“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

-Mark Twain

Have you ever heard the phrase “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”? An expression oft-repeated and accepted as true by those content to live in a world where they see two things they want, but where the choices appear incompatible; so they grudgingly resign to only picking one or the other, and give up hope of enjoying both.  I am here to tell you that this colloquialism is not true!  You CAN have your cake, in your hand for example, and you can simultaneously savor and enjoy every bite! This may spark a paradigm shift for you.  You may have acquiesced for years to a cake-free diet.  A shift occurs when you are suddenly enlightened by facts and reason that an old way of thinking is untrue. I believe my readers are thinkers, you are smarter than many, and you therefore have the ability to do well with your investments. So, another paradigm shift is that you can buy an apartment building inside of your Individual Retirement Account (IRA) – You get the benefits of current income without paying current taxes on the money, aka having your cake and eating it too!  That’s the “perfect storm”, another expression that we can explore another time.

Inside of an IRA your money will grow, tax free, while it is in the account. Any individual with earned income equal to or greater than that year’s contribution can contribute up to $5,500 a year to an IRA ($6,500 if you’re 50 or older), and taxes will be payable only when you withdraw the money, which could represent decades of compounded earnings. Consider how this might apply to your children, or grandchildren.  What some investors don’t know is the money in your IRA account can be used to invest directly into real estate through one of a number of custodians (whom we can direct you to). Consider getting a cash distribution of 1 ½ percent per quarter from your real estate assets and not have it count towards your taxable income for that year.  That’s having your cake and eating it too!

You need to take a hard look at investments in real estate. Many RE assets act contrary to the stock market or possess some level of countercyclical resistance to prevailing market forces- when the stock market gets scary, investors move to hard assets. With real estate, income is a great preference, but wealth preservation is also a characteristic that makes real estate such a sought-after investment.

Just take a look at this video from VWC and reach out to our Team to request more information on the VWC Multifamily Fund III.   Get on the path to quarterly distributions at 6% per year and let us show you how to use your IRA money to minimize your tax burden.

I’ll end our conversation with this: most high-net-worth individuals keep some or a large portion of their wealth in real estate assets, and often times in tax advantaged accounts like IRA’s and exempt Trusts.  You are smart, join the world’s wealthiest investors and add real estate to your investment portfolio so you can have your cake and eat it too!