Some are scared to invest right now. Others are waiting for the perfect opportunity. But are they missing out on some of the best opportunities right now? How can you stay ahead of the curve?
Chris Miles shares what’s happening in the current marketplace and where you may be missing out.
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Are You Missing Out Right Now?
Welcome to our show that’s for you, those of you that work so hard for your money and you’re ready for your money to start working harder for you. You want that freedom of cashflow today, not 30 or 40 years from now, but right now, so you can live that life that you love doing what you love. Most importantly, it’s not by getting rich, but by living a rich life because as you’re blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you.
I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate you that have been binging on these shows and going back to past episodes. Here’s a key tip here. If you’re a business owner or you’re starting out a business, go back to the earliest ones. If you’re more looking to invest, start these ones and work backward. The more recent, the better when it comes to the investing part of it. There are some great episodes if you go back, especially in our early days. You may even have to go all the way to BlogTalkRadio.com and even find some of those very first episodes. They’re not the greatest quality, but they’re great anyways.
A reminder, if you have any questions for us, reach out to us at MoneyRipples.com. Take the Passive Income Calculator. If you want to find out how much passive income you can create over the next year, go ahead and check that out right now. I’m back in the studio. Whether you knew this or not, I was out of town and out of my home office. I went to Hawaii for over a month. We’re back again and doing this. All the previous episodes you’ve been watching for the last two months, January and February, were recorded in 2022.
There have been more things. We’re going into March 2023. There are more things that have been happening, haven’t there? There have been some updates. I don’t think that much has changed, but I want to address what I’m seeing right now based on things that I’ve been hearing from other investors, operators, and people like that that have their ears on the ground and/or are in the trenches. They’re already there on the front lines knowing what’s going on in the market today.
The sentiment I’m starting to see is we get a lot of people that are procrastinating right now. There might be excuses. People might say, “I’ve got taxes to worry about. I’ll worry about investing later,” or, “I’m saving up my money for that next opportunity. When someone tells me what to invest in, then I’ll jump.” I’m here to tell you that if you have any of those thoughts or maybe you’re holding back because you’re scared, you’re missing out. I’m not here to create all this FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out. I’m not here to create that for you. I’m not here to create scarcity. I’m here to create some reality.
The reality is that right now, there are plenty of opportunities today. Even when I say today, I’m still recording this a few weeks in the past. You’re reading this a few weeks later. There are opportunities right now on the verge. The key is you need to be on the trending side. You need to be leading the trend, not the post-trend.
When news comes out and people tell you, “This is where all the money’s being made right now. This is hot,” that’s when you know it’s not because the money has already been made. The people have already done it. I’ll give you an example. In the last six months or so or the last year in 2022, we heard everybody saying, “People are competing for offers and buying a house. It’s incredible right now. You can sell your house for top dollar.”
What happened going into the summer of 2022? People still think they’re going to get top dollar, then they’re shocked because as interest rates had risen, people weren’t offering as much anymore. When people were trying to sell their homes like, “I want people fighting over my house,” people weren’t fighting you so much, were they? That had stopped. Eventually, people caught onto that and started saying, “There are no longer competing offers. Now is a hard time to sell.” They then started saying, “Maybe this is better for buyers right now.”
What’s fascinating is this. As I’m talking to some of my friends in multiple markets across the country, whether you’re talking about Boise, Idaho, Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Newark, New Jersey, it doesn’t matter. Whether you’re looking in the South, East, West, or North, everywhere you look is about the same. Everybody’s noticing that it’s currently becoming a better seller’s market. Why? It is because all these people that held off on buying and thought, “Maybe that was not the right time to buy,” because they heard the news that everybody was asking too much for their property have been delaying. As interest rates rose, that didn’t help things either. Everybody held off throughout the winter.
January going into February, and now, we’re going into March, all these people are saying, “We’re having an easier time selling our properties. It’s getting better.” This does not mean it’s a seller’s market. It just means it’s a better seller’s market. It was a horrible seller’s market for a few months especially. Like what happened in March 2020 when everything froze because everything shut down across the country, we started moving to the summer of 2022, and then things picked up to try to catch up to it.
In the United States, people are still moving here. They still need housing. They still need a place to live. Some people will delay trying to sell their house because it was moving in the winter anyways, so now, they’re looking into the summer. If you want to be at the forefront, you may want to sell your properties now. I’m not giving any investment recommendations. I’m saying if you’re looking to sell a property, this early springtime might be your best opportunity. That is especially before we get into summer when people might say, “I need to sell out of this and then buy into a new place.”
You’re going to start to see more transactions happening. This is also good news if you’re a buyer. As buyers are starting to creep back into the market and there is starting to be a little bit of competition among the buying, it’s still a good time because people still think it’s a bad time to buy. Understand that whatever people are saying in general in the market, it’s wrong. If people say it’s a bad time to buy, that usually means it’s a good time to buy. If people say it’s a bad time to sell, it’s usually a good time to sell.
If people say it's a bad time to buy, that usually means it's a good time to buy. Click To TweetNews and hot tips are always behind the times. They’re always behind the trend, not in front of it. If you want to lead the trend and you want to be able to profit and make real wealth, you got to stay ahead of it. In fact, you got to do the opposite. If everybody tells you to run away from the market, run towards it. If everybody’s telling you to buy in that market, you sell out of that market and stay away from that market.
This is why last year, I stayed away from crypto. I knew that in the spring of last year, especially when there were crypto experts saying, “It’s going to come down,” I said, “I’m going to profit, take that money out now, and have it come down.” I took that money out and made a profit. I bought crypto and I made money, but I’m not buying it. That’s me personally. Some of you guys might disagree, and that’s fine. The proof is in the pudding. It’s worked for me. The thing is, for me, it’s worked over the years. I made my mistakes in the last recession. I learned from them. That’s why in these last boom years and even as we’re moving into this weird transitory type of time period where people can’t decide whether it’s a recession or not, that’s why I’m still able to profit.
I would also give you another warning. There’s also going to be because things are starting to dry up a little bit in the investment space, it’s getting harder for people to make money brainlessly. There are a lot of people that went and invested in real estate. They went and bought their apartment buildings. They hardly knew anything about what they were doing, yet they bought them. You’re going to start to see pretty soon those people getting burned. They’re going to start needing more cash. They get cash out. They might realize they bought too high and may not be able to get out. They’re desperately trying to figure out how to get out of their deals. This is going to start happening more. I’ve already seen this happening in the self-storage space.
I was talking with a guy back in December. He said, “It’s much better now in December than it was in August. In August, everybody was still asking for top dollar in self-storage.” In December, he said that a $1.6 million property that was being listed now is being listed at $1.15 million. Last weekend, as I was talking with another self-storage guy, he said “People are starting to figure out that prices come down.”
When that little sweet spot happens and the reality sets in for people, they say, “Do you know how I rejected your offer, that lowball offer, before? I’m willing to entertain it again.” That’s when you know you’re in a good place. We’re seeing that with residential real estate with some of the turnkey providers that we have in our group. We’re starting to see that now.
They’re starting to make lower offers and get it accepted even though ten days ago, it didn’t work. We’re starting to see people now that are able to unload the properties and get a higher price for them, too, depending on which market you’re in and what kind of real estate you’re doing. I’m talking more about the cheaper real estate that it’s a great time to buy. There are still some good opportunities even to sell even in that market. That’s what I’m seeing.
The trend I’m seeing with people that are potential investors is that they’ve got the cash and the ability to do these things, but they’re holding on for longer. I thought it was all because of fear. I thought, “It must be because people are scared to death. They’re afraid of losing money. That’s got to be it.” What I’ve come to find out as I’ve started to dig into people’s psyche a little bit more is it’s not. In some cases, they’re almost waiting for that perfect opportunity. They hear recession and think, “I got to wait for everything to calm down.” What happens in the meantime is that you miss out on some of the best opportunities today waiting for it to “calm down.” Could that happen in the stock market? Sure, absolutely, especially if you don’t do anything.
The difference here is that there are plenty of alternatives. There are plenty of things. Are there some certain investments that maybe don’t look as sweet today as they did before? Yes, but things are starting to look good. Since people keep their money on the sidelines, that opens up more opportunities for you to take action because you’re getting your money in some of these best deals currently. I’ve seen these in real estate. I’ve seen this in the oil and gas sectors. There have been some great things there. I’ve seen it come back with self-storage. People aren’t talking about it yet, but they’re there.
Not early this year, but maybe late 2023 or going into 2024, we might even start seeing some apartment buildings coming back as good deals again. That will happen once those prices settle back down from all the hype that has been built up in 2021 and 2022. You’re going to see that. As a warning, because you have the cash, you still need to be careful. I know it sounds like I’m contradicting, but I’m trying to bring balance.
The truth is always in the middle of the extremes. You got the extreme over here of, “You should go do it now,” and then you got people that say, “Don’t do it.” The truth is in the middle. You should be cautiously optimistic right now because there are a lot of charlatans out there. A lot of people are trying to take your money that have no business being in this business, yet they’re taking people’s money. There are a lot of people saying, “I can’t find deals right now, so I’ll create a fund. This fund will invest in whatever I find out there. Hopefully, something will stick.” Stay away from that.
If they’re doing investments, you want to stay with the people that have been there, have done it, and are still doing it. It’s part of their nature in the sense that they could almost know it like the back of their hand. They’ve done it so many times. They know exactly what criteria they have to meet and they’re not willing to bend those rules. They are disciplined. They do the same old vanilla projects over and over. Those are the deals that you should be focusing on right now.
If someone starts to come out with the new latest and greatest craze or something sexy and they haven’t had a lot of experience with it, even if it could turn out well in your favor, I would suggest being careful or maybe don’t do it at all. This is my own personal philosophy. When in doubt, stay out. If I have any doubts at all, I don’t do it. If I feel good, confident, and peaceful, it doesn’t mean I don’t get a little bit anxious or apprehensive like, “We’re about to invest in this thing.” It doesn’t mean I don’t feel that, but it means I don’t feel a lot of concern, doubts, or fears. That’s a good thing. You should never let fear and scarcity enter into your investing. That’s the advice I have to give you today. There are plenty of opportunities and things you could be doing.
I would recommend this. Maybe you got money sitting in the bank. Maybe you got online savings. Maybe you got money sitting in stocks or bonds that you’re starting to wonder if it’s a good place. Maybe you’ve got money sitting in cash value life insurance, whether it’s with us or somebody else. Maybe you got money sitting there and you’re wondering what to do with it. Maybe you got some equity in your house, although equity from a house may or may not make sense depending on your situation.
Maybe you got old 401(k)s from a previous employer. Maybe you have some IRA money, Roth IRAs, or whatever it might be. Maybe you have annuities. We’ve had a lot of people with annuities saying, “These things aren’t doing much for me. What now?” If you’ve got money like that, and especially if you’ve got at least $250,000 of that there in those investments, you should be reaching out to us at MoneyRipples.com right now. Take that Passive Income Calculator and see what number you get. If that number comes in at least $15,000 or $20,000, we should be talking, assuming you put in the numbers correctly. If you don’t get that number, that’s fine. Wealth Accelerator Academy is another good option.
I’m telling you. There are deals available right now. My biggest concern for you is that if you put it off a little longer and put it off for several more months or maybe years, how much wealth will you miss out on? Time is your only friend right now. Time is also your enemy when you don’t take advantage of that time. Find ways to do that.
Don’t go in guns blazing. We have some people that are younger that are in their 20s and 30s that are ready to take out the world. They’re taking big risks. We don’t want that. For those people, I have to tell you to slow down, breathe, and then look at those investments. For many of you, especially if you’re past my age and in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, it’s a matter of you needing some guidance and some direction. You need some education to know where the best deals are.
We’re not investment advisors. We’re not going to tell you where to place that money, but we do provide guidance and a framework to help you figure out, “These specific deals would be the best ones to look at for your goals. Look at these.” We have some people that we’ve vetted. It doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed, but we’ve got some people in our network that could be a good fit for what you’re trying to do. We’ve had some amazing results.
Today, I was talking with our coach, Craig. He was sharing some of the case studies that we had. He had a couple that was in their twenties. He works in the tech sector. In the technology industry, there are threats of layoffs. Passive income is a big focus. They’re younger. They were wanting to take higher risks and wanted to do it now. We had to slow them down, educate them first, and then say, “Now, look.” They have been buying some turnkey investment properties and some rentals. They’re getting some cashflow there plus some tax advantages. They’re also looking at some funds and things like that that are paying some decent returns.
We talk all the time about 10%. I’ll tell people right now, even my own clients, don’t always count on 10%. It might be 7%, 8%, or 9%. We had one fund in our network that did 8.5%. The lowest was done since 2015. Why? It was not because they lost money, but because they put more money in cash reserves to shore up extra cash in their account. That was because either one, in case things do go crazy in the market, then they have some extra buffer there to protect their fund, make sure that people all get their money back, and then make returns, too, or two, it will give them extra money. If something doesn’t happen that is as bad but opportunities show up, they might get even better opportunities to lend money towards. They’re looking at that.
Normally, you get double-digit returns. That’s still possible. That fund did 8.5%. It’s a fund that we advertise on the show. It’s the sponsor of our show. It did 8.5% last year, which is the lowest they’ve ever done. That still beats the negative 20% of the stock market in 2022. Some people were like, “It didn’t make 10% this year.” At least you didn’t lose 20%. Do you know how long it’s going to take you to make that money back? Good luck. You’re going to wait years to even make up what they are able to do if they ever catch up at all. That’s my point.
There are opportunities that people are missing out on right now. They’re even holding on to the stock market. This might be the perfect time to get out of the stock market. I’m not claiming that that’s the case. I’m not giving investment advice. Who’s to say that this is a new little high that we’re at with the stock market? If it’s hitting over 4,000 in the S&P500, what if that’s the highest it gets for the next couple of years, maybe 5 or 10 years? Would you look back and say, “I should have done it then, and I didn’t. I could have been in other investments making money while everybody else is losing money in the stock market.”
Know that if you do what everybody else does, which is put your money in your same old 401(k)s, IRAs, and Roth IRAs, throw your money in there, hope that you’re going to do something and be successful, and have enough money for financial freedom, that won’t happen. It hasn’t happened yet. What makes you think it’s going to happen in the future? People aren’t financially-free saving in these mutual funds, yet people still do it.
I guarantee that if you save the way that everybody else saves, you will get the same broke results everybody else has gotten. The choice is up to you. Do you want to take a different path? A path that’s been proven to work better doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed path, but you sure have a whole heck of a lot more odds of success than a 0% chance of success saving in that mutual fund or those same old retirement accounts you’ve been told to invest in for the last several decades and yet has been proven not to work.
The choice is up to you. What do you choose? The only time is now. What are you going to do with the time and the knowledge you have today? If you want to take action, do something. It doesn’t have to be with us. You can always reach out to us on MoneyRipples.com, but it can be with anything. Take action, move forward, and don’t listen to what the masses are saying. Do the opposite. That’s been my advice for many years, and it will probably be my advice for years to come. Make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.