BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 115: Growing an Empire From Nothing with Felipe Mejia

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

Felipe Mejia’s relationship with money started at an early age - when his parents divorced and his world turned upside down. His mother introduced him to the power of real estate by fixing up the basement and renting it out to generate income. His mother further influenced his money story by creating her own cleaning company and introducing Felipe to a client who hired Felipe to clean up his job sites. Felipe put his own spin on that by hiring the work out for a slightly lower rate than he was getting. Real estate became Felipe’s main source of income, generating enough that he does not have to work a traditional job any longer. Felipe Mejia, along with Ashley Kehr from Episode 114 are the hosts of BiggerPockets newest Podcast, Real Estate Rookie. Together, they share stories of real estate successes - as well as encouragement to get started investing in real estate. The Real Estate Rookie show is for anyone interested in investing in real estate - and needs a little encouragement. The Real Estate Rookie Podcast airs on Wednesdays wherever you get your podcasts. In This Episode We Cover: Felipe's money story How important money is for Felipe What he did to his first rental property The importance of putting money into an investment How he earned money during his quest to join the police department On getting attracted to the power of earning passive income through real estate On house hacking Challenges he encountered in terms of his rental properties His advice on getting one’s spouse onboard How he approaches cash reserves And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast Airbnb Real Estate Rookie Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 115, where we interview Felipe Mejia from the brand new real estate rookie podcast and get his story of financial independence through real estate investing. All I'm saying is personally, my time is more important than my money. When I started chasing my time, my money came after me. Think about if you got a cat at home. If you have food in your hand and you're chasing it, for some reason, it still won't come to you.

When you sit down with food in your hand, the cat will come to you. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my out of this world co-host Scott Trench. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else.

And show you that by following the proven steps, you can put yourself on the road to early financial freedom and get money out of the way so you can leave your best life. Wherever you are in your financial or life journey, you can begin rapidly moving towards a position capable of generating a great income, saving a huge percentage of that income and setting yourself up to make larger and larger investments on your way to financial freedom.

Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate or start your own business will help you build a financial position capable of launching yourself towards your dreams. How's it going, Mindy? If you are listening to this show, you need to go and watch the intro on YouTube

because Scott has a unique background. And he is definitely out of this world. That's right. I'm a space cadet today. Although, don't go on YouTube just to watch that. It's not really worth all that extra effort. But if you like watching on YouTube, you can watch this on YouTube. All of our shows are released at YouTube, but about 8 to 10,000 people usually watch our

podcast on YouTube if you like to see us talking. I love that background. You said you were a space cadet. I don't think that it didn't catch that. Anyway, let's get back to today's show, which is the episode with Felipe Mejia. Felipe Mejia is the co-host of Bigger Pockets' newest podcast called The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. And last week, we interviewed Ashley Care, who is Felipe's co-host. This week, we're speaking to Felipe about his journey to financial independence,

and he gets there, shockingly, through real estate investing. Yeah, absolutely. It is a great show. And Felipe and Ashley are both amazing. real estate investors with very different backgrounds. And I think that if you're interested in learning how to get started as a real estate investor, I think they're going to have a very helpful show. It's going to help you get comfortable with that and hear about a lot of stories. Nobody gets started doing it perfect. And I think that's really a big message to this is here's all

the mistakes that people have made but still are finding a way to build a successful portfolio with all this. Yep. And their new show airs on Wednesdays. And it is out. Episode one actually aired last Thursday in place of the bigger pockets of real estate investing podcast. So there is one episode out there now and make sure you subscribe to their show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, before we bring in today's show sponsor and Felipe, I kind of wanted to address a question that I got from a listener and we'll bridge this segment with a new visual transformation here. But basically, Tracy is asking, hey, I have a lot of money in my 401k, but the rest of my money is in my home equity, and I don't have very much cash or after-tax stocks or anything to invest

with. And so her question really centers around, how do I access the money in my 401k to buy real estate? And I'm not going to answer that question. But instead, what I'm going to talk about is how I think about IRAs and real estate investing. And that's what we're going to go with. Right. So, and I think that's the important thing to understand before you ever go into the tactics about how to actually tap your 401K to invest in real estate. So when you buy a rental property, you are able, and, you know, when I buy a rental property here in Denver, I'm able to generate a lot of cash flow with very little taxable income. And the tax side of things is very important when considering whether or not to use an IRA. So, for example, if I buy a $400,000 duplex, you know, I might just, you know, I might just, you know, generate $20, $30,000 in cash flow, but I might only generate a few thousand dollars,

maybe $5,000 or $6,000 in taxable income, right? Maybe I'm generating none or maybe I'll even generate a tax loss, right? That generates very little tax on that taxable income, maybe $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, depending on how much cash, how much taxable income I'm generating. When I invest in real estate through an IRA, I lose part of that advantage. In addition, there are some difficulties in controlling the investment directly, managing yourself, going to work on it, those types of things. All these things become a little more difficult with real estate when you're investing through an IRA versus if you're using after-tax dollars. So what I mention that, well, I like to think about investing through these vehicles where if I have an IRA like a 401k or a Roth,

that's where I like to invest in stocks. And if I were to invest in bonds, I would invest in bonds through one of those vehicles. The reason for that is when a stock generates dividend income, that shows up my tax return if I'm not using it through an IRA. When I go to sell it, if I have a gain, I incur a capital gain. Same thing with bonds, right? The bonds produce interest income, which shows my tax return. So personally, I think it's largely advantageous in most, but maybe not all, cases for folks to consider buying real estate outside of their retirement accounts and using their retirement accounts instead to, focus on the bonds and stocks and other things that are going to generate income, that's a little more difficult or to defer taxes on or whatever. And then a last point on this is on the exit side of things.

When I want to go sell real estate, I can use a 1031 exchange to defer rental gains. Or, you know, as Felipe will talk about in the show, I can take out a line of credit on my property, or I can cash out, refinance my property. So all three of those are great ways to take cash and liquidity out of your rental property without incurring a taxable event. Again, advantages that are mitigated to some extent when you go through a 401K. And so just wanted to have that discussion here, because I get that question a lot because a lot of people have most of their wealth in both the retirement accounts and their home equity. And if you kind of approach the problem from that, maybe it's still a good idea to invest in your 401k, and you can go into the details on that

and hire a custodian to help you with that. But maybe it'll also help you kind of frame the question of how do I generate enough liquidity to buy real estate outside of my 401k so I can take advantage of those tax advantages. Long-winded discussion there. Hope it was helpful. I have nothing more to add because you said it so well, Scott. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going. And more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look

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Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Felipe Mejia from the real estate rookie podcast. Welcome to the Bigger Puggets Money Show. I'm super excited to have you on this show today. How are you? Mindy, I'm so excited to be here. I can't even wait to get started.

Well, we're not going to have to wait much longer. But I wanted to say that last week we interviewed Ashley Care, Maybe you've met her. Of course. We actually only met yesterday. Same. Same. We only met yesterday in person yesterday.

I guess that's too many yesterday. So we only met in person yesterday for the very first time. As did you, I met you in person for the very first time. Why did I meet you for the very first time? I don't know. I don't know. Let's see what Scott has to think. No.

Honestly, we were able to come up to, we had the honor of coming up to bigger pockets in Denver. and we were going to be talking about our new show coming out very soon. It will be announced by the end of this week, which will probably be after this podcast comes out. So we're really excited about that. Actually, this podcast is airing. We take these a few weeks in advance, but this podcast airs the Monday after your show first aired last Thursday

in place of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Investing podcast. So... That's a timeline that's hard to follow. I love it. That's awesome. So we just announced a brand new podcast called The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. It is hosted by Felipe Mejia, who is our guest today, and Ashley Care, who was our guest last week. Their regularly scheduled time to release their shows is on Wednesdays.

So if you are listening to this show and are interested in real estate, but maybe are not exceptionally well-versed in real estate, the Real Estate Rookie Show will help you learn how to become the bomb diggity of real estate investors showing my age. And we will have links to the new show in our show notes, which can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 115. So I think that was a nice enough advertisement for your show. This whole episode is kind of an advertisement for your show because you're going to tell us what you know. But this show is not about real estate. This show is about money. So Felipe, where does your journey with money begin? man, it begins probably in one of the worst times in my life, probably where my parents got divorced.

And I had never felt the noose that money can be or maybe a sword. It can be used for good or bad. I never really felt the effect of money until my parents got divorced. We weren't well off by any means when my dad was still in our picture. But when he left, we definitely felt the water at our throat, if you will. Like the way I explain that to people who talk to me or ask me the question about this is I was never drowning when we were with my mom raising us as a single mom. But we always felt the water at our neck, if you will, right? Like we always knew that it was there. So when my dad left, so did the finances go. Traditionally in Latino homes.

The mom stays home. The dad goes out and work. That's kind of how that went. So when my dad did leave, so did the finances. and what my mom did was she, with the little money she did have saved up, was she built out the downstairs of her home to add three bedrooms and a bathroom. Therein substituting my dad's money when he left, what we did was we rented out three bedrooms downstairs in our single family home.

That was a ranch-style home. Therein bringing in $1,500 more. And then I saw the power of money how, I mean, literally months before when my dad was around, you know, we could go out to eat whenever we wanted. I could get the shoes that I wanted. And then thereafter, it was like, no, wait a minute. Now we got to start budgeting. So I was able to feel both sides of money pretty quickly when I was young. And then going forward from there, once my dad did leave, I ended up stepping up as quickly as possible into the role of bringing money to the home just because I felt like I was supposed to. So I started just taking odd jobs,

little here and there, mowing lawns. I mean, just doing it. whatever I could to bring in money once I started getting a little bit older. And my big taste of money was when my mom got remarried and I would ask my stepfather if I could go to work with him. He was a flooring installer. But I told him not to treat me like, just like his stepson or anything. I said, you know, treat me like one of your employees. I really want to earn, you know, adult money.

I didn't even know what that meant when I was 16. but I would say, you know, take me with you, work me the way, you know, that should be because I really want to make adult money. I didn't know why, but I knew I didn't ever want to feel that water at my throat that I felt when my parents got divorced. So that's kind of where I started noticing the effects of money, the power that it has, and I knew I didn't want to feel that again. How old were you when your parents got a divorce?

Sure. So I was 11 going on 12 and my mom got remarried at when I was. 16. So those three years is where we really felt the pressure of money. And then when my stepdad came in, he really alleviated it and helped us with that. And that's where I started working. Haven't stopped since then. So what did you do with this money once you earned it? Did all that go back to the family or did you save it? So at first it was like helping a little here with mom or, you know, and when I say helping with mom, I mean by not asking her to buy me my stuff anymore. So when I started working with my stepfather, I bought my own shoes, I bought my own clothes, I bought my

own cars. I bought everything for myself and there's something about working for your things that you end up valuing a lot more than when someone else buys it for you. So that was a big stepping stone that I realized really, really quickly at 16. I was like, the money that I make, like I said, can alleviate me of feeling that drowning sensation. Did you go to college after high school? So after high school, I went to college and my mom actually paid for my college. college in cash, we weren't big fans of debt. So we would all come together and do that. So my mom paid for my college in cash, but I was responsible for everything else of my life, rent, books, car, insurance, I mean, everything in my life I was responsible for except the burden of college

because my mom wanted to make sure that I got that higher education. The way she did that was my mom actually cleans houses. She still does that to this day. She has a pretty large company. she cleans high-end homes here in my city in Nashville. And she collects basically cash or check every day. So if she does three or four homes a day, they pay 150, 200 bucks a house. That was how she was able to be home when I got home from school when I was younger and things of that nature. But to answer your question about college, I did go to college.

My mom paid for cash. I ended up graduating three years of bachelor's degree in three years because I saw that my mom was paying for it. So I needed to finish quickly. So I would take 21 hours semester to graduate as quick as possible. Did you go to school locally? No, I went. Well, I went about an hour out of Nashville to a city called Cookville, Tennessee. Okay.

Yeah. So I went out there. My grades heard a little bit because I wanted to graduate so quickly, but my diploma doesn't show my grades and never been asked for them, so it doesn't matter. Fair enough. Well, this is awesome. And just like, you know, kudos to your mom for, managing the situation and accumulating so much to be able to cover college as at least

proportion of that, a single mom. Absolutely. She's pretty amazing in that. She's been, she's always been really good with money in that she's always taught us not to hold on to it tightly. And the way I explain that is to people is we don't try to hoard all our money and put it in the ground and try to save it all. It's always about investing. It's all about reinvesting. It's about strategically using your finance to build more finances to weigh money against more money. And even when I have these conversations with friends, I always get the comment, oh, Felipe, life's not all about money. And I really want your listeners to hone in on this part right here. Everyone always says this. Money is not important, Felipe. It's not the most important thing in your life.

And I always tell them, no, no, it's not. But money does positively affect or negatively affect, depending on how I use it, the most important things in my life. I cannot feed my son love. I can feed him food, so I need money to buy food, right? So money is important in that it affects everything that's important in my life. Yeah. I love it. So it sounds like your introduction to money was very powerful in a lot of ways, a lot of

perspectives growing up. I noted that there was a little house hacking component in there that you're exposed to an early age. Did that come into play in your own personal journey after graduated college or what happened after college? Sure. So I realized the importance of money, like I said, that it affected the most important things in my life. But when I graduate, let's back to her a little bit. When I graduated high school, my mom didn't give me a car, a ring, roses. She gave me her half portion of an investment in a mobile home that she had with my stepdad. So she gave me her half portion. I bought my stepdad out of the other half. And that's how I had my first rental

property where I had a tenant pay the lot fee, which was $350, that was his rent. So I lived for free. So all that to say, one, I've never paid a mortgage even until this day. I've always had my mortgage paid by cash flow. So what I found out quickly was that that liberated me of one of my most heaviest expenses was my mortgage payment or lot fee when I had the mobile home. So yes, my mom taught me to house hack. When I back from the divorce, I saw how that saved her and our family, basically from being torn apart by renting out rooms in the house. So I did that with the mobile home that my mom gave me, and that's how I was able to live for free during college as well.

I never had a mortgage in that instance either. And his rent has always been going up, and Victor the Painter is still with me to this day and still rents at one of my houses. Awesome. Okay, so you graduate college and you have no debt, or at least no student loan debt. You've got a mobile home at your own and are renting out,

and you've got a, do you have any assets? Have you been able to stockpile cash, for example, throughout this period? Right. So during this period, I was really intrigued by money in that I wanted to learn as much as I could about it. And one of the first things that I wanted to know was why and how is money like transferred, this paper money? What is it backed by? Where can I go somewhere and say, hey, you know, give me the value of this money.

And I very quickly realized that money in the money. the United States isn't backed by gold like it used to be. So a lot of people believe that, oh, our money is backed by gold. But that's not true anymore to answer your question. Every dollar I make goes back into an investment or leveraged against debt to buy more cash flow. So when people say cash is king, I always try to reiterate with what's your king backed by? And I would say cash flow is king. Fair enough. Okay. But like in terms of like a layman's understanding, of this. Out of college, you had a mobile home, and did you have

any cash at that point? Yeah, so when I graduated at college, I still working with my stepdad on the weekends with his flooring company. And I think I came out with like 45 or 45 to 5,000 bucks. I mean, it wasn't a lot. But what I did was when I came out of college,

I sold the mobile home and used the little savings that I had, sold the mobile home for 12,000. 12,000, I believe. Wow, that feels like forever ago. Like $12,000, and I put a down payment on a single family home here in Nashville. Awesome. Okay.

And so what does this journey look like in the first year? You sell that. You buy the single family home and you're working, I presume. What are you working at? Sure. So my goal with college was to become a police officer here in Nashville. That was my goal from the beginning. I've been born and raised here.

I love my city. I still do. I'm bilingual. I speak to languages. I was like, I'm going to be a great asset to the police force, especially with the Latino community. What happened was, funny enough, God had other plans.

I got in, three days later, verbatim, quote, Felipe, we have enough Latino police officers, you're welcome to leave, end quote. That's the last conversation I ever had with the police officer. Huh. And I was asked to leave. I went back and then got in trouble

for going back on grounds because I was told to leave. So I thought it was banter. I thought it was part of the whole, you know, training portion or whatever. Nope. That's just how it was. So I sorrowed for a little while. It's completely sucked.

I spent a bunch of my young 20s trying to get back into different police departments, and it just wasn't meant to be. I mean, there was just door closed after door closed after door closed. And that's where I found real estate and money had always been in my background, and I had such a passion for it. So I didn't follow any more my mindset. I followed more my passion, and that's why I've been successful.

Awesome. So what does that look like? So what year do you kind of stop the search for joining the police force and begin focusing on that? And what is your position like at that time? Yeah. So once I got denied from the police department, I started doing just little side jobs, Ubering here and there, cleaning up construction sites, just trying to make money to buy real estate, but at the same time, still pursuing the police department, which never ended up working out. And then once I focused 100% on real estate is when I really took off. But after I sold my mobile home and bought that first single family is when I saw the power of passive income, cash flow, if you will, through real estate. And, you know, eventually I said I have to give up this police department search and just focus on what's really paying the bills and affecting my soon-to-be-eventually family and all these things. And I'm glad I did. I'm glad it worked out the way it did, actually. I have no sour towards it now. Great. So what year would you say you kind of stopped that hunt for the joining the police force? Sure. So I graduated in 2012, 13, 14, 15. So about 15, 2015, 2015. Great. So 2015, you're a little disappointed in not being able to pursue your career that you were looking at. Are you married at this point?

Yes. So me and my wife, so backtrack to the single family home, once I bought that, I was down again to like nothing. I think I had maybe two grand in the bank. It was a super struggle there. So that's why I ended up going back to what my mom had taught me, which was house hacking, right? So what I did was I brought, remember Victor the painter from the mobile home, I brought him with me and he rented a room in my house once I sold the mobile home and I Airbnb'd the other room and I lived in one. Okay. Got it. And then in 15, 16, in that year, met my wife. She had a townhome. We Airbnb'd her town home, started getting more cash. But we never went above a certain threshold. Once we had $30,000,000 in the bank, we would invest it.

I knew that it wasn't important to have a ton of money in the bank. It was more important to invest it. Well, let's look at this. So in this period, your first home, you buy it in 2012, the single family, it sounds like, right? And you start renting it out and Airbnb being it.

You're down at $2,000. you are, I assume, living for free or close to it. How are you building up cash then? Are you getting paid during your search to join a police department? Are you doing other odd jobs? How are you earning money in that period? Okay, so what happened was, so I wanted to be a police officer and you're not getting paid, right, while you're looking for that.

So I took odd jobs. One of the odd jobs that I had was I was a translator for Metro National Public Schools. So I was an interpreter or a couple different little middle schools or the Latino kids that their parents had to come in for IEP meetings and I would translate the meeting telephonically. So you speak in English and I'm literally telephonically speaking it in Spanish

so that the parent can understand and that was how I was making a little bit of money. But on the side of that, like I told you, my mom cleans houses, she ended up hooking up with a contractor who builds very high-end homes out here and he would hire me to clean his construction sites. So what I did was I would send guys

to clean the construction sites I would make a couple hundred bucks off of them while I was working at Metro National Public Schools, eventually leaving that job to do more full-time construction work, if you will, for more money, for sure. Gotcha. And so you were able to accumulate how much by the time you make your next investment or meet your wife, whatever comes first? Sure.

So I ended up saving about another 15 to 20 grand. And that's when I told in that year, then my wife, and I said, hey, you know, there's equity in your property. I have cash. let's sell your property and buy a single family home. So with 10 to 15,000 saved up from the construction sites, and this is something I would tell your followers as well, if they're looking for money to invest, or if they're looking for money, or how to get it,

or whatever, don't be ashamed or don't be too hard on yourself on the not-so-prety jobs, is you would be surprised what they pay. We would make close to 400 bucks to clean a construction site that took us two hours. You tell me a job that pays you, you know, And I would be able to pay my guys $20, $25 an hour, and they loved it. Are you kidding me?

They're like $20, $25 an hour to clean for sure. And it was literally picking up the shavings or the cuts from the guys that are putting in the framework. And we would clean the same construction site five times. So we would make, you know, three to $500 per time that we went, depending on how long it took. And it was after framing, after drywall, after duck work, after certain things that went in. And these builders were building tons of houses. And I just had my pick of the litter. It was great. It was great money. It was ugly work, great money.

Awesome. I like that. It was ugly work, great money. I love it. So from 2012 to 2015, you're able to accumulate about 20 grand in liquidity throughout this process. Yep, just saving everything I can. Awesome. And you're being creative, entrepreneurial, you're also working during this period. And I love it. And so in 2015, 2016, that's when you buy this first house, right? And this seems like a turning point in your career here. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. So that's our first rental property. My first single family was in 2012, moving to 2013, where I sold the mobile home to buy my first, where I moved in. And I was able to save the money, Scott, because I didn't have a mortgage. But that's why I was able to

save up more money. So house hacking. Anyways, but yeah, we finally got that second home, which was, it seems for some reason like the second home is a lot harder than the first home. So we had to save up all the money. For some reason, saving up the money for the second home is so much harder than saving it for the first one. I don't know why. Scott, I don't remember. When I read your book, I think you say something about that. I think it's interesting you say that because I think the first $25,000 in liquidity is the real challenge in all this because I think you're going to have a different perspective perhaps because your house hacking the whole time. Right. But I think most people, if like if you're starting out in your 23, you need to save up $15,000, $25,000 so you can put it down

on a house hack so you can eliminate your mortgage. And once you've done that, you're accelerate dramatically your ability to save up, making that second house much easier than the first one, I think, at least in my case. You know what? I think I agree with you. I agree with you because my first home that I bought was bought because of the gift for my mom with the mobile home. Yep. So I was able to kind of bypass that, okay, that light bulb moment. My second one is actually my first one because that's the one that I had to fully fund by myself. So you're right. It was, hypothetically, that was my first one. And that's, like I said, that one was saving up money. Luckily, my wife had some equity in her property and we were able to buy that next single family

home, which we still have. Well, love it. So you buy the second single family home. Which one do you live in? Right. So we moved into the one that we bought with my wife because we were able to take advantage of the three and a half percent down because, you know, we were going to reside in that property. So we rented my other one, which gave me cash flow, which allowed me to save up money because we didn't use any of that money. And I was still working at this time. Still on the construction sites, just, you know, ugly work, good pay, and just saving everything that I could. At that time, we didn't have any kids. So my wife was working as well. And basically, we just saved everything we could. It was a way that we knew we were going to continue to buy real

estate from this point. And we were just going to have to save every single dollar. There wasn't any raising capital or borrowing money. It was save as much as you can and then put that next money down on that next property. One of the things that I love to tell some of the people that I help with real estate and money as well is that when you're saving up money, you don't need to go out like your friends. You don't need to buy the car that your friends have out of college. You don't need to live in the house that your friends have. I mean, I saw my cousins who are my same age buying homes, you know, two, three times the same value as mine. And I would just, in my mind, I'd be like, man, it'd be really nice to buy that house right now.

But no, I'm going to save my money and buy another rental property. I'm going to save my money and buy another rental property. Just old school, just save up as much as I can. So don't fall into the whole Jones's thing. No, love it. So over the course of two or three years, you know, it takes you that long to accumulate the first $15,000 to $20,000, right, through what you're doing.

Then you buy this next house and rent out your former house that you were living in, right? Well, FHA load. And that implies to me, doing some quick math, here that you're saving a couple hundred bucks a month throughout that first three-year period. It sounds like there's a massive acceleration here after you get married and buy the new house. Is that what I'm hearing, that you're able to start accumulating far more than that, maybe $1,000 plus or $2,000 a month in liquidity?

So the thing that accelerated us the fastest was, if you remember, I said we didn't have any kids. So I was Airbnb being my first home. I moved in with my wife on the second home, and we Airbnb two rooms and the bonus room. we were living in that house. So me and my wife Airbnb'd our home that we were living in so that we could save money. Again, never paid a mortgage. Like I said earlier, there's truth in that I've never paid a mortgage. We Airbnb'd the whole time that we were living there. And that was how we were able to save $2,000 because we had no mortgage on the first one and no mortgage on the second one. Love it. Awesome. So was your wife on board from day one?

Seriously? No. I feel like you asked that on purpose. Yeah. I love that. I did ask that on purpose because I want to know if she was on board. Because this is a big question that we get in our Facebook group is, you know, how do I get my spouse on board? I want to be financially independent and they don't agree. So it sounds like there's a story here.

Yeah, there definitely is. No, if I'm not mistaken, she was not on board at first where we were living to have Airbnb there. But because something that helped me a lot was when we were dating. She saw it happening. It wasn't like something that I had to explain to her. She saw me Airbnb when we were dating when I had my house, my first home. She saw the finances that were coming in from that. And I said, you know, can we do this with our house here? I don't remember the exact conversation, but it wasn't, I remember she wasn't on board right away doing it at our house. And if I'm not mistaken, we started out slowly with just one room, maybe just the weekends or not all the time. But quickly, she saw that we were able to, we were going to be able to get out of that situation and move into the next property and so forth and so on a lot quicker. To give you the easy answer and what I would tell others to get their spouse on board is don't tell them, show them. Show them the numbers. Show them if a track record or, you know, pull up history, data, whatever is going to, you know, best help with your wife. I've had some friends who

tell their wife, you know, every time we buy a property or we're going to do Airbnb, I'll take you on a vacation. I mean, just appeal to your wife. Don't force anything on her. Don't tell your spouse. I say wife because I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm married to a woman. I would say, hey, don't tell them what you're going to do. Have a communication, have a conversation about it. Take her out to a nice dinner and say, hey, I really want you to see this.

Maybe give her a book that talks about it. And trade, say, hey, I'll do something that you want me to do. Maybe she wants you to go ballroom dancing. I don't know. But definitely explain things. Have a conversation. Don't just say, hey, this is what's we're going to do. Because not only are you going to have the little troubles with Airbnb or whatever you do,

but the last thing you want is to have troubles at home. Yep. Okay. That's awesome. Okay. So we're now up to two properties that you're going nuts on Airbnb with. Do you live in actual Nashville or in a suburb? So I live in actual Nashville.

Right now I don't. But yes, when we were doing, we were actually living in Nashville. And the laws with Airbnb were really gray when I started. So I do not. Airbnb in Nashville anymore because the laws are a little bit more black and white. But when I was Airbnb, it was a lot more of every individual HOA or every individual city within Nashville had like their own subsidy laws. And it was like, it was kind of more like if your grass was overgrown, if your neighbor said something, you got in trouble. But if you didn't, it was okay. It was kind of like

that for a long time. Okay. Got it. So you have this house, your Airbnb, you're too, your Airbnb, them. You are both working full-time. What is the next move for you guys? Right. So the next move was, you know, it's crazy. Scott, you're like in my head. I was able to save up so much money so fast, but I wasn't bankable, meaning that I was self-employed, but I wasn't self-employed for two years yet. Not having the wisdom and knowledge of investing. I didn't know that I could partner and do some of these other things. So what I did was I just started saving up as much money as I could for two years and I saved up $60,000 and we bought a condo cash. Awesome.

And that was in Nashville as well? It was. We bought a condo here in Nashville. Well, it's the subsidy inside of Nashville. It's called Aanioc where I bought that condo and we rented it out for $1,200, I believe. Yeah, I think it was $1,200 and all cash flow because we paid for it in cash. We could not refinance, but that wasn't my game plan anyways. So I just cash flowed $1,200 and we were able to save again, you know, a bunch of money a lot quicker.

There's a trend there, I guess, you know, as we continue to save and invest, we're able to save more because, you know, we didn't have those mortgage payments and we didn't have some of those big hefty bills that people have. So we were able to save all of our coin. So even if we were making more money, we never spent more money, if that makes sense. We always just kept saving it because we wanted to keep investing. I love it. It's the snowball, right? So, you know, it's the first one's the hardest. Just kidding. I agree. No. Okay, so you're starting to accelerate here. It sounds like you also are, I imagine, so let me know if this is right, that you're not accumulating consumer debt with credit cards or car payments and those types of things. Is that right?

That's absolutely right. So I believe that there is good debt and bad debt. Dave Ramsey would hate me because he actually doesn't live too far from us here. But Dave Ramsey would completely disagree. but I would say that there's positive and negative debt, there's cash flowing debt, and then there's consumer debt. So no, we stayed away from consumer debt as much as possible. Every dollar had to bring back another dollar. As a man of faith, I always was prone to knowing that the Lord has blessed me with financing, and one day he might ask for that back, and I'm not per my faith. I'm not going to just say, he gave me a dollar, I'm going to give me a dollar back, right? And it doesn't work that way. If he trusted me with money,

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something broke. What do you do about reserves? because you said that you like to, you know, as soon as you save it up, you want to invest it. But what happens if something breaks? Line of credit. So what I do, an LLC is a line of credit. So let me give you an example. If I have a rental property that I bought for $100,000 cash, I will immediately go back to the,

if I bought it cash, I will go immediately to the bank and say, have this property that's owned outright. Here's the lease on it. And I get a line of credit to 80% of the value of that property. So if I add $30,000 worth of value to it, by my own sweat equity or whatever, I'm able to go get even more money than I paid for it. And that's my cash is over property. So every property, we're building that out now. Every time we add a property, we're going to try to have a line of credit on it for its own reserve so that we can invest the cash. So remember, cash that you have, if it's worked money, like you've traded an hour for a certain amount of money, I'm going to invest that. If I have money already invested, I'm going to have money already invested, I'm going to have. a line of credit on it to reuse it if that property has an emergency of such. So every one of my properties will have a line of credit. So do you pay off all your properties then? We paid off one property so far and that's just because we wanted to become our own bank in that we didn't want to

have to go ask the bank for loans when buying more rental properties. If I could bring 20%, it's rare that a bank will say no. So I just use the line of credit. credit from my first rental property, the cash flow pays it off as quick as possible, and then I can just keep rinse washing and repeat. Okay, this is a very interesting way to think about reserves that I think makes a lot of sense. It's a reasonable way around this problem. If you're going to have a completely paid off property, the chances, even if that property loses half its value in a downturn, you're still going to have a hefty line of credit you can have access to at that ratio. Is that kind of your thinking? Yep, for a good 10 years. You're under contract. You closed with the bank,

they have to honor that for 10 years. Doesn't matter what the market is. Doesn't matter who's sitting in the office. And that big White House, it doesn't matter. That bank has a contractual agreement with you to have you that money at 10 years. So my property is its own cash reserve, if you will, for the next 10 years. And then after that, we'll see what happens if I sell it or whatever. And this is very different than, for example, putting down 25%, you know, let's call it, Nashville prices are pretty high, I imagine. So a $400,000 house putting $100,000 down, getting a 75% loan of $300,000, you know, if you're using a line of credit against your $100,000 in equity, that could be a dangerous liquidity trap that you're putting yourself into because if the property

goes down in value, you may not be able to access that line of credit. But if you've got the property paid off entirely, you don't have, so in other words, how much is your property that's paid off that you use for the line of credit? How much is that worth? It's worth $200. I have a $150 line of credit on it. Great. So you have no dollars in reserve. You have $200. $100,000 in reserve to manage your portfolio. Exactly right. Yeah. So this is not a hyper-aggressive approach to reserve.

It's actually a quite conservative approach to your reserves. I'm very conservative. I'm not a risky investor. I'm too scared. Right? I'm too scared. We keep about between 30 and 70. That's a big number.

But if when you're a real estate investor, we keep between 40 and $60,000 cash always in reserve. And the rest is heavily invested in our real estate. with the backing of a line of credit that's guaranteed for five to 10 years, depending on how they want to structure that deal. That's our reserves if we do have an emergency with the property. Okay. Love it. That's a great rock-solid position in a lot of ways.

But let me point out something here. When you first started out, you used up all of your liquidity, more or less. You used up your $5,000 in cash, and you sold your only asset to get going on the house hack, which is what you have to do in a lot of ways to get going in this business. and that's the risky, that's the challenge, you're using it all up right there to get going. So I think that that's just interesting thing. Like what you do to get started,

sometimes you got to play a little bit riskier at first, and then you, I imagine, rapidly built out a more conservative position and didn't sleep well until you did. That's exactly right, Scott. I mean, that's spot on. You're a smart man. That was exactly that first couple purchases were super scary. Even up to the condo,

that was probably the last one that was scary. for me. I remember sitting up there on my computer contemplating like, man, we're going to have like $6,000 left over when we buy this property. We're going to have no money. I have three houses and $6,000. That's not a good position to be in. But I knew that cash flow was king, not cash in for me. And I said, this is going to be the proof. It has to be the proof for me. I had to put myself to that test. And I took that plunge and it's been a great decision. We ended up selling that condo, made about 20 grand on it, plus a year of cash flow and purchased a six-unit apartment complex. The moment I became bankable, because as we had talked earlier, I was two years of self-employed, or I hadn't finished my two years of self-employment yet.

So I saved up as much money as I could as well as that condo. And I sold the condo, put a little bit of cash, and bought a six-unit apartment complex. Awesome. And so what year was that? What year is that transaction there? That was 2016 going to 2017, I believe. Awesome. So at this point, 2016 going to 2017, you've got a commercial asset. You've got two houses. And I imagine that your cash flow is just continuing to accelerate and stockpile. So could you walk us through the next couple of years to your current position? Absolutely. So let's go from there to where I'm at now. So what we did was, The six-unit apartment complex I bought in the college town that I had graduated from in Cookville. It was cash flowing about $1,700 a month. It was great. But during that time, you know,

interestingly enough, Scott, I want you to listen to us to remember this. I figured out the difference between rich and wealth during this time. And for me, defined wealth versus rich, the X factor there is time. So we had reached financial independence at this point, and we had realized that that's fine and all, but I didn't have my time. I was financial free. I didn't have to work anymore. I wasn't on the construction sites, if you will,

but I wasn't time-free. I was still running back and forth, managing the properties, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. The money was great, but I wasn't on a path to wealth. So we sold the six-unit apartment complex, made a good about,

it made maybe 20-30 grand on that sale, plus the cash flow that we had made for the year that we had it. And that is where I read a book, Life an Air. I read the book Life and Air. During this time, my wife had reached out to Brandon Turner and me and him got connected, and he said, you should read this book called Life and Air. And I did.

And that's when I had the epiphany of, oh, I'm chasing money. I'm not chasing time. And that's where I think a lot of times people also mess up is they just chase the money and use money. And in turn, money uses them. When you chase time, I don't know what it is about it.

When you start chasing time, money chases you. And what I mean by that is, for example, this podcast that's coming out with bigger pockets that me and Ashley Kerr are going to be a part of is because I have the time to do it. That makes sense? Yeah, absolutely. If I had a W2 job or 9 to 5, I would have to say no. So I have the time to do it. I sold the six-unit apartment complex.

I bought a house that was paying me less than cash flow, but I now had all my time back. And now I was leveraging my time to buy more properties that even if they paid me a little less than cash flow, they gave me the time with my family. Yeah. So when you have the six-unit apartment complex, were you not able to outsource that to property management, for example?

Is that why you had to sell it to get your time back? Sure. So I could, to answer your... question, but it was going to cut too much into the cash flow, whereas if I sold it, bought a house cash in Nashville, the cash flow was going to be the same as if I had a property manager out there. I see. So you were not, in other words, underwriting some of these early properties to property management. You were not factoring that into your assumption, your assumption process. And that bit you later because you had to sell them when you actually realized, hey, I'm buying

myself a job managing a commercial property an hour and a half away from home as opposed to passive income. Is that what's happening? That's exactly right. So I was chasing the money versus chasing the time. So what I did was, okay, it's going to cost me 400 bucks to have a property manager that's going to put me down to closer to $1,000 a month. Why don't I just bring that money back to Nashville, cash flow $1,400 on a single family home that if there's an emergency, I can run down the road and manage, or I can leverage some of the money. the people that I know here to do that for me. It's not going to cost me the same as a six-unit apartment complex. Great. I love the thought process there. So what year was this? This is 2017?

Yep, going into 2018. And then from there on out, we've just repeated the process of buying rental properties here with that line of credit from that initial property that I bought, cash. We've done a flip here and there for some extra money, but that just comes with, you know, part of being in real estate. No, I think this is great. You know, I like that book Life and Er as well. I think there's a lot of great things in it. For those listening, be warned ahead of time, there is a little bit of a religious tone to that book.

So some people, that's not their cup of tea. So don't pick it up if that's not you. But I think there's a good message in there about de-leveraging your position and how that's not going to get you the clearest path to total ROI, but it can get you to the end goal maybe, which is a great life, a little faster if you think about that as part of your overall plan. So a great book on that front. And it sounds like what that did for you was it turned you out of how do I make the most amount of money to how do I get a reasonable return for the least amount of time, which it sounds like after that you're just able to continue accumulating and buying properties at just a slightly less aggressive rate but still at a steady clip the next couple of years.

Yeah, exactly. From there, I was able to just focus my time on finding those rental properties that were going to cash flow easy and giving me my time back. as much as possible versus chasing the properties that were going to give me more money, but less of my time. Or take up more time and finding a property management company. Because even when you find a property management company, you still have to manage that property management company. So it's never truly just you're done sipping margaritas in Cancun or whatever. You're always going to have a little bit of your management in your properties. So what I try to do, like I said, is find the properties that have the least amount of management

because they're going to give me that money that I need to continue to reinvest that money. Love it. How would you describe your workload before and after this transition? How many hours a week were you putting in? 70 hours a week back when I was doing the apartment complex down in Cookville, an hour there, an hour back plus the time that I was there. But in turn now, I would say my property's take up maybe an hour or two per property, 14, 15 hours. A week. Unless I'm in the middle of a flip or something. Yeah, a week.

Unless I'm in the middle of a flip or getting one ready for tenants, typically they don't take any time. Awesome. Great. I love them. They give me all my time back. So what I'm hearing here, if I'm trying to relate this to kind of some of the other stories we've heard, it seems like you really put in the slog, if you will, for a couple

of years here, two, three, four years. And that's what you kind of needed to get over the hump in terms of you created this snowball effect where it becomes relatively easy to continue to accumulate capital and accelerate your position. And you decided at some point after you kind of hit that top of that hill and we're on the downslope, you decided, hey, why am I working so hard? When I can still, I'm still going to snowball to that goal. I just don't need to keep pushing with full out effort anymore. I can kind of ease off and enjoy my life. And is that, Is that kind of what I'm hearing through your story? Yeah, that's absolutely right, Scott.

One of the biggest things that I tell people is, you know, don't, don't chase money as hard as you think. At first I did. At first, I worked really hard, saved up a bunch, invested. Worked really hard, save a bunch, invested. But then I was able to take a, you know, I got to a point where I realized that my time was more important than my money. And then I started using my time more strategically.

If it wasn't my best, like if I wasn't using my, you know, if I wasn't using my money, you know, my time to best help me with me and my family or how I was going to be interacting with them. It just wasn't something that I would take. I would literally have two deals in front of me and I would allocate funds according to the property that wasn't going to give me the most cash flow, but that was going to give me most of my time back. Got it. That's a really great way to look at real estate investing because nobody starts to invest in real estate and think, you know, oh, I can't wait to spend every waking hour taking care

problems. And I can't wait to work 40 hours a week and then go work 30 hours a week in my real estate to get, you know, $100 extra a month. That's not the way that it should work. I do see a lot of people focusing on the money aspect of it. And on Bigger Pockets forums, these small multifamily properties are touted as this amazing, perfect investment. And when you said you sold yours after a year, my first thought was, why? Well, it. I can make the same amount of money on a property an hour closer, a one unit an hour closer gives me the same as the six unit an hour away. That makes so much sense.

And I think that some people don't necessarily account that into their or take that into account when they're running their numbers. So that's a really good point. I'm glad you made that. Yeah. I think I love the multifamily sector. If you are chasing, if that's what you're chasing. And that's okay. I'm not saying that my way is right or that someone else's way is wrong. All I'm saying is personally, my time is more important than my money. When I started chasing my time, my money came after me. Think about if you got a cat at home. If you have food in your hand and you're chasing it for some reason, it still won't come to you. When you sit down with food in your hand, the cat will come to you. The same concept.

Yeah, I think a big part of it also is just underwriting to property management because, you know, I've managed my own properties for the first five years of being a landlord. I recently switched over to a property manager, right? And that greatly enhanced my return. But make no mistake, it's a dollar per hour activity. I'm trading my time for part of this return, right? So the reality of that is that property management is a commodity. It costs a certain amount, usually about 10% of rents plus your leasing fees. If you're not writing that into your underwriting or you're dependent on not paying property management to, in order to cash flow your property, you're buying yourself a job. You are not necessarily buying yourself passive income. And that's, I think, what I'm gathering. The lesson that you just learned here was, hey, I'm going to buy myself passive income. And property management is much less expensive for me in Nashville than it is an hour. Cookville. Yeah. Absolutely. I realize is that it wasn't as important for me anymore to save up all this money by trading my time for

it. It was more important for me to invest that money in other avenues that are going to produce more money. So right now, I'm in a place where I'm still in growth mode where what I would like to get to is continue to use my money to buy back my time. And the next big purchase for me is not going to be a rental property. It's going to be a full-time staff, one or two people that's going to manage all my properties for me. So I don't traditionally rent. I don't buy a house, rent it, make, as Mindy said, $100. My cash flow is about $1,500 per property just because of the way I structure my investments. So I will buy two more properties at a certain point, and I will hire someone full-time to manage that whole portfolio to continue that growth that we have.

Got it. That will reduce your cash flow. But, and create and improve your time. Love it. Great spent time. Yep. Absolutely. Perfect. Felipe, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners before we move on to Our Famous Four? Chase time, not money. Chase time, not money.

All right. Okay, that's great. That's really great advice. We haven't heard that yet. It's now time for the Famous Four. These are the same four questions. We ask of all of our guests, Felipe. Are you ready? Absolutely. What is your favorite finance book? My favorite finance book would be a book out of the Bible called Proverbs. So I read that book before I became a man of faith,

and I realized how important that was and how those same little nuggets in each verse, I've read it in books. You know, I have tons of books up here. I have from Life and Air to the Wealthy Gardner and everything in between, and it all talks about the same stuff that I read in Proverbs. So I try to read the book of Proverbs once or twice a month. and then just kind of continue. So that's one of my favorite financial book.

Awesome. Have not heard that one before. We're going to get King Solomon. Even if you're not a Christian. Even if you're not a Christian, it's fine. Read that. And ask us advice. All right, what was your biggest money mistake?

Oh, Jesus. I purposely didn't talk about this until now. I bought a Nissan 350Z cash when I went to college. All right. That was an incredible mistake. That's a beautiful car. It was a $16,000 mistake that I still pay for a high insurance because of that car. Oh, sounds like you got yourself into some trouble with that car.

It was. How I got the college and back. Do you still have that car? No, gotcha. I sold that as quickly. As soon as I figured out the importance of money and how to use it, I got rid of that car so fast. Did it get you to and from college very quickly? Very quickly.

I'm going to be 100% honest. Part of that was my wife. She was like, we need to get rid of that car. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Man, don't be afraid of the ugly job that pays good. Don't be afraid of that plumber job. Don't be afraid of a job that's going. That's not going to go away, right?

My mom cleans houses. And I asked my mom, I said, Mom, what happened in 2008? You know, how did we get through that? I don't remember a lot. And she's like, what happened in 2008? she didn't feel anything and didn't know anything about it. She cleaned houses. I mean, people still got their house clean.

They were worried about making money and never cleaning their house. So she was never without a job. So I would tell people, don't be scared of the ugly jobs that pay well. There's a lot out there. A plumber won't get out of his truck to go to my construction site for less than like $200. That's a lot. Yep. All right.

What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Oh, my gosh. I was so scared of this question because I don't really... I don't know. I don't have a good answer. Can I hear one from Scott? All right. Scott has a lot. I don't have a good one for this. I'm so sorry, guys. I'm not, I don't. Sorry. Why did the people not like the restaurant on the moon? Why? Because there was no atmosphere. Ah, excellent.

That's an excellent. That's a terrible joke. That's a terrible joke. Stephen King is a son named Joe. Now, I'm not joking, but he is. Oh, that's horrible. I heard that one the other day I liked it. Ah, that was really good. I like that. That was really good. Now I'm thinking, does he really have a son named Joe? Does he have a son named Joe? I don't know.

That would be funny. Okay, Felipe, where can people find out more about you? Let's show. So you can find me on Instagram at Felipe Mejia, R-E-I. That's F-E-L-I-P-E-M-E-J-I-A-R-E-I. That's where you can find a lot of my post that I talk about, everything real estate and money, how I finance deals, how I save up my money, and how much I love bigger pockets. You're going to see a lot of that stuff on there as well. And just the influence that you guys have had on us. So we really appreciate even what you guys are doing. But that's where

you can find me. What about on iTunes at Real Estate Rookie Podcast? Real estate rookie podcast. Real estate rookie podcast, let's go. That's right. By the time this show comes out, that'll be going hard and strong. I'm going to invest all my time that I have in that. I'm so excited about that podcast. Genuinely because I have a passion for T. teaching investors, especially, especially rookie investors, how to start and how it's not impossible. If a 5, 6, 5, 7, you know, Hispanic kid from Deep South can do it, you know, anybody can do it. This is something that takes a little bit of hard work. There's no way around that.

There's no borrowing. There's no this. It's hard work. Invested for a certain amount of time is going to teach you the wealth that you are looking for, 100%. I could not say it any better. Very excited for the show. I'm super excited for the show. Thank you guys for the opportunity as well.

And I want to take this moment to thank Bigger Pockets for the reach that you guys have and the millions of people that you guys have positively affected with what you guys do. You guys go in and day in and day out and just grind it out. But there's millions of people out here that just listen to shows like this and are impacted positively.

Especially me. I mean, I'm definitely an attribute to this. And luckily now, Scott and the Bigger Pockets team has trusted me as part of a team member. so we're really excited about that. We'll love it. We're excited. This show is going to be awesome. Yeah, we're super excited too. Okay, Felipe, thank you so much for your time today,

and we will see you soon. The Real Estate Rookie Show comes out every Wednesday morning at midnight. So go ahead and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, because that's where you'll find them everywhere. Okay, Felipe, thank you so much. No, thank you guys. Have a good rest of your day. Okay, Scott, that was Felipe, Maha He'll be.

How did you like that episode today? I thought it was fantastic, Mindy. I thought he had a lot of great answers to his approach. I think he had a unique approach. I love that he started aggressively right out of college. And I like the way he has slightly less traditional ways to think about finance, reserves, and all that kind of good stuff. Yeah, you know, as he was telling his story,

I kept hearing him not mention anything about reserves. And I thought, oh, please have reserves, please have reserves. I like his approach to reserves. having a line of credit backed by your paid off property is a great way to deploy all your cash while still having reserves in case of an emergency, which is the whole reason that they're there. And like I told him, after we stopped recording, you don't have a new furnace and a new air conditioner and a new hot water heater and a new roof on every single property all at the same time. maybe if a hurricane comes through, but for most part, that's not going to happen. So you don't need that much reserves when you get into these larger amounts of properties, but you still need to be able to cover several repairs at once.

Well, let's look at this too. If you're going to use a line of credit as your reserve facility, right, you need to have a conservative position, right? If I'm going to have $30,000, $40,000 in cash, I'd want to have a much larger line of credit if I'm going to use my line of credit as that because I want that buffer. When properties go down in value, you know, it will be a little harder to access that line of credit in reality than the current situation of that. So the way he's handling it is I have, for example, on probably less property than Felipe by a significant amount, but my three properties,

I've got about $35,000 in reserves across them, you know, and that's in cash. He has $230,000 in reserves, right? He's got his all-cash property and, you know, paid off, and he's got $30,000 in cash. He has his personal life. So that is a much more conservative position than I have, but it allows him to keep that his reserve invested in a property that's hopefully appreciating at three, four, maybe a little bit above that percent a year. So he's getting a better return on that reserve than I am, but certainly a much more conservative overall position, I think. Yep. And like you said, towards the end of the show, My way isn't better than your way.

This is just how I do it. His way isn't better than your way for reserves. It's just something different. And when people are having a hard time finding those reserves, this is just another option that you could have. So I really like that he showed that with us. Absolutely. I think his approach is wonderful.

I would just caution you the listener not to consider a dollar of line of credit, equally conservative to a dollar of cash in the bank. I think if you're going to use lines of credit as your reserve, like Felipe, you've got to have a much larger cushion than someone with be a cash equivalent. That's more of my main point there, which he does. Yep. Okay. Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. Okay. From episode 115 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, I am Indy Jensen and he is Scott Trench.

And what? Ground Control to Major Tom. What's a space one, Scott? Come up with it. You're super quick. Ten. We're leaving in ten. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four three, two, one. Goodbye. Bye.