A great reason to have assets
I was talking with a friend recently who was going through a tough time. You see, my friend had had some medical complications that had caused her to have multiple surgeries over the past few years. (By multiple I mean 10 plus.) To make a long story short, every time the surgeon would go in to fix the problem, it weakened the adjacent area, which it would tear shortly thereafter.
This situation has wreaked havoc on my friend’s life. Not only has she had to endure lots of surgeries, but her weakened health state has kept her from her friends and her career.
But there was some hope. The doctors said there was a surgery they could do that would strengthen the problem area and allow her body to heal once and for all. This was great news! The only thing they needed to schedule the surgery was go-ahead from her insurance company.
But then the adversity struck again. The insurance company said that the surgery the doctors were proposing was classified as a cosmetic surgery and would not be covered.
That stunk, but my friend would not be deterred. She scheduled the surgery anyway and then went to work trying to figure out how to pay for it. That was an optimistic, yet tenuous move. And I liked it.
As she and I were on the phone she was going over all the ways she and her family were trying to raise the needed funds. She went through a couple of their ideas. One included cashing out a retirement fund she had. To me, that should be a last resort. But when she talked about getting a loan against her house to pay for the procedure, I had to stop her and remind her of something — she had assets!
You see, my friend is an investor. She had been out of the game for a while due to the illness and had no active deals going, but she still had assets. She had some performing notes that, truthfully, she had kind of forgotten about because they were so passive. She knew the funds were hitting her bank account but had lost sight of the value still associated with them.
She was able to take one of those notes and sell it off to another investor to generate the funds she needed to pay for the surgery. Doing this allowed her to keep her retirement money and not acquire any personal debt to pay for the surgery. Instead, she used assets to do what they were supposed to do — take care of her.
How cool is that?
This reminds me of a passage from the bible in the book of Proverbs. You can read it in Chapter 27 verses 23-26.
There it states that you should pay attention to your flock — in other words, your assets. Solomon goes on to talk about how riches are not forever and that things change over time. In verses 26 and 27, he points out you should use your assets for different things. He says you should use a portion of them for your household needs like “garments.” (For us that includes monthly expenses like utilities) You should allot a portion for investing — “goats for the price of the field” — and also, for your living needs — “goats’ milk enough for your food, for the food of your household, and sustenance for your girls.”
In this case, my friend, who just happens to be a girl, needed that surgery in order to be sustained. And without having that note to sell, things would have been more difficult. But because she did have it, and knew different ways to use it, she is on her way to having a better life. And that is a great reason to have assets.
Joe and Ashley English buy houses and mobile homes in Northwest Georgia. For more information or to ask a question, go to www.cashflowwithjoe.com or call Joe at 678-986-6813.