A (4:06)

Oh, my goodness. Okay. There's seven things in there that I want to talk about already. So first. Well, a first. Congrats. That's incredible. So a family of seven.

B (4:17)

Yes, family of seven. Still fitting a Toyota Sienna minivan.

A (4:21)

All right, nice. What's the age range of the kids? How old is the youngest?

B (4:24)

So youngest is about to turn 2 next week. So we have 2 years old, 3, 5, 8 and 10.

A (4:31)

Wow. Okay, that's quite a range. And you are homeschooling. You and your wife are homeschooling?

B (4:35)

Yes. So my wife last 10 years has primarily been doing the brunt of it, but now I'm on board. I've been teaching my little girl to read the last couple months and yeah, interesting. Homeschooling.

A (4:45)

Are there any type I know in this day and age with AI and I've heard of the Alpha School and things like that. I don't imagine that's, that's what you're part of, but like, are there new resources that are applicable that like, I know you're up on this kind of stuff. So that's why I want to ask you specifically, like anything you guys have come across?

B (5:01)

Yeah, no, there's so many. Like we're part of 2Homeschool Co op. So we do a forest school on every Thursday. And then actually I just got back from a homeschool co op. Every Friday we do another more kind of academic co op. I teach a Toastmasters club. My wife does pre K, but yeah, they do academics there. And then the forest school one, we're kind of more learning about nature, survival skills and things like that and just hanging out in the woods.

A (5:21)

Okay.

B (5:22)

But yeah, so my wife was actually homeschooled K through 12. She did go to college. She became a teacher and all that. So we're like second generation homeschools. I went to public school, but, you know, we can kind of count second generation. And you know, we were mostly doing paper curriculum because that's what she knew. But we've, you know, with five kids we kind of needed something to officiate and guide us along the way. So we kind of move towards like Chromebooks and digital now with most of the older kids, but with the younger ones, we're still trying to do paper curriculum, get their writing skills advanced and things like that.

A (5:50)

Okay, I like that. Yeah. I just wasn't sure, like in this day and age of Khan Academy and all these different things that are available.

B (5:56)

Like Academy for math.

A (5:57)

Nice. Okay. I tried. Yeah. I had my girls do that in their elementary school years for a little bit and then it was. Yeah, it was really enjoyable. And it's neat to be able to have your kids go at their own pace to too. Like if they're advanced, they can go as far and as fast as they want and if not, they can go as slow as they want. I just thought that was. Khan Academy is wonderful for anybody, anybody interested in learning about just about anything. So it's K H A N Khan Khan Academy. And yeah, it's something really, really special. So you said second generation homeschool, which is interesting. Now second generation phi is something that's a term that Jonathan loved for years and years and years. Right. And frankly, I haven't mentioned that all that often. When you said that it jogged My mem. How do you think about financial independence? Before we get back to your story and go from there, how do you think about financial independence for your kids? I know something you talked about on the first episode way back when was having Roth IRAs for your kids and having earned income and et cetera, et cetera. But how do you, how and do you roll financial education into the homeschooling?

B (7:01)

Right? So actually all five of our kids have Roth IRAs. Their own Roth IRAs, which we started at the age of zero for most of them. I have a YouTube channel, you know, we're not very big, just 12,000 subscribers, but they're featured in all our YouTube channels. So that's how I get them income to roll into their Roth IRAs. Cause you know, we get advertisements and we get paid through the YouTube channel. So they're my models in my YouTube channel and that's how I pay them. So they all have Roth IRAs. I don't tell them about the Roth IRA just cause I don't want them to know, oh, I got thousands of dollars, blah blah blah. You know, I had this hunger growing up just because we were poor. So I had this hunger to succeed and, and make my way in my own life. You know, I had to pay for my own college. We talked about that. M139, I won't rehash it, but I think I'm going to, you know, tell my kids the kind of the same thing. Like if they want to go to college, they're going to have to pay for themselves. And so, you know, I've been very intentional about teaching my kids finances from the get go. You know, we do like the bank of dad method. I'm sure you've heard of that where you know, we give our kids 1% interest at the end of every month for their savings. So like my 10 year old, he's got 600 saves, so he gets 1% of that $6 at the end of every month. So if he can get his savings up higher. You know, my little kids, you know, they start out with like a baseline of like a $2. So I guess it's more like an allowance. I don't really love allowance, but I like this interest method. But yeah, at the baseline it's like $2. And the little ones, you know, they're still making those mistakes of every time we go to a soccer game, they're going to the snack stand and buying all the fruit roll ups they can and things like that. But I think, you know, they Understand, like, I think most kids that walk around, they don't even know what a piece of candy costs. My kids at least understand that because they're making the mistakes of buying whatever they want whenever they want it. But you know, my older ones, they've grown out of that. And you know, he just sold a Pokemon card that he traded for anyway, he sold it on ebay for like 107 bucks. So he's all excited telling everybody I just made 107 bucks. And yeah, so you know, he's gotten the concept of, you know, what things are worth and the value of things. And we always talk about money with our kids all the time.

A (8:58)

Yeah, this is something that I definitely am dealing with with both my girls. My kids are a bit older than yours. I have a almost 14 year old and a 17 year old. So it's interesting because I think as the kids get older and you've already deduced this with the age range of 2 to 10, the lessons are different and how much you want them involved in it actually expands. And it's interesting because we were just talking about this with the girls and saying, hey, maybe it's time for like they each have a quote unquote credit card, but it's just an authorized user card on one of my accounts and it's all commingled so they don't really see it and it doesn't, it comes out of my bank account, it doesn't come out of theirs. So I'm actually contemplating either. I'm not sure that I can open cards in, in their names at this point. Maybe my older one's probably pretty close. But anyway, like opening up a card and having it very specifically, that is that child's card and it's linked to their bank accounts and the auto pay comes out of their bank account. Again, I have to deal with all the details and whether you can do this or not in that it's in my name and the bank accounts in their name, yada yada yada. I'm sure people are yelling at me right now, but nevertheless, like for them to be able to deal with this and actually set up the autopay and see it come out every month. And I love your bank of dad, which is a really cool thing. And we did start with allowance and I think there's something to that. When we don't do it as allowance for like, oh, you have to take out the garbage and you get a dollar. Not, you know, it's just, it was used under the guise of financial education I think at the end of the day that's what we want to do as parents is we want to educate our children and make them successful adults. So yeah, I guess you and I differ a little bit on that. But it's probably at the fundamental essence, it's the same thing. But talk to me about the bank of dad, though, because I think this is actually something that a lot of people can take away from this. You're ultimately incentivizing behavior, which is frankly another thing we do as humans and also as parents. Right. Is like you incentivize certain behavior and obviously by giving interest based on the amount they have, you are incentivizing more savings. But I'm curious, how do you pass those lessons along?

B (11:03)

Yeah, so I don't know, we just do it with all the kids and they all, yeah, get that 1% at the end of every month. And I think, you know, the kids always ask me for it like once it's near and the month. Is it the first yet? Is it the first yet? And they're always wanting for that to happen because yeah, like I said, the two little ones, the three year old and the, the five year old, they're always buying snacks and buying these little knickknacks all the time. But the older ones, you know, they're much better savers at this point because they have like goals. Like, I don't know, my older one likes drones and things. So he wants to buy a nice drone. So I think he's learned that lesson through the years of not just spending every single penny he earns right away, but if he can save it, then he can, you know, buy those greater things that are worthwhile.

A (11:43)

That's very cool. I like that a lot. So, yeah, for people out there, it doesn't just have to be a 1%. You can incentivize any type of behavior, which is actually really interesting. Right. Like we talk about 401k matches and that's something you should always get at your, at your job. Well, you can also do that with your kids if you can incentivize a match on certain type of investing or a certain type of savings. Right. So hey, you just got $100 for a gift. Yeah, you could spend it all. Like in my case, you know, my, my kids would go to Lululemon or something like that. Yeah, you could spend it all. Or any percent of it you save. I'll match 25% of it. Something like that. I'm just making this up off the top of my head. Of course. But you could do whatever type of match or whatever type of incentivizing you want. And I mean, Sonny, I think that's. It's a really cool part of like a holistic second generation FI concept, because they don't learn this stuff other than at your homeschool. They don't learn this stuff at school. We didn't learn any of this at school. We learned it along the way, or maybe if we're lucky, for my parents in some way. But I think those of us in the FI community can be a whole lot more intentional.

B (12:48)

Yeah, absolutely.

A (12:49)

So let's go back to Doge, which maybe this was one of the few good things that came out of Doge. So you got six months of severance.

B (12:59)

Yeah. Six months of full salary, full health benefits and yeah, that was it. You know, I didn't have to show up to work, I didn't have to do anything and just got paid leave. So it was kind of like our Runway where. Where we were like, hey, you know, my spreadsheet says right now I'm 122% financially independent. You know, we're making more passive income than, you know, our expenses by 122%. But is that real? And so we were like, okay, let's see if we can save that entire paycheck for those six months. And I think it was coming around to like $80,000 or something. So that was the goal, the next six months. Let's save 80k and see if that happens. And we did. And it was awesome.

A (13:33)

Okay. I think for a lot of people there's one more year syndrome. Right. That's something we've dealt with for a long time. It's easy to stay. Now, you are an optimized person. I just, knowing what I know about you over the years, you're optimized, but nevertheless, like you said, you're making $147,000 in a pretty cushy government job like that. Can't be easy to give up, right?

B (13:54)

So hard. So hard.

A (13:55)

And that's the thing. Like. But that could turn into one more year syndrome, into five more years, into 20 more years. I don't know if there was a pension looming. That's another factor for some people, maybe you.

B (14:06)

Yeah. No, for every year I stayed, I get an additional percent towards my pension. So right now, after 13 years of working there, I get 13% of my highest three salaries once I'm 59 and a half.

A (14:17)

Okay. And every subsequent year you would have gotten another percent.

B (14:21)

Right. So if I was there 20 years. That would've been 20%. Yeah.

A (14:24)

Okay, gotcha. All right, so there was an opportunity cost, but the nice thing is there wasn't. That's not quite as bad as I would have feared because for some people, many it's a, you hit that X number of years, it's 20 years, you get nothing prior or then you get the full pension at 20. Okay, so that's a little mitigating factor for you. So that's not quite as bad.

B (14:43)

There was something like if I hit my minimum retirement age, which would have been 47, just because I started so early. 47, then I would have got full health benefits right. When I retired at 47. So now I don't have any of those health benefits. Okay, so that was something. But I'm like 47, that's 12 years from now. I am not holding out that long. So that wasn't really a factor.

A (15:03)

I gotcha. Okay, so the spreadsheet said you were whatever, 122% fi. Yeah, you're a smart guy. You and your wife are really optimized. But nevertheless, you were still working.

B (15:13)

Yes.

A (15:14)

Right. Even though you had said, my dream is to have a stay at home family. What was it really just the six months? Was it like you were looking for an excuse? Talk me through that. Because I think this is the point that, that can really help people, right?

B (15:26)

No, I think, you know, so we do a lot of rental real estate. We have 11 doors in the New York City area. So, you know, we started that journey 10 years ago and kind of bought houses and we were just doing a lot of renovations, you know. So out of those 11 units, we've replaced 10 kitchens, 10 bathrooms. So there's a lot of costs involved there. So we were constantly reinvesting money. You know, my paycheck was going into those properties to like make them better. So we never really felt that cash heavy. We had a lot of like HELOC debt and things like that. You know, our net worth now we're worth $3 million net worth wise. So we're doing really good as, you know, 35 year old person with a family of five. But, you know, we were never had so much cash because all the cash would go into these renovations and things. So I guess because we didn't have like a nest egg or a cash nest egg anyway, we never felt like, oh, you know, we have room to just say goodbye to the job just because, you know, we are borrowing from helocs and things like that to pay for These renovations and things. So I feel like very soon we would have felt like, okay, we have a surplus of cash, we're done with renovating, maybe we can think about retiring early. But that never came. And then once this Doge thing came, it was just like a light bulb. Like, whoa. Like before that I was not thinking. I was thinking like, two years. But I always said two years. Even since you're. Since six years ago, I was like, oh, in two years I'm going to retire. In two years they're going to retire. And it was always like that. So, no, this was the. Definitely was a catalyst for making this action.

A (16:46)

Okay. Love it. And that's the thing, right? Like it. We can't beat ourselves up about it. I know. My catalyst. I've mentioned this so many times on podcasts. My catalyst was this tiny little pathetic thing where it was, in essence, the workday previously started at 8:30am and then all of a sudden, the powers that be said, oh, no, work starts at 8am now. And it was just like 30 minutes. I'm like, well, screw that. This is ridiculous. I'm not giving you two and a half hours of my life every week for a year. It made no sense. So anyway. But sometimes that little exogenous shock can make all the difference in the world. That can just wake you up. So, okay, $3 million net worth. But I'm assuming a significant majority of that is in the real estate properties in the. In the 11 doors. I know you have your numbers documented, so we can really dive into this. Let's go through the net worth in terms of broad buckets.

B (17:37)

Yeah. So a majority is real estate just because how things have appreciated over the years. So we have $3.8 million worth of real estate. That's what it's appraised at. But what we owe on it is about 1.3 million. So in total, 2.4 million of what we have after, you know, debts. So in terms of Roth IRAs, we have 355,401Ks, we have 326,000. And then cash is right around 100,000 right now.

A (18:06)

Okay, so. Right. But roughly 2.4 million of this, slightly over 3 million in net worth is in equity in the propert.

B (18:14)

Right. And that's what we're living off of right now. We're actually not utilizing the 4% rule at all. All we're living off of is the rental income from three properties. You know, 11 units, it's two, four families and one, three family.

A (18:26)

Okay, gotcha. It's so interesting. Right? Because everything is a decision. Because in theory, you could sell those properties for roughly 2.4 million, probably less, some commissions, etc. But even just saying 2.4 million and then you could take the 4% on that.

B (18:43)

Yes.

A (18:43)

Right. And you're at a little over a hundred grand right there.

B (18:47)

Yep.

A (18:47)

But it looks like from your spreadsheets that I've seen on your. Your website and what you send me, those 11 doors, that 2.4 million is producing a net profit of about $123,000, approximately. So you're doing a little bit better, certainly, than what you would in selling. It's funny because I think a lot of people. And I'd love your opinion on this, Sunny. So there are people who are looking for this bizarre purity test when it comes to, like, fi. Like, FI only works if you only have assets in the stock market and you sell exactly 4% of them and you earn nothing else and you do nothing else and you basically sit and stare at a wall. Like, I think it's. As you can tell from the sarcasm dripping from my voice, I think it's utterly preposterous. But in essence, you took that money that would have been invested and you just bought some rental real estate with it, and it kicks off income, which is essentially the same. Yeah. So, anyway, long story short, I'd love your thoughts on, like, are you not doing fi according to the book because. Because 80% of your net worth is in rental real estate.

B (19:52)

Yeah. No, like, I like you. You know, I think whatever way you can buy your freedom, buy it. You know, I have a lot of friends who, you know, do the 4% rule, but a lot of them have stress, you know, when there's a down market or something, or they're like, oh, you know, maybe I shouldn't have left so early because now my 4% is, you know, only 100,000, rather than the 130,000 it was when I retired or whatever. And I just feel like with rental real estate, there's so much control. You know, I vetted every single one of my tenants that I have in those 11 units. I know who they are. You know, a lot of my former tenants have gone on to buy houses and things, so they're good people. But, you know, I have so much control over this rental income, and I know it's going to be there, and I just like that about it. Just like the cash flow and just. Yeah, it's. And I feel like when you withdraw from your 401k and your IRA, it kind of feels like you're taking away from something that could be growing. But the rental income is a lot more easy mentally, I think, because it's just going to come in every month. You know, when tenants pay their rent. It's not like you're stealing away from your nest egg or you're stealing away from this big pot of money that's growing at 8% a year or whatever. So I think mentally it just feels like, oh, yeah, this rent's coming in. Of course, I could just be funneling it into, like, a brokerage account or an IRA or something. But mentally, it's just like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be getting $123,000 a year from the rental income. We can live off that. It just feels good to me.

A (21:13)

Yeah, no, I like that. And I think ultimately, at the end of the day, it's to each their own. Right. Because I think what we've tried to educate people here on so much is the 4% rule works. It really, really does. Even though it doesn't. Like you said, it doesn't feel as good. Because, frankly, most of us have been savers for many, many years, just by virtue of being fi. We've had to save for a decade, two decades, whatever it may be. And it's hard to flip that switch. But flip that switch, you have to sometimes. Right. And it's just if that was part of your plan. Okay, well, I need to sell assets, and that's fine, obviously. Yeah. If you have money rolling in, if that had been part of your plan all along, like with rental real estate or frankly, buying a business is another way of doing it. It's the exact same thing. It's. You're just buying assets. Right. Like, whether you're buying stocks or you're buying a business or buying real estate, you are literally buying assets that are ultimately going to kick off the money you need to live and buy with stocks. You need to sell some of them.

B (22:09)

Yep.

A (22:09)

It's just how it works. So it's all part and parcel, but I think it's what makes you sleep well at night. Because frankly, like, for me, having 11 properties, like, you've done all the work. You know this stuff inside and out. You've been doing this for a decade. Like, but for me, the stress of owning the properties would be overwhelming. But isn't that so cool? It's like everyone, you need to deeply understand yourself. And I love that they're probably 50% of the people are listening to me and saying, oh, yeah, I couldn't imagine doing real estate. Like, I'll just take my stock market and then the other 50% are saying like, oh yeah, it's Sunny. Obviously, who would want to do that? Like, this is a no brainer, you know.

B (22:45)

Yeah, yeah. But the amount of, you know, emergency calls I've had over the last 10 years being a landlord, you know, it's, it's, it's stressful sometimes. You know, I'm working on full time job and I got, oh, I locked myself out. Oh, the toilet's clogged again. Oh, you know that I found a rat in my apartment. You know, it's been a journey and you know, you know, my wife and I are so grateful with the freedom we've bought now. But over those 10 years, you know, it was kind of like working a second job a lot of the time. But you know, we've made those properties now like optimized so well that, you know, I know when those water heaters are going to go. I know which ones we replaced. I know what we did with that kitchen, how it's going to last. And you know, it just works really well right now. But it was a journey to get there.

A (23:25)

I get that. Do you have, I know with all your, your love of spreadsheets, like, do you have like detailed maintenance spreadsheets for every single one. I'm thinking about like the real estate investor out there who's like, sunny, help me out here. How do you do this?

B (23:37)

No, I, you know, you say that, I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. I should probably start telling this. I do have some like general things like, hey, you know this apartment we painted with this sheen and this color just so that we can do touch ups here and there. And I have like a lot of things like that recorded and stuff, but I just have in my head like, oh yeah, I can go into my, my invoices and just be like, oh yeah, we did replace that water heater 12 years ago or whatever. But yeah, I think categorically I should probably just have a spreadsheet with the maintenance logs. That's a good idea.

A (24:03)

That would be cool. So it sounds like you have been the property manager for much of this time. Has that changed or are you still property manager?

B (24:11)

Well, So I spent 12 months in Japan. I took my whole family. There was a big opportunity through my work through the Department of Defense to work, work as a, like almost like an ambassador engineer and work with the Japanese Ministry of Defense for a year. And I was like, hey, I'll volunteer to go. So we did that. So for a whole entire year we were away in a foreign land and we still had to manage these properties. So that's from 2022 to 2023. Awesome experience. And you know, the DoD paid for my housing there. I rented out my house for the entire 12 months here. So I was making so much money financially by doing that exchange. But during that time, you know, I was a 13 hour time difference away. I was how many thousand miles away. And so I need to hire like a property manager, someone boots on the ground that could take care of things. And so I actually ended up talking to my landscaper and he ended up, you know, I put him on group texts with every single one of my tenants. And he was a kind of a handyman too. So he started, you know, I would wake up a lot of mornings in Japan and the tenant would have been like, hey, you know, this issue happened and, and he was like, I'll be right over. I could see the text message when I woke up and be like, hey, it was already taken care of. Awesome. Good job, Danny. Thank you. And it worked out really well. So yeah, we were doing that while there. And he still helps out with the property now, although now I'm a little more hands on for the bigger things.

A (25:24)

Okay. Cause yeah, I'm curious. So if you're making a net profit of. Yeah, approximately 123k. And of course that's going to go up and down a little bit at the margins, but how much are your family's annual expenses? Like what are you trying to cover as far as. So not the expenses on the houses because I know last time you gave us all that granular detail, like in essence it's like, okay, here's what our life costs x all the properties.

B (25:48)

Like right. I put us right around 100k. That's about our entire expenses if you include our single family house to.

A (25:56)

Gotcha. Okay, so all in your life costs 100 grand and you're making just from the rental about 123.

B (26:03)

Yeah.

A (26:03)

Okay, so you have a savings rate. And then also that whatever was about 800,000 I think was off the top of my head of the year. The other savings you have in various vehicles, that's just sitting there compounding, which is wonderful. You're hopefully never going to have to touch that or not have to touch that for many, many decades, which is great. So I guess, and this is my own bias, of course, but like, is there a thought to just going totally hands off with it and hiring a property manager, Even if it's 10% like you, you have some wiggle room in there, right? You've got about 20% of wiggle room. Is that a thought?

B (26:35)

Well, it is, but, you know, you say 10%. When I was thinking about going to Japan, I started interviewing these property managers, and I got people, you know, around the 7, 8% range in our North Jersey rents, which is a lot higher near New York City. So they're okay with 7 to 8%, but that's a gross rent.

A (26:49)

Yeah, I misspoke. I realized that as. As you were going into that, I realized it's on the gross rent, not on the net profit.

B (26:55)

Obviously, our gross rent is like 274,000. It's a lot more than our net. You know, it's more than double our net. And so it would be a huge chunk. And not only that, I just didn't like how the property managers were incentivized. Like, they're like, okay, so when we have an issue, you know, the toilet's clogged, we're going to call a plumber, and that plumber is going to charge 1000 bucks or whatever to replace, to. To unclog it, and we're going to charge 15% on top of whatever they charge just to. For making that call. I'm just like, so why don't you just pick the most expensive one so you get the highest 15%. You know, it just didn't seem to incentivize correctly. And I don't know, I just, you know, we've worked really hard to place really good tenants, to take really good care of them. You know, a lot of them became friends and just. I guess I'm a little resistant to change that up and introduce a new factor that could mess it all up. And I like the concept of that, you know, small and mighty landlord. You know, we haven't bought anything since 2020. We're not like empire builders. We just want enough for our financial independence to buy our freedom. And. And I think these 11 units, you know, it's very manageable for me. I probably put in, on average, I think, like, five to ten hours a month on these properties.

A (28:06)

Oh, wow.

B (28:07)

You know, most of the regular maintenance is taken care of. All the landscaping. You know, I have a landscaping guy. I know all the contractors now. I know all the plumbers, I know all the electricians. So I can give them that call, say that 15% know what's going on, know it's being handled in a way that the tenants are happy with and keep that connection with them. So. So I don't think I'm pivoting away from full property management just because I don't want to give up that 8% of gross and also just I like being in the loop.

A (28:33)

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. And I guess it would be about 20 some odd thousand low 20s in terms of. And that's. Yeah, that's not nothing to stroke a check for $22,000. So that makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, you reference small and money real estate. So that's Chad Carson, our great friend has a book called the Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor. And I think this is fantastic. I think this is, for me, this is like the 5 mentality for real estate investing. It's finding that enough point and then trying to optimize your rentals as much as you can to make them as easy as possible. Like Chad talks about his buy box and basically he's always taking his most troublesome properties and trying to sell them and then only looking to buy properties that are similar in his buy box, quote unquote, that are similar to his top performing properties. And it's just this continual process. Eventually get to the point where you have a plus plus properties that are just not bothering. That's a, I'm making that up. But like they just simply aren't bothering you and it's just smooth. I'm curious, do you guys plan, I think you said you had about $1.3 million in mortgage. Do you plan on paying these off? Like is this a long term play?

B (29:47)

So no, we do not plan to pay off the mortgages. I mean if we have like a crazy surplus of cash, maybe we will. But they're all under three and a half percent interest rates, so it just doesn't seem to make sense to pay off them early when I can just go to a high yield savings account and make more interest on that. So that's the only reason, you know, if interest rates start shrinking, then sure, we'll start considering paying off those debts. But at three and a half percent and lower, like one of ours is 2.8% and just like I don't see the reason for paying them off early.

A (30:15)

Okay, all right, that makes sense. And obviously they're kicking off enough income to cover your life. So yeah, there's no, no massive need to change. But man, that will be, that will be real nice when they're paid off. You have this empire of real estate pretty good.

B (30:29)

Yeah, that'll be another $60,000 bump, you know. 60,000. It's just going to mortgages.

A (30:34)

Interesting. I like it. All right, so Sunny, I know you are not limited to just rental real estate and house hacks and things like that. You have a whole bunch of side hustles. One that you started since we last talked was a Turo rental car business. So I know you told us last time about your car flipping days, which I think were when you were younger, but I was interested to hear that there's another car related side hustle.

B (31:01)

Yeah, so Turo is kind of like almost Airbnb for cars. So we bought a minivan when we had our third child. And so I had this 2009 Toyota Yaris with roll up windows, and it was just kind of sitting there and I'm like, I always want to optimize. I always want to use my liabilities to make them into assets. And so I started renting it out on Turo, which is like a car exchange service. Like I said Airbnb for cars. And so I was only renting it for $35 a day. You know, I was in Garfield, New Jersey, middle of nowhere in New Jersey. And I'm like, is this really going to make money? But, you know, the first year I earned $6,400. That was in 2020. And then the next year I earned another $5,500 in 2021 from one car. This is from one car, you know, that I bought for $5,000. So I'm like earning more than I bought it for year after year. And then unfortunately, someone did total the car. No one got hurt. They hit black ice, hit a guardrail, and it was totaled. But, you know, Turo paid me a $4,000 settlement on a $5,000 car I bought. So in total, I think I made like 18,000 on this car that I bought for $5,000. And I could still use when I really needed it. But yeah, it was an awesome experience. And now my little brother does it. My other brother is thinking about doing it. So, yeah.

A (32:17)

Wow. Okay. All right. So you're going to have to pass along some actionable tips here because I suspect there are people who are. Their antenna are raised here. How viable is this for everyday people? How much effort is it? How much like schlepping, like delivering the car to people? Like, how much trouble is it?

B (32:34)

Yeah, so I just parked the car right in front of our house on the street. I had a lockbox right on my house and with a code. And I give the code to the the renter and they just go to like it was right under the mailbox. They'd go to it, they put in the code, grab the keys and then just rent out the car. Honestly, it's very easy and I like that. You know, it's not a huge, I mean cars, used cars are more expensive now and your car has to be under 13 years old. That's the limit that Turo gives. And I think there's a mileage maybe like 120,000. Has to be below that, something like that. But yeah, you know, a lot of people don't have the capital to maybe buy a rental property, but they have the capital to buy a car. So that's why, you know, my little brother is like, how do I make some passive income? I'm like, hey, try Turo. So he's been doing it for like a year and a half now. It's gone really well. He. I just added a second car to his fleet of rental cars. Some people, this is their livelihood. I know someone in Colorado with 28 jeeps and that's how he makes his family income. You know, that's all he does is rent out his 28 jeeps. And yeah, you have some issues sometimes with the lower end cars. You know, $35 a day rental. You know, I, sometimes they'd come back and smell like weed. So I bought an ozone generator. You know, you learn little tricks to get rid of smells and things. So there's some issues, but more likely than not they were good people and they would leave it back clean. Maybe I'd have to take my hand car vacuum and do a little 20 minute cleaning. I honestly thinking about doing it again, it was a little annoying with one car. I think with a fleet where I am, you know, being a multimillionaire now, it's just not worth it so much. But I think it would be a great thing for my son. Like maybe I can be go in with him as a partnership and, and he can clean the vehicle and do a quick 20 minute turnaround each time. And it, it's, I think it's a great investment and a passive income stream or semi passive income stream for, you know, people who want to build kind of like a smaller rental kind of business like this without going into properties.

A (34:19)

And it's funny and I swear to you and to everybody listening, I'm not making this up. In the last 48 hours, I had this thought experiment. I was undertaking this thought experiment of like, what would it look like to invest in something that could generate Cash flow. They're like, maybe people aren't doing because they don't have assets. Like you said, they're not multimillionaires. Right. Whereas I have some assets. Are there things I'm even thinking, like, I don't know, landscaping equipment or, like, heavy duty, like tree stump grinders or something, you know, like. Like, literally, just as a thought experiment. And Turo was one of the ones that crossed my mind. But again, like you, I wouldn't want to do just one car because that's a lot of hassle. Whereas, like, what if you had 30 or 50 cars, $55,000 cars. Okay, well, that's not an insignificant amount of money. But if you have.

B (35:08)

Well, you just grow it iteratively, you know?

A (35:11)

Right. But, like, what would it look like to hire someone to run that for you? What would it look like? Where do you. Where do you park them? Like, these are the questions that I'm, again, at the very beginning of this journey in terms of thinking about it. And frankly, am I going to actually do this? I doubt it. But. But it's fun to think about. And I think Turo is something that. So let's talk of your brother.

B (35:30)

Yeah.

A (35:30)

What is holding? Is it cash? Is it assets to, like, that's holding him back? Like, is he planning on doing 5, 10, 20 cars?

B (35:39)

I think that's the plan. I mean, he's only 26, you know, so he's a lot younger than me. So, yeah, he just didn't have a lot of capital. So he had enough capital to do one. He's been doing it for a year. He finally got enough capital to buy a second one off that business. Really. And so I think he, you know, he likes it. So I think he's just going to keep going for it and keep growing that fleet and getting that passive income to keep going up and up and up.

A (35:58)

Okay. All right. I like this. So, yeah, my mind is spinning because. Right. Is it viable, like, in this day and age to find a $5,000 car? Yeah, maybe. Maybe not, you know, for most people, but if you look hard enough. And again, it's about learning. And I think, Sunny, that's what's interesting about you to me, is that, like, it seems like you just. You approach these problems and you just kind of knock them down. Right. Like, you know, in my mind, you've been buying and selling cars for your whole adult lifetime, and maybe even when you're, like, teenager, frankly. And, like, you know, when I said, can you find a $5,000 car? You just Nodded and said, basically, yeah, of course. And in my mind I'm like, oh, I don't know if you could, you know, yada, yada, yada, right. But I suspect you can. And could you turn that into, like you said, $6,400 in one year, 5,500 another at just $35 a day. Like that's not bad, right? That's more than 100% return in one year.

B (36:47)

I mean, someone had it up for 80 days, they took an 80 day trip. So, you know, you can make a decent amount of money.

A (36:52)

Okay, I like it. All right, Sunny. So switching gears to yet another one of your. I don't know if we'll call this a side hustle, but it probably qualifies. So you have a family of seven. I know now you have a lot of time and travel is a massive aspect of your current and future life, but also your not too distant past life. Also you mentioned the, the year long trip to Japan. You mentioned renting out your single family home, the house that you guys live in, but that suggests to me you haven't sold it since, but you're still traveling for intermediate and or long periods of time. Talk to us about what does this cost? How do you afford it? Like what does travel look like for a five family of seven that has a house in a high cost of living New Jersey area?

B (37:36)

Yeah, so we love to travel. We've always been traveling. You know, I'm making it a goal, you know, by spring next year to have gone to 46 states with my wife. We're at like 25 right now. But we're planning this massive 60 day long road trip all across the country, taking all the kids with us. And so it's going to be exciting. But yeah, so we got all this freedom, you know, for the last eight months, haven't been working. So, you know, we homeschool our kids. So no school obligations. We do have some obligations of co op, but we can get covered and things like that. And so, you know, we're like, we have all this time, but with all this time we want to travel a lot. But if we travel a lot, then our expenses are no longer what they were. And, and how can we afford to travel all this time? So, you know, I'm thinking, and so I was like, I got the idea to start Airbnb, our primary residence when we go on travel. And I call it our perpetual travel machine because we can actually make more money, Airbnb our house than we spend on traveling. And so we first Started this in August of this past year. We went on a 10 day bicycling adventure across the Erie Canal from Buffalo, New York to Albany, 360 miles. We took all the kids with us. My oldest 10 year old pedaled the whole thing. My wife had an E bike and she could take like three kids with her. And I had one kid on the back of my bike. And we just over 10 days, we did like about 36 miles a day. We biked from town to town to town. I forget how much we spent. I think we spent, you know, we were staying in hotels every night, our motels. So we spent about like 1200 on the trip. So a decent amount. But we Airbnb at our house the entire 10 days we were gone. And we made like $2,300 of the 10 days we Airbnb it. So we made more money Airbnb ing at a house than that trip. And then for the entire month of August, we made 5800 Airbnb our house. And so my wife went to Austria, took her aging kind of parents. That was kind of a dream of her. She had the little baby too. I had four kids with me. We went camping, nonstop camping. We spent more hours outside in the month of August than inside, if you include being in a tent. So I took my kids down the shore, we went camping on the beach. I took them to Lake George. We had a whole island to ourselves. The state of New York has island camping on Lake George. And we had a whole island to ourselves. For $28 a night, we could camp on it. We paddled there two miles. So we made bank just Airbnb our house and having a great time outdoors with our family. And so, you know, this month later on, in two weeks, I'm doing an Ironman in Mexico. I'm bringing my whole family with me. We're going to spend two and a half weeks there. So we're going to Airbnb the house. Someone's going to be enjoying our house on Thanksgiving. They're going to have a. We're putting the leaves in. They're going to have 10 people here enjoying Thanksgiving at our lake house here that we live in. And then in January, we're going three weeks to Brazil. I've never been to South America. I'm like, hey, let's do it. So we're going to Brazil. Oh, I have a cool hack about that I could talk about. But yeah, so we're going to Brazil, Mexico and Brazil. We did all with Miles, so I'm super Excited about that because it's hard with a family of seven to do everything with miles. It's so many miles. But we did Mexico and Brazil with miles. I'm excited about that. And then next year in the spring, we're planning a 60 day road trip across the country and we'll be Airbnb our house the whole time. So we, we make more money than we spend traveling. And so I'm so excited about this perpetual travel machine that we've created.

A (40:42)

That's unreal. Is there something special about your house? Like, what Are you near New York City? Like, are you. You. Basically, I think you said you're not.

B (40:51)

Yeah, we're an hour New York City. So we're kind of. We're in Morris County, New Jersey. It's not special. We're not in the boondocks. We're like in the suburbs. There's really nothing special in a small, tiny town called Mine Hill, New Jersey. Even New Jerseyans have never heard about it. But, you know, our house we kind of picked like this. It was only $360,000 in New Jersey. That's pretty low. We bought that in 2020, but, you know, it backed up to woods. And then there's a lake back there. I have a kayak rack with six kayaks. I'm an avid biker. You know, I take my kids on biking adventures. We have 25 bikes in the garage that people can use. I put a full size trampoline in our basement. I could put a link to our Airbnb if you want. It's. It's pretty cool, our house. You know, we have a blow up hot tub. I like to do ice plunges in the lake and then go into the hot tub. Pictures of that in our Airbnb thing. I don't know if guests will be doing that, but we have a pool in the summer people can use. It's just a cool house, you know, nothing really special. And people just seem to like to rent it. And I, I'm honestly surprised how quickly things get booked up through Airbnb. I think there's just a lot of people who travel and, and want a place that can accommodate like a larger family. And we encourage, you know, we say right on it. This is our personal residence. We don't want trouble with our neighbors. So we encourage families to say we, we say no to parties. No parties allowed. And so far, our guests have been awesome. So I think we have seven stays at this point and everyone has left the place like spotless. It. I'm honestly Shocked. And I think it's because it's primarily families that have stayed and they've left it so clean. It's amazing. Like I'm just shocked, honestly.

A (42:24)

That's incredible. Yeah. I'm thinking about all the limiting beliefs that I would have or people would have and yeah, it would be how could I rent out my own place? People are going to wreck it, whatever. Or frankly, why is anybody going to rent my house in random suburban Richmond, even though I know objectively I live in a great spot, like it's a nice place. But like my limiting belief is, oh come on, who's really going to rent your house in Richmond, Virginia? But I guess, I mean, it's shocking to hear how quickly you've rented us.

B (42:51)

Yeah, I mean people travel everywhere. So we used to, for two and a half years, three years, we had a, in our four family house, we had a separate room. We couldn't really rent out as a fifth unit. So we had it as like a bedroom Airbnb. And we made it Japanese themed to kind of detract people, you know, so people were sleeping on the floor on tatami mats. We had a projector with anime DVDs. We had a Japanese style bidet toilet. And we were a little close to New York city then like 30 minutes out, so still not that close. But people. There was a funeral house in town, so people would come for funerals. People would just come to visit family that lived in town, you know, and they didn't have a bedroom for them and they didn't want to stay at a hotel 20 minutes away, so they wanted to stay in town. There's always reasons people are staying wherever they're staying. So I think it's just, you know, it's easier than people think.

A (43:35)

Yeah. And I love just all the little hacks just embedded in what. In what you say, like even just the Lake George thing. So first off, for anybody who's ever been to Lake George, it's absolutely beautif. A real, a nice place in New York State. But just renting a little island, what did you say, 28, 38 something a night, it's insane.

B (43:52)

We had a whole island to ourselves. Water is crystal clear. It's the clearest. I think it's the cleanest lake in all of the US which is amazing because it's spring fed and I think it's a top rated for water quality. It's a top rated lake in all of the US and we're just snorkeling, seeing fish, rope swings. We had Such a good time.

A (44:10)

That's a great place in the summer, that's for damn sure. So, okay, miles and points for a family of seven. Most people think that's impossible. How'd you do it?

B (44:20)

Honestly, I don't know how we do it. I think, you know, so for the last, like, seven years, I feel like we've kept everything domestic, like always. Road trips with the car, just because seven tickets is so expensive on a plane. But we've still been opening credit cards and stuff, so we just had a lot of miles. I think, like the United Airlines card, we have like 300,000 United miles. I can pull up those numbers if you want. About how much we spend. I think we got good deals. So I can. I can tell what we spent on Mexico, but we just had a lot of miles over the years for United and American, and that's what we booked Brazil and Mexico with.

A (44:55)

I think this. This might be the key is with your flexibility.

B (44:59)

Right.

A (44:59)

It wasn't like, hey, we need to travel on July 4th, and come back on July 19th. It's, hey, we want to travel. It wasn't even necessarily Brazil and Mexico.

B (45:09)

Right, right, right. So I was looking at the calendar and being like, okay, yeah, so I'll go like five days before my Ironman event just because it was the cheapest miles. And then, you know, we'll stay. I think we did end up staying like, four days longer than I was just thinking, oh, we'll be there two weeks. So I'm like, okay, let's just make it two and a half weeks. Just because it's cheaper on the miles.

A (45:26)

Yeah, right. And that's the cool thing about flexibility. I think this is just one of the myriad of ways that we can benefit from being fi. And being flexible with our time. Right. Like, I was listening to another old episode, and it was. It was something about like, oh, people. Oh, it might have even been the roundup, actually, that. That you were on was, when do most people go to the grocery store? Well, they go on Saturday or Sunday or Costco Saturday or Sunday at 3 o' clock when everyone else is there and you have to stand in line at Costco for an hour. Right. Whereas, like, when you're fi, you can go whenever the heck you want. I get there at 10am when it opens. I'm the first person online because I run through the store and I don't wait for one second.

B (46:11)

We took our whole family to Six Flags yesterday. A Thursday, a random Thursday in the middle of November, and we took them to six Flags. So they knew there was going to be no lines. And that's another hack. So we went to Lake George and they have a Six Flags at Lake George, which is $20 cheaper season passes than New Jersey. So we ended up $60 season passes for this year and next year at Six Flags. And anyway we use them. Yes.

A (46:33)

Oh, and then. Well, so my daughter, my older daughter is a roller coaster enthusiast. So she actually went to that Six Flags by Lake George this summer. And we've, we've been to the one great adventure is obviously the great one in New Jersey. And yeah, it's amazing now with the merger of Cedar Fair and Six Flags now there, I think there are 40 odd parks that are all reciprocal with each other.

B (46:55)

We just went to Dorney Park.

A (46:56)

Nice. Very cool. Yeah, we got Kings Dominion down here, which is great. So that's another one that's, that's pretty good. But yeah, that's a great. Talk about a nice fi. Hack or way to spend money is like it's under a hundred dollars usually for thereabouts for an annual pass.

B (47:10)

Yeah.

A (47:11)

Depending on what park you're getting at. And you can just go an unlimited number of times. It's. It's really pretty wild.

B (47:16)

It was great. It was only $60. Yeah. I was amazed. Like, only $60 for a season pass for this year and next year. And then the parking is $40 by itself. So with the season pass, it's included. I'm like, man, we would have paid $40 for parking. So anyway, that's pretty good.

A (47:31)

Yeah, that's very good. So. Right. So going back to the miles just real quick is. Yeah. With some flexibility. I always tell people like that is the key in terms of succeeding at miles and points is can I be flexible? That is the first rule of succeeding in miles and points. It just is. And if you can be flexible, you can go almost anywhere you want and you can go for nearly free. And I think there's a lot to be said for that. So for anybody who's new to this, we have a ton of resources@choose a vi.com travel and also we have our credit cards list@choose a vi.com cards and you can basically find all the information there. I'm going to be doing a bunch of episodes in this in 2026, so stay tuned because really, Travel Rewards is a way for most of us to take one or two close to free vacations at least every single year, if we're smart about it. And it, I mean, sunny, you know that that adds up to real dollars.

B (48:21)

Mm, yeah, absolutely.

A (48:23)

So, okay, you said, I don't want to let this slide. You said there was some hack for Brazil.

B (48:27)

Oh, yeah. So Brazil for Americans, they charge we were gonna have to pay over $1,000 in visa fees to go to Brazil as Americans for my family of seven, so I think it just adds up to. It's like $150 a person or whatever. But. So we are dual citizens. Actually, my little daughter is a triple citizen. Japan, Austria, and America, so I'm also a dual citizen. So I can use my Japanese passport to go into Brazil and not pay any visa. And my kids are all Austrian citizens, so they can go into Brazil not paying a visa. So we save ourselves $1,000 by using our alternate passports by going into Brazil. I don't know how applicable that is in your audience, but I thought it was cool.

A (49:05)

Well, maybe the passport thing. Are there any interesting stories on getting the Austrian and Japanese passports?

B (49:11)

It's just like my mother in law, she's Austrian, so she could pass that down to my wife, who can then pass that down to our kids. Japanese is similar, but you have to do it within three months of birth for the Japanese citizenship, which I didn't know for my older four kids, so I could only get it from my fifth child.

A (49:27)

Oh, gotcha. Okay. So, yeah, I've looked into this a little bit, and it really does vary country by country. So I signed up for Ancestry.com just to see if I knew I had some Eastern European ancestors. So this is still, like, in the cards for me potentially, because it looks like I might have. I think Poland might be a slightly easier one, and Italy. But you need to be able to, like, definitively prove, like, I think it's up to great grandparents, but it depends on the country. So nobody quote me on any of this. Or Sunny, obviously. But the key is having multiple passports. It just. It can be really, really valuable, especially in a file life. Not just in this case, where you get this nice little reciprocal benefit to get some visa fees for free. But really, there are a lot of rules, let's say in the EU, where you have to. I think it's what, 90 days? And you have to leave the country, whereas if you have an EU passport, that doesn't apply. So, like, that can be a massive, massive bonus if you happen to have grandparents, great grandparents that you can definitively prove came from some European countries, like, that might be something to really look into. So I suspect, Sonny, that's going to help there. There's going to be a Good handful of people at minimum. I'm gonna, I'm gonna set our sights conservatively here and say that that's going to help. Just this one random little one off comment, you know, I like it. So, okay, the 60 day road trip next year. Are you guys RVing it? Are you staying in hotels? What are you doing?

B (50:50)

So we are so cheap. I just can't bring myself to buying an RV that gets five miles per gallon and go 6,000 miles around the country. So, you know, we're just sticking with that Toyota CNN minivan 2011 just hit 200,000 miles going strong still. I did just buy on market, Facebook, marketplace a roof rack so we'll have a little more leg room than we're normally accustomed to in our trips. But yeah, we are just going, we're going to be staying with friends and family. My brother just bought renting a house in Colorado. He just moved there. We're going to visit him for a week. I have family in California. We'll stay there. But we're also just going to go to a lot of national parks and do tent camping. We love tent camping. We do backpacking all the time too. But yeah, we're going to stay at Glacier national park for, for a while. Go to Yellowstone, go to Yosemite, go to Mount Rushmore and yeah, just go to a lot of these cool places. I'm so excited because yeah, I haven't been to that part. A lot of those parts of those northwestern states, Utah, Idaho, Montana. I'm just excited. My wife's always talking about Montana, seeing horses there and just hear so much cool things about a lot of the national parks there and just seeing a lot of friends that we haven't seen in a while. So we'll visit them. We told them, hey, we have all our camping gear, just give us some floor space and we're happy.

A (52:01)

I love that. I love that. And yeah, that's really the cool part about fi is A, that flexibility. But B, you're doing this with your family. Right. Like you set this out as a goal. My dream is to have a stay at home family.

B (52:12)

Yeah.

A (52:13)

And you succeeded. You and your wife succeeded. Right? This clearly was a team and you guys are there now. I just, I love it. So where, where do you go from here? So you have, you have rental income that covers all your expenses. You have this, you're getting more and more equity obviously every year that just even without express paying down your mortgages, you, you did it.

B (52:33)

Yeah.

A (52:34)

What is that like, I know your mind is not Gonna just stop there.

B (52:38)

I know, yeah. So world school and the kids, that's a big thing. You know, we're starting to roll up, taking baby steps towards that. That's a huge thing. And honestly I thought when I was going to leave, when I left the federal government, that I'd have all this time, you know, 40 hours a week. Now I could dedicate towards something else. But honestly, like, having five kids takes a lot of energy. You know, I'm soccer coach, I'm helping kids learn to read, I'm doing math flashcards with all the kids. I'm, you know, I'm in it with my wife and I get a lot of fulfillment from that. I. But I thought I'd still have a lot of surpluses. I'm also training for an Ironman, which takes a lot of time. You know, that's 2.4 miles swim, 112 mile bike, 26 mile run. It's a lot of time. My goal is to another 13 hours, so there's a lot of time dedicated to training for that. So I think once that's over November 23rd, I'll have a little more time again because I had a lot of personal projects that I was thinking I was going to, you know, have that YouTube channel I'm trying to grow. I made a patent two years ago that I'm trying to make into. I'm making prototypes for the product right now, but it's just so slow going. My goal was to have that launched by the time my, my paycheck ended in September. I'm not there yet, so there's all these goals. But you know, I'm just trying to have the perspective that, you know, really the goal was stay at home, family, spend the time with the family. And we have, you know, we've had so much fun this summer, just going on all these trips, you know, and just being a stay at home family, that's the goal. And that's been my perspective. And honestly, it's a good life. You know, this phi life is awesome. And yeah, if it's just baby steps I can take, then I'm gonna have to be happy with that. And I am.

A (54:11)

I love that, man. It's a good life. This fi life. That's a pretty good quote. I like that.

B (54:16)

Yeah.

A (54:16)

All right, well, that feels like the energetic end of the podcast here, Sunny. You know, it's just really cool. I'm glad we reconnected. I'm glad you came back on and I'm just really happy for you and your wife and Your kids sounds like you're just rock and rolling and just living that fi life. And that means that might mean one of anything, right? Like, one of so many different things that you can do, which is, hey, an Ironman. Hey, I'm teaching math. Hey, we're going to go on this trip. Hey, we're going to learn new things. Like, it can be anything. And that's the beautiful part of Fi is you're a young guy, you're, I think, 35, plus or minus. And you know, your wife, I assume, is roughly the same. And you guys have another 60 years and you can do whatever you want. And I think that is the goal of what we're doing here, right? Like, this Fi journey is the one reliable way for middle class people to get wealthy. It just is. And it's a life of intentionality. And it usually takes somewhere between one and two decades to get there. And you did it and you rocked it. And here you are reaping the benefits of it. It's amazing. And I wish you a big congrats and good luck ahead of time for the Ironman. That's no joke.

B (55:28)

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited.

A (55:30)

All right, Sunny, so you have a website that I don't know that you necessarily post to very often, but it's got a ton of resources, especially for people who are looking. There's this amazing scholarship that Sunny talked about in the first episode, episode 139. It's called the smart scholarship. He has a whole article on that. He's got, like, just a whole bunch of good stuff here. So while it isn't updated that often, it's still a great resource. So it's famvestor.com f a m v e s t o r.com and, Sonny, you have a similarly named YouTube channel, is that right?

B (56:03)

Yeah, YouTube channel is also called Famvestor. So, yeah, check him out. I'm trying to be a little more proactive on that.

A (56:09)

Okay, very cool. So, yeah, if anybody wants to follow along with what his family's up to, definitely check it out. Sonny Burns. Thank you, my friend.

B (56:16)

Hey, it was a lot of fun. Thanks so much for having.