About ten years ago I was working in a lucrative, but soul sucking career as an investment banker doing mergers and acquisitions for private companies with a little boutique firm in Phoenix. I was miserable, but I had a conversation with one of our clients that changed my life….
This was a guy that was a “deal guy” that spent half of his life on airplanes and the other half analyzing companies to see if they could buy them really cheaply build them up a bit and then sell them and make themselves obscene amounts of money. Well, he was a bright nebisshy guy and had just made on his last deal tens of millions of dollars. I was talking to him about another deal and asked rather charmingly so where are you putting all of your new found millions? I thought he was going to say something esoteric like 60% bonds, 30% stocks and 10% commodities… Instead he simply said, “Land.” I said, “Huh? Why land? For crying out loud you have made yourself richer than rich analyzing and buying companies? What’s up with land?!!!?” He said in a Zen master tone, “In all of my years investing I’ve never heard of anyone losing money investing in land…”
So I closed a big merger deal, paid my taxes took the rest of the money and told my wife I’m going to invest in land. She was skeptical and already thinks I’m crazy, and says” Mark, please don’t lose all of our money… Just put in a CD or a mutual fund… Please…” I said, “The best investor I know told me he was buying land and I should buy land.” So she says, “Did he tell you how to do it?” I said, “That’s the fun part. It doesn’t matter, if I can’t sell it, the worst case scenario is WE OWN LAND!!!”
She bought my enthusiasm and I went to New Mexico with a buddy of mine, researched some nice dirt in a gorgeous rural area and bought as much as we could afford. Well, that first deal I went and marketed the land on the internet, made some money, bought more land, made some more money and a year and a half later told my boss to shove it and started buying and selling land full time. Well, times are tougher now, and my Wife still asks me when I’m going to get a real job, but I absolutely love the chase and thrill of buying raw dirt. It’s like a high for me. And if I make a mistake and buy something no one else thinks is as great as I think it is I always remind my Wife, “Don’t worry we own land.”
Cool website I found:
http://www.bundle.com/— My Wife and I argue a lot about money and she’s always reminding me how lucky I am that I’m married to her and not her crazy shopaholic friend so and so. Well, now I have some data to strengthen my argument as bundle is a web service focused on letting you compare your spending habits with other people in the country based on your location, age and household composition. Don’t worry, I”ll still lose the argument…
