These are all products I use and highly recommend. I will add to the list over time. This site is not just about rental property, but everything financial and more. I might even throw in some non-educational, fun items at some point. Enjoy!
Rich Dad Poor Dad
This is where it all began! The book that changed my life. Robert Kiyosaki has written 10+ books, and I have listened to them all. You gotta love audiobooks. They are great for long commutes to work or while traveling.
This book has sold over 32 million copies worldwide and is a must-read for anyone interested in real estate or entrepreneurship. Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant are his first 2 books and set the foundation for all in the Rich Dad series.
The core message is that traditional schools do not teach financial education; and therefore, we all lack much of the knowledge the rich possess, how to make and keep money. Much controversy was made over the statements, “Your house is not an asset.”, and “The rich don’t work for money.”
Why is your house not an asset? What is the difference between an asset and a liability? An asset is anything that provides income, that puts money in your pocket, typically on a monthly basis, i.e. positive net cash flow. A liability is anything that costs you money or takes money out of your pocket on a net basis.
Therefore, the house we live in is a liability because it continually costs us money. We have to the pay the mortgage, utilities, property taxes, etc. Whereas the house we rent to someone else is an asset because it provides a continual stream of net income.
Most people struggle financially because they buy liabilities instead of buying assets. Your house, car, boat, motorcycle are all liabilities as they suck money out of you every month. So the key to building wealth is simply to buy assets. Sounds simple, right!? Yes and no. You have to learn how to buy and manage assets, and our education system does not teach that.
It also doesn’t teach us about the different types of income and the tax implications for each. For example, self-employed people pay twice the social security tax as employees pay. As an employee, your employer pays half of SS and you pay the other half.
However, income from rental property is passive income rather than earned income and therefore is not subject to social security tax. So that 15.3% you get to keep!
It is absolutely criminal that basic tax code education like this is not a part of the standard high school curriculum. Traditional education teaches how to be an employee and that’s it.
There is much more information like that above to be gained from the Rich Dad series. Those with the knowledge have the power. Building wealth is all about changing to an income stream generating mindset rather than a working for money and stockpiling mindset. As stated above, the rich don’t work for money, money works for them.
Quicken
I have been using Quicken since 1998, and believe it or not, I am still using Quicken Basic 2000! This is the #1 personal financial software, and rightly so, as it is a must-have for tracking expenses, particularly for anyone contemplating retirement.
Side note: It makes me cringe every time I hear a financial pundit correlate expenses to income by saying something like, “You need to be able to generate 85% of your working income when retired.” Newsflash: there is zero correlation between income and expenses. This deserves repeating, there is absolutely zero correlation between how much we make and how much we spend. Those desiring early retirement may only spend 25-50% of their income, whereas at the other extreme many folks carry a lot of personal debt due to spending more than their income. So personal income levels, spending habits, and money management skills are all over the map. Sorry for the rant, I’ll get off my soap box and finish this review. More on that in a later article.
There are 4 different versions (one for managing rentals) with all kinds of reports and tools. You can download credit card purchases, track your investments, pay your bills, and a plethora of other useful features. Admittedly, some features are overkill and/or not entirely necessary.
I use mine strictly offline as a checkbook register and historical record of transactions. Since all my bills are already setup for auto-pay directly, it literally takes only a few minutes each month to enter expenses and another few minutes to reconcile the account (aka “balancing your checkbook”).
It memorizes prior entries and therefore auto-fills after a couple key strokes. For bills that are the exact same every month like a mortgage payment, you can have those transactions automatically scheduled. All income and expenses are categorized upon entry, so you can easily generate an itemized category report. Perfect for reviewing the last 12 months to know exactly where the money went and how much you spent down to the penny.
So to each his/her own as far as the version and what features to incorporate in your personal and/or business finances. You can purchase the Home & Business version with all the bells and whistles or the Starter version for basic personal finance. Either way, knowing how much money we spend each year is a must for personal and retirement planning. If you don’t know how much you spend each year, then you are not ready to retire.
H & R Block Tax Software
I have been using this tax preparation software for over 20 years, from all the way back when it was called TaxCut. The younger readers were spared the misery of manually completing taxes with pencil and paper. What a nightmare that was! Thank God (or perhaps more directly, Bill Gates) for the advent of the PC operating system and all the resulting immensely helpful software. Let’s see a show of hands for all those who have heard of MS DOS!?
H&R Block vs Turbo Tax: It goes without saying, they both provide the same basic result, the ease of preparing your taxes. So it all comes down to price. Due to Amazon rules, I am forbidden from mentioning specific prices, but if we simply choose one version and compare — the H&R Block Premium and Turbo Tax Premier are equivalent and both offer documents for Rental Income — we see that buying H&R Block saves us about $20. Cha-ching!
For those who don’t yet own rental property, it’s important to know rental income and expenses are reported on Schedule E which is not included in the Basic and Deluxe versions. Make sure to purchase the Premium or Premium & Business version.
The biggest tip I can give is maintain good records all year long, before it’s time to do your taxes. I created an Excel form which basically replicates Schedule E and another log sheet with expense and mileage details. This speeds up the process when time to use the software.
For the smartly frugal folks, be aware that although Federal e-filing is free, H&R Block charges $19.95 for State e-filing. As an Ohioan, we can file online free, so most states likely offer the same.
Bluehost Web Hosting
I actually first signed up and started building this website in October 2017, but the endeavor was delayed 2 years for personal reasons. About the only benefit of COVID-19 is it has given us the opportunity to work on projects which our busy lives have prevented us from pursuing.
I have utilized the “stay at home order” time to finalize this site’s look and feel, test all the functionality, and begin creating content. I am not a website developer and have no formal training with site-building or html coding. I am 100% self-taught, yet would have had zero chance of accomplishing this feat without access to the infinite knowledge of others through these wonderful things called the internet and Google. Most things you can learn through other bloggers or when all else fails the free tech support of product and service providers.
If I can do this, so can you! It just takes time and perseverance. I literally started from scratch, knowing nothing about building a website or even where to start. This is the Reader’s Digest version of the products I ended up choosing after more research than I care to recount.
I am going to save you a boatload of time. I learned that although there are a few dozen website building platforms, WordPress is the “Windows” of site-building with a worldwide market share of 63%. Joomla is the 2nd highest with a measly 5% market share.
WordPress is the software used to build the site, analogous to how PowerPoint is used to create a presentation.
In order to have a professional, monetized site, you must use WordPress.org rather than WordPress.com as the latter has limitations. In a nutshell, if you want to make money, use WordPress.org. If you are a hobbyist or just want to create an online family photo album, then use WordPress.com. But if you are anal like I am and must know all the pros and cons, then check out this article.
This brings us to Bluehost and a few other goodies below. Using WordPress.org to build a site requires what’s called “self-hosting”, which means you have to pay for a hosting provider.
Bluehost is a web hosting platform or server which enables a website to be displayed for all the world to see on the internet. It is a popular and cost effective host for launching a new site. This keeps costs low in the early years of building followers, and it should be sufficient for the first 3 years or so. If you are a super success and have millions of readers, then you will have to upgrade to a more powerful platform at some point.
The Bluehost service and staff have served me well. They actually have phone support 24/7! (Phone support is temporarily reduced due to COVID, but chat support is still 24/7.) They are good about helping with run-of-the-mill beginner issues with WordPress and also offer paid tech support if needed. I have never needed to pay for tech support.
Once you have a hosting service like Bluehost, you now need to select a theme (or “template”) to begin your website. StudioPress is a popular theme designer and also built the most popular framework called Genesis.
Let me explain: the Genesis Framework (a parent theme) is analogous to a car’s chassis, body, and steering wheel; everything necessary for basic driveability of the vehicle. Its functions do not change. The theme (aka child theme), is analogous to all the bells and whistles and creature comforts that make the vehicle fun and desirable to drive. The child theme is a template on top of the parent theme framework.
The theme is where all the creatively and customization come into play. It’s what makes a website unique. This site was built using StudioPress’s Daily Dish Pro theme, yet I customized it quite a bit, so there’s not much resemblance at this point. Check out all StudioPress Premium Themes.
WP Engine Web Hosting acquired StudioPress in 2018 and is another more powerful platform that hopefully I’ll have the luxury of upgrading to in the future. I don’t have first hand experience with them as a web hosting service; however, I can attest to the fact that they have excellent tech support.
WP Engine serves as tech support for all StudioPress themes and Genesis, so I have dealt with them multiple times in solving many site-build issues. They are a first-rate team!
Disclosure: Amazon Associates and other affiliates are partners of Cash Flow Playground, and I may earn a commission if you click a link and make a purchase. This is, of course, at no cost to you, and I thank you for helping to support this site.