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- [00:00]
A
What if I told you that $4,000 and one property could change your entire life? Deandra McDonald went from working multiple jobs with zero free time to achieving financial independence and leaving her W2 in just four years. Today she's breaking down exactly how she did it and why. The strategy she used is still wide open for anyone willing to take action. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.
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B
Money.
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A
My name is Mindy Jensen and with me, as always, is my has more than one rental co host, Scott Trench.
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B
Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here. And I know that you and I both have more than one tenant, multiple tenants when it comes to personal finance. All right, we are so excited to be joined by Diandra, a teacher turned full time real estate investor. We're going to be breaking it down today in terms of just how she broke out of that position and built a empire that she runs today. Deandra, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.
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C
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to talk with you guys in particular because I don't think early retirement is talked about enough sometimes with the bigger pockets kind of schema neighborhood. I think it's a lot about getting that next property, that first one. And that's great. That's great. But specifically the. But if you don't want to keep working, if you don't want to keep scaling, how do we get there? How do you sustain it? Very, very excited.
- [01:27]
B
So you're the first person to accuse us of not talking enough about on that. So we're looking for, we're looking forward to chatting about that. So I know that real estate has been a big driver sneak peek. I know that you started out from really tough situation, but today we want to dive less into the real estate specific journey. We do want to hear about that, but more into where did this journey start? What was your financial situation like when you in your words, in your view, began this journey to building wealth?
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C
Absolutely. For me, this investing journey started because I was struggling financially. I like to tell my husband this. I like to tell a lot of people who listen, if things would have worked out for me right out of school, I do not think I would have invested. I don't think I would have questioned the system that had placed me there. The reason I started investing was because I went to college, because you were supposed to go to college. And I got the fours and the fives on the APs and I got the credits and I win and I did it. The University of Virginia ranked number 16 right now. And I'M saying that because we're not going to be for much longer, right? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold on. This little thing we got for this one week or these two weeks. Yay. Number 16.
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B
In football. Is that what.
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C
You're correct. We're using. This is the thing.
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B
Oh man, I got you. I went to Vanderbilt. Number nine.
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C
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm gonna go. You're talking college.
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B
I got my one chance. Yeah, you and I both.
- [02:49]
C
Usually we're ranked number one and two and everything else, right? Lacrosse, diving, all of these other pieces. We kill it usually all the time. It's just this one thing that we can't quite get right. But anyway, I went to the University of Virginia. I graduated with a chemistry degree. In my mind I was doing everything right. I was going to graduate and I was going to get a job. I don't know, making 60. I don't know, I don't even know what number I thought was going to be good enough, but that was the idea. And I graduated. I had maybe $20,000 of student loan debt and I couldn't get a full time job so I couldn't pay my bills. Right. I'm from New York originally. I didn't go back home right after school because I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford to live on my own. And it felt like there was this massive timer over my life that was just counting down until that December 1st date when the first student loan payment was due. And I didn't really have a way to do it. I was doing my absolute best to pay bills. I had like four or five part time jobs. Opened the pool as a lifeguard in the morning. Then I would go work as a vet tech during the day and I would come home and shower. Then I would go to the bar because that's from 8 to 2am and then I would shower at the pool. When I got it, it was non stop. And I looked up one day and was like, this just can't be life, right? Like this can't be what my parents had set me up for. And I'm six months in and this is awful.
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B
What was the full time job I.
- [04:08]
C
Want to be getting hired as a laboratory tech. And this is also something I just didn't know, right? Scott? I majored in chemistry but that in the science world is like a high school diploma. So there was this expectation for a lot of science degree people to go back to get their master's scientists science degree People, golly, for scientists to go back and get their master's, right? Or to get their PhD, or to go to medical school or veterinary school. And that was the plan. I wanted to go on into vet school, but I had $20,000 of debt and I couldn't pay that. So it made me kind of freak out a little bit of like they want me to take out another 240 to make like 80 on the back end. That can't be right. That was what they were selling. But I struggled to pay the 20. How was I going to pay another quarter of a million dollars in debt? And so I paused and eventually got the job as a lab tech. And I was. Oh, Scott, $28,000. I said, I'm big money, right? I said I could take days off, paid time. Amazing. And that started about January 2014. So it took me about eight months to get a job in my field.
- [05:06]
B
A couple of observations here. First, we've interviewed Preston Cooper, who has done a very detailed study at Freeop on the ROI of college degrees. And a couple years later he followed that up with the ROI of master's degrees. And chemistry and biology are really interesting examples of undergraduate graduate degrees because to your point, as you just described, they don't offer a lot of compensation with just the undergrad. They tend to go with master's and PhDs or MD or pharmaceutical or those types of advanced degrees that do have okay or to good combined ROI in those fields. Taking that observation at the data level to your reality, how infuriating is that to graduate from a top university with a degree in chemistry where you probably worked way harder than the folks in the business degree, getting the business degree, which is just the thing. Like everyone knows that's the case, you know, you're as hard or harder than the engineers to get your chemistry degree and then you still can't get a reasonable paying job? Like that's how. How frustrating or infuriating was that for you?
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C
It was frustrating. And it's funny that you said it because I wasn't even that frustrated at the school. I think I was really frustrated at myself. I think I was really frustrated at my community. So I'll start with myself. I think I was frustrated that I didn't look past the initial show up experience. I didn't look past what I was told by the people around me. And they had a life that was exciting and they had a life that I really liked. I mean, I love the way I grew up. I'm just like walking in my mom and Dad's footsteps, and they're encouraging me to do so. But the life they grew up with in the 70s and 80s was not what I had access to in the early 2000s or the late 2000s. I think I'm upset with my community of feeling, like, why didn't a professor say something? Why didn't I have to take a class on these student loans? I was 17. Like, why? I. I just was frustrated overall. Funny, I just. I'm never frustrated. Uva. I was like, yeah, it makes sense. You took the money, you got paid. But more than frustrated, I think I felt helpless of just, hey, even if I have recognized my mistake and I want to do something else, I don't know even who to ask, right? Like, I don't even know. I can't ask my parents. They're the ones who got me here. And they don't know any different than just go to work and do something else. And bigger pockets wasn't around quite yet. And so just more helpless, I think, than frustrated.
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A
When you're making $28,000 a year and you're living in Virginia.
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C
Yes.
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A
That's not a lavish lifestyle that you are affording at $28,000 a year, is it? And what year are we talking about?
- [07:36]
C
We're talking 2014. Not lavish at all. I think I was bringing home maybe eighteen hundred dollars a month, right? Give or take. And when I tell you, I. Scott Mindy. Proud. Oh, proud of my little $1,800 again. My day, I had insurance. I said, multiple doctors, right? Primary care physician and the gynecologist. Everybody's covered. I can go dentist for me. I wear glasses. I said, I talked a while because none of that's covered. So that's also something I don't know if we talk about enough, right? None of that was covered for me when I was working part time. It was like, hope you don't get sick, right? Hope nothing is too crazy or hope that ER is what you can go to, because that's all you have access to right now. You're out of network for your mom's insurance. And she has been very clear. You better be on the cusp of death before you go out of network for my insurance. And so I had all this access. I had a little apartment. Mandy, you're right. Not very lavish, right? Whole thing carpeted, except for the linoleum in the bathroom and in the kitchen. It was a one bedroom, had a couple closets, but it was mine. And I was proud of my little space. And I finally felt like I could get up under it. I had taken out credit card debt in order to like stay afloat in those six months or those eight months before I got a job. But I had a little credit card debt. I had my little car. My, my car payment was 200amonth. I felt on top of the world I could pay my rent and not even listen to this with a student loan payment. It wasn't even graduated. I was paying standard. I felt big money paying my student loans and finally felt okay. If I can just keep my head down for the next three to five years, I think I can get ahead of this. My car will be paid off. I'll have a couple dollars in savings. And what shifted all of that was getting my first rent increase. And I said this is crazy. This is crazy. What has changed? What has changed that I now need to come off of another 25$50 a month when I already don't have Internet and I already don't have data on my cell phone plan and I'm already like volunteering to get pizza? What else? And that's what made me start to invest.
- [09:34]
B
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- [11:10]
A
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- [12:19]
B
All right, welcome back to the show. It sounds like at the end of 2014 you got this job after six months after graduating from Uva and struggling for a little bit there. And then the next year, the next winter is when they raised the rent and things began the next year began to get kicked into motion for your journey.
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C
So I graduated May of 2013. I got the job December 2013, starting like January 2014. And I got this apartment. I was in a different apartment with a, a situation though. Yeah, I got that my own apartment, the one I'm talking about that June. So June of 2014 I got my apartment. December 2014 I got the rent increase form as they prepare for the next year. So it gave me six month notice which yay, I guess. But six months into my okay, this is going to be three years of like head down, still picking up shifts sometimes on the weekend to get some extra money, budget crunch numbers. I got that increase and was like it'll never end. I will never be able to get ahead of this if I don't take charge of it.
- [13:22]
A
What got you from the point of I am making $28,000 and a $25 $50 a month increase Is giving me some anxiety to I can own the building. Like, I know people who make a lot more than $28,000 who are like, oh, I can't afford to invest, I don't have enough money. And they're wrong. And you're going, but mentally, how did you make this, this switch? Like, did you have real estate investors in your family?
- [13:53]
C
Great question, Mindy. Honestly was ignorant because in my mind, right, the rent increase was because that was a landlord. In my mind, mortgages were set, right? So once you got the mortgage, everyone would tell me, principal, interest, set, set, set. So I was like, okay, if I can just get a mortgage less than I'm paying for rent, at least it's set. No one had mentioned that taxes go up and insurances can change. No one had said that quite yet. So as much as I didn't have investors in my family, I had homeowners, right? My parents owned condos in New York that they lived in. So I knew about HOA fees going up, but I wasn't trying to buy condo. So in my mind, hey, the principal and interest is set and it won't be going up $25 or $50 every year just because especially in Virginia, we don't have rent protection, right? There's no rent increase limits or terms. So if they came back and said, hey, they want it to be 3, $400 more, they could, if they could get it and I would just have to eat that. So it was the ignorance, the belief that a mortgage at least was stable and less than what I was paying. That was the goal. And if I could get a roommate, that would help out a little bit more too.
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A
Okay, so tell us about this first property. How long did you look for it? What did it cost?
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C
So let me back up to the first time I applied, right? We talked about how I didn't get that job until January of 2014 when I started working. But that summer of 2013, I had a bunch of part time jobs I was cobbling together. I applied for a mortgage. Again, Mindy ignorance. I applied for mortgage, thinking I'm making money on paper, they're going to approve me. I submitted it and she called me in and I've told this story before, but she looked me dead in my face and had a little chuckle. It wasn't the cookie sandwich method where you give like positive, negative, positive straight out the gate. No, you cannot qualify on theory for this 12 week process made enough, I guess. But you don't have consistent income. You have crap credit. You also have not started paying your student loans yet. So this was before some of the legal, the laws that changed about how much percentage they can take or the zero dollar payment, including your DTI and you have credit card debt. I think I said that. But there were so many things that she was like, here's all the reasons you don't qualify. And after she had her chuckle and I had to like, you know, like to get the tears to go back because I was like, ah, this is so frustrating. She gave me a list of things I needed to do to fix it. She said, you have to get a job, you got to pay off this credit card debt and you need to have about 3% saved of whatever you're going to buy for the down payment. So that was a month after I graduated college, two months after I graduated college. So summer of 2013, I got that job and I remember still having that in my head, okay, I'm going to pay down this credit card debt. I got the job. Now it's just the debt and to save. And so that's why I was living super small. I cut my Internet, I cut my extra stuff on my phone, I didn't have cable, I went home and went to sleep and got up and went back to work. I would work on the weekends. And I was starting to get some traction. I really was starting to pay down some of that debt and starting to get some savings up under me. And that's where that three to four years came from. Right. But getting that rent increase was like, I, I'm not working to give you more money. I am working so that I can get from up under this. And I went to apply again. I was like, here's where I'm at. Can you do anything with what I got right now? That would have been December of 2014, maybe January of 2015. I went back to the same lady because I like pain, I guess. I, I went back and she said, okay, if you could have the credit cards paid in full, we don't have to count that to your DTI before you purchase. You make enough, we can pre qualify you now for $85,000. And that, remember I'm making 28, 85 seems enormous. I said 85, especially if it was denied $85,000.
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A
Oh wow.
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C
So I go to my realtor and you guys already know, when I asked to see all of the properties listed for 85 000, he's like, here's the one, here's the one property you can go for because the other one is A total loss from a fire. But you can go to this one. And we went to that one townhouse that was listed for $85,000. And it was three bedrooms, one bathroom. It had a parking spot. And the whole time we're walking through it, we're like, yeah, it's a little dated. Yeah, it's a little ugly, but what's wrong with it? Why is this Property listed for $85,000 in 2015 in Charlottesville, Virginia? And we placed an offer. We did the inspection. We kept being like, what is wrong with that? What's going on? And this whole time during the inspection, I'm picking up extra shifts to pay off this credit card debt. I'm trying to. We're. We're having engineers come out. He's like, I'm going to have my friend come look at it to make sure it's not settling. We're going to have moisture control. I don't want you to buy a lemon at your first property. And it's been 10 years, and I still have that property. I'm going to tomorrow that property. I purchased it. And my. I went from my, like, 725 rent that was going to go up to a $525 mortgage, and I got a roommate. So with one purchase, I went from like, how are they going to increase my rent every year? To I don't have to pay anything now in order to live.
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B
That's so fantastic.
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C
What.
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B
One tip for those wondering what is wrong with it? If you're ever wondering that while you're looking at a property, Google the address, right? Just Google it. And if there's some. Every once in a while, I' find a news story about the house that is unflattering and that that can be part of the reason why the house is. Is not selling in those scenarios. Does not sound like that was the case with this one.
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C
Or if it was ignorance, you know, I don't know. Worked out for me.
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B
I love it. House hacking, right? 2014, 2015. The golden age of house hacking. What glorious times those were for folks doing that. That stuff. And I'm sure the story then goes on to. For that to have gone fairly well, right? Rents go up, price goes up, mortgage days flat, and we're building that. How does your financial position progress following this purchase? And what are the next steps in your journey?
- [19:23]
C
I got this house, I have my roommate, but I'm still making $28,000 a year outside of the rental income right at my ear, my W2 job. I'm still making 28,000. And that's when I started to say, okay, I fixed the rental problem. Do I want children? Do I want a family? Do I want to ever stop working? Because I'm not putting anything into my company's 401k or whatever it was at that point. I'm not putting any to that because I'm only making eighteen hundred dollars a month. The value of my property is going up, but I can't rely on selling it because I still need somewhere to live. And so I went back to school and I know we talked about not going back to school, but I did go back to school to get my license to be a teacher because that was when I started asking more questions, getting around people who were doing better than me. I was trying to flip my chemistry degree into something and I learned that I could flip that into teaching. In Virginia, you don't need a master's in order to teach compared to like New York or other states. So I had about one semester of classes I would have needed to take and then I could student teach and then I could be a full fledged teacher. I'm also a science teacher, so I qualify for all of the upper level sciences by taking the test. And I remember even for student teaching being like, wait, so I have to pay you guys to teach Yalls classes? That feels crazy. No, like why would I teaching you to work at your school? So you know what I did? Because I learned from before I started asking people, are there other options? Is there something else I could do here? And they said, well, if you're a long term sub, we can pay you to do it, but you won't have a mentor. And I said, I can find a mentor. I want to do that, whatever that is you need to be a long term sub. And so I was able to be a long term sub. And that's when I started teaching full time. So after I finished my one semester of school, as I was still working as a lab tech, I began teaching. And now my pay went from 28 to 48 or 28 to 50.
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B
As a long term sub, your pay went from 28 to 40.
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C
Because I was on pay scale with the teachers, right? So whatever they make per day is what I was getting. It just wasn't salaried. And then I, the next year I got hired by the same county to be a full time teacher. So my pay increased 22,000 gross overnight. And I said to myself, okay, I've also been here before, right? You can live like this just fine. And now just have an additional $22,000 a year. If you can just keep your roommate. We don't need a new car, we don't need new nothing. I could. I gave myself Internet. That was something I said, okay, I think you've earned. I think you've earned a little fiber, you know, I think you've earned a little. A little cable, Netflix. But we're not going to increase the $2,000 per month you are now getting. All of that went into investments. So anything past the house, when the house did start to make a little bit more money, because I did eventually get a third roommate. So when the house was eventually making more money, anything that was extra just stayed in the account for the house. And all of the extra money I was making from this new job went into the next investment, the next property. And if I could not buy something that year, I was in maxing out my IRAs or my 401ks with my job.
- [22:16]
A
I think you're the first person I've ever heard who got into teaching for the pay increase.
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C
That's right, Mindy. I was like, oh, wow, I'm making more crazy.
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A
How long did you have this first townhouse before you saved up enough and found the next house?
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C
I had enough within like six months. Because remember, these are primary residences. These are 3% down. Out of $100,000 properties, I would only need three grand. And I went from paying $700 a month in rent to nothing. So to me, that $700 just went into the savings account, which meant within three or four months I could buy another property. Now I couldn't because I just bought a primary residence and I couldn't buy like the house next door yet. I needed to wait at least a year before I purchased another property. But then what happened is every year I just house act again. I just found somewhere else to buy. I got to the point where I almost wasn't even unpacking. Like, why I'm back. We're going to move in a year. Just leave it right in that box. And I will see you again in 365 days. Because it does take that little time in order to save. Because I'm trying to keep my lifestyle low to invest for the future.
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B
We're now in 2015, right? And we have our $48,000 a year teaching job, Is that correct?
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C
That's right.
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B
And we've got our house hack.
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C
I bought the property in 2015. I was finishing my semester of classes. But then in 2016 is when I got the $48,000 a year job.
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B
What was the conversation with the loan officer like for the next house? Can you tell us about that one?
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C
The next one was, hey, you can't buy the house next door. You know, she was like, so that's not how this works. You can. We're not going to approve you for another primary residence that's identical to what you have already. You have to give us something more. Has to be bigger or more units or something. And I was like, okay. And so that's when I started looking for.
- [23:59]
B
Never heard that before. What is that?
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C
And so I asked a few people, and they were like, yeah, you're really. I think. I was. Honestly, I think what's happening, Scott, is I was applying too soon to the one year. So because I was nine months, they were like, well, approve it if there's a reason for you to move versus waiting the full one year to apply, because I want it to be closing.
- [24:18]
B
For those listening who are lost here on this, when you get a mortgage for a house hack or a primary residence, it typically comes with a requirement to live in the property or to. They have the intent to live in the property for a full year. Andre was doing what a lot of house hackers do and trying to move as quickly as possible on there without obviously committing mortgage fraud and violating the terms of that agreement here.
- [24:41]
C
So if you do want to move, there typically has to be a valid reason, right? Your job has moved you, or like, hey, I'm about to have babies. I need more rooms or something. And when they would ask me, I didn't know what they were asking, and I had to. And I was just saying, like, oh, I just want more money. And they're like, so, no, you can't do that. But I could look for larger properties, right? I can't get an identical townhouse next door to where I'm at, but you can look for larger properties. And so I started looking for a duplex. I got engaged that year, and I wanted him to buy properties. So he was maybe gonna buy the property next door, and I was gonna buy the duplex, and then we would have so many properties. And looking back, I was like, oh, was that a requirement for marriage? I guess it was my little dowry that I helped get for myself of, please buy the house next door to mine, control this and have another one, and we're going to be great. So that's what happened. So now we're in 2016, I am engaged. And it was like, well, I'm not going to rent So I suggest you buy a house. And he was like, yeah, that works for me. So he bought the house next door to mine. While I simultaneously, as a single person, based on taxes, engaged, is still single. I was able to go and buy a duplex. We still live separately. And then when we married, we moved into his house, and I was able to rent the other ones.
- [25:51]
B
Oh, my gosh. Okay. That took me a minute to process. Okay. And that. That marital is a life event that is qualified under the rules for these owner occupant mortgages to allow you to vacate. Is that what you're saying?
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C
No, he bought it under his name.
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B
Okay.
- [26:06]
C
2015, I bought my property, first property. In 2016, he started purchasing his own property. I was not on that property. I was waiting until I found the duplex I wanted in order to, like, step up because I could use the FHA loan, and I didn't find that property until 2017. So I was looking, I was on the hunt for it. I didn't find what I wanted until 2017. He wound up buying his own property under his own name, making sure IRS is listening. Own property under his own name. And then in 2017, two years after I bought my first property, I bought my first duplex because I had finally found it. I had all the financing for it. I had my $48,000 or $50,000 a year. I had my. My taxes, my W2s. I had my pay stubs, and I was able to get my first in 2017. We got married late 2017, December, and then 2018, we moved in together.
- [26:53]
B
So this is fantastic.
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A
And.
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B
And, you know, we talk about house hac, complain, you know, solutions. Always house hacking. Well, kinda, yeah.
- [27:01]
C
Yeah. Huh.
- [27:02]
B
If you're not in this, like, entrepreneurial world, earning a ton of income or starting a business or have some side hustle, again, all comes back to income there. The house hack, I mean, is just such a cheat code. I mean, think about this. You were earning $28,000 a year, then you became a teacher. And that felt like a cheat code because you had this house hack. Now, here's what else the house hack did, because you were house hacking this 85,000 half duplex. You had income rental income from that tenant. When that gets added to your teacher salary, now you're making, you know, $55,000 a year. Still doesn't sound like much, but when you go to apply for the loan for the duplex, you can also count the 2,000amonth or 24,000 a year from the duplex. Income on top of that. All of which compounds if you had bought the house without a roommate during that time period, you would have been excluded from this for years following that situation. And so it's really like, it's. It's. Sometimes it's hard for me to understand how peers in your situation could possibly get ahead possibly on the other side of this and, and escape this capitalist trap essentially without doing that strategy, unless they went into some kind of entrepreneurship or had some sort of higher, higher income job from the get go.
- [28:16]
C
If I could add another piece to that, that I think house hackers resist, which is very frustrating, is that it took me 18 months originally to save like three grand. Like Scott was saying, because of the rental income, I was able to save another 600amonth, right? So that was another maybe 2,000 now in six months. But one of the other big things was that the property appreciated. I went to pull a HELOC on that property. Three years later, I got a HELOC of 50 grand. All this time, I have not saved $50,000. But just because I purchased an asset and waited, held on to it, took care of it, right? If I had to replace the roof or if I had to get a new fridge or new H vac, whatever, I now have 50 grand that I could use on something else. Or if I would have sold it, I would have been able to access 50 grand untaxed because it was my primary residence, right? So if I would have sold that house to buy the duplex if I wanted to, I didn't. But that was also something I could not have saved my way into, especially as a lower earner, right? Making 50 grand. I'm saving my gross salary from a sale because I happen to buy it when I could. That's also what house hacking offers. I tell people sometimes to buy a house, you got to buy a house. I know we all want to get to the big one to begin with. Maybe that's not it for you right now.
- [29:27]
A
Yeah. What I'm hearing is that your story says I took action. How many people were you working with that were making $28,000 a year as chemistry texts? And they're living with their parents or they're living with nine roommates and they're spending every dollar that comes in. They're not saving anything, they're not doing anything. I'm going to quote Uncle Dave here and say, live like no one else now so that you can live like else later.
- [29:53]
C
And Mindy, if I could add, I think where I get frustrated sometimes, When I hear people lament the idea of house hacking or that work is, if your lifestyle is good, then be cool with it. Like, be happy about it. One of the reason that hard work didn't scare me is because I was already miserable. Like, I. It was already hard, but that hard didn't have a way out. That hard was like, this is gonna be it. And hopefully you make enough to make it a social with Social Security. But that was it. This hard had one end, and that end looked terrible. Where this other hard, it wasn't going to be easier, but this other hard had an out. And in my mind, it was like, okay, well, if I was going to do 50 years of this, I can definitely do five years of this over here and have the opportunity to not have to work for the rest of my life.
- [30:39]
A
Yeah, I love that. Reframe. If I could do 50 hard years, I could do five hard years.
- [30:44]
C
Yes.
- [30:45]
A
You said five years. Is that how long it took you to quit your job?
- [30:50]
C
It did, yes. So what year are we in? We're in 2017. Oh, we're in 2017. Maybe we're 2018. We're 2017. I bought my duplex. We have four units between the two of us. I'm married, and I want to keep house hacking. And my husband says, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I said, are you sure we can make some money? He said, leave it cleave. Right. The word instructs. We cannot continue to. I'm taking that wildly out of context, but we cannot continue to, like, have roommates. I want to be able to live on my own, and I have been saving. I have my HELOCs. I use my duplex for Airbnbs and also have my roommates. So I probably had 60, 70, between 60 and, like, $80,000 in cash. Because this whole time, I didn't increase my living, I didn't get a new car, I paid my debts and everything extra went straight to the bank. I said, okay, I can look into buying a property that is not primary residence. That's when I learned that those down payment is. Is not the same. I didn't know. Again, ignorance, right? Because I'm just rocking with what I know. I'm used to three, three and a half percent, 5% down payments. That first 20%. I said, Mike, 20%. That's gonna take all my funds. But luckily, I had gotten used to talking to people asking questions, and I had asked enough that the person who sold me the previous duplex I bought or the duplex I bought was like, well, I got some of these condos I don't want. I can't sell them because I own too many of them in the complex. Let me explain. Sometimes people have issues buying condos because too many investors own in the complex. Housing will not approve the loan because they think it's a risk for primary homeowners. So he couldn't sell them to primary homeowners because there were too many investors in the complex. But he said, I own them outright. I will sell or finance them to you. Give me cash, you can have ownership of them for a period of time and figure it out. I said, I've never heard that before, but okay. So I put down my money for a couple condos. These are all Airbnbs. In the wild, wild days when there were no laws regulating Airbnb anywhere, made all this money. And even then, I probably, at that point, I probably could have left teaching.
- [32:56]
B
Could you give us some more details, like how much you put down, what was the terms, and how much you said you're making all this money?
- [33:01]
C
So the condos were all one bedroom, one bathroom. They were very dated. They have been updated probably since like the 80s. But I got them for $100,000 and he wanted $20,000 down with the HOA that put my mortgage.
- [33:12]
B
You get three of these?
- [33:13]
C
He offered three, I took two.
- [33:14]
B
Okay.
- [33:15]
C
Because I was like, is this real? I think I was still in this. Well, the title company hasn't told me no, you know, and I'm not gonna write him a check. It's gonna go through title, but okay. And I had to put down $20,000 and the mortgage was a 5% amortized over 30 years for three years. So I had a three year balloon and I had an HOA, but the HOA was like 250, very low. So my full payment for each property, each of those condos, like 550amonth. Water was included, Internet and cable was included. Okay. So all I really needed was electric. So all in my bills for that unit, if I was going to furnish it and do all that was about $700 a month. No more than 700. The Airbnb was probably making $4,000 a month. So very quickly it became like, oh, and that's just at $125 a night, right? $150 a night. These are not overly expensive and they're really pretty. It has a fireplace and a balcony and a parking spot. And they're near uva. But I'm fully booked. Turning over the apartment. I'm waking up at like 5am to turn over one apartment, going to work as a teacher from 9 to 5 and then like rushing for a late checkout or late check in to like finish the other apartment. I'm making a lot of money, but I don't have any time. I'm very stressed out, right? Trying to make sure. And then we get reviews every day. The reviews are stressful. And so this is 2018 and I'm making good money. And I'm saying to myself, I just don't want to live like this either. Like this isn't it either. I don't want to script hello Forever. And that is where I get introduced to larger multi families. It's like, well, I'm still staving, I'm still not increasing my lifestyle a little bit. Let me, let me say a little bit. We're not doing stations anymore, right? We can get on a plane. Not international, don't get crazy, but we could get on a plane and go somewhere domestic for an hour or two. But overall, lifestyle still very low. And I started looking into larger multifamily and thought, well, that could give me the best of both worlds. I can get a lot of money with, with less work, with less daily, like washing the towels every day and changing over the sheets and making sure I lift and flip over the mattresses. And that was the shift into the final stage before I could like fully leave my job and say, I think I can do this.
- [35:17]
A
What does larger multifamily mean in the context of this story?
- [35:21]
C
I was looking for large in the four units, right? Because I wasn't house hacking. And so I figured if I had to put down 20 anyway, I might as well go as big as I can. I'm not going to restrict myself to the FHA guidelines of up to 4, up to a quad as a primary residence. So I had all my money before I went to look at a property. I tried to get pre qualified. We talked about that earlier and all the commercial lenders are like, what are you talking about? That's not a thing. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, that's we, we qualify properties, we don't qualify you. Right? Ignorance, where you're just like, okay, I thought I would come here first and have my little letter like I did when I was getting my primary residence. But no, I'm supposed to go find the property and have that qualify with them. So I started looking ahead. I think again, the 60 to $80,000 because I had built up my Reserves again. And I had some equity in my condos and I started to look and surprise, surprise, 10 unit properties are very expensive. They are not the same price of primary residences. They're 5, 6, $700,000. And when I have to put down 20, I don't have it. So I'm still looking, I'm still thinking. I remember opening up Craigslist. People say, you know, these off market things. And that's when I saw it. That's when I saw it. Mindy. It was my first ever look at a motel for sale. It was 10 units. It was listed for 190 and the inside were little studios. And I said, that looks like a tiny apartment to me. Right? If we can flip that, those, you know, those two burner stove top and we can make that a real stove, that there's a sink. There's not going to be a dishwasher in here, but one person could stay. It looks like a dorm room. It looks like a dorm room with a little kitchen. And I went to go see it and it was two hours away and it felt like the longest two hours ever. And I got there and I was like, I mean, looks like a building to me. And I saw the units and I saw the interior and I loved it. And when I ran the numbers was like, well, this makes about what my Airbnb makes without the daily work. It's not as high of a profit margin because this is a little more expensive. Right. There's a lot more units to turn over there, a lot more water heat meters, and the maintenance is going to be more expensive. But if I just came here once a week, I feel like that'd be enough versus the seven days a week I was at the Airbnb. So yeah, I think I could do something like this. And that was my first introduction into the larger multifamily space.
- [37:33]
A
And how much was this little motel with the, the 10 studio apartments?
- [37:37]
C
It was listed for 190.
- [37:39]
A
$190,000 for 10 studio units?
- [37:41]
C
Yes. Now, Mindy, that's a great sound bite, but when you walk into one of those 400 square foot units and they have four cats and you walk into this other one and they have roaches, you start be like, okay, well, I.
- [37:52]
B
See why this ain't in the D.C. metro.
- [37:56]
C
No, no, this is heading towards southern Virginia. We're southern southwest Virginia. This is just a working class town in between smaller working class towns. But hey, it's 30 minutes of commute. People commute longer than that in Nova. I figured again, it's going to take me a little more. That's going to cut into my profits. But it was listed for 190. I got it under contract. No, no, I didn't get under contract. I took it back to the lenders because they told me originally, right, bring us the property. So I had five lenders ready to go. Four said no. And I thought this was going to be a situation like my. My primary, where she said no, but gave me an explanation. They were like, they don't like it. So I learned then commercial don't really have standards that they have to apply to, right? Commercial lenders can say whatever they want. There's not a federal guideline that they have to approve it person to person. They were like, oh, it doesn't really fit what we like. Oh, we don't like the location. The rents are too low. And the one who said yes just said, yeah. And I said, why? He's like, feels good. Said, not gonna question it. Not gonna question it. He did say, needed more reserves. So going back to Scott's question, I did sell one of those condos, right? He wanted high reserves. He wanted less debt on my name, so be it. I saw one of those condos because I wasn't gonna have the time for it anyway. Now with 10 new units to have to figure out. So I had the down payment. I sold my condo. I reach out to an inspector. They said, the roof is falling apart, and you had a lot of work with the sewage line. I went back to the seller, I said, hey, you're gonna have to lower the price because I need to fix this roof or you're gonna have to give me a concession because I need to, like, fix this roof because I'm not gonna have this property fall on people. That's. I won't do that. And so we wound up closing for 150, and he gave me $25,000 in concessions. And I was able to get my roof done and new gutters and gutter guards. Spending money on that roof. The roof is beautiful. It is a work of art. First roof with the fancier. Because I was trying to spend all the concessions, right? Trying to try to run up whatever I can do to make some more money off that sale. And that mortgage, I think, was, like 900amonth. Just principal and interest and. Yeah, I know, it's wild. It is. And I bought, like, three more like that, just, like, because they were available. And I will say, for this, for everybody listening, going back to what Mandy said, because I like how she phrased it right. If I could do 50 hard here here, I can do 5 hard here. I saw that they had lost the management side of these properties. It wasn't inherently that the property was a gold mine. You got to manage them well. These properties have been neglected and when you're in like the neglected backwoods, it comes with everything that's in a neglected backwoods, right? There's a lot of drugs, there's a lot of turnover, there's a lot of vagrants and you have to figure out how to handle that, that either as a manager or the management company you hire. And it's gonna be a year before things start to level out. It's going to take time in order to get everyone on board and get everyone picking up after their dogs and get everyone to pay the rent on time in the way you want them to pay the rent and to submit maintenance requests and to not paint their houses. It's gonna take time, but that was my thought when I bought that property in 2019, that first one at least.
- [40:58]
A
Okay, this is our final ad break, but we'll be right back with more after this.
- [41:03]
B
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- [42:26]
A
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- [45:48]
C
Somewhere between seven, probably seven and eight. And then units wise, somewhere between 50 and 55. Somewhere in that general range because we're also selling them as they go. You know, sometimes you're like, oh, those are on the market. Those are not on the market. We're adding something to the basement. That's why I was like, who knows what's happening at this exact moment?
- [46:05]
A
Okay, so between 50 and 55 units. Starting way back when, you made 28,000 doll a year and now you don't have a job. You are unemployed.
- [46:16]
C
I like to say work optional. Right?
- [46:19]
A
Work optional.
- [46:19]
C
Because I do and I, because people have called me out rightfully. So I do a lot on social media. I'm here, right? This is a good time. This is like kind of, kind of part of the, the vibe I've got going right now. But if I stopped this, I could still live the life I want to live.
- [46:34]
A
Yeah, you're not going to a 40 hour a week job. You're not working for somebody else or even working for yourself in 40 hours a week. Now these 50 to 55 UN, how much of your time does that take? Every week or month?
- [46:48]
C
Right now a little more than usual. I actually forgot that building. So probably eight or nine buildings in 60 minutes. I just bought a joint venture with my membership group. So I'm trying to get them to become more private lenders or do more private lending. So we bought a six unit building. I need to get that fully occupied. So I'm showing them that process. So right now that probably takes me a day a week. We go down Wednesdays or Fridays, one of the, whatever day is more free and do whatever we're doing at that point. But once that will be occupied. I should be occupied by the end of November. A day.
- [47:20]
A
You work one day a month.
- [47:22]
C
One day a week.
- [47:23]
A
One day a week. Okay, okay. But still like one day a week. There's people who are working 40 hours a week who are working a little.
- [47:29]
C
Bit more than that. Just a little bit more. For sure. No, like one day, one day a week.
- [47:33]
B
What do you want these days in terms of like wealth and money? Like, what does that goal look like for you nowadays, given where you started?
- [47:41]
C
What a great question, Scott. My husband went back to school, he went to grad school. And for those first two years, grad school was actually the first two years of COVID So it was 2020, 2022. And I wanted nothing more than just to sit down. All I wanted, I just wanted to sit in my house and watch TV and work out maybe and cook and just sit and be with him. He was working, right. Because he was in grad school. And after two years of just kind of sitting, I said that, well, that was fun. And what do you want now? Because similarly to what we talked about before, I don't think this is, this is what I want to do for the next 40 years or 50 years. What I found brought me a lot of joy, was pouring all this extra time that I now have control over into the people around me. So showing up to watch my friends, kids, being on the phone with people who are further away, my friends who we have like hour long conversations, helping out with my church, teaching online to give people these same options that I've had that I've had access to right now. I think a big focus for me is trying to help as many people as I can have. Even just like a taste of what I've gotten to experience because of real estate.
- [48:46]
B
What is like the financial portfolio that you want to build today. So for example, you know, I paralleled some of the things in your journey were the first probably three, four years in terms of the house hacking, those types of things. And today I'm much more conservative. And the reason for that is a defensive, like I'm like, oh my God. Of I kind got to my, my goal number and now I'm, I'm going to just be much more conservative. Is that at all factoring into your portfolio or do you still invest to grow the portfolio using max leverage or the best financing available?
- [49:18]
C
That's a great question right now. No, I am not trying to max out everything that is available to me. I said when I left teaching. When I left full time, I said, hey, you can always count on $55,000 for me. Right? That can always come into the household. And even then, and I know that might sound crazy to. But even then I was like, our lifestyle can't go past this contribution, even though the portfolio has. And that's because we still have debt. That's because my husband wasn't retired the way I was retired quite yet. Right. And I wanted to make sure, especially because he loved his job so much. I wanted to make sure that we were able to be debt free by the time we were 40. That was a. That was a thing that kind of came to me of like, I want to have nothing at 40 years old. That way, if he walks away, we can still keep everything we want, making $60,000 a year. So even if we did have to go back to what that's that conservative and me, right. Even if we did have to go back, we can figure out between the two of us how to make 60 grand. And the rest of that money has gone into investing now more into the stock market than I have before. Right. It's to paying off property. So now a couple free and clear, which is like, oh, now we learn about trusts and putting this here and how do we protect these assets? I'm buying some joint ventures because I want my members to learn more. Like, hey, these are available. And I still flip because that pays down debt. But I have no interest right now. And buying another like 30 unit right now, I just want to pay off debt and keep living.
- [50:41]
A
Now when you say debt, you just mean the mortgage payments, right? You're done with the student loans and the credit cards and all of that.
- [50:47]
C
I have an educator for a husband, Mindy, So we are not done with his two moms.
- [50:52]
A
Ah, okay.
- [50:53]
C
But. But he's doing the 10 years. So he has the 10. The public service loan forgiveness.
- [50:59]
A
Yes. Perfect. And that I think is perfectly acceptable.
- [51:01]
C
Exactly. So he has another years and then those will be done. But yes, it's the mortgages not only on my own home, but on all of the properties I own as well.
- [51:09]
A
Is your goal then to be completely debt free? No mortgages at all?
- [51:13]
C
Correct.
- [51:14]
A
Even with the lower interest rate mortgages, like the first property that you bought, you had a 2 or 3% mortgage on that.
- [51:20]
C
How kind are you? No, in 2014, I had bad credit, so no.
- [51:24]
A
Oh, okay.
- [51:25]
C
I think it was like four. But yeah, I think there's something very freeing about full ownership. And I will say that will be the Last one that's paid off. Right. Like, we're gonna go. We're gonna use the snowball that we're gonna go for the higher or the avalanche method. Right. We're gonna go for the higher interest first. But I think there is something very powerful about going from a space where I was making 28, 000 a year to saying I now own 50 units outright. Right. And that like, my family owns this outright. And then we could put it in trusts so that the next generation can own it outright and be starting from there versus starting from $20,000 in student lo knowing which direction to go with.
- [52:03]
A
Deandra, I love your whole story. It is so inspiring because you didn't come in here and say, oh, I was making $200,000 a year. Wow. How'd you do it, Deondra? So amazing you making 200,000. But when you're making 28, 000, most people making 28, 000 don't even think about investing. And you're like, I'm gonna anyway. And you started with a house hat that's still investing. And then you move to another house hack and to another house hack. And I just love. Yes, you did it when we had lower interest rates, but you still did it. And all the people who are yelling at the radio right now, yeah, but they're never going to do it. Deondra didn't have a yeah, but she's like, I'm going to do this. And she did.
- [52:47]
C
I want to add one more Mindy for those people. I have been in house act right now. So we just bought a house. It was a requirement for that house to be a duplex. And I told my husband that's part of my dream because as my parents age, I don't want to put them anywhere but in my home. And I knew if we didn't have something stable settled, right, that's in the house that I could walk to that they could. We're next door neighbors or they're in the basement apartment. But having that allows me to do live my dream, which is making sure my community, including my parents, are taken care of. And that was in 24. So house hacking is not just a situation where we're oh, well, that was great. In 2015. I did in 2025, with 2025 rates. And still when that apartment is rented fully, if I was going to rent it fully, my mortgage is like $800 for my six bedroom brick colonial, and it's. It's $900. So house hacking also works now in 2025 now, is there somebody gonna be living below me maybe? Sure, whatever. But it's not a thing of the past. There are options available to us still today.
- [53:45]
B
I think people were having a really hard time finding house hacks 1, 2, 3 years ago as interest rates rose and prices hadn't changed and rents hadn't changed. But I think now in large parts of the country, we're seeing opportunities really blossom again in a lot of, a lot of cases. So I think if you've been thinking, if you've been ruling it out for the last two or three years because nothing seemed to work, maybe take another look. Depending on where you're at, things could be changing. I'm seeing opportunities that look pretty good here in Denver, Colorado these days.
- [54:15]
A
For example, I just sold a house hack to a client, Steven. He listens to the show.
- [54:21]
C
Nice.
- [54:21]
B
Awesome. Deandra, where can people find out more about you and where can people find this new book that you just wrote?
- [54:27]
C
Oh, my goodness, yes. So if you look on Instagram, I'm Deandra McDonald. So it's just my name. If you look on TikTok, it's simple real estate. Same with YouTube. Deandra McDonald and I just wrote they'll probably put up a much prettier version. I'll send them the beautiful mock ups because this is still the author proof, but it's called the Multi Family Advantage. Breaking free from the Single Family Trap to Scale into Early Retirement. So you guys got about an hour is of my story, but this is not my story. And I want to make that very clear that that's what this is for. You can hear about me. This is how you do it. This is how you analyze the properties. This is how you think about when a property is worth keeping or selling. This is how you, you decide if you're in a maintenance phase like I'm in right now that Scott seems to be right now, or if you're in a scaling phase when you want to keep growing, when you want to do more. This is the how to, this is the why, you know, why it worked for me, and this is how to get it to work for you. That is now available for pre order on Amazon and on my website, deandramacdonald.com and the book comes out officially December 1st.
- [55:31]
A
All right, Diandra, this was super fun. I'm super stoked to check out your book. I am super stoked. I just went and followed you on Instagram. I, I want to see all the good things that are coming your way. So thank you so much for sharing your story with us and we will talk to you soon.
- [55:45]
C
Thank you so much, Mindy and Scott, I really appreciate you guys letting me be on today.
- [55:48]
A
Oh, I appreciate you coming.
- [55:49]
B
Thank you, Scott.
- [55:51]
A
That was Deandra McDonald and that was such a great story. I had so much fun listening to her. What did you think of her show?
- [55:56]
B
That was great. And I think that, you know, the, the frustrating part, I think for some folks will be the house hack. Right? It comes down to the house hack in getting started. This getting on the other side of the capitalism snowball is so hard if you don't have a very high income, for example, and keep the goalposts removing. And it's so easy if housing is eliminated as an expense and the other items are kept constant. And I think that's the theme we're going to hear so many times from folks. It's not a rule. Not everyone has to house hack to fire, but such a high percentage of people who get there quickly without starting a business are going to do this.
- [56:36]
A
Diandra looked around and said, I am not happy with my life. So she took action and made changes so that she could be happy. She asked questions and then took that information and put it into action. And if you're not willing to take action, I have no advice for you.
- [56:54]
B
Yeah. And I also call out, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of people push us. They're like, hey, where's the person who never earned a high income in their journey to financial independence? There it is. Right. And you know, I can see the challenges already coming from that where, hey, you know, yeah. But then she invested in real estate. Well, look, we're going to struggle here at Biggerpockets Money to find a person who ends the fire journey still making a below median income. Right. But there's so many examples out there, people who start the journey making less than that and then find ways to solve that income challenge. Right. In her case, her upgrade made was to becoming a teacher. Right. That was her, that was her path to getting ahead financially and getting into medium income was, was actually becoming a teacher. And for many people that there's a bias, that that's a really difficult path to wealth. And she used real estate and the free time and the advantages that that came with to build this empire that she has today.
- [57:50]
A
But it took work. That's the bottom line here. There is no easy button. There is no I would like to be financially independent. Poof. I asked. That doesn't happen. You have to do the work, and she did the work, and now she's reaping the rewards. And this is such a great story. I'm so happy she was able to come on and share it with us.
- [58:09]
B
This is the. The. The advantage that I think today's Gen A, or, you know, Gen Z and Gen, and then Jenna will have is if you can really, really smart in high school and amass a couple, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to summer jobs and those types of things, save your pennies, you know, any Christmas card money, that kind of stuff over the years. If you can avoid making the mistake of accumulating a large amount of student loan debt without an associated high income, if you can avoid the trap of a vehicle and that first house purchase, I mean, good gosh, these kids can get ahead super fast and avoid and skip many of the hard lessons that we've had to discover or unpack here on BiggerPockets Money. So it doesn't have to be this hard for a lot of folks, but you do have to really map that journey out from the beginning pretty strategically and make those. Those big choices correctly.
- [58:56]
A
Yep, absolutely. But those small wins just compound to huge, huge wins. All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
- [59:06]
B
Let's do it.
- [59:07]
A
That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Indy Jensen, saying, gotta go, ufo.