Property Advice

You snooze, you snooze

Private Property South Africa
The Roosting Venus |
You snooze, you snooze

My Other Half likes a cat-nap. In fact so much so does he enjoy them that I find him nodding off in all manner of unplanned places as a matter of course.

It’s all very well for example after a lengthy lunch on a Sunday, but when you’ve sent him to collect the mother-in-law and he’s drifted away between turning off the engine and knocking on the door, things can take a difficult turn. They can become unprecedented too when he drops off during a corporate breakfast or while you’re trying on goodies at Woolies. Especially when he wakes up with a snort.

He assures me it’s not age, but wisdom, that is prompting his growing aptitude for lassitude; it’s not, as one could think, apathy or idleness that is leading to this lethargy, but a brilliant ability to work smart. I’ve heard him too, explaining to his business partners, that this is creative, goal-chasing time.

Of course not everyone buys that, and sometimes when I see his partners’ faces and hear their comments about only Mussolini and Churchill having noon-time naps, I realise that there is, possibly, subtext there for the taking.

Saving face

Being however, by law, his accomplice, I thought I’d better find a loophole, a way, one way or another, to extricate ourselves from the situation. To save face that is. His face. First I tried simply waking him up, but that didn’t really go down well. Anyone who’s ever had to wake up a grumpy male and deal with the thereafter knows very well what those old wives meant about letting sleeping dogs lie.

So I’ve progressed. And a little research lit the way forward. Passive income they call it. Making money while you nap. And property, believe it or not, is one great way of doing it. In fact, if, as they say, passive income can allow the business owner to make money successfully without “wasting any time, money or energy” doing so, then it surely is the perfect answer!

While there was a momentary relief after taking the momentous decision to become a real estate investor, it didn’t last long. Like all new things the terms and concepts came spilling out and we were back in the land of decision making. Since he was dozing and there was dough to be made, it was up to me, once again, to gather my wits, take stock of our assets, and investigate the buy-to-let, the gearing, and the return on investment that a property purchase could offer. A tangible asset that appreciates in value over time, property investment can become even more attractive when you don’t use your own capital to buy it. A passive income from an asset we don’t even own? Clearly it was time to find out more.

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