investors' huge losses, Wall Street paid out some of its biggest bonuses in history.

However, investors should realize it's "buyer beware." Investing is different from shopping. If I go to Sears and don't like the tool or shirt I purchased, I can generally get my money back. When we go shopping, we expect value for our money. But when we invest, we do so in the hopes of making more money -- and knowing that we risk making losses. What would happen to the financial industry if brokers were sued every time a client lost money? The wheels of world commerce would grind to a halt.

My point is: The world is filled with honest people handing out bad advice. An example of honest bad investment advice is the standard one of "work hard, save money, get out of debt, invest for the long term, and diversify".

The world is also filled with biased advice, which is why people say, "Never ask an insurance broker if you need insurance, or a mutual-fund sales person if they recommend mutual funds." Furthermore, there are many crooks and con artists as well, who intentionally promote dishonest ventures.

Spotting the Difference

So while it's imperative that we have the Securities and Exchange Commission and a brave Attorney General such as Spitzer to enforce the rules, we, as individual investors, still need to be vigilant and personally responsible for the advice we receive and what we do with our money.

In my opinion, that means each of us needs to be responsible for our own financial education so we can tell the difference between good advice, biased advice, and crooked advice. If you can educate yourself to know the differences between those three types of advice, getting rich is easy.

Or, if you take investing advice from a subway rider, don't be surprised if you wind up on the subway.