Rufus Samuels and his wife, Angela, have been married for three years and had their first child in July. Like most Americans, the Orange, New Jersey, couple, both 32, was impacted by the recent recession. Rufus was a senior quality assurance analyst for Prudential Financial’s Website before he was laid off in September 2002. He was an unfortunate casualty of job outsourcing. He now works as a consultant, getting work through an IT placement agency.
Rufus’ annual salary was $56,000 before he was laid off. But when he’s working steadily as a consultant, he can pull in up to $75,000. Angela has worked as a credentialing coordinator at CIGNA for the last three years. Her annual salary is $37,000, which brings the couple’s potential gross income to $112,000. Rufus’ assignments have been sporadic lately, so he has focused on building his investment real estate portfolio.
Rufus used his severance from Prudential to make improvements on the couple’s one-family home, a “fixer-upper” they purchased for $74,000 in 1998. More recently Rufus has made $20,000 worth of repairs on a three-family house he’s renting out for additional income.
Rufus knew he had to increase his cash flow if he was ever going to reach his goal of financial independence. “I realized that I need to start making my own breaks,” he says. “I want to have control over what I do.” Since he didn’t have a great deal of cash, he didn’t think he could benefit from a financial adviser. But after attending a financial seminar for women with his wife, he was inspired to reach out to the seminar leader, Sandra Salter of American Express Financial Advisors, to begin crafting a strategy for his family. “I contacted Sandy the next day, and that’s when we got off the ground,” Rufus says.
Salter’s first recommendation to Rufus was to buy more insurance. He had a term-life policy and received health benefits through Angela’s employer, but as a consultant, he had no disability coverage. “Sandy encouraged me to get some disability insurance so if something happened to me, my bills would be paid,” he says. He also purchased a variable-universal life policy. Rufus is looking for tax-deferred savings and a tax-free stream of income in his retirement, and the VUL policy Salter recommended will provide him with that. Including his Prudential group-universal policy, Rufus now has about $800,000 worth of life insurance and $1 million worth of accident insurance. Angela has her own term and variable life policies.
Next, Salter worked on diversifying Rufus’ portfolio. After five years at Prudential, he had
$6,000 in a 401(k) plan, and Salter helped him uncover $10,000 in additional pension benefits that he had rolled over into a traditional IRA. Worth approximately $20,000, Rufus’ IRA is invested in a few mutual funds, such as Ariel Appreciation (CAAPX) and Fidelity Advisor Growth & Income (FGIRX), as well as Real Estate Investment Trusts, including CNL Retirement Properties.Because he doesn’t want to be an employee again, Rufus is also striving to develop his investment real estate. He got started by refinancing his home for $205,000 in February 2004 (it appraised for $257,000) and putting some of the proceeds toward the three-family house he purchased for $175,000 in the neighborhood in which he grew up. He rents two of the three units for $950 a month each and hopes to get market rate (roughly $900 to $1,000) for the third apartment, which has three bedrooms.
Rufus is looking for additional properties he can purchase and rent out in East Orange, New Jersey, and other areas. He also hopes to take advantage of the state’s government-subsidized Section 8 program, which allows tenants to rent apartments below market rate and pays a subsidy to the landlord to make up the difference. Rufus says that if he can make $2,000 to $2,500 a month from his properties, after paying the mortgages, he will reinvest one-fourth of that amount each month. That will help him continue to build cash reserves and retirement savings well into the future. He’s optimistic he can become financially independent within 10 years. Salter admires his ambition: “Now that Rufus is going through the financial planning process, he’s asking questions he’s never asked before. Now he knows what to look for.”