About Barry and Brenda
Barry Neave’s helpful nature has enabled him to accomplish much in life. He is notable for his contributions to St. John’s Ambulance and the volunteer fire brigade, as well as, establishing Tasmania’s first ambulance rescue service.
In recognition of his efforts he became the 1977 Jaycees Outstanding Young Australian for Services to humanity and in 1981 received the Municipality Australia Day Citizen Award for Sorell. Recently he was inducted onto the Sorell Memorial Hall’s newly installed Honour Board in recognition of this award.
After 6 months of my workmate John Chambers bending my ear I attended my first Investors Club meeting in Hobart.
I learned about equity and how you could use it to purchase an investment property. All this was new knowledge to me and at the time I thought the little equity I had wouldn’t allow me to purchase a dogs kennel never mind an investment property. It wasn’t until the second meeting I attended that I understood “good debt and bad debt.”
Driving home that night with this knowledge racing through my head the penny dropped. I realised I had all bad debt and no good debt! After the third meeting I I could see how using equity to purchase an investment property could work for Brenda and I, so I decided I was going to buy an investment property by ‘hook or by crook’
However we were $90.000 in debt and I knew something had to change. The first thing to go on the chopping block was my beloved 30’ Huon Pine cruising yacht followed by a block of land we owned. We also downsized from our waterfront property which was situated along side some of Australia’s finest cruising waters in Tasmania….our first investment property was well under way!
I had lost good business opportunities in the past and also on the share market so with our first investment property under way my wife Brenda was concerned that this was another “lost cause” and told me “I was on my own” while refusing to attend any club meetings. However after 13 months and property Number 3 she mentioned casually mentioned that she would go along to the next meeting. I couldn’t keep her away after that! She embraced the clubs philosophy and together we turned our bad debt into good debt.
Six months after the purchase of our first investment property she told me she still expected a policeman to come knocking at our door to say we had done something wrong!
How life changes! We went from being $90,000 in bad debt and the bank not wanting to know us to; 13 months later owing over $400,000 in good debt and the manager from the ANZ bank is inviting us to share a day with his family in Banks Corporate Box at the international Tennis in Hobart. We were wined and dined like royalty!
It reminded me of the time years earlier when I was young; a farmer once said to me, “son, when you owe the bank $200,000 you have a problem, when you owe the bank millions they have the problem” I never knew what he meant at the time but on that day it finally became clear to me.
We owe the bank 2 million dollars but our properties are valued over 3 million dollars which means we have over one million dollars in equity. The Investors Club has changed our lives and we thank its founder Kevin Young for that.
At several Hobart workshops we met TIC founder Kevin Young and his wife Kathy, as our friendship grew he invited me to Brisbane to perform maintenance work on Club members’ interstate properties. We accepted, and while living in Brisbane I met many members and travelled many miles through my Club Maintenance duties.
Brenda became a Property Guide which worked well with my vast knowledge of Brisbane. She relates well to the fears and anxieties that new members experience and always relates back to the days when she first started out with TIC.
It doesn’t matter who you meet in The Investor’s Club, everyone becomes your family. We treasure the time we spend with each and every member and give thanks every day that we are so blessed.
I thank John my work mate for his persistence in getting me to my first TIC meeting and thank Kevin and Kathy for their kind and generous spirit in all they do for the tic family. Our aim is to help our children get into investment properties through The Investors Club.
We have returned to Tasmania in July 2008 and bought two more properties in Queensland bringing our total number of properties to seven.
Barry and Brenda Neave
Yes Barry, I’d like to join TIC or request a FREE Information Pack
