Is it smart to get an investment property?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally featured in the Savings Challenge newsletter, which you can sign up for here. The weekly newsletter offers readers savings tips, expert answers to your questions and weekly challenges to help boost savings. (If you’d like to have your savings question answered by our experts, please send it to savingschallenge@cnn.com.)

Buying a rental property and becoming a landlord may be a good investment … or not. But either way, it’s a job.

In this week’s Ask the Expert, which is part of CNN’s Savings Challenge, Douglas Boneparth, certified financial planner and founder of Bone Fide Wealth, offers a few questions to gauge whether the move would be right for you.

Reader: Is an investment property worth it?

DOUG: The honest answer? It depends! And anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Investment properties can absolutely build wealth over time. The combination of rental income, appreciation and tax advantages like depreciation has made real estate a meaningful part of a lot of people’s financial lives. I get why it’s appealing.

But here’s what the highlight reels on social media tend to leave out. Owning rental property is a job. You are a landlord. That means tenants, vacancies, maintenance calls, repairs you didn’t budget for and the occasional nightmare scenario that no spreadsheet prepares you for.

Before you pull the trigger, I’d want you to honestly answer a few questions.

• Can you carry the mortgage if the property sits empty for two or three months?

• Do you have the liquidity to handle a major repair without it derailing your broader financial plan?

• Are you buying in a market where the rent covers your costs (mortgage, taxes, insurance, maintenance) with something left over?

• And are you doing this because it genuinely fits your goals, or because it sounds like a good idea at dinner parties?

If the numbers work and you have the stomach for it, real estate can be a legitimate wealth-building tool. If you’re stretching to make it work on paper, it’s probably not worth it.

Run the numbers (not just the optimistic ones) and let those be your guide.

Tip of the week: Quick ways to up your credit score

Credit scores help determine if you get approved for a loan – or an insurance policy. The higher your score, the lower your interest rate and monthly payments.

Many factors go into a score, but one way to raise yours quickly is to lower the utilization rate on your credit cards. That’s the percentage your outstanding balances together represent relative to your combined credit limit.

For example, if you have a combined limit of $30,000 across three credit cards and your balances add up to $15,000, your utilization rate is 50%. If you have a $5,000 combined balance, your rate drops to roughly 17%.

Your utilization rate ideally should be below 30%. Here are some ways to improve it:

• Pay off balances you’re carrying – or at least reduce them and be sure to pay on time.

• Don’t make big purchases on your credit cards when applying for a loan, and pay off smaller, new charges right away.

• Don’t close any existing credit card accounts. That lowers your overall credit limit.

• Don’t apply for new credit since a lender’s “hard” inquiry into your credit history will ding your score. (But it will not hurt your score to pull your own report, which you should do to check for errors before applying for a loan.)

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