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Sydney, Ashley, Grace, Lee, Justin and I attended the Summer Concert Series at the Redmond Town Center last night (8/16/2006).  We listened to a lovely jazz concert.  We all ate yummy Subway sandwiches (courtesy of Lee and Justin), and then enjoyed the concert!

My family and I live in Redmond, WA at the heart of the Pacific Northwest.  My wife and I have two young girls, ages 7 and 2. As parents, we’ve talked often about the values that we want to instill in our children, particularly our children who are growing up in an environment of relative affluence.  I came to the United States when I was two years old, and I grew up in an environment that was modest.

When I watch my kids, as thankful as I am that I can provide them with things that I never had, I often wonder whether I am setting the right example.  In these past few years, owning investment properties has given me a fringe benefit that I would never have anticipated.  We’ve told our older daughter, who is the 7 year old, that these apartment buildings will one day pay for her college education.  (If you recall from a separate thread, at some point, I could refinance my properties, pull out part of the equity and use that money to either buy more properties or to pay for critical expenses like my children’s education.  That money is not taxed, the interest is deductible, and the rental income from the properties services the loan – I am out of pocket nothing.)  In any event, my daughter has taken this statement very seriously.  We’ve set up a system where we pay her $3 per hour to work at our apartment buildings.  I keep a set of children’s work gloves, broom, garbage bags, etc. in my car.  When my daughter is with me, as soon as we pull up to one of our buildings, she hops out, puts on her work gloves, and starts to pick up trash.  When she’s done, she sweeps and then she waters the plants.

We used to spend a fair amount of time on the weekends carting our kids to all their various events.  You name the event – endless birthday parties, ballet, swimming, rock climbing camp, ice skating camp, girl scouts, movies, etc.  As you can see, I’m somewhat of a skeptic in terms of the sheer amount of children’s activities.  To be sure, we still cart our kids around on the weekends, but, every weekend, we do something at our investment properties, which means that S\our daughter has an opportunity to do some work and to earn some money.  For some people, this may not seem like a great way to spend time.  After all, they are just kids, right?  For us, however, it’s been a great way to bond with our children, and, in the meantime, I feel that we are instilling a strong work ethic.  Three weekends ago, our gardener went AWOL, so I had to do some mowing and weed whacking at one of our buildings.  It was a Saturday and my older daughter went with me.  She spent the better part of 3 hours working alongside of me, sweeping, picking up trash, watering, etc.  It was hard work.  All of our tenants know my children – remember the part from a previous email about buying high quality properties, right?  High quality properties attract high quality tenants and my tenants are all exceptional and they treat my children with extraordinary respect.  They have all commented at one point or another how remarkable it is that my daughter comes with me willingly to do such hard work and that she does it with such enthusiasm and without complaint.  They all tell me that they’ve never seen kids that age doing this sort of stuff, and they’ve all asked me at one point or another, “You don’t have to do this, right?”  The implication, of course, is that I could hire someone to do it and I can, but, often, I don’t because manual labor is refreshing (silly as it sounds) and it gives me an opportunity to work with my kids.

At the beginning of the summer, my older daughter wanted a new bicycle.  I told her that I would be happy to buy her a bicycle, but she had to pay for ½ of it.  We went to the store and she picked out the one she wanted.  It was $49.95.  She quickly figured out that, at $3 per hour, she would have to work approximately 8 hours to buy her bike.  By the way, seven year olds don’t have any concept of sales tax, but I figured this was close enough.  A weekend did not go by where she didn’t ask me whether we could go to one of our apartment buildings so she could do some work.  I would think about her request for about 1 millisecond, and then we would be in the car headed over.  When I see how hard she is willing to work for something that she really wants (in this case, a bicycle), I am deeply, deeply touched.  It has also given us an opportunity to do something productive together as father and daughter.  One day, while she was working, my older daughter has asked me if, some day, she would own these buildings, and I replied that, some day, her mother and I would be happy to sell her these buildings, to which she replied, “Yeh!!”  It took her about three weekends to earn enough money to buy her bicycle and she treats that bicycle like it’s made of gold.  Why?  I think it’s because she has skin in the game – she paid for ½ of it.  She has endless dolls and other toys that people have given her, but those dolls and toys just get tossed in the playbins at the end of the day, often carelessly.  However, she treats that bicycle with a reverence that borders on religion.  She definitely knows how much work it took for her to get it.

I’ve found a great article on Raising Young Children at http://www.twoworkingparents.com/articles.htm. 

If you are a family with young children and two working spouses, you are not alone.  Every day, you deal with a host of complicated issues ranging from the pure logistics of running your family to work-life balance and dependable childcare (hard to find).  Moreover, if both you and your spouse are W-2 employees, you are probably in a very high tax bracket, have very few tax deductions (other than home mortgage interest), all of which makes things tougher when they don’t need to be.  Many families feel overwhelmed just coordinating the schedules of their children.  If you want a website where you can go to share information and to talk to other similarly-situated parents, go to http://www.twoworkingparents.com. 

I just found out about a great, FREE 2 day real estate seminar in Seattle on October 7th and 8th. This seminar is being held at the Washington Convention Center in Seattle. The fellow teaching is an experienced real estate investor in the Puget Sound Area named Greg Pinneo. I understand the seminar is excellent and, best of all, it’s FREE. If you want to sign up, go to http://www.reachreturns.com. Click on the link that says October 7th and 8th, 2006 FREE two day Investment and Negotiation Seminar in Seattle, WA for more details.

I just found a great website for Seattle Landlords - it’s http://www.seattlelandlord.net.  That website has just about everything that a Puget Sound Landlord would need, including information on relevant Washington Landlord-Tenant laws, screening of tenants, and much more.