← Optimal Finance Daily - Financial Independence and Money Advice
Optimal Finance Daily - Financial Independence and Money Advice
3478: How to Live Rent and Mortgage Free by Christina Browning of Our Rich Journey on Financial Independence
00:09:21
Christina Browning challenges the conventional 30% housing rule and shares how she and her husband creatively eliminated rent and mortgage payments
Loading summary
Transcript6 lines
- [00:00]
A
When you're ready to start a business, there's so much more to it than just filing paperwork. You need a business address, a website, a phone number, an operating agreement. Basically a complete business identity. And Northwest Registered Agent helps you build all of that from day one. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. Real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Plus your home address, personal email and phone number. Stay private. No upsells, no selling your data. Don't pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com ofdfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com ofdfree
- [01:06]
B
this is optimal Finance Daily how to Live Rent and Mortgage Free by Christina Browning of rrichjourney.com I've seen financial gurus that cite as a general rule you should spend no more than 30% of your average gross income on housing. Wait, what? Seriously? How on earth can anyone achieve fire if 30% of their gross income is spent on housing? Before you point to technicalities, let me cut you off. I understand that the recommendation is no more than 30%. I also understand that when most people are directed that they can splurge up to a certain amount on something, they tend to go all out. I mean, as a kid, if my mom told me that I could go to the grocery store and spend no more than $5 on snacks, I certainly wasn't coming home with a 50 cent sack. So here's my link between candy and housing. When most people are told to spend no more than a certain amount on something, in most cases they spend that maximum amount. But if you're interested in fire, you can't behave like most people. Think Outside the Box for Housing what I encourage you to do when it comes to housing is to think outside the box. Don't accept that you can spend 30% of your income on housing. Think differently. Consider what would happen if you told yourself that you should spend no more than 10% of your income on housing. What if you even adopted the crazy idea that you should spend nothing at all on housing? Well, that's exactly what Aman and I did on our journey to fire. We got creative. We began to think of ways to live rent and mortgage free and and we did just that in fact, we came up with ways to live rent and mortgage free before we even started our fire journey. For more than 10 years, we implemented five completely different strategies that allowed us to live rent and mortgage free and we lived in beautiful homes. Want to know how we did it? Here are the five ways that we lived rent and mortgage free. Number one Resident Advisors Being a resident advisor is a great way to get your housing paid for while you're in college. But you don't have to be a young college student to be a resident advisor. Aman and I lived in UCLA's graduate school housing when I was in law school at the age of 32. Aman was the only one working at the time and we needed to save money, so we became resident advisors in exchange for getting free rent and an additional monthly stipend. 1. We were only required to be on call 8 weeks out of the year. Only 8 weeks? Don't get me wrong, we got some interesting 2am phone calls during those 8 weeks, but it was definitely worth it. If you're not a student and don't qualify to be a resident advisor, try applying to be a resident manager of an apartment complex. Same concept. You just don't have to be a student to qualify.
- [04:01]
A
2.
- [04:02]
B
Renting out empty Rooms have an empty room lying around in your house. If so, get a roommate to pay your rent. Shortly after graduating, Aman and I purchased a lease option on a three bedroom condo. But it was just the two of us and we had two spare rooms. We knew exactly what we wanted to do with those spare rooms. Make money by renting them out. Clearly, the con to this is that you have to share your space with strangers. Who wants to share a place with a wackadoodle? Fortunately, we ended up with great roommates. One thing that helped was that we listed the rooms at slightly below going rates. By doing this, we got tons of applicants, which meant plenty of roomies to choose from. The two roommates we selected ended up paying for our entire monthly lease option, allowing us to live rent free. And when we ultimately moved, we sold our lease option for a great profit. 3. Strategically downsize notice how I didn't just say downsize. You've got to be strategic about it. Let's face it, most of us live in a house that's too big. Sure, downsizing will likely decrease your rent, but there's also a way to decrease your rent and live rent free. Here's how we did it. Obviously we downsized, but rather than getting rid of our larger home, we kept it and rented it out at a rate that paid for us to live in a smaller home while also paying the mortgage on the larger home. We put our larger home on Airbnb and vrbo, which allowed us to collect a much higher rental income on a nightly basis compared to the rent we could have collected from a long term renter. This option worked for us because we got to downsize and embrace a minimalist lifestyle while also living rent and mortgage free. Number four Granny Flats not to beat a dead horse with the Airbnb VRBO concept, but this fourth rent and mortgage free technique also involved Airbnb and VRBO just in another way. Under this method, we actually didn't own a house. Instead we rented a house and still lived rent free. We did this by essentially renting two homes at the same time. A main home with a detached granny flat in the backyard. We lived in the main home and rented out the granny flat on Airbnb and Furbo. This was a great option for us because we got to profit from real estate without actually owning the real estate, investing in the real estate, or maintaining the real estate. Of course, if you use this technique for living rent free, you must get approval from your landlord before you do it. Employer Paid Housing and our final way for living rent and mortgage free was through our employer. When we lived in Spain and Japan, we we worked for the federal government and the US government paid 100% of our rent in utilities while we lived and worked abroad. What many people don't know about the federal government is that many times they offer free rent and utilities to employees that work abroad in places like Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, all over the world. But it's not just the federal government. Many corporations also offer free housing to employees willing to move and work abroad. It's basically an incentive that employers use to encourage employees to work abroad. Of course the incentive worked for us. We worked abroad and lived rent and mortgage free, which allowed us to save and invest a ton of money. And as the saying goes, the rest is history. You just listened to the post titled how to Live Rent and Mortgage Free by Christina Browning of rrichjourney.com the New
- [07:43]
A
Year always gets people thinking about their finances, Paying off debt, saving for a home or retirement. But only tracking where your money went last month doesn't actually help you get ahead. Set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, budgeting accounts and investments, net worth and future planning together in one dashboard on on your phone or laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this year and get 50% off your monarch subscription with Code Optimal. Monarch is what I use. I love the automated tracking and clear projections. You can actually see yourself getting closer to your goals. Set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long. Use code optimalonarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code optimal. Imagine you're a business owner who has to rely on a dozen different software programs to run your company. Each one is expensive, overly complicated, and worst of all, none of them are connected. Now imagine a platform that could tackle all of your business management needs in one place. That platform you're imagining, it's Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need and they're all connected on a single, simple, easy to use software, giving you peace of mind that your business is always being taken care of from every angle. Odoo assists in accounting, marketing, inventory, hr, CRM, manufacturing and everything in between through its user friendly interface and open source applications. Basically, if your business needs it, Odoo's got it. Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and money on those expensive disconnected platforms and let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. It doesn't get much better than that. So what are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com and that's o d o o.com odoo modern management made Simple Housing is most
- [10:01]
B
people's largest expense, so it makes sense to get creative here if you really want to make a big dent in reducing your expenses. I'm a huge fan of house hacking and I've seen it done in a lot of different ways. When I first bought my house, I had a roommate who covered 90% of my mortgage while still paying well below market rate for rent. It worked out this way because I bought a house well below my means with a mortgage payment of only $600 per month. So it was really a win win for both of us. In addition to the help on the mortgage, I also had someone to help with my dog when I traveled. Along that same vein, I have a friend with two spare bedrooms in her house and she rents these out fully furnished to travel nurses. What's nice about this is that it's a temporary arrangement. Living with a stranger can be risky from a quality of life perspective because it's impossible to know before getting into it if you're really going to get along. But with a three month time frame, even if you're not a fan of your new roommate, you can likely tolerate it for such a short period of time and that should do it for today. Have a happy rest of your day and I'll see you on the Thursday show tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.