5 Habits Property Investors Have That Normal People Don’t

We made a video about investing on the average salary. And people were angry. So this time, Ed and Andrew are asking a different question: what is being “normal” actually costing you? In this episode, they walk through 5 things investors do that normal people don’t. You’ll learn: Why waiting to be noticed is costing you more than you thinkWhat happens to a pay rise in a normal household vs an investor’sThe goal-setting study where 76% of people got at least halfway to their goals (and what they did differently)The lesson? Normal isn’t free. You just pay for it later. Let us know your thoughts by leaving us a voice message on the Property Academy Hotline⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.speakpipe.com/PropertyAcademy For more from Opes Partners: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.opespartners.co.nz/newsletter-sign-up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stay ahead of the NZ property market⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.opespartners.co.nz/private-property-sign-up?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=promo&utm_campaign=pp_signup ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/opes_partners/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@opespartners

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome along to the Property Academy Podcast by Opes Partners. I'm your host, Seb Aknight.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  And I'm Andrew Nico.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  And this is a show that helps Kiwis go from zero to five investment property. So you could be financially free and stick around for the next 15 minutes because you're going to learn why being normal is the most expensive thing you'll ever do. The five things investors do that normal people just don't. And the difference between a normal weekend and investors weekend. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is recently I've been doing some videos about investing on the average salary. And the wonderful thing about the internet is that people tell you what they really think. And there were a couple of people who are saying, well, it's, it's just impossible to get ahead on the average salary. And it just made me think, the reason why, back when I was like earning the average

• 0:54Speaker 00

  salary in New Zealand and living the average life, the reason it was so hard for me to get ahead was that actually being normal is very expensive. And being normal is actually not the way to get ahead in life. Because if I was to ask you, because you've been looking at the stats around this, Andrew, what being normal in New Zealand looks like? I mean, what does it look like?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  So let's start with savings. The average savings for, for the Kiwi household is negative 1.3% a year. Negative, this is backwards. And Australia, which is, you know, a reasonable economy to compare ourselves to sometimes, positive 6%. So as a country, we are doing way worse and we're spending more than we earn.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  And so if you are normal, it is going to be very difficult to get ahead, right? And so if we look at some of the things that investors, people who get ahead do, that normal people don't, the first thing on my list is that normal people will often take the job they've got, or look at the job they've got and just accept the pay that comes with it. If I think about an investor who's going to take control of their life, they might do things like upskilling, or I've seen investors change jobs because their boss isn't going to give them a pay rise. So they're going to move to another job that has a higher level of pay, or that has the next step within their career journey, which means in the future, they're going to be able

• 2:24Speaker 00

  to earn more, even if it's a sideways step for now, so that there is more growth in the future. And a great example that's just in my head right now is Karo, who was recently on the show for Case Study Sunday. Now, she's a nurse who saw that it was going to be quite difficult to increase her pay just doing what she was doing, because, you know, nurses' pay is decided collectively. So she went and got additional qualifications specifically so that she could earn more. Now, that is a choice that is very difficult to make because you've got to go back to university, potentially take on more debt in order to be able to, to go and get those additional qualifications. She had kids, so it's going to be quite difficult to study when you're trying to raise a family at the same time.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  And it is difficult, but she was able to do it so that she could get ahead. What else do you think that investors do, or that people with that investor mindset has that is different from normal?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  I think the next one is waiting versus asking and, and who you work for. So if you're normal, that's waiting to be noticed. It's not wanting to kind of have that uncomfortable conversation about what your next step in your career is, or just waiting to start investing and waiting for, you know, life to get a little bit easier before you do that, or waiting to meet someone who helps you buy your first home. Investors don't think like this. They have something that they want and then they figure out how they're going to get there. Now, again, doesn't mean they're going to get there, doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but they want to know, well, what steps do I need to take today to get there? And I think, you know, often, goals of this kind of significance can seem quite overwhelming at the start, but you just have to break it down into, well, what is the, what is

• 4:00Speaker 01

  the weekly task, or the monthly task, or the daily task that I need to do to get me closer to that goal? And make it more manageable in terms of approaching that bigger number.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Well, I suppose the other thing, right, is it is so tempting to just wait for your boss to notice you, if you're working as an employee, waiting for something to happen where you're finally going to start investing. But actually, we've got to make that happen ourselves. Like, there is no guarantee that your boss is going to realise your brilliance, right? You've got to make that happen and say, hey, look, this is what I want to happen. I want to get a pay rise. I want to buy into the business. I want to take that next step in my career. What do I need to do to make that happen? These are not easy conversations, but they are the conversations that change your life, right?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think about like some of the conversations, particularly you, you have had with some of your team, where they've come to you and said, I want to grow my career. I want to do X, Y, Z, and come up with a plan to get there. And I, I do think as an employer, and I don't, I don't deal with that kind of part of the business, but I think the most successful people in terms of advancement, they come to their boss with a problem, but also a plan or a proposal. And then they work with them to figure out, well, how do I actually get there? How can we work together on this? And some of the people that don't get ahead, they're the ones that actually say nothing and then they get pissed off that the plan hasn't been given to them. And most small to medium businesses, the bosses are so busy doing the job, there's

• 5:36Speaker 01

  not that they're purposely ignoring someone's potential, they're just busy.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  Well, sometimes the other thing you're going to have to do is not work for a big corporate, if you want to get ahead, right? Because often, big companies are not very flexible in terms of what they can pay you and the career advancement that they can offer. Whereas if you go to a smaller business and can really transform that, that's where there might be some more career advancement, right? And I know that, like, this is not the career advancement podcast, or the how to earn more money podcast, it's the Property Academy podcast, right? But this plays a role in how we're going to get ahead, because property is one part of your life. The other thing that I think is, is different is about your weekend, right? So I think a normal weekend, a normal person's weekend would be taken up with TV and kids'

• 6:25Speaker 00

  sport and a bit of tidy up around home. And let me be very clear, there is nothing wrong with any of that. I am recording this on the weekend. I cannot wait to go at, to the local butcher shop, which we're going to do, so I can cook for my family, really looking forward to it all.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  God, we are, we're going to become boring, haven't we?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  But I think normal is spending all of your leisure time, all of it on leisure, and doing nothing outside of work. Whereas an investors weekend, or investors evenings, might include some of that, but also going to an open home, doing a renovation, having a conversation with a property manager, doing some research, doing some learning, watching a webinar, listening to a podcast, talking to a financial advisor, reviewing properties, looking at your financial statements, uploading your bank statements into AI to tell you where you could be better with money, any combination of that, right?

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Doing some of it, again, not all of it, not all the time, but some of it. And I think that normal is going to work, and that's work time, and then going home, and that's all home time, not thinking about anything else. But if I think about when I was getting started, right? When I was getting started and really trying to climb the ladder at work, even when I was just starting out of my first job, I worked so many weekends to get ahead. And I was amazed when very early on, a colleague said to me, Ed, you really shouldn't work so much outside of work hours. And I was flabbergasted. I was like, I was like, no, ma, why, why is that? And they said, because your boss might think that you're very inefficient and can't do

• 8:10Speaker 00

  the job within normal work time. And I thought, I never would have ever thought that. And I, I was really perplexed by it. And I was like, I can, I can understand totally where you're coming from, but I want to do so much more than just the bare minimum requirements. Because at that stage, my first ever job, I was on a maternity leave contract. And I walked in there and I was like, I will be hired at the end of the year. And within three months, I was working on a Friday night, I was reading through like, some like weird reports.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Some things never change.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  And the CEO stopped and she said, I'm going to find a way to keep you by the end of the year. Anyway, and I, and, and I got a job at the end of the year and it was wonderful. And they created a new position to make that happen.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  And you know, the funny thing is, as an employer, if I did think someone was being inefficient at work, and rather than complain, they were dealing with the work that they needed to catch up on after hours, I wouldn't see that as a bad thing either.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Well, you'd have a conversation around it, wouldn't you? But it's quite interesting that normal is doing your work and going home, which is fine if you're happy with the normal life. If you live the normal life, you will get normal. If you do the things that the people who earn the top 10% of income do, you will become more like those people. Your income will become more like those people. What's next on your list?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  And next is what happens to your spare money. So I think normal is just spending what comes into your account. Now, I'm not talking about reckless spending, just life spending, just, just going, oh yeah, I can afford that because I've got the money in my account. You know, you get a pay rise, it feels good at first, but then you get a big car and then you get a bonus and actually that becomes a holiday. And you don't even really feel like you're getting ahead because you are just spending what's there. Whereas an investor, their mentality is, okay, what am I going to invest first? And then whatever's left over, yeah, do whatever you want then. But I've already committed that investment and that happens before my spend.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  And the amazing thing is that is not normal. It is normal when it comes to like your KiwiSaver, right? And then we all look at our KiwiSavers and say, isn't this wonderful? My balance keeps on going up and it's because that is literally what we're talking about. When we say you get paid, you move the money straight out of your account. So you don't see it, you're saving on autopilot. You will start to accumulate wealth without even realising it over time. You're already doing that with your KiwiSaver. You're already seeing how much of an impact that can have over the long term. Yeah, day to day, you might say, oh, it doesn't look like my balance is going up. Maybe the markets had a particularly bad week or had a particularly bad month or a couple of months. But over the long term, you start to see that accumulate.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  And so that's why investors will, will double down on that and say, well, maybe I move some money out of my account and put that into investment properties or other investments. Number five, the last one on my list is around planning. So there is a researcher called Gail Matthews and she was at the Dominican University of California. Right. And what she did was she split about 150 people into some groups and she got them to start setting goals. And she said to one group, just think about your goals. Think about them, keep them in your mind. I'm going to record them, I'm going to track what happens here. For the second group of people, she sat them down and she says, write down your goal. And so they all wrote down their goals and she said, right, your next step,

• 11:40Speaker 00

  share those goals with a friend. So they shared those goals with their friends. Then she said, send that friend weekly progress updates with how you're going. Now, if we look at the first group, the group that only thought about their goals, 43% of that group achieved their goal.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  That's actually better than I would have thought.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually I should correct myself. It was 43% either met the goal or did at least half of the goal. So they got over halfway of their goal. So, so pretty good, 43%. Now, if we look at the other group, roughly 76%, over three quarters of the people who wrote it down and reported their goals to their friends, achieved their goals or at least got halfway to it. And the point around this is thinking about a goal is not enough to achieve it. We must write it down and we must have some amount of accountability for that. Which is the reason why for the last seven years on this podcast, I'm always saying to people, you've got to have a plan, you've got to have a written plan, you've got to have some accountability

• 12:44Speaker 00

  from whether it's a friend or a financial advisor to keep you to that plan and keep you moving forward. Because that is something that normal people don't do. Normal people just, you know, think about their goals, wouldn't it be nice to do this? Investors who make it happen, write it down and have some amount of accountability such that they are being held to that goal. Because it is so easy if you are thinking about a goal and then you start putting maybe some money aside because maybe you're doing the can I invest test, right? Where you're putting money aside to see what that's like before you actually pull the trigger on investment. And then you start to spend it because you think, well, nobody's looking, nobody's going to ask me about it. That's okay. And it's very easy to let yourself get away with this kind of stuff.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  It is, I see you smiling, Andrew, of course, because that's true.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I'm just smiling because I wish the people could see your little dances you do when you're describing things.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  You know, what's the actual message here?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  I think the key message is that everyone has different opportunities and, and you get to choose when you sacrifice and when you're going to have the more challenging types. Because you can either decide, you know what? My life is happy when I can just relax a bit more after hours. I can, I can spend whatever money I want. I worry about not being able to enjoy my present and I'm not so concerned about my future. But your future is going to come at a cost. Ed and I fall into the investor category where we want to, we want to do the grind now. So we don't have to later on. Now, to be fair, we'll probably just always do the grind, but that's just the way we're wired. But I think that it's really important just to always know that no matter what you decide,

• 14:21Speaker 01

  absolutely fine, but just don't kid yourself that you can get ahead without making some sacrifices today.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  And in the last 15 minutes, you've learned why being normal is the most expensive thing you'll ever do. The five things investors do that normal people don't. And the difference between a normal weekend and an investor's weekend. Right, let's wrap it up there, but please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. It really does help us get the message out to more people.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to the Property Academy Podcast. I'm your host, Stephen McNeil.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And I'm Andrew Nicoll.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  We're going to be back here tomorrow with even more daily strategies, texts and insights to help you get the most out of the new selling property market. Until next time.