Category: Lifestyle

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was used as a template by the New York Life Investments in 2019 to illustrate the pyramid towards financial freedom. Right in the middle of that pyramid is Accumulating Wealth, which consists of the following: building an investment portfolio, saving for retirement, and paying down debt. A lot of options are available for any investor for the first one, such as stocks, mutual funds, and real estate.

Why Invest in Real Estate?

In case you haven’t seen it on your social media platforms yet, there is this guy who asks random people driving expensive cars and houses what they do for a living. Two of the most common answers were FinTech (Financial Technology) and real estate. It just shows that investing in real estate is still one of the most reliable ways to grow your money. The next step then is to look for ways to finance your real estate project. 

Real Estate Financing Options

Below is a shortlist of ways to finance your next real estate project:

• Owner Financing
• Lease
• Hard Money Lenders
• Microloans
• Equity Partnership
• Home Equity Financing
• Trade Houses
• Special Government Schemes
• SBA Loan
• REITs

Owner Financing

Unlike traditional selling where the buyer gives the seller money in exchange for something, here, the seller extends finances to their buyer. The buyer then will repay the seller later based on agreed-upon terms.

Lease

Leasing is like the usual renting, except that a higher amount of money is being paid. This is because the rent includes a premium, which ultimately accumulates to the purchase price.

Hard Money Lenders

Compared to traditional bank loans, hard money lending is offered by private groups or individuals. While the interest rates are relatively higher due to higher risks, hard money lending has its own advantages. Investors are subjected to less stringent approval procedures; an online application is possible, as evidenced at NewSilver.com,  and those that are considered risky projects are more likely to be approved than in a conventional bank loan. This type of financing also makes making profit easier, as a faster approval rate will mean faster rehabbing and flipping out of the purchased property.

Microloans

Just like with hard money lending, the qualification criteria for microloans are less strict. The lower amount of money loaned makes this possible, and this type of financing targets newer businesses or startups.

Equity Partnership

If the buyer really wants to purchase a property but is short in cash, an equity partner is also a viable option. In this setup, an additional entity (the equity partner) enters the picture of purchasing and injects some cash into the transaction. The terms are to be agreed upon by the buyer and the partner.

Home Equity Financing

When you want to expand your investment portfolio, you can leverage your existing property to buy a new one. HEIL and HELOC are just some of the options being offered by banks and other financing institutions in this category.

Trade Houses

Another way of utilizing your old property is by trading it for a new one. Aside from having a new investment, capital gains that are normally part and parcel of selling a property can also be avoided.

Special Government Schemes

The USDA offers up to 0% interest mortgages to low- and moderate-income individuals to fill underpopulated areas of the country. Towns with less than 10,000 population are included in this program.

SBA Loan

The US Small Business Administration aims to provide financing to small businesses as the name implies. That said, the borrower must occupy part of the whole property being purchased. The funding usually amounts to $125,000 to $20 million, and a 10% down payment is required. Some loan products allow the borrower to buy a building, conduct building improvements, or do ground-up constructions.

REITs

REITs, or Real Estate Investment Trusts, offers many advantages to investors. One of which is liquidity, as a shareholder who wants to opt-out of business can have his cash back when someone else wants to buy his shares. Buying targeted REITs is also possible, as one can select those that build medical buildings, parks, etc. While you do not have to manage anything in those investments, the downside is that the profits are stripped off overheads before distributing to the investors. 

Despite the variety of investment options such as the stock market and other technologies such as cryptocurrencies, real estate remains one of the most reliable avenues for building wealth. And while it requires a comparatively higher capital, several financing options are widely available for any investors. One only needs to consider his or her goals and put up a nice strategy to be able to repay these liabilities.

Real estate is arguably the most profitable than any other industry. Yet, many people are still skeptical about it. But if you know what you’re doing, it can seriously earn you a living.

According to research, 90 percent of the world’s millionaires got their wealth, and maintained it, through real estate investing. And it’s still one of the lucrative investments that’s effective today. It has so many benefits to offer. The best part of it is that you can even start without a significant capital, major assets, or credit.

Convinced? If you are, here are some strategies on how you can make money in this industry.

Buy to Let

One of the most common strategies that you can use is “buy to let.” Also known as BTL, this refers to purchasing a property in order to rent it out to tenants – either for residential or commercial use.

Residential

Usually, landlords choose to purchase a property, then lease it for residential use. The good thing about this is that it performs better even in the middle of an economic crisis. When the pandemic started, a lot of businesses were affected and closed down. This kind of scenario affects commercial investors too.

But residential real estates are immune to this as it’s always in demand. Thus, even if there’s an economic crisis, you’re still sure that you can earn money from your investment.

However, over time, you are at risk of spending more money. Renting a house out for residential use has phantom costs or unseen expenses. This includes repairs and maintenance.

If there’s a leak, you’re liable to fix it for your renters. You’re also the one who’ll spend on renovations for the next tenant, you’ll pay for the electrician, repairman, etc.

Commercial

On the other hand, there is commercial real estate. For this strategy, you can lease your property for commercial use. This can give you more income. In fact, it can generate 6 to 12 percent of return of investment price (yearly) than residential real estate, which can only make between 1 and 4 percent.

In addition to that, you’re ensured that your property is well-taken care of. This is because retail tenants need to maintain their store and storefront based on the rules and regulations of the company. Their business will be affected if they don’t follow them.

As a result, their interests are aligned with yours. This will definitely help you maintain and improve your property’s quality, as well as the value of your investment.

In addition to that, you won’t have to worry about renovating it. Some companies usually want to handle the renovations on their own as they have a design or branding to follow.

Renovating

Renovating property is also one of the common strategies that investors go for. Here, investors purchase a property, usually residential, renovate, then sell it.

For this strategy, you’d purchase a property at a low price. Experts on real estate investing say that the cheaper you can buy it, the more likely you’ll profit from it. However, this also means you’ll need more work and money to refurbish it.

But the good thing is that remodeling a house can increase its resale value more. Windows and garage door replacements alone can increase the property’s value up to 75 percent.

But for this strategy to be viable, you’ll need a huge amount of money. It looks easy but the process is lengthy. Still, the amount of money that you’ll gain is worth waiting for.

Online Investing

Thanks to the advancements in our technology, you can now invest in real estate online. This strategy involves web platforms and mobile applications. These platforms and apps will connect you to real estate managers who are looking to invest in properties. Once you get a deal, they will trade your capital with dividends provided that they earn money.

Real Estate Investment Trusts

This investment strategy is a bit different. Also known as REIT, this kind of resembles the real estate funds. However, you neither purchase nor manage the property yourself. Rather, you and other investors will pool your money into a fund, but a company will manage it.

REIT comes in various forms. Some REITs mainly focus on retail properties, including shopping centers. Others focus on hospitality, namely hotels and motels. The good thing about it is that you have a wider option.

Another good thing about it is that you don’t need a huge chunk of money in buying properties. Plus, it has lower risks than other strategies.

Diversifying Investment

All of the real estate investment strategies actually come with risks. For instance, commercial real estate doesn’t perform well in economic crises. Renovating properties takes time, effort, and money, which can be a drawback too.

No matter where you invest, there are always downsides, especially if you’re only putting all your eggs in one basket. But if you diversify your investment, there’s a smaller chance that you will lose all your money.

For instance, if you were to spend all your money in one building and renovating it, but no one buys or rents it, you’d likely find yourself in trouble. All of your money was already spent in that one building and you have no money coming in.

You can lessen such risk by putting some of your eggs in other baskets. This means you can buy a few houses or venture into other real estate investment strategies. This way, you won’t have to worry about your income. Even if the market crashes, you still have a backup.

It would be even better if you invest in different sectors in different countries. Thus, if the prices plummet in one country, your losses are reduced as your investments are balanced by the good ones.

Investing is not as easy as it looks. It involves more money than you thought, depending on the real estate strategy you’re going for. Plus, there are risks. But it’s a lucrative investment. If you know what you’re doing, you’ll surely earn more.

If you’re a word game lover, you already know that word games come in all shapes and sizes. You know the fun they can be and the mental stimulation that comes alongside playing them. If word games don’t sound like your cup of tea, you might be surprised to learn that these games are much more than just a pastime. Word games are incredibly good for your mind and result in long-lasting boosts to your cognitive abilities.

The following will break down why you should be playing at least one of these games—Scrabble—on the regular and will include some tips to help you master the sometimes tricky rounds. With a little technique and practice, you can be an expert Scrabble player in no time.

Scrabble Changes The Way Your Brain Works

A University of Calgary experiment did a study on the effects of Scrabble playing on the brain. They used 24 people in the study, half of which did not play Scrabble before the study began. They were given jumbled letters and were told to identify as many English words as possible as quickly as possible. Their brains were monitored by fMRI scanners.

The study found that the twelve volunteers who regularly played Scrabble were better at the task, which should come as no surprise. What was surprising was that the study also discovered the Scrabble players used an entirely different part of the brain to complete the assignment. They used the working memory and visual perception parts of their brain instead of the regions most generally associated with retrieval in visual word recognition.

The study concluded that the brain was highly flexible. If someone were to make Scrabble a regular part of their lifestyle, they could open up new mental capabilities. The results are being applied to other research being conducted on neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. People may be able to train their brains to use alternative regions, meaning damage or loss in one area doesn’t have to prevent a person from forever struggling with certain tasks.

Scrabble Improves Vocabulary But Also Strategy Skills

It should come as no surprise that playing Scrabble can boost your vocabulary. You’re always going to remember that one super obnoxious word a friend put down that won them the game. What many people don’t realize is that the layout of a Scrabble board also improves your ability to strategize.

Because of the double and triple letter score squares as well as the double and triple word score squares, many find winning the game involves a little planning ahead. Not only do you want to make it difficult for your opponents to access and use those squares easily, but you also want to set yourself up to use them optimally. Expert players tend to plan several words to help with this.

How To Be Good At It: Brush Up On Your Vocabulary

Diligent players of Scrabble will tell you it’s not just about knowing more words—and it isn’t. It’s also about knowing the right type of words. Because different letters produce different scores, learning words that use rarer letters can result in a massive advantage. Knowing words like the following can be the difference between a win and a loss:

• PHIZ (18 points)
• QUIFF (20 points)
• ZYMURGY (25 points)
• BEZIQUES (28)
• QUAT (12 points)
• MEZQUIT (27 points)
• QU (11 points)
• HIGHJACK (28 points)

It’s fairly easy to find lists of excellent Scrabble words online. Take note of a few of these words and watch your gameplay change.

Use An Unscrambling Tool

A big part of Scrabble is finding the words you’ve got in your seven letter spread. If you’ve never done this sort of thing before, it can be a little overwhelming. Taking a bit of time to watch an unscrambler program provide all the possible words out of a sequence of letters can train your mind to see these words hidden in the letters you were given. Spoiler alert: there are more words in a series of seven letters than you’d first think. There are over 200 words that can be made out of the letters: P, N, A, L, T, E, S—that’s a lot of options!

The above information should help you see why playing Scrabble is so great for your mind. And the tips included at the end should help you get off on the right foot when it comes to developing a knack for the game. Of course, everyone is different, and so everyone’s mind works a little bit differently. Take note of the letters you struggle to make decent words with when playing and do a little research on the possibilities they can have.

When starting a business, grasping consumer attention by elaborating who you are and what you offer becomes one of the most fundamental operations at the initial stages. Once you attract a certain percentage, the objectives then diversify to include retaining them as return customers and attaining a wider market reach.

That is where vigorous marketing comes in handy. However, getting the market talking about you and identifying themselves with your brand requires a smart and calculated move. In the modern age, technology plays a significant role in how people interact. A significant percentage of the young’s demographic to the old are active online on social media platforms. Therefore, building your clientele portfolio through social media becomes the move to actualize.

Do You Have a Social Media Community?

Having a communal feel has, from time immemorial, become a significant influence on human interaction. It gives people a sense of belonging. It helps them feel appreciated, valued, and cared for at all times. Additionally, it provides a space for interaction without worrying that you will have judgmental and critical responses.

For instance, if one struggles with certain addictive behavior, a communal approach in reminding them they are not alone goes a long way in dealing with the situation. It is no exception with a social media community. Give your market a different and custom opportunity with a community that stems from your business.

Live Streaming is the Way to Go

When you want to have an interactive session with your audience, live streaming is one of the ways that will offer instant results. It will increase user experience and engagement, which will, in turn, help social media users associate with your brand.

Through live streaming, you can also promote your products and services. Customer satisfaction is fundamental in increasing your consumer base. Thankfully with live streaming, you can hold an interactive question and answer session where you answer any queries and concerns that your audience may have about your business. Additionally, live streaming offers an authentic approach that customers find pleasant to interact with and become return clients.

Conversational Marketing

Does your audience talk about you? If not, you could use a boost. Digital and social media marketing, as  e-innovate.co.uk highlights, is helping you open up your social media platforms for a wider target reach. If only a considerably lower percentage of your audience market knows about your business, even when you have intense marketing, you could be doing something wrong.

A significant influence of social media marketing should have conversations flowing naturally around your business. It becomes easier to align your business objectives around what gets people talking.

Custom Social Media Influencer Marketing

Social media influencer marketing has significantly grown over the last couple of years. It allows you to use a well-known brand in marketing your products to their audience. With such a strategy, consumers will want to associate themselves with your business as they can vouch for the brand influencer’s opinion.

However, the influx of social media influencers has seen a shakeup in actively using the marketing strategy. In such a situation, it may dilute the marketing effect you hope to achieve as consumers may doubt the authenticity of brand marketing.

Here’s how you can make it tight- micro-influencer marketing. Look out for smaller brands with a loyal following. That is your gold mine. Such influencers will have an easy time reaching out to their audience in vouching for your product and services. Additionally, the audience will then reach out to their followers, which will, in turn, help you market your business.

Video Content

A great way to jump on social media marketing in 2021 is through videos. The essence of social media platforms is to have a visual boost. Thanks to videos, you can quickly illustrate what your business offers. Remember, the attention span of the average consumer is a few minutes.

Therefore, a significant percentage will shy away from reading very long content in your business. On the other hand, creating short minutes of videos will quickly grasp their attention and communicate effectively when they are still interested.

6. Stories are Ideal

The use of stories like Instagram offers a real time consumer interaction that is hard to ignore. It allows your audience to interact with you when a day to day basis without putting too much information on your feed. The stories last for a day, giving you ample time to keep your audience up to date on what you are up to throughout.

Ultimately, remember that technology is the future. Consequently, social media is also part of technology. Therefore, increasing your presence in the different social media platforms will have you boost your market tremendously.

When we first move to a new residence, we often feel alienated and out of our element. This feeling is only natural because your home can only be cozy if you implement your own ideas. Warmth and coziness are attributes that your home acquires from you, and not the other way around. Summer is more suitable for minimal approaches and designs because if you’d like the house to be breezy and dynamic, but it can be much harder in winter to enjoy minimalist home décor. Whichever season it is, your home should be the safe sanctuary that you can’t wait to return to at the end of a long, hard day. Fortunately, it’s not hard to give your home a cozy vibe without making major investments. Here are the best simple home décor tips you can use to achieve this.

Good Lighting

Lighting is often overlooked when people are trying to find the simplest way to add some coziness to their homes. You wouldn’t believe how lighting can affect our moods and sleeping cycles. Since we’re looking for coziness mainly, you should opt for warm light setups that can make you feel welcome at all times. You want to avoid harsh, overly bright, and single lights as much as possible because they can create an emotionless aura. Try to go for variable cluster light sources in the locations where you’ll be spending time alone or with guests. If the budget is tight, you don’t have to invest in big lighting setups and settle for warm bulbs in the rooms in question.

You might want to get familiar with color temperatures to properly use the most suitable bulbs for your home. The temperature of light is measured in kelvin, and warm white’s temperature averages around 3000k and cool white is 5000k. It may sound confusing, but the higher the temperature of the light, the colder it is. The reason a candle provides such cozy light is that its light temperature is around 1850, which is quite warm. Strong neon lights can give a very discomforting vibe that will make you feel uneasy in a room, no matter how comfortable it is.

Incorporate Greenery

 In Color Theory, the effect of different colors on our mood and mental health is studied. The color green has been proven to have a positive effect on our mood. Incorporating greenery scenes into your house can soothe anxiety, instill peace, and have an uplifting effect on your mood. Live elements are one of the most effective contributors to adding a cozy vibe to your space. The process might be hard at first but once you get the hang of learning how to water your plants and care for them, it will be a piece of cake. Since there are many abandoned corners in our houses that don’t get the attention they deserve, you can take advantage of these empty corners to add some of your favorite plants.

Other than their wonderful effect on one’s psyche, plants come with another huge advantage. They give you the opportunity to add some creative DIY vessels that match your personality and the aesthetic of your house. You can either choose to paint the pots in colorful warm tones to create an appealing contrast with the greens, or you can choose blue shades and other cold tones to paint your space in natural colors that reduce stress and calm anxiety.

Personalized Furniture And Decorations

Having a lot of furniture from popular brands will make your home look generic and inauthentic. This will make you feel that some parts of your home aren’t as cozy as you’d like them to be. It’s important to start switching things up a bit and look for ways to add your own touch to the furniture and decorations. As mentioned on VisionBedding.com, it’s possible to customize unique bedding, rugs, duvets, and many more items by utilizing custom print fabrics. You can choose to use your own photos or digital artwork, or even choose readily available artwork. Whether by reupholstering an old piece of furniture or building a DIY table, the things you choose on your own will make your home personalized and cozier.

Rugs And Textiles For Warmth

While hardwood floors are much warmer than tiles, but they don’t really provide the warmth you’ll need to support your legs in winter. A layer that separates you from the floor can do a lot in terms of coziness and warmth, and they don’t have to cost you a fortune either. While the disorganized look of incoherent rugs can certainly make the place look like a mess, it can be done right by choosing synchronizing colors and materials. It’s hard to find a room in the house that won’t greatly benefit from a rug, whether it’s the kitchen or bathroom. You can even use combinations that align well together, such as Persian-style rugs on top of natural fibers. Naturally, you should opt for carpets if you can because they can add a stronger layer of insulation and warmth.

Adding Furniture To Corners

Corners can look quite bleak and stale without any furniture pieces. If you have a lot of empty corners in your home, it may be time to start changing things a bit. You need to look for furniture pieces that look inviting and add warmth to the corner. Whether it’s a small chair or a couple of seat options with a small table, they can do wonders when it comes to coziness. Try to always go for smaller pieces of furniture to avoid cramping up corners unnecessarily.

Decorating The Walls

Empty walls can make even the warmest homes much colder than they should be. The good news is that it’s not very hard to decorate the walls with simple decorations. Some people choose a single piece of artwork or an indoor water wall to decorate a big wall, and it can look pretty dazzling. But keep in mind that such a route requires choosing the piece of artwork with dedication and not just as a rushed afterthought. Artwork can be pricey, but you can stay within budget by using prints instead. You can also use mirrors to give an extra layer of depth to your home.

Relaxation, content, and comfort are all feelings that your home will instill when you have made an effort to make it cozy. Even your guests would be able to tell that your home is cozy if you start adding your own touches around the space. Aside from being impressive, cozy home will make you feel safer and more productive.