LIFE UPDATE…We’re Buying a What???

UPDATE – We now have a NEW website, Laundromats101.com!
This blog, MyShinyNickels.com, will remain a personal finance website, while all laundromat-related goodies, including this blog post, have been moved to Laundromats101.com.
Click HERE to read this post on the new site…

HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL!

So a whole heck of a lot has been going on at our house lately. (Not sure why I’m stating that as something notable. There’s pretty much something always going on at our house.)

If you remember from my last post, Randy was offered a lump sum payout from his former employer, in lieu of a small annual pension at age 65. And it was pretty much a no-brainer that we would take the lump sum and directly roll it over to a Traditional IRA, to avoid heavy taxes and penalties (and of course, allow that money to reach its full potential). So that’s what we did.

Just two weeks later, another opportunity crossed our path.

But before I get to that, you should know that for a while now Randy and I have been studying the 3 core pillars of building wealth. Meaning, that the vast majority of wealth in the world has been achieved through one or more of these three areas. (Yes, I realize there are other ways of building wealth, but “movie star” and “rap artist” are not on my short list.)

As a textbook reminder, the 3 pillars of building wealth are…

• Investments (stocks and bonds)
• Real Estate
• Owning a Business

We’ve got #1 pretty much taken care of. We invest 50-60% of our income each year in low-cost index funds. With some decent returns, that pillar alone should allow us to reach our early retirement goals.

However, the other two we’ve only dabbled a bit.  We considered pursuing real estate properties (and that still may be a possibility in the future), but we decided to start focusing on owning a business. We already knew it had to be a business that was structured just right to allow us to keep our day jobs (semi-passive income), required an initial investment of less than $50k (this is the most we’re comfortable parting with), and could either be run from our home or within a short distance of it. Needless to say, most business models don’t fit that criteria.

Until that opportunity I mentioned came along a few weeks ago.

It was an opportunity to purchase a semi-passive business, requiring an initial investment of less than $50k, that is less than a mile from our house.  Perfect.  What is it?

A self-service coin laundry.

It’s been a neighborhood fixture, running successfully for nearly 40 years. And after a week of intense research and working closely with a broker, we made an offer to the seller. And crossed our fingers.

(Note: Our purchase offer is contingent on a whole boat-load of things, that are yet to be confirmed…income and expense verification, reviewing of the lease, etc, etc)

Two nights ago, our offer was accepted.

Now we start the due diligence process, of verifying everything. If all checks out and goes as planned, in a few months we will be the new owners of a small coin laundry business.

I’ll be updating the blog every so often to talk about the process of acquiring an existing business, what kind of return we expect to see on our initial investment, and how we plan to use this business to further build our investment portfolio towards early retirement.

I’m going to refrain from revealing exact purchase price figures until we’ve closed escrow, out of respect to the seller and others involved. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of things to talk about until then, and once the process is complete (one way or the other), I’ll dig into all the juicy numbers.

So I invite you to join us in this journey…I’m sure we’ll all learn something new along the way.  (There really isn’t a dull moment around here, is there?)

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. “

Unknown Author