BiggerPockets Money Podcast - $200K/Year & Early Retirement in 10 Years by Being a "Lazy" Investor

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Today's episode is from the Fire series, which originally aired on our YouTube channel. Dion McNeely had such a great story that we wanted to share it with our audio listeners too. This episode is brought to you by Connect Invest, Real Estate Investing simplified and within your reach. Without further ado, let's chat with Dion. I am so excited to talk to Dionnenege today. Does retiring in 10 years feel unattainable to you? Today, Dion is here to prove that it isn't off the table even if you're saddled with debt.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Now, Dion is fully retired and has the flexibility to do whatever he wants to do. Sounds pretty great, right? I can't wait for you to learn how he did it and to take his lessons and apply them to your own life. Dion, thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, thank you so much for having me here. Anybody who is familiar with me knows that I am a not-so-secret Mindy Jensen fan. Well, thank you. I am a not-so-secret Dionneem-Neele fan.

Starting point is 00:01:01 Let's go back to the beginning. How did you discover the concept of financial independence and the idea that you could retire early? I tried for a pension a couple of times. I tried the Marine Corps and they downsized after Desert Storm. I tried law enforcement and they downsized after 2008. And I think when I started working towards investing, my goal wasn't even financial freedom. It definitely wasn't and ironically still isn't generational wealth. I'm not trying to create generational wealth.

Starting point is 00:01:29 I think my kids inheriting something would take away their own personal drive. They will inherit millions. It's just not my goal. I was trying to do the most important thing that I think we could do for our kids. I didn't start investing until I was 40. I was a single parent with three kids. I've just gotten laid off from law enforcement. I found out about $89,000 in bad debt in my name that I didn't know existed until the divorce.

Starting point is 00:01:50 And I thought the most important thing we can do for our kids is to take care of our finances so that we don't become a financial burden to them when we're too old to work. And so that was what got me started with the idea of buying rentals and at least a 10-year journey. Real estate is a get-rich-quick scheme. The really hard thing is convincing people that 10 years is quick. Yeah, you can absolutely get rich. You can get very wealthy through real estate. And Dion, I have a feeling you're going to tell us how. But before we do that, I want to go back to this $89,000 in bad debt. You said the word bad. What does that mean to you? So I have three categories when it comes to debt.

Starting point is 00:02:28 And most people are familiar with two. A lot of people don't believe in good debt, right? But there's three. So you have bad debt, which to me is consumer debt, credit cards, personal loans. And when I went through my divorce, I actually found out about $313,000 in bad debt. But I found out that creditors will negotiate with you if you're thinking, you don't even have to be committed to it, but just thinking about bankruptcy, many of them would take 20 or 30 percent of whatever was owed.

Starting point is 00:02:54 And since I didn't even know what these. debts were, I was contacting the creditors to find out how to make the payments. And ended up with out of 313, $89,000 was what I was responsible for ultimately. And so to me, bad debt is that consumer debt. Then there's also worse debt. In order to reach financial freedom and have the confidence to retire, I wanted to make sure all of my worst debt was gone. And to me, that was anything with an adjustable rate, anything with a loan reevaluation period, anything with a balloon payment, or with a high interest rate. At the time, interest rates were around 5 to 6% for mortgages, so I figured anything above 6% was my worst debt. And so I split my disposable income into two categories. The first one was

Starting point is 00:03:33 I wanted to save for a house hack. The second was I wanted to get rid of the worst debt. So I was making minimum payments on everything. And then half of my discretionary income went towards my worst debt. And it did take several years to get rid of it. But that happened while I was acquiring rental properties. And that first one, I had a really bad debt to income ratio. I was only making $17 an hour. I had the bad debt. And luckily, a lender told me, there's no way that you could buy a house unless you had something like rental income on your tax returns. So what I did is I took my kids. I was a single parent with three kids. We moved from my house, which I kept through the divorce. So I was good about keeping custody of kids and my house never been good about keeping a girl around.

Starting point is 00:04:13 So I moved from the house into an apartment and we rented the house out for two years. So this did a couple of things. I got laid out from law enforcement and I started teaching at a CDL school and making a little bit. It was a $17 an hour job. But two years in the new industry to become lendable, two years to work on my credit score, two years to save the little down payment that I needed and two years to get rental income on my tax returns. So that when I bought that first duplex, I was actually bankable. I still had bad debt.

Starting point is 00:04:41 I was working on acquiring good debt. And when I talk about financial freedom being possible in a decade, these 10 years, I usually get the response of it's really hard to do. There's no way you can do it now. And yes, when you talk about financial freedom being 30 minutes or 30 days, you talked about, you know, the get rich quick scheme, if you start today with a 10-year journey, that means you're in the graduating class of 2034.

Starting point is 00:05:07 And a lot can happen between now and then. So for me, it was starting with a 10-year, plan, and if you're starting today, it needs to be a 10-year plan. Now, it might go faster. Maybe you have less debt. Maybe you make more money. Maybe you make smarter decisions. But if you plan for 10 years, you will be happy if it happens sooner. If you plan for two years, you're going to be too enticed into taking risks that outweigh the returns, and it could blow up in your face. To the people who are listening saying, oh, it's going to, it's hard. It's going to, yeah, you know what? Financial independence at any income level, any debt level, is

Starting point is 00:05:40 heart. It's not impossible. It's not this overwhelming burden. It's this overwhelming freedom. But you're going to have to work for it. It doesn't just pop into your lap. And I think 10 years is a really good time frame. Of course, if you're making $12 an hour and you've got $400,000 in student loan debts, you're probably not going to make it in 10 years. I'm sorry to break that to you. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about $89,000 in bad debt and $17 an hour. And instead of saying, well, I guess this is just my life, you decided I do want to be able to buy a house and do this house hacking thing. So I am going to move out of my house into a rental, which is considered a downgrade and shouldn't be necessarily because it's just a move. But you moved out of your house and

Starting point is 00:06:37 started renting it so you would be lendable. If you're going to pursue financial independence, you are going to have to do things that other people aren't willing to do. Dave Ramsey says it best and most succinctly, I can't even say that word. He says, live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. And Dion is living like no one else now because now is his later. And so people don't feel depressed by the story. We've talked about the beginning. The ending is I retired in 2022 with 16 rental properties. I purchased a duplex since then. It made about $204,000 in profit in 2022 to retire on. I spend about 50. So I have four times the amount of money coming in that I need. And so the fun thing in retirement is figuring out how to spend that. And for anybody saying that

Starting point is 00:07:24 it's really hard to start now, I want you to understand that what's about to be said is my opinion, not bigger pockets and not Mindy. So if you get angry, come at me in the comments. My name is Dion. on. 2024 is the golden age of buying real estate. And I know that's going to upset a lot of people. I'm going to go back through the last decade as succinctly as possible. Thank you for the 64 cent word there. I started saving around 2010 after getting laid off from law enforcement.

Starting point is 00:07:50 In 2010, everybody was saying it's a double-dip recession. Don't buy real estate. It's going to crash again, right? 2011 was the bottom. So I started saving that. In 2013, I go to buy that first duplex. And everybody was screaming at the top of their lungs. prices are starting to pass where they were in 2008.

Starting point is 00:08:05 It has to crash. It's unsustainable. Don't buy. So I bought a duplex. In 2015, when I bought the next one, everybody in the world was screaming, silver tsunami because this was the first year. Baby boomers were hitting possible retirement age.

Starting point is 00:08:17 It's going to be a flood of inventory. Prices were going to drop. Don't buy. In 2018, when I bought another duplex and made a huge mistake and paid off a house, I lost a million dollars doing that, everyone was saying interest rates are above 6%. And you know that prices haven't come down. Nobody can buy a house.

Starting point is 00:08:33 if interest rates are above 6% and prices haven't adjusted, don't buy. So I bought another one. In 2020, everybody was screaming. There's a pandemic. There's an eviction moratorium. Nobody has to pay rent and you can't evict them. People can go on forbearance. The market has to crash. So I bought a fourplex and a triplex. 2020 and 2021 when every when forbearance was ending. And everybody said, this is going to flood the market. Don't buy real estate. I bought a duplex. Every single year when everybody was saying it's impossible to do, I did it. In 2024, here's what they're going to be saying in 28. Here's two and a half reasons why this is the golden age of real estate. First, remote work

Starting point is 00:09:08 is a game changer. When I grew up, I think I knew one person who had a remote job. In 2010, I probably knew five. Right now, if you take out truck drivers because I ran a CDL school, and it's hard to do that remotely. But half the people I know work a remote job. The census did a study. 56% of people are required to work in their office for their companies, which sounds like a big number until you realize, that means 44% of employees aren't required to work in the office. So what's happened is pick the major metropolis near you. For me, it was Seattle and Tacoma. Remote workers, not the ones who can work completely remote and geo-arbitrachian live in Thailand and make a lot of money for living there. But the ones who have to go to the office once or twice a week. This is a little significant

Starting point is 00:09:52 amount of people who can now take their Seattle or Tacoma rent money of $4,000 a month for a little apartment, move out to the suburbs and pay $2,500 a month for my house. Rent's pushed up. but prices haven't because they can't buy. The remote workers don't want to buy because they might get called back to the office next year. So rents are pushing up for me. It was I pushed out to Mason County and Kitsup County and found a ton of deals.

Starting point is 00:10:14 Found my most recent duplex that I'm actually house hacking now by using that method. The second reason why this is the golden age of real estate is November 18th, 2023, the regulation changed on conventional lending to be able to get a duplex, triplex, or fourplex with a 5% down conventional loan. In the past,

Starting point is 00:10:31 for a triplex or a fourplex, you had to use FHA to get that low of a down payment. In 2028, people are going to say, can you remember 2024 when you can buy a small multi-house for 5% down? How insane was that? Every one of those years that I bought that somebody said you couldn't, we look back now and think, I'm so glad I did. And people say, you can only retire because you did. In five to 10 years, people are only going to be saying that you can retire, the person starting this journey today, because you took action in 2024. Wow. Okay, you said two and a half reasons? What's the half reason? The other half reason is if you're paying attention to fair market rents, this is a bit of a math thing. So this is why I try not to talk too much math because

Starting point is 00:11:09 the Marine in me says, I don't know math. But the housing authority bases their data on setting fair market rents on the last seven years. They don't consider the most recent too. So those previous five years set rents. So if you go to the HUD website and check fair market rents in your area, look at how much rents went up from 2023 to 2024. It was a massive jump. One of my tenants went from 2,200 a month to 3,000 a month. That's a significant increase. So what's happening now in 2024 is that massive jump that happened after 2020 because there was a rent freeze for a year. 2021 and 2022 are starting to be factored into Section 8. And the way Section 8 impacts rents is every October, they have to come out with what they're going to pay for rents next year. So in October, we have next year's data.

Starting point is 00:11:57 That doesn't mean that when my rents went up from 2,200 to 3,000 in January, that all of the rents did. Because most leases end in the summer. So as we cycled through this summer, you're going to see a lot of rents jump up mid-20204 because of that increase. In 2008, people are going to say, if you were aware of this, and in the middle of 2024, you were anticipating what Section 8 rents were doing to the area average rent in your area, you could find deals that would cash flow at the end of summer that didn't make sense at the beginning of summer. So it's two and a half reasons because that's projecting forward based on known data. Okay, you just blew my mind.

Starting point is 00:12:35 And that's specific to Section 8, correct? So that's the thing is Section 8 impacts all rents. Because why would a landlord rent to somebody who's not Section 8 when the government will pay you guaranteed amount of that increase? So two things impact rents area average that aren't the rentals, right? Supply and demand is always a factor. But basic allowance for housing around a military installation. or a college is impacted by what the military will pay for basic allowance for housing. In 2023, we saw a 12% increase in 2024. It was only a 3% but it was 3% on top of the 12%.

Starting point is 00:13:08 So BAH is impacting area average rents. And then housing authorities, what they'll pay for rents impacts rents, but about six months behind because, and this is something I do backwards. Most people say they want their leases to end in the summer because it's really hard to find a tenant in winter because nobody wants to move. All but one of my leases ends in January and February. That helps me have very limited tenant turnover because nobody wants to move in the winter. So I do that backwards. But most landlords want their stuff in the summer. So that's when Section 8 starts to roll over midsummer. And again, why would a landlord rent to non-section 8 for less than what the state would pay? Exactly. Tax season is one of the only times all year when

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Starting point is 00:16:32 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Okay, now don't think I didn't catch this, but you said you paid off a house and lost a million dollars. Tell me about that. So not a hypothetical. It's actually my story. In 2018, you were only allowed to have four mortgages in your name, and I had just found bigger pockets and was educating myself on things like DSCR lending, asset-based, seller financing, all these other options that I didn't know was there. So I had four mortgages at that point and decided to pay off my smallest amount, lie at largest interest rate, and I paid off my single family house.

Starting point is 00:17:05 I owed about $121,000. Just after that, I purchased a fourplex where my out-of-pocket was $109,000. That fourplex since 2020 has appreciated over a million dollars. Had I purchased another fourplex, which I had the funds to do, had the deal. Instead of paying off a house, I would have had a million dollars in appreciation two or three times the cash flow of the paid off property. So I look at that paying off that house, it's not a mistake, and I don't regret it. At the time, based on the information I had, best decision. Part of the Swan account, sleep well at night.

Starting point is 00:17:36 But mathematically, I can say, considering all of the options, I lost out on a million. dollars. Okay. I can see how that is working. I can hear people saying, oh, well, he didn't have a million dollars in his, in his hand. No, but he could have. So I agree with you. You lost a million dollars, but you said something very important. You said, and I typed this out as you were saying it, you said, at the time, based on the information I had, I made this decision. It is completely the seller's fault for not listing that until after you had paid off your house. But I also am not a of paying off, you know, those old mortgages, the 3% mortgages, the 2% mortgages. I have one right now.

Starting point is 00:18:17 I'm not paying an extra dime towards that because instead of putting money into that account, I put it into the stock market where it grows more than the 3% return that I'm getting by paying off my mortgage. So I completely understand why you wouldn't, in hindsight, not want to do this. It is what it is. What is it? $200,000 a year coming in and you only spend 50. So this would have just been more problems.

Starting point is 00:18:44 You saved yourself some problems. When I retired, it was $204,000 in profit, and I spent about 50. Because of the binder strategy and thank you, inflation, it's closer to $250 a year coming in, and I still don't spend more than 50. Do you want my address to send me a check for $200,000 every year? You would think of something better to do with it than I do. All I do is blow it on scuba diving in other countries. Okay, I can't spend the money that I have.

Starting point is 00:19:08 I'm not going to take yours. We'll just take your money and throw it into more real estate. Are you currently buying more real estate or are you sitting pretty? So my goal is not to acquire more real estate actively to grow the portfolio, but the money piles up. This is the problem. I'm trying to get everybody watching this video to have so that I will acquire more rentals. Again, I'm not trying to create generational wealth, but it's the best use of capital, right?

Starting point is 00:19:31 And this is, let me see if I can articulate this. Warren Buffett often talks about diversifying. Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful, says, you know, no more than 20% in one asset. class, no more than 5% in any asset. I'm 100% in real estate. And because I'm one, I don't know if I owned a stock or had a penny in a retirement account, I'd probably still be working. So since I'm in one asset class, I diversify in two very specific ways. And doing that, adding properties as I go that meet this criteria, one is that it's at least 10 miles away from my other properties, pulling tenants from different sources, close to several economic drivers

Starting point is 00:20:05 like a port, a base, a college, a hospital, Boeing, or Amazon. And the second criteria is that I have three different types of tenants. I want about one-third military, one-third Section 8, one-third working or retired. So my portfolio is ready for a pandemic, stock market crash or prolonged government shutdown. And so adding properties as the money piles up for me is still the best use of capital because I have mastered one asset class. When you reach probably $10 or $20 million in net worth, maybe diversify.

Starting point is 00:20:35 to protect your wealth makes sense for those people that say those things. But as you're growing your wealth, focusing on if it's stocks, focus on stocks. If it's growing a business, focus on the business. Joss Breit Singh from Minority Mindset, it gets a better return growing his business than he does buying his rentals. He buys rentals, but he doesn't focus on it. For me, since I've mastered real estate and rentals and actually have my tenants ask me to increase the rent with the binder strategy, it's the best use of my money other than the hardest thing in retirement has been learning how to spend money. And I'm slowly. I've come out with these things called reverse budgets. Oh, okay. You're throwing so much

Starting point is 00:21:11 stuff at me. This is going to be a nine hour conversation. Reverse budget, since you just talked about that, because I've got notes for these other things. What is a reverse budget? A reverse budget is if you had to be frugal and financial freedom, I wouldn't have done it. I would have stayed at work until I was in my 70s or 80s. But since I don't want to be frugal, but it took a decade of living frugally. It took that dedication and learning the systems of how to make as much as you can, spend less than you make, and save and invest the difference. You develop these habits over that decade to reach financial freedom that are really hard to break.

Starting point is 00:21:46 So I actually have a reverse budget. So if I don't spend this much, I've failed for the month. I must spend $2,000 a month eating out at different restaurants. Now, whether it's me or with friends, it doesn't matter. That's a reverse budget. I have an asset for every expense, right? I've got the health care duplex. I've got the travel duplex.

Starting point is 00:22:04 I've got the vehicle duplex and I've got the vodka fourplex. But with my vehicle duplex, it profits a little over $2,000 a month. I want to make sure that the next vehicle that I get costs at least. Now, this is registration, insurance, upkeep, and everything, at least a minimum of what that property profits to where, yeah, I drove a 15 and a 17-year-old Jeep and Jeep Cherokee for that decade to reach financial freedom. but going forward I'm always going to have the goofiest silliest vehicle I feel like having because I have an asset paying for it. So reverse budgets is making sure I don't live too frugally because that was not the point of financial freedom.

Starting point is 00:22:41 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 backward. it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal

Starting point is 00:23:03 finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focus on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year.

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Starting point is 00:25:49 and your spending. And question, what sort of reserve fund do you have for either, individual property or just collectively for all of them. I'm a crayon eater. I've got my crayons ready to eat. It has to be simple. So it's not per property and my reserve scaled with the size of my portfolio. When I had seven units or less, I kept $10,000 as a reserve thinking I can handle an eviction, a garage door, a water heater.

Starting point is 00:26:15 When I got above seven units, I thought Murphy's fourth corollary could kick in. That's if any sequence of events can go wrong, they probably will, and in the worst possible order. So 10,000 was no longer enough. I raised it to 30,000. And that was pretty much where it stayed. while I worked. When I stopped having that drug that kills our dreams, the paycheck, I raised my reserves to 50,000. That's not per property. That's 50,000 total. Any amount above the 10, 30 or 50 needed to be put to work to help me get to financial freedom. So I still maintain a $50,000 reserve. That's scorched earth,

Starting point is 00:26:48 emergency, never touched. Everything above that is, you know, cash flow for my lifestyle and going to the next investment. And so as your cash flow grows, your investment strategies can change, right? I'm the lazy investor for 10 years. I bought rent ready or already occupied. I've never done a rehab. I've never done a bur, a flip, a wholesale or anything to reach financial freedom and retire. Once I retired and had my time freedom, I did my first burr, which I call my last burr because I don't like it. It created about $300,000 in cash in a year and I don't want to do it again. It's not worth it because I could have spent the winter in Thailand scuba diving and no, I was here managing a burr. So that's not why I retired. So that's how I do my reserves. Kindergarten simple. I picked an amount. I stayed there and it scaled

Starting point is 00:27:34 with the size of my portfolio and grew when my job went away. And remind me how many units you have total? So in 2022 when I retired, I had 16 and I've purchased one duplex since then because I'm on the slow path. The problem was the cash piles up. So I did a burr that was self-funded. I just purchased it cash, funded the repairs. And so I'm not even sure. it's going to be a complete burr because I might not pull any money out at the end. I might just leave it in there and enjoy the cash flow. You can do that. When you have 200,000 more than you need every year, you can, you can choose, you can make different decisions.

Starting point is 00:28:07 How much time does your real estate take up either weekly or monthly? It's a great question. It has two short answers. When you're growing your portfolio, all of the time. It is not passive. Real estate investing is not passive. Real estate ownership is close to passive. 18 rental units now, a house hack one of them, takes about two hours a month to completely self-manage.

Starting point is 00:28:34 It would take me about two hours a month to manage a property manager, so I'll do that myself. And I use things like Hemlane, so if I'm in another country and I have a tenant turnover, I can step up the process for that one month and have a leasing agent go out. I have handyman in place. Now, I do this because I invest locally. I'm in Washington State. Everything is between Tacoma and Olympia. I'm now in Port Orchard, so I'm a little bit further out.

Starting point is 00:28:55 But since I invested where I live, I did it myself. If I was going to invest at a distance, I would have started with property management, like my friend, Millennial Mike. He's a law enforcement officer near Seattle, but he invests in Gary Indiana's. Five years investing, he's got 27 properties, but he does it with property management. He's smart, though. He's still house hacking a duplex in the high cost of living area. I self-manage because I put the systems in place, and those systems are what gives me the freedom.

Starting point is 00:29:20 the idea that it's probably been about seven years now that I've had to go to a property. Like I'll go and record a video or one of my tenants is a nephew. I'll go and I get to see my nephew, but I don't have to go to my properties. It's kind of like when people say I want to buy a rental property. I don't think I've ever seen a property and then made an offer. I've always gone to look at a property once I'm under contract. Everything I've needed to know, I can find out online. Dion, what would be your piece of advice to anybody who is just discovering financial

Starting point is 00:29:49 independence, maybe has debt bad or worse, and is thinking, well, I'd like to try that, but I'm not sure that I could ever get there. Understanding that it's going to take a decade is the first step, right? If people think it's Michael's Uber from one rental at a time, has over 180 rental units. And if he said, well, to reach financial freedom, you need to have 180 of these rental units. Nobody would start. So he's smart enough to say, get to four.

Starting point is 00:30:17 If you can get four properties, your entire life will be changed. Your generation will have millions to inherit by the time you get there. If you pay these off anywhere close to around your retirement age, your retirement will be completely different. Once you get to four, now you can decide, okay, I don't like this. Stocks is my way. And I didn't start investing until I was 40, so I only had a short runway of 10 years. There's people like Joe Kuhn on YouTube, KUHN. He retired at 54 using stocks in the Buckets method, completely different method.

Starting point is 00:30:47 than me. He made more money than I did, and he invested for over 30 years to retire at 54. So if you have a longer timeline for compound interest to do its thing and you make more, there's other methods that might be better for you. For me, it had to be done in a short period of time. And since I have to live somewhere, I was willing to house hack. And I think the biggest mistake that people make about house hacking, we can talk about in this video if we end up having time for it, is one of the things that helped me retire. If I didn't house hack, I'd probably still be working. That reducing or eliminating my biggest expense added $1,200 a month to me being able to save

Starting point is 00:31:23 when I was only making $17 or $18 an hour. That's huge. And so that's what got me started. And so if somebody's going to start today, I think it's really important that you pick an asset class that excites you. If it's entrepreneurial and you want to start a business, if it's stocks, if it's crypto, if it's real estate, we're more likely to stick to a plan we're emotionally invested in. I don't want to say this that it's so bad you don't start. The first five years suck. It's slow. Take me as an example. I start saving. Two years later,

Starting point is 00:31:53 I buy a duplex and then two years later I buy another duplex. In the first four years, I did two things. How boring is that? When you reach 10 years of doing really boring, let me tell you, boring is sexy because boring gave me freedom. And I can now, using the math of time, I never have to work again. I can choose to. But because of finding bigger pockets and educating myself and improving the way that I invest, whether it was stocks or crypto or real estate, choosing that asset class, life is completely different than if I was stuck in the rat race with another two decades to work. I like what you said right there. I could choose to work if I want to. I think some people hear about financial independence retire early

Starting point is 00:32:35 and they're like, oh, I don't want to retire early. I like my job. Great. Get financially independent anyway because you might not always like your job. Maybe your boss leaves. And you're You get the worst boss on the planet. I'm sure that's never happened to anybody in the whole history of the world. But it's happened to me a bunch of times. It's happened to a lot of people I know. And just being able to choose to walk away. It's huge.

Starting point is 00:32:59 You don't have to. I still work. I'm financially independent. And I'm totally fine still working because I love what I do. But if you get to a point where you are financially independent, now you have all this freedom to choose how you want to spend your day instead of how. having to spend your day at jobs that you may or may not love. And I mean, even if you love your job, there's still times that you're like,

Starting point is 00:33:22 ooh, it's really nice outside. I want to go swimming or snowboarding or whatever it is that you like to do. And when you have a job that you are tethered to your desk, nine to five, that's not going to happen. Dion, this has been so much fun. I could literally talk to you for a hundred more hours. So we will, of course, have you back. But where can people find you? You can find me on YouTube, Deontoc Financial Freedom, or if you go to Deontoc.com, there's actually a free binder course there.

Starting point is 00:33:50 I don't charge because it helps the tenants and the landlords. And that's just Deontoc.com. And in that, I give away my spreadsheet that was made by me and my CPA for managing my rentals. And I give away my seller finance letter that I submit with my offers when I'm pursuing a seller finance purchase. As a real estate agent, I'm going to go grab that seller finance letter because you never know when somebody wants to write that up. I love that. All right. Dion, thank you so much for your time today.

Starting point is 00:34:16 It is always so much fun talking to you. If you liked this video, please click the thumbs up. And don't forget to subscribe to this channel for more inspiring fire stories just like Dion's. This is Mindy Jensen, signing off.

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