Your Savings Didn't Disappear. They Changed Form.

By Jacqueline Smith

Jacqueline Smith is dedicated to serving the vibrant Vancouver/Portland real estate market. Since stepping into the industry in 2014, I hit the ground running selling 52 homes in my first year and now have my hand in selling over 1700 properties.

You spend years building up your savings account. Then you buy a house and watch the number drop, and it feels like the money is just gone.

That’s how I felt when I bought my first house, and with every property I’ve bought since. It doesn’t really go away, but there are a few ways to think about it that make the fear a lot smaller.

There’s a difference between spending and investing. When you buy a Louis Vuitton purse or go out to eat, that money is completely gone. The purse wears out or goes out of style in a few years. When you buy a property, you’re putting that money into something that appreciates, offers tax benefits, and pays down over time. The money isn’t gone. You moved it from a savings account into an asset that’s going to grow.

Your money just changed form. That’s really all that happened. It went from cash sitting in a bank account to equity sitting in a property. You still own that value. It’s still yours. It’s just held somewhere you can’t withdraw from on a Friday night.

Start tracking your net worth. This is the habit that changes how the whole thing feels. People tell me all the time, Jacqueline, I don’t have enough assets to be tracking my net worth. When my husband and I started tracking ours, it actually became really fun. You don’t have to do it every month. Quarterly is plenty, or even twice a year.

The fun part is watching two things move. Your equity grows with appreciation. According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, U.S. home prices have historically risen about 4.3% a year over the long term. That’s a national number over decades, so even if you hit a dip, the trend holds up.

And you’re paying down principal every single month. Across our properties, my husband and I watch a couple thousand come off the balance every month. It’s like putting a few hundred into savings, except you never see it in your bank account. On a net worth tracker, you see it.

There are plenty of free net worth trackers out there. Pick one with a section for retirement accounts and one for real estate. If you want the exact one we use, reach out, and I’ll send it to you. We’re not financial experts by any means, but we’ve been lucky enough to learn from some amazing mentors, and this is one of the best things they taught us.

On the months where you don’t have money to put into savings, you actually do. You’re putting it into your equity account just by making your mortgage payment.

Real estate is still one of the best ways to build wealth. If you already own and want to diversify, maybe move some of what you have in the stock market into a property, we’d love to help there, too. We’ve worked with a lot of clients who wouldn’t call themselves investors, especially when the market gets volatile, and a tangible asset starts to feel better.

If you’re thinking about buying and you’re afraid of ending up with an empty bank account and nothing to show for it, let’s sit down. Call or text us at 360-800-1334, email us at jacqueline@evergreenrealestatepartners.com, or visitblog.evergreenrealestatepartners.com.