Progress in Restoring Cash Flow

Progress has been a long time coming. 2 years ago my wife and I moved back to the US from China, we bought a larger home, my wife stopped working full time, and we had our first child. Since then it feels like we have been treading water or worse as sometimes we have lost ground. Our cash flow from my job is now consumed by our monthly expenses and we have had to adjust to a much slower accumulation of assets as a result.

Since then our focus has been to route cash to paydown some of our real estate investment debt to free up additional cash flow. After all, the key for us at this point is cash flow - with multiple streams of income and excess cash every month the benefits are numerous:

the amount of cash we need to hold for emergencies goes down
we can feel more comfortable allocating cash or leverage to future investment opportunities as they arise
unexpected expenses can be absorbed more easily
financial concerns about our ability to ride out a job loss
we can feel comfortable utilizing additional outsourcing to reduce the stress of our daily lives

With the primary mortgages paid off on both rental properties we will have up to $1,500 in additional cash flow from the rental properties. This will significantly improve our monthly cash flow when added to our job income.

Related in Cash Flow:

August 2014 Cash Flow (Sep 05, 2014) Well its been nearly 2 years since I sat down and did a scrub of our monthly cash flow. I use to do this regularly w/ MS Money, but now I find it painful to do. Its a lot more...

November 2012 Cash Flow (Dec 03, 2012) Its been 2 years since I last showed a snapshot of our monthly cash flow. I've realized some things have changed with our growing family and over the past couple years I've put a focus on improving our cash flow...

Reducing Financial Impacts of a Job Loss (Jan 26, 2012) My wife was recently notified that the preschool she teaches at for a few hours a week is shutting down. It got us thinking about a more difficult scenario for us - the loss of my job. Given its by...

Comments (4)

Just a suggestion for you on one way to help boost your cash flow. That is by selling covered calls on investments you already own. You can typically get anywhere from 1-4% PER MONTH on your money regardless of what the stock does. I think it is a good strategy.

Brandon

Posted by Brandon | October 26, 2010 9:04 AM

2million, this might be a little off topic, but do you own a smart phone? if so which one? I value your engineering education and ability to evaluate latest technologies. Do you prefer the iPhone, Blackberry or Droid?

Posted by Steve | October 27, 2010 11:09 PM

Steve - well my current Sony Ericsson phone is falling apart so I do have to start thinking about getting a new phone.

Posted by 2million | October 31, 2010 1:35 PM

Happy Halloween! My brother just got a Droid. Can't comment too much on it because he's just learning how to use it. If and/or when you get a new smart phone, please update all your readers on which one you chose and why. Thanks!

Posted by Steve | October 31, 2010 7:11 PM