Thanks for the comment! Good to hear that you had a good experience with a hard money loan. We are looking at this model here in Scottsdale so we’ll have our own experience to report at some point in the future.

Are you heading out this way any time soon?

As I look at the world of investment options, I don’t see anything that perfectly fits this description. There are few things that come even close.

Thus, the concept will remain a dream.

You’re right that it’s not too hard to find a single investment that clears the 10% return threshold for some period of time. The challenge lies in creating that cash flow overall from your investable capital base on a consistent basis without the investor’s active involvement.

It’s also an asset allocation issue – you want some money allocated to safer or more liquid investments that may yield less than 10%, while other investments in the portfolio could be doing much more than 10%, but may have lumpy payout or require some setup time. Regardless, there is significant work to be done by the asset manager (if not the investor) to pick the right blend of assets to achieve the liquidity, safety, yield, and most importantly, lifestyle goals. Doing this well usually requires expertise, experience, and/or insider access to information or deal flow.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125728737379626349.html

For people who don’t want to spend a lot of time looking and getting educated, the low cost ETF is probably the way to go. Warren Buffett has said that what he does is not for everyone. Instead for the vast majority investors Buffett says the best option is the lowest cost fund that follows the stock market up and down.

“The upside of the painful bear market, of course, is that stocks are much cheaper – as cheap, in fact, as they have been in many, many years. Based on the price/earnings ratio (using earnings from the past 12 months), the U.S. market is as inexpensive today as it has been since 1990. From today’s levels, says Bogle, it’s reasonable to think that the S&P 500’s profits could grow by 7% a year. Throw in the current dividend yield of over 3%, and Bogle believes stocks could return 10% a year for the next decade. “I don’t think that’s a pipe dream,” he says – and this from a man who at the turn of the century was warning of years of subpar returns.”

In this context, we should be talking about after-fee investment returns only.

It would be fun to do a follow-up interview just on the topic of creative investments people have made in their self-directed IRAs. We’re so brain washed by Wall Street and main stream media that the only investments most people think of for their retirement accounts are stocks, bonds, mutual funds.