What a great list of interesting people to go learn more about! Thanks!!!
My mom told me about Mr. and Mrs. Pfeiffer of Piggott, Arkansas. They were a wealthy family that owned a really nice home and a fair bit of land. When the depression came along lots of people in the area were hurting. They were also proud and did not want handouts, they wanted to earn their own way.
The Pfeiffers bought every single quilt people brought them. Didn't care whether it was any good or not. They just bought them. Every few months they would pay someone to paint the outside of their home. Apparently the paint is really thick on that house. Good people.
Oh, yeah, some writer named Ernest Hemingway married their daughter and moved to Arkansas for awhile.
http://arkansaslivingmagazine.com/article/hemingway-pfeiffer-home-showcases-cultural-history/We own some farmland up that way, my mom and dad are buried thereabouts.
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What can we, as FIRED people with a stash do to improve people's lot in life?
One, of course, is to spread the word. Lots of people have the drive to do what needs doing if they just have a good plan to follow.
Another way is to build in a budget for charitable giving. The problem with giving is that once you give it, it's gone. You've got to come up with more stash if you want to give more away.
My wife and I decided to treat every 5th or 6th property as a charitable one.
We had been looking for a fixer-upper that we could renovate and donate as a battered women's safe house, for example. Thought we had found a good candidate but then we realized it was next door to what appeared to be a criminal gang. Decided to pass on that house.
Then I got to thinking that there's another way.
We found a really cool home in our area that was going to be destroyed. We wanted to save it. I'm helping someone get their real estate investing business going. It's employing him and after school starts next year it will also be able to employ his wife. I pay him to help me renovate my rentals and flips and loan him seed money for investments at very favorable terms. The intent of those terms is to enable him to acquire some properties that he otherwise wouldn't be able to afford yet. He'll be able to season them for a couple of years as rentals before refinancing them to more conventional mortgages. Or use borrow money to make a quick flip for essentially no interest. I have a cap on the amount I'll make available to him and my only restriction is that I know how to make money on the property. (That way, if something goes wrong like he and his wife die in a car wreck and I have to take over the property, I'll be able to offload it without losing my capital.) Before I got into flip #1 I made sure I could get my money back out of the repaired house. Turned out I was able to sell it after only doing a few repairs for enough to put $10k to $15k into my buddie's pocket and anywhere between $0 to $15k in my own.
So, first property netted my buddy at least $10k. 2nd and 3rd properties we worked on were rentals for me. He made cash while working on them and then gets the first 12 month's rent payments (minus taxes, insurance and property management fees). So, that's another $12k-14k in rent plus about $12k in repair wages. While we were working on #2, I called him up (he was out of town) and told him that I was buying another property, #4. "Take a look at it when you get back, I'll rent it out if you don't want it." He decided he wanted it. I've bought the house and will fund the repairs. Then I'll sell it to him at cost using seller financing. Expected terms will be along the lines of 0% for 3 years, then market rates. This gives him time to build up a repair kitty because he has no mortgage costs plus season the units as rentals so the banks will refinance them. I'm making that capital available for use in purchases for 3 years, so he could potentially get a flip, fix it up, sell it and then use the proceeds to fund another rental. All that without the hassle of dealing with a bank and their rules.
What do I get out of that? An energetic, smart, handy person to help us with our renovations. We're no spring chickens anymore. And we get our money back which means we can re-use it to help someone else get started. That's important!
And, of course, he's being exposed to the value of helping others get started, too, as well as how I treat people I do business with.
Next project will be a rental property for college students to share. If I can find one at the right price, I can fix it up, rent it out for a few years to get my money back out of it, then turn it into a non-profit that can rent to students at half price (and remain self-supporting). If I do it this way, I can re-use my charitable capital for another property.
I guess it's kind of like recycling charitable dollars.
Anyway, that's the current plan. If we come up with one that's better, we'll do it.