I have been thinking of starting this series of blog entries for some time now. Problem is, I have been so busy focusing of getting ready for our road trip that I have kept putting it off. Yesterday, the apparent stress that has been building up finally got to me.

We are planning to leave on Saturday for a trip to Warner Robins, Georgia to attend the closing of the purchase of our first mobile home park. I say “first” because we plan to buy several over the next several years. It has been a significant learning curve getting accustomed to the world of mobile home parks, U.S. real estate and generally being out of my element.

People as us all the time, how did you get involved with mobile home parks and how did you find this one. The simple answer is, the Internet. As you may or may not know, our ultimate goal is to move to Costa Rica. When in Costa Rica, we are not able to work a regular job because we will not be residents of the country (at least not right away). So, in order to generate the income to live, we needed something that would provide us with a stable income in an arena that we understand and are comfortable with. Since I have been dabbling in real estate for many years, it was obvious that real estate investing was where we had to focus. Also, since we will be non-resident investors, we needed a solution that would work well over the Internet and telephone. A solution that fit what we already know – rentals.

Mobile home parks provide a means, using on-site management, to run the park without being on site. As well, the volume of parks in the U.S. is very high (buyer’s market) and the barriers to entry are relatively low for the amount of income you can generate (high returns). So why mobile home parks and not other types of income producing real estate like renting homes, apartments or commercial property. Well, having several single family homes can be a administrative nightmare, apartments buildings have low returns and high maintenance costs, and commercial…well…let’s just say that this is not the time to be investing in a market that is having one of the worst times in history (vacanies are visible all around). Mobile home parks do well in any economy. There is always a need for low income housing.

So today, I start planning the trip down to Warner Robins to see where we will stop and how long we will need to drive each day. We are travelling with our three young children, so planning is much more important. Lot’s of work to do.

‘Til next time.

As an example, my wife and I have a dream of living in Costa Rica. Part of the process has been designing our future Costa Rican home for about 18 months. The first time I did this, we didn’t even have property to build on. I had everything on a flat, square plot. It was great and it incorporated all of the details I always thought I wanted. Then we went to look at lots and found out that the lots were more interesting than we had ever considered. That is, anything BUT flat and square.

I didn’t just drop the idea of living in Costa Rica. In fact, this new information made the prospect even more exciting. With respect to the house, there were so many new ideas that I could incorporate. In fact, every bit of new information changes what I can or want to do with the house. In fact, I have over 20 different designs that I have played with, dealing with about 5 different concepts.

You can see the latest design on my Flickr page. The house design has changed, but the main idea of living in Costa Rica has always stayed strong. With every new design, I get more and more excited. In fact, this is a great way to visualize the end result of achieving my dream.

So don’t let changes allow you to abandon your dreams. Just look at them closer and see how you can improve them.

What is it exactly?

The top level is the main house with the kitchen, semi-circular dining balcony, living room and hallway to office and master bedroom. The master bedroom has a glass shower that faces out to the private courtyard.

The second level is where the bedrooms are for our three children, plus their common bathroom. This is accessed from a circular staircase that matches the curve of the semicircular dining balcony.

The third level is where the guest rooms are located, along with the outdoor kitchen that they could use. Behind this is where the car would be parked. The two lines in back represent the driveway that would wrap around below the pool and to the bottom of the property. Notice that the pool has an infinity edge that would allow those coming up the driveway to see the water coming over the edge.

The green areas that you see are, as much as possible, the natural slope of the property. There will be a lot of trees on the property, I just haven’t bothered to put them into the model.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

The “A” stands for Actionable or Action Oriented. This means the when you write out your goals, you have to write them in the form of an action. This is important because the achievement of your goals requires action on your part. What that action is depends on what you want. By making the goal action oriented, you are being more specific, which as we have already seen, is a key to the whole process of achieving your goals.

So it is not sufficient to write down “Ferrari Modena” on your goal list. This doesn’t tell you whether you want to own one, rent one, see one, see a picture of one, or just dream about one. You need to turn this into an action so that your mind can understand how it is going to help you achieve this goal. And don’t forget to be specific.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

“I want to own a 2007 Ferrari Modena 430 in Ferrari red with tan interior.”

“I want to rent a Ferrari Modena and drive it on the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada.”

Notice in the first case that I put in the year and model of the car. There may be something specific that you like about one particular year. Also, colors are very important because it is easier to capture the image in your mind.

In the second case, why do you want to rent a Ferrari? Where do you envision yourself driving when you do? Add as much detail as you can. What does it sound like? Feel like? Smell like?

That’s it for today. I am going to look at some Ferrari Modena photos and videos now.

There are two reasons why being able to measure your goals is important. Firstly, being able to measure your progress helps you see that you are in fact making progress. Making progress allows you to stay motivated and keep focused on those goals.

The second reason is that you need to know when you arrive. I touched on this last time when I talked about being specific. When you know what you want, you will know when you have it. If you do not know what you want, you may go on searching and searching, not realizing that you may be wasting energy on somehthing you have already accomplished and could be using that energy towards a new goal.

So how do you measure you goals?

The best way to do that is to break your goal down into smaller and smaller pieces so that you figure out what step to take next. These pieces could be either chunks of time or smaller tasks that need to be accomplished before the next one, or both. These smaller pieces are easier to understand and appreciate when you get started.

Let’s look at our previous example of becoming rich. Let’s assume that you decided that you wanted to accumulate a net worth of $1 million within 5 years. What you would do is break this beast down into more manageable chunks of money in smaller time periods. For example, a linear example would be to break it down as follows:

$200,000 in one year
$50,000 per quarter
$16,667 per month
$4,167 per week
$595 per day.

Once you have gotten to this point, you will agree that figuring out how to make $595 is probably easier than making $1 million. Of course, the breakdown you use depends on how you plan to make the money.

Not every goal will be centered around money, so let’s look at different example. How about running a marathon. You are not going to go out and run a full marathon your first time out. You need to start off by running shorter distances. Depending on your level of fitness, you may even need to start out by getting of the couch and going for a walk.

The purpose of this is to break down your goal in pieces small enough that you can feel comfortable in achieving them. You cannot expect to go out and knock one out of the park on your first attempt. What you need to do is to get up and get going. If it requires a series of very minor tasks to start off, then that is what you need to do.

Whatever your goal, the point is that it is easier to deal with smaller tasks or amounts that you can wrap your mind around and actually commit to achieving. Once you do achieve the first stage of your goal, you can move on to the next. As you get more and more accomplishments under your belt, you start to build a habit of success and this habit makes it easier and easier to achieve the bigger ones ahead.

Maybe you got married and had kids, then the marriage turned sour. Don’t dwell on the bad marriage, rejoice in that fact that that marriage blessed you with wonderful children. If you didn’t have children, rejoice in the fact that you now know what not to do or who not to do it with the next time. Learn from the experience. As an aside, if you are in a bad marriage and have kids, you can still go after your dream of finding true love.

Instead of staying in a bad marriage “for the kids”, why not get out of a bad marriage “for the kids.” Show them that just because you made a mistake doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it, adjust, and continue to shoot for your dreams. Show them that love is something to shoot for.

Never settle, it sets a bad example.