The Monopoly Philosophy: How I Used Board Game Strategies to Find Financial Freedom In Investment Real Estate

By Jeff Wallace

Discover how a beloved board game charts the path to financial freedom through real estate investing. The Monopoly Philosophy will teach you how to implement successful board game strategies in real life to achieve success as a real estate investor. Author, Jeff Wallace, shows you in a detailed step-by-step analysis, exactly how he was able to use real estate to transition from living paycheck to paycheck to achieving financial independence and quitting his 9-5 job by the age of 41.

With the right game plan, the average working American can get started investing in real estate with $5,000-$6,000. Real estate is the most accessible type of investment opportunity available to build long-term wealth, and no other type of traditional investment will put you in a position to retire within the next five years.

Anyone can do it and most can get started within a few months. Are you ready to change your life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Wallace
• Release date: Oct 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370761395

Jeff Wallace

Jeff Wallace is a real estate investor and self-made millionaire. In his ample free time, he enjoys traveling, backpacking, biking, and relaxing and home. Prior to living the lifestyle his financial freedom allows, he was employed as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, A U.S. Secret Service Agent, and an internal affairs Investigator for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Jeff and his wife Tami live, work, and play in The Woodlands, Texas.

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The Monopoly Philosophy

How I Used Board Game Strategies to Find Financial Freedom In Investment Real Estate

By: Jeff Wallace

This book is dedicated to all the hardworking men and women who dream of one day achieving financial independence.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been No, for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. - Steve Jobs

In 1902, legend has it that Elizabeth Magie (pronounced McGee) developed a game called, The Landlord’s Game, a game that eventually became the game we now know as Monopoly®.

For 30 years, versions of land and property development games were created, until 1933, when a game very much like the modern day version of Monopoly was created by Charles Darrow and produced by Parker Brothers.

Now, over 100 years later, Monopoly® still has real, relevant lessons to teach today’s real estate investor.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Passion for Property

Chapter One: The Rules of the Game

Chapter Two: Roll the Dice

Chapter Three: Don ’ t Wait - Buy Now

Chapter Four: Passing Go

Chapter Five: Buying Baltic

Chapter Six: Luxury Tax

Chapter Seven: Advance to Illinois Avenue

Chapter Eight: Learn to Negotiate

Chapter Nine: Mortgages

Chapter Ten:    Becoming a Monopoly

        Champion - My Exact           Purchases and How I

        Did It!

Introduction

As a kid, I absolutely loved to play Monopoly. I was always up for a game and played any time I could convince a friend or family member to play. When we had a family game night, I always voted for Monopoly, a fact that was usually met with groans from the rest of the family.

I learned two things early on: it was easy to beat opponents who didn’t really want to play, and there was a strategy involved that pretty much assured a person of winning if they played the game well.

Years later, it shouldn’t have been such a revelation when I realized that Monopoly had much to teach me about the wealth building potential of real world real estate. Every aspect of the game, from rolling the dice to buying properties, and passing GO to landing in jail, had a lesson to teach me about real estate investment.

Over the course of time, I used my unconventional Monopoly philosophy to buy and sell real world properties. And I wasn’t making Monopoly money; I was making real money, and lots of it. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

A Passion for Property

From an early age, I had an interest in real estate. I remember a fourth grade art assignment in which we were instructed to get our crayons and construction paper and draw something about any topic we chose. My finished piece of art was a floor plan layout of my future house. It definitely had a fourth grade level of sophistication, and included features like a retractable garage roof for helicopter departures and arrivals, as well as a zero-grass, all-pool backyard (because no fourth grade boy wants to have to mow the lawn).

As I got older, my interest in real estate grew into a passion for it. During college, I had a summer job working in construction. I always felt a great sense of accomplishment upon completion of a project. As a young adult, I realized there was more to real estate than met the eye, and it had another interesting quality… it could be an income-producing and wealth-building investment.

As an investment, real estate is an interesting option for many reasons. Unlike the well-plodded path of working, saving, and investing (usually in the stock market through a 401K) to build a huge pile of cash sufficient to (hopefully) sustain you through your retirement years, real estate is like the goose that lays the golden egg. Let me explain why.

Why Real Estate Made Sense

In my first real job after college, (when the topic first became relevant, because I actually had some money that could be invested), I had a frequent stock market vs. real estate debate with one of my coworkers, Doug. It was the mid-to-late 1990’s during the dot com frenzy, and the stock market had grown like mad for several years. There were stories everywhere of normal men and women creating massive fortunes from a small investment in the next big tech company. My coworker was convinced he was a future stock market success story and actively researched companies to invest in. It was something he talked about all the time.

We both started working at the job at the same time, (we had only been there about six months by then) and neither of us had enough money to make a very sizable stock purchase. So to be successful, we needed to get in on the ground floor of a dream stock and get HUGE rates of return. Simple math told me that in order to make massive wealth in the stock market we needed substantial investment capital (which obviously neither of us had).

I loved to debate my coworker on this topic. I told him he could acquire investment real estate with a modest down payment, thereby putting him in control of the income from the property as well as the appreciation. Multiply that formula by ten properties, and it was a no-brainer that real estate easily beat the stock market as an investment option.

In order to acquire one million dollars in stock, he would need one million dollars. On the other hand, he could acquire and control one million dollars in real estate with less than $200,000. As I debated Doug on this topic, often just for the fun of the debate, I began to realize that real estate just made sense.

But he wasn’t buying my argument.

I added to the debate the tax benefits of investment real estate, which are many. (I’m not a tax advisor, but do a little online research and you will see what I am talking about.) But he still wasn’t on board. I asked him if he could buy a stock and only contribute 20% of the purchase price and have a lender cover the remaining 80% (Mortgage). I asked him if he could also get a third party (Tenant) to repay the loan amount to the lender over a thirty year period while he got to keep all of the value the stock would gain over the years (appreciation). I asked him if while a bank was funding the purchase of his stock, and a third party was repaying the purchase amount to the bank; if his stock would be paying dividends every month virtually tax free that he could use to pay his bills (cash flow). And finally, I compared his stock to my real estate with this goose and the golden egg scenario:

The Pros of Real Estate