Business
This week’s guest is friend, real estate client, Stock Hacker, iWIN Member Karen Cumming You may remember Karen Cumming from the decade she spent as a television reporter at CH-tv - a station based in Hamilton that also serves Niagara and the GTA. Years before that, she worked as a radio newscaster and talk show producer everywhere from Hamilton to Toronto to Montreal with CHUM Radio and Corus. There’s a good chance you may have heard her name thanks to something that has nothing to do with media, though, and everything to do with space. A project, in fact, that is literally “out of this world”. Karen is one of what’s known as “The Mars 100” - 100 people from around the world who have made it to the final round of astronaut selection in a legitimate mission to colonise the red planet with a company out of the Netherlands known as Mars One. Long before her space adventures, Karen became involved in real estate investing back in 2008. You remember - the year the markets tanked. The year “the experts” would have said no one should be putting their money into property. Despite all of that, she bought a single family home in the Old South neighbourhood of London, Ontario. Soon after, she joined the Real Estate Investment Network - “REIN” - in order to learn what she needed to know about becoming a successful landlord. Almost twelve years later, she now also owns a freehold townhouse on Hamilton mountain, and a single family home in the lower city of Hamilton… and is one of the original members if iWIN. Today, Karen is a freelance journalist, health promoter and teacher who writes about mindful living, meditation and self-care at karencumming.com. Here’s where things really get interesting. Karen has an extra special reason for investing in real estate now, thanks to a life experience she recently went through. She has seen the inside of Ontario’s long-term care system up close and personal, and understands more clearly than ever the need to be financially proactive and prepared for the final stage of life. Earlier this year, she and her sister Pat guided their mother Verna through that system, and were stunned to realise how little they knew about how it works. They felt ill-informed and ill-equipped to make the decisions that had to be made. And they knew that they weren’t alone. Thousands of baby boomers across Ontario are in the same boat. In the end, they decided to write a book designed to help other families on their own journey with an elderly parent. It’s called “The Indispensable Survival Guide to Ontario’s Long-Term Care System” - now available on Amazon.ca, chapters.indigo.ca, Kindle, Kobo and Smashwords. Karen …. Welcome to the podcast.