You’re probably asking “Are you really gonna talk about financial calculators?” and thinking:

Yawn, yawn, yawn – wake me when it’s over!

Here’s the thing: Our real estate investors group is geared for experienced investors. To master creative deal structuring and financing, we all need to know how to speak the same language.

The best communication device that accomplishes this task is a financial calculator.

Remember, a financial calculator is about money, not math. Knowing how to make it sing and dance is critical to achieving financial freedom.

I promise, once you know how to use a financial calculator, your real estate investing world will never be the same. Plus, you will be head and shoulders above most any investor you meet – including the so-called gurus.

Let’s use a financial calculator to answer this interesting question: Can you become a millionaire by delivering pizzas part-time for five years? If you think you can’t, then you’d be wrong.

Follow along with me. You get a part-time job delivering pizzas that pays about $125 per week.

You invest your $500 in net monthly earnings ($125 x 4 weeks $500) at 8 percent interest for 5 years. How much will you have at the end of 5 years? Using a financial calculator, we easily learn that the answer is $37,738.43.

Now you invest your $37,738.43 at 12 percent interest. How much will you have at the end of 30 years? Go ahead, I dare you to take a guess. After plugging the numbers into our financial calculator, we learn our investment would have grown to $1,320,733. That’s right, you’d be a millionaire all because you delivered pizzas part-time for five years and invested your earnings.

You’re probably thinking: Good point, calculator boy, but don’t you know you can’t get an 8 percent yield – much less a 12 percent yield – on a savings account? Right now, my bank is only paying me 0.5 percent interest.

Folks, don’t you know you can’t save your way to financial freedom? To be financially free, you must invest your money and let things like compound interest, appreciation, amortization and time work their magic.

So you think it’s impossible to find returns of 8 percent to 12 percent? What if I told you that returns of 119 percent are all around you?

Back in 2008, there was no way Kim and I would ever consider a trailer as an investment. It’s safe to say we wouldn’t touch one even while holding a ten-foot length of underpinning. All that changed when we ran the numbers through our financial calculator.

Here’s a pretty typical deal: Buy a single-wide mobile home in a trailer park with an all-in cost of $3,000. Then sell it for $9,500 giving the following terms: $500 down, 18.549 percent interest, at $250 per month for 53 months.

Want to guess what your yield is on this deal? Would you believe a whopping 119 percent.

Just for grins, what if you invested the $37,738.43 you made from your part-time pizza delivery job at a yield of 119 percent for 30 years? Ready to have your mind blown? You’d have over – and I swear I’m not making this up – $22 sextillion dollars. I don’t know about you, but I want me some sextillion dollars.

Please tell me again why financial calculators are boring. And while you’re at it, explain why they don’t teach kids how to use these wonderful, wealth-building tools in school?

Bill and Kim’s North Georgia Real Estate Investors Association meets on the 2nd Thursday of each month, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the beautiful Hilton Garden Inn off Main Street in Cartersville.

For more info, go to REIoutpost.com.