One of my favorite time-wasting ‘relax’ websites is a video aggregator blog called Devour. I take no responsibility for the ensuing addiction if you click that link.

Today they posted one of three short films I had to share with you. They’ve done a Man’s version of the popular book Eat, Pray, Love. My wife and I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit in our lives, living in four different countries since we met, visiting many more and doing some amazing things. Some of my favorites include taking ballroom dance classes in a small Irish community college, watching the World Pipe Band Championships in Scotland, eating at every McDonald’s in northern France and attending Mass in Italian in St. Peters’ Basilica.

Travel is important to us both, as is trying new things and new food. Learning (and reading) is a passion we both share, and these shorts expmplify what we’ve done, how we live now with our son and what life holds for us in the future.

Watch, be inspired and go do something new.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

No related posts.

There’s been a lot in the news the last few months about how Canada’s gone from a nation of savers to a nation of spenders. While it’s true that we’ve gone from saving ~15% of our income to ~1%, there’s some scarier stats out there. We’re in serious danger of outliving our savings, getting useless biased advice,  and seeing retired people recycling bottles for extra cash. At 28 years old, I’m a little scared.

Few people have any sort of idea how they’ll save for retirement and even fewer actually are taking action.

Only 32% of Canadians have a plan for retirement, which means of my almost 700 friends on Facebook, 450 of them haven’t the foggiest clue how they’ll retire.

I’ve got news for you: CPP and your work pension plan aren’t going to cut it.

It’s no secret that real estate is  a big part of the retirement plan Megan and I have created and are executing. The worst case scenario when I buy a $200,000 townhouse is that in 20 years the tenants have paid of the mortgage and I’ll have (at least) a $200,000 asset.

Stay tuned this week and I’ll tell you how I turn my $200,000 forced savings plan into a $400,000 retirement find.

Photo Credit: Proimos

No related posts.

Anyone out there who is a REIN member, has attended a Quickstart or read Don’s book Real Estate Investing in Canada: Creating Wealth with the ACRE System is going to be familar with the concept of a Personal Belize.

Simply put, it’s a way of visualizing your goals, in this case for your real estate, in non-monetary terms. It’s understanding success not by how many properties you own, or your net worth, but by how the sand on a Belize beach feels under your feet.

I chose to create a part of my personal Belize as a blog post when I attended the Quickstart in Vancouver in February of this year. I did that because Megan and I are both huge fans of traveling, each of us having spent a year living in Europe. I want my real estate to give us the ability to travel and expose our kids to more of the world. I know that we’ll blog about it for our family and friends to read as we go, so I thought I’d be a great way to get into the spirit now. You can read about Megan and I in Italy here.

For my parents, part of theirs was visiting Europe. The just got back from nearly a month in France and England, and they’re going on a cruise to Bermuda in the fall. (You can also hear Dad speak about property management during the cruise)

Dad outside of St Paul’s in London
 

 Mom at the Tower of London

There’s a great section on REIN’s website for success stories. One that hit home with me is Kevin Matwichuk’s story.

Kevin joined REIN in 2005, and kept things simple. They bought 18 properties over the next three years. (One more than the usual 17-3 goal) They learned a lot. And in November 2007 bundled himself, his wife and their four kids (ages 9-13) off to the Caribbean where they spent seven months crusing on a 42′ Catamaran. You car real all about their trip and look at some amazing photos on their blog, One Life Sailing.

That’s pretty phenomenal, and something I’d love to integrate into my Belize.

No related posts.

Well, it’s a day later than I’d planned but that’s life. This edition of Song of the Week is less about the song and more about the video. It’s footage from the 18-foot skiff US Nationals. It’s also related to real estate because Howie Hamlin, an icon in US sailing, is a very successful real estate investor and developer.

Anyways, enjoy a little bit more of my personal Belize.

No related posts.

There’s a market two streets over so as soon as I’m done writing this Megan and I are going to take the kids a go buy some food for the party tomorrow. It’s handy to have a market so close and I’m getting used to buying food every day or two instead of going to Safeway once a week. It’s made both of us feel healthier already and we’ve only been in Genova for two weeks. I’m sure the next 4 months will go quickly though and we’ll be back to Edmonton.

Megan’s spending one day a week helping out a the women’s shelter (which also keeps her doing social work), and we’re doing lots of stuff with the kids. There’s a play group for Will three mornings a week with other three year olds, and you haven’t seen chaos till you’ve seen 20 little Italian toddlers running all over the place. It’s a great place to meet other people and practice our Italian. Then there’s a baby-swimming class we do twice a week with Kaitlyn. It still gives me lots of time to work on helping teach seniors how to use computers. It’s still amazing that people still haven’t caught on to the information age in 2013.

Anyways, we’re going to drive up to Geneva and spend a week skiing with Megan’s mom….hopefully injury free this time
Right now there’s some fresh bread and cheese waiting for us!

I wrote this as part of a visualization exercise at the REIN conference I’m at this weekend. By writing a real "what does it smell/sound/taste like" description of where I want to be (or one version of where I want to be) you’re more able to find a way to achieve your goal than saying: "I want to live in Italy and that’ll take a million dollars, so in five years I need to have a million dollars.

You should really try it some time. The Quickstart has been great thus far and I’ve learned a lot. I’m looking forward to a weekend to relax (and do a little skiing) next weekend…

No related posts.