Making Work a Vacation

For the vast majority of my adult working life, it was drilled into me by management that I should NOT take a two week vacation. The logic was, when radio listeners tuned in and Don and I weren’t there, they would find a new show to listen to and they would never come back. So if I actually took the vacation time that I had accrued, I would essentially be committing career suicide.

This always caused me a ton of anxiety. One of my greatest passions is international travel. My manager’s about killing my career would be in the back of my head as I planned a trip. It’s the sole reason that I’ve never been to Australia, South Africa, or Thailand. It’s nearly impossible to have a decent trip to any of those destinations and return within 2 weeks.

The thought of “working remotely” never even entered my brain.

Flash forward to this week. I’ve spent the past few days staying at my sister and brother-in-law’s condo in Florida attending their oldest daughter’s wedding. My parents also live in the same town.

It’s been no problem to do almost all of my work responsibilities from here. Basically working in Seattle Real Estate from the Gulf Coast. 

Last night I had to move from the condo to my parents place because my sister and bro-in-law use their real estate here as a way to buy their freedom to travel and be near family.

You see, they don’t live in Florida, they just own real estate in Florida. The reason I needed to switch sleeping arrangements is because they are short term renting their condo to pay for their annual taxes and HOA dues for the entire year.

Then the next renter pays for a large portion of their mortgage. They spend most of their time NOT staying at this condo, but it cost them very little to actually own it.

In the meantime, the value has more than doubled in the time they have owned it.

I have to admit, I’m a little jealous that they have so successfully deployed this strategy. We actually went around with a local real estate agent yesterday and looked at some condos. I was curious to see if I could do a version of this technique. It would be awesome to have a place where I could be close to my folks, my sister, and my niece and still get the lion’s share of my work done remotely.

These are the type of strategies that Don and I specialize in with our Real Estate Business. Finding ways to maximize your life in addition to your net worth. What’s it all for if you can’t sit at the kitchen table and play some rummy with your folks every once in a while?

Reach out if you’d like to find a place closer to your family that will essentially pay for itself. www.ronanddon.com or email me directly at [email protected].