Gordon:
Your wife might not be interested, but at least she is not opposed to it. Consider yourself lucky.
Acey:
Unfortunately on this occasion it sounds like you evaluate your life partner with the same amount of objectiveness that you might apply towards evaluating an investment property. Just because my wife loves playing the piano doesn't mean I have to like playing it. But as partners do, we try accomodate each other. She has a piano in the house, and I have a bunch of power tools
in my garage. She would rather cut her arm off with a circular saw than actually try build something with one, and I would probably rather cut my head off with the same saw than try learn to play Mozart. But, nonetheless, she will take an interest in something I build, for my sake, and I will take an interest in something she plays, for her sake. Get the picture?
So I agree with brains' assessment. My wife and I have been looking at investment properties for a while, but my wife has a differing interest in the process to me. She realises it will ultimately lead to an improved financial situation for us. You could say she is "passively" for it.
She has actually taken some initiative and started inspecting certain houses that I suggest might be worthwhile looking at (my wife works part time, I work full-time, so it works well for inspections).
She knows what a yield is, but basically she's not interested in how to compute the numbers. Sure, she want me to tell her how much it might cost us per week (negatively geared, for example), or how much it might make us (growth etc), but as to how that is done, she couldn't care less. I am educating her by stealth.
I asked similar questions six months back about getting my wife interested and it has come slowly, and still has a long way to go. The replies I got then opened my eyes - they pointed out that my wife was capable of seeing things I couldn't, of expressing concerns that I might not see, of seeing risks where I might not, etc.
We're both pulling in the same general direction, but we do it differently. I used to think that was bad, but now I see it as possibly being useful. Two people with complimentary skills may well be better than two people with the same set of skills. My wife knows I'm smart enough to crunch the numbers without her help, I know she's smart enough to inspect a property and give me her opinion without my help.
I also know that if my wife is going to have her name on the loan documents etc, than I need her to be happy with what she's buying. If I find a property that's fantastic purely based on numbers, and she thinks it's a hole, I would either have to try convince her otherwise or just find the next one that she does like. She has to sleep at night, too, and that's called compromise.
