BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 214: Finance Friday: Fighting Cancer, Starting a Family, & “Planting Seeds”

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

It’s hard to imagine what someone is going through once they’re given a cancer diagnosis. The last thing many people want to think about during such a troubling time is finances. This was true for Zachary, who’s combined net worth with his partner more than doubled while he was supporting her throughout her chemotherapy and cancer surgeries. Even though it was a medically troubling year, Zachary and his partner were able to almost double their income, while keeping expenses fairly low. This allowed them to set a 50% savings rate and keep enough to pay for treatments, retirement investing, and even save for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Since IVF is such an expensive treatment, Zachary wants to know how he can best position himself to pay for it while his partner reduces her time at work to take care of their future children. In This Episode We Cover Becoming cancer free after a stage three diagnosis (wooooo!) Doubling your income by making intelligent career changes Short-term rentals vs. long-term rentals and the risks of both Planning for medical expenses like IVF Contributing to HSAs, Roth IRAs, and 401(k)s Managing a 10-bedroom “sorority house”  And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter Get Tickets to BPCon 2021 You Need a Budget Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, show number 214, Finance Friday edition, where we interview Zach and talk about the most advantageous asset allocation. Be three-quarters time. So this is an idea Nikita thought of, which was essentially trying to still have a full-time job, especially for her because she does need the health insurance, and it's just hard to get it elsewhere, but trying to find a position that allows us either to work fewer hours during the day or just take more time off during the year. Hello, hello, hello.

My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my sunshine on a rainy day co-host, Scott Trench. Oh, well, I'm always a pleasure to be with my beaming co-host, Mindy. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter where or when you're starting. That's right. whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or simply move to a part-time or three-quarters work world, will help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.

Scott, I'm so excited to talk to Zach today. His situation is already advantageous. He and his wife make a very good salary, and they have a rental property in another state. They have their own home, that they airbusy, B&B in the basement, so a bit of a twist on the house hack. And they seem to be doing really, really well. They do have a rather large expense coming up in the form of in vitro fertilization treatments in the next couple of years. And that is something that we haven't discussed on this show before. So that was really interesting to talk about. And then there was a nice bit of discussion over should he buy locally versus

should he buy more real estate in the Midwest, where it's a lower price to a lower cost of entry. So I think this was a super fun episode, and I hope that a lot of people get a lot out of it. Yeah, I thought it was a great episode. And I think he's got a really interesting approach and a really strong position from which to attack the next phase of his financial journey from. He has a lot of different options. And what I really like about his strategy is he's thinking about different things.

He's thinking outside the box. but he's also getting ready to do a lot of research before just jumping in with both feet, which is the way that you become the most successful is by being prepared. Before we bring in, Zach, we are going to read the stuff that my lawyer makes me say. The contents of this podcast are informational in nature and are not legal or tax advice, and neither Scott nor I nor Bigger Pockets is engaged in the provision of legal, tax, or any other advice. You should seek your own advice from professional advisors, including lawyers and accountants, regarding the legal, tax, and financial implications of any financial decision you contemplate.

Okay, let's go give Zach some financial decisions to contemplate. 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 taxed 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 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's subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused 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 in a 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. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes.

But somehow, every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control

spending with virtual cards, and find tax write-offs you didn't even know exist it. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, Sound makes everything easier, expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point,

I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Liener Stronger for Fitness. The Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more. All accessible in one app.

If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. 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. Zach and his wife are making good money in their jobs, have an investment property out of state, and spend less than they earn. But they work high-stress jobs, and 2020 was an even bigger kick in the teeth for them than for most.

A cancer diagnosis has them rethinking how they want to spend their days. They're looking at starting a glamping business, and they want to make sure they're optimizing for their asset allocation. Zach, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Very excited to talk to you guys, too. Thank you for having me on. We have a lot of things to get to today, so let's jump right in.

What does your income debts and expenses look like? All right. So pulling up the spreadsheet now, it looks like we have, so 2020's been, like you mentioned, an interesting year. We both got new jobs that are significantly higher paid. So that's been a great happening. This time last year I was working at a software implementation job that made in the mid-50s. And now, as of next week, I'm going to be starting as a Salesforce admin at a startup with a starting salary of $92,000 a year.

Nikita's W-2, she got a new job and then got a raise of that job. And now she's making $78,000 a year. We also moved to Utah and bought our first house that we've lived in, although it was our second house that we bought, and Airbnb the basement. We could probably cover our mortgage if we just went all in, but we have people visit, so we block it off a lot, or if we're just tired of doing it, we block it off. So I'd say averages around $1,000 a month. We'll find out at the end of the year what that will be. We also live about 25 minutes from some ski locations, so the winter likely will make more than the summer months. And I have a side gig right now.

There's a program that helps people get into Salesforce, and I run some of the volunteer projects along that. That makes $5,000. And if I didn't say Airbnb, yeah, $1,000 a month to $12,000 a year. I did a little calculations, sort of estimating the taxes and dividing it by $12,000. And I think all in were probably around $12,000 a month in income. All right. So that's a tremendous income there. And that's relatively, it's all relatively new.

And how new is that? Is that in 2020? Is that starting now? Yeah. Oh, well, I started making more mid, mid-2021. But I started at a consulting firm. And that was the job that was stressing me out. So we'll see how this next one goes.

I think it'll be a little bit less stress. But, yeah, I'd say this time last year, I was making 50. Nikita was making 60. We didn't have Airbnb or a side gig. So, yeah, it kind of doubled in the last year through the pandemic. All right. That's awesome. How about your expenses?

Expenses have gone, well, while, I don't know, they've been all over. This is another difficult thing that we have going on. they went up because of medical bills, but we also, for about six months, lived with my parents in Colorado because the health care was a little bit better there. And so that living expense went down, and we subletted our apartment, although we were still kind of losing a lot of money on that. And then we bought a house in Utah, which went up, but then we also Airbnb, so that kind of helps with the expenses.

and we sort of think of the Airbnb as money that we will use to make improvements on the house. It's a 1960s house that overall it's pretty nice, but there's a lot of things that we'd like to do with it. Build a deck out back. We just got chickens that actually didn't cost that much money. Potentially put a second bathroom in the basement. So that would up our Airbnb rents and put it in if we wanted to do a long-term rental, we could. So the expenses have gone up. I did look back at 2019. We used an application called You Need a Budget. We've been doing that for three or four years. And 2019, I believe our annual expenses were about $60,000 all in. And this year, it's looking like it'll probably be about $75,000. So we did have some creep, bought a Peloton, bought a home gym. You can see behind me. This is an infrared sauna that I have in my spa office. So we did spend some money

on some things. And I don't know if it was just because we like needed a release valve or if like just buying a new home, you have to, we bought a bunch of tools for a retaining wall that we just built, spent a couple thousand on a retaining wall. So yeah, expenses are a little bit more. but not in comparison to the increase in income, I'd say. Yeah, you've got just a huge income and you're spending less than half of it is what I just heard from that. Yeah, and actually I loved, I moved it over to a spreadsheet for you, Scott, so hopefully you appreciate that. And that was the first time I noticed, oh, with my new job, we will be at that 50% mark, which is like we've been going for that forever, trying to basically invest half of our income and live on the other half. I think last time I'd remembered calculating

that we're at like 35, 36 percent, and we'd always been going for 50, so it looks like we'll be there soon. So before we get to the investing in net worth stuff, because you have a lot left over with that, can I, you know, we mentioned there's a cancer diagnosis. Is that impacting timelines or thoughts or anything like that? Or is that something we don't want to discuss that? Yeah, I mean, the cancer definitely was a major part of 2020 for us. It was actually, tomorrow's our anniversary, and that's when we noticed something might have been wrong for the first time. And about a month later, the diagnosis came in. She had stage three ovarian cancer, had to immediately go in for surgery, then did infusions of chemotherapy.

So that had a massive impact on her health, but also since we're on the money show financially, she was on a plan where there was, I think it was $6,900 out of pocket. And so we paid that essentially instantly with all the hospital bills and whatnot. and then her health insurance renewed in September because she's a teacher. And so we paid that again. So that was a pretty big out-of-pocket expense that we had to do. Although fortunately, we did have some cancer insurance. She had bought cancer insurance about three or four years ago because she is,

her heritage is Askanaji Jew, which have higher rates of the type of cancer that she just got, breast and ovarian cancer are the two, the two most likely ones. And so that, that almost paid for our out-of-pocket expenses. So that kind of netted things out. The other big impact that it's going to have is her ovaries were removed. So we're going to have to do IVF, which many and I were talking about beforehand, the low end estimate is about $20,000 for just one round of giving it a go. So we're hoping it goes on the first one, but that doesn't always happen. Now, it sounds like, though, that the biggest health issue was resolved in favorably with Yeah, yeah.

She, fortunately, the surgery got all of her cancer. the cancer drugs did their job, and she is currently cancer-free. And this new program that she's on, this is the reason why we can't do IVF earlier than this, is an oral chemotherapy that she's going to be on for two years. And the studies just came out months before she started them, and it reduces the rate that she is likely to get it again from in the 30%, which is just awful.

I was just like, oh, basically we've got a, you know, a huge, huge chance of this happening again. And it's a very aggressive cancer. It went from, yeah, we don't want to get in the details, but like very, very aggressive cancer to less than 1%, which is kind of the rate of normal cancer just in the general public. So really just luck to heck.

out with that at least so far. We're hoping that luck continues. Well, that's fantastic. So those are, in the scheme of your, you know, going back to the finances of this, you know, in the scheme of your finances, that's not going to be a major issue relative to your income and your expense ratio with that. That will impact a lot of those things. And I think it's wonderful. You know, Will, I imagine, I imagine Nikita's going to be going to her out-of-pocket max for the foreseeable future. So you'll see in one of the expenses, I just put $1,000 a month for medical. Yeah. Okay. So if you have fair enough there with that, I, the more important thing is that that,

that the health issue has been resolved here. And you've got, you guys are in a relatively strong position where you can plan around that, I think. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's go to investments in net worth then. What's the current state there? It is, man, another. So as horrible as 2020 was for a lot of reasons, both the real estate and the stock market seemed to think things were awesome. So our net worth really, really jumped up. So this time last year, I'm trying to look at, oh, let's see if I can get to May. Actually, I'll just do all dates.

I'm looking at my YNAB that has a net worth tracker. And if I look at, what is it, 2020, our net worth was in the 160s, and now it is coming on 400,000, maybe about between 350,000 and $400,000 and $400,000. And that primarily is made up in retirement accounts and real estate equity. I can go through the individual numbers if you want, or we can just kind of summarize things. How would you like me to? Let's summarize what's in the retirement, like what's the total bounds for retirement accounts? And, you know, can you give us a high-level picture, how that's spread across, it sounds like you have multiple?

Yeah, absolutely. So it looks like retirement accounts have $183,000 in it. We have about $50,000, $60,000 in cash. and the equity in real estate, one of them for our out-of-state property, which is in Muncie, Indiana. Ooh, probably shouldn't say that. It's a very good price to rent ratio there. So feel for to look that up. The prices have gone up since we bought, and I was just this summer, but it's still great. And if anybody needs a reference to a great property manager, I have one. And then our home equity is about $50,000. That's another thing. I just checked.

the Zillow last night, we bought at 450, which was well above asking, and this was in February, we finally closed. And Zillow's already saying, you know, I know that's kind of a, not a great thing, but it really is. The comparables are really going up about 515 as of last night. So I'm going to conservatively say that we have 50,000 in equity with that, because we only did put 5% down. We've got a 427 in a mortgage. And then that plus the increase in equity is about 50. Well, love it. And so what is your kind of like, what is the goal?

Yeah, I'm glad you ask. So we were talking about that last night because I was like, okay, well, I'm going on the bigger pockets. And I've got Scott and Mindy. And I think one of the things that you guys are both really, really good at is looking at end goal and then trying to come up with a plan based off of that. So I was like, Nikita, what do we want to do? And in the next two years, or wait a minute, two kids in the next five years, but really at the end of that two-year period where Nikita will be done with her treatment, we want to start doing the IVF so that bill will come pretty quickly. And in the next five years,

also be three-quarter time. So this is an idea Nikita thought of, which was essentially trying to still have a full-time job, especially for her because she does need the health insurance, and it's just hard to get it elsewhere. But trying to find a position that allows us either to work fewer hours during the day

or just take more time off during the year is what we'd like to do. And I think we're both in careers, where that might be possible. But that's kind of her goal. And if that is less possible to try to create some sort of income stream where either one or both of us didn't have to work or maybe one of us could be part-time, because Nikito did want to play a big role in raising the kids,

and I would just like to work less. So it sounds like the goal is not to sprint towards a huge net worth as rapidly as possible. but rather put yourself in position where in the next three years, let's say, you can work three quarters time and your wife can not work at all. Yes. Yeah, actually, that sounds good. I think we were thinking both of us work three quarters time, but I think her not working at

all and then potentially doing some of our real estate ideas that we were talking about. I think she'd be a good fit for that role. She does 90% of the Airbnb right now. We like hosting, and that might be something that she could do while she's raising our kids. The only thing about that, though, to kind of go back on it, is health insurance for her. So she still may need a position, whether it be half-time or three-quarters time or something that would allow her to, still get health insurance. Or you can, or you need a position that would provide health insurance for the family, right?

Oh, yeah. I forgot you can do that because we've always had separate health insurance. Yes. Yeah, never mind. Problem solved. There we go. Well, yeah, because what I'm hearing, what I'm hearing you say is that, is that it sounds like the goal is to have at the earliest point possible the option for one of you to work

three quarters time and the other not to work a formal job at all. That's what I'm hearing, but I don't want to make sure I'm not putting that words in your mouth. That sounds like you clarified what we were talking about last night. I like that idea. Okay. So if that's, and it sounds like you're at least a year away from, you know, trying to get pregnant or anything like that. Two years. Yeah, but basically two years, basically two years.

Although some of the expenses will be coming up sooner. But, yeah, two years from starting that. So that's kind of the timeline where as soon as hopefully she gets pregnant. she could start stepping down and I can be in a position where I'm not working 50, 60 hours a week at a high stress job. So you got two years plus probably a little bit, you know, plus or minus to put together a financial position that would make this really easy is kind of what I'm backing into with that. And, you know, I see you sent us a really nice spreadsheet ahead of time. you put something called CoastFi into your spreadsheet. So are you thinking about that?

Like, is that kind of one of the concepts you've been noodling on as you kind of maneuver towards this goal? Yeah, that was something I heard on y'all's podcast at one point or another. And I did like the idea. Originally, when I reached up to Mindy, my microphone wasn't working, so we had to reschedule. The idea was to potentially get in a position within a couple of years. to have reached Coast Fye and then start a glamping business. So this is an idea that I heard from a YouTuber called Rob.

I can't remember his last name, but his YouTube channel is Rob Built. And really fun, entertaining guy. And he kind of is doing what we did. He started, he bought a house that was maybe a little more than he needed, did a basement apartment. And then he actually built a tiny house in his backyard. He was living in California, so that's allowed as well as it's really expensive there and higher Airbnb rates.

And then he started doing sites in Joshua Tree and either tiny houses or yurts or a frames. And I really like the idea of that. We're a few hours from Moab, which is near Arches National Park. And I thought that would be an interesting idea for us to move out there by a property with a little bit of land on it. So like four or five acres. And then on that property, we could either Airbnb the whole property or live in that property and put campsites around it. And if you look on Airbnb in that area, we're definitely in some of the summer months. So the prices might go down a little bit because it is very hot in Moab.

But you get, you know, $150, $200, $100. It's just depending on what type of glamp site you set up. So it seemed to me to be a crazy ROI where you spend, let's say, $30,000 on a yurt and make it really bougie. Do three or four of those on your property and make your money back in the first year. and then can sort of coast on that as well, but kind of crunch some of the numbers, and I felt like we could, with five units, pretty easily, after expenses,

be making about $60,000 doing that. That was one idea, and that would get us to the end goal of, potentially get us to the end goal of Nikita, not needing to work and me working less, but it doesn't have to be the, the solution. So what I'm hearing you say is, is you are willing to, you're not willing to maybe cut completely on your spending side right now, but you are willing to put in a lot of

creative thought and hustle and entrepreneurial endeavors into creating income streams over the next year or two to fortify this position as much as possible, as long as you're working towards an asset that can produce repeatable income. Is that what I'm hearing? I think so. I, with the real estate stuff, I find it fun. I love just looking at Zillow, looking at Airbnb, see what the different rates are, seeing what we could afford and how much revenue that would come in. And right now, since we're in such a good cash position, both having reasonably good paying jobs and no kids and be able to offset our living expense with Airbnb, it seems. like a good time to just start building assets. And that's essentially what I want to know is like,

what do you think would be the best way to build those assets up? Because I have done the long-term more traditional. And that's been decent. We make about $300 a month right now after being pretty conservative about CAP-X and other expenses. And that's we believe at our next lease signing, we will be able to make $1,000 a month because we just did a $30,000 renovation where we added two bathrooms, renovated a third bathroom, and added a new washer dryer to the basement. It's a 10-bedroom. It's basically a sorority, but we made it a lot nicer. And so if we can get a few more people renting it, I believe six-girls, no, maybe seven girls are renting it right now, but if we can get 10 girls in there,

the price would actually go down for each of them, and we would be making more. And that's the guy. So I only suggest Dane if he can actually get us that. That's our property manager who suggested the renovations, found the house, and we're already doing well with it. But even then, it's like, okay, well, that's $1,000 a month. It's going to take a lot to get to that. And we invested quite a bit, too, because I believe we would put 20 to 25% down and then the renovations.

And we don't want to do a cash out refy because the rate we got was so low. We got it in August. And I think it was around like three and a half percent for an investment loan, which was decent. So it's like we can only do maybe one more of those in a year. So I'm trying to think, what can we do with essentially $6,000 a month in the next two years, so it may be like $100,000, maybe a little bit more of money. How can we, how could we put ourselves in a position to where maybe the option of walking away for both of us is there, but definitely the option for one of us walking away and another one,

maybe stepping back a little bit. Well, I love it. I think this is great context. And I, you know, I can't speak to buying a sorority house and the cash for, potential on that, but I can't, or buy any yurt and Moab, Moab and then producing income. Although I visited Moab and we paid a tremendous amount of money for an Airbnb that was like 300 square feet in like an alley. But it was great. But it was just like, like, you open the door, there's the bed. And, you know, that's the property with it.

So I think you're on to something with thinking here. What I'm hearing you say is I'm investing a lot of time and energy and thought. and excitement into this real estate stuff. And I believe the ROI is there and that there's multiple opportunities that my creative brain can seize over the next year or two in a way that's going to produce returns that I cannot have a risk-adjusted odds of replicating anywhere else in a realistic sense. I'm convinced of that based on what you've said here. And to me, that says, okay, if I go back to the strategy and we had a sneak peek, thanks again to your great preparation for some of these things about where you're allocating your money.

I think based on what I'm hearing here, I would say, yeah, go ahead, allocate that away from those retirement accounts and into these approaches, because you've clearly got interest and the ability to model it and the ability to think through it and the willingness from a strategic perspective to operate it in future years. And I think, based on what I'm hearing here, you believe, and I have no reason to doubt you, that you're going to drive a much better ROI from the activities than you can't from just about anything else that will give you much better odds of being in that position you want to be in two years from now than dumping it into an index fund

inside the Roth, even though I love Roths. What do you think, Mindy? I have a lot of questions. Number one, I am not in any position to tell you what you can do with your money with regards to the IVF treatments. And I hope that it is a one and done and takes, it takes the very first time. Have you guys talked about how many times you're going to go through it before you say, okay, we're done? And that's something that you and your wife should talk about because I have heard a lot of stories about people who, oh, just one more time, oh, just one more time, and oh, we've already put this much money into it. What's one more time? And I'm sitting here at a very advantageous position where I already have two children. So who,

Who am I to say, oh, you can only do it twice or you can only do it 27 times or, you know, whatever. That's something that I want. And I know that's kind of a downer and I'm sorry. I hope it takes on the very first try. But even if it does, that's still $20,000. That is something you can comfortably afford because you have such a great income. But, you know, five times isn't necessarily unheard of.

And that's $100,000 right there. So that's something that I just want to plant a seed so that you can, you guys can start thinking about that. health insurance is a big consideration. You said that you have separate health insurance plans. Is it more financially advantageous currently for you to have separate plans? Sometimes the employer will cover the employee 100%, and then the spouse is extra, in which case it would make sense for you each to do that.

The reason right now we're on separate ones is when you combine health insurance plans, your out-of-pocket max essentially doubles. So we want her out-of-pocket max to be as low as possible. And then mine, I did just break a toe, but I almost never have health expenses. So I'd rather just have it at one right now. But I think that's probably why I'd blocked it out. It's like we'd made that decision.

It's like, oh, yeah, we've got to be on separate health care plans because otherwise we're just going to spend a lot more on health care. So that's, that was the current, current thinking on that. But that doesn't mean we couldn't change that in a few years. And you said that you have an HSA plan. Is that the best option given her situation? So HSA is relatively new. We, and when I have current investments, this is current planned investments for 2021.

I actually just got my HSA and then I really really, I don't like the fees in this one, so I'm rolling it over to another one. And then I didn't realize Nikita's health care plan was a high deductible one, so we could do the same with her. So that was sort of the plan just because of the tax free going in, tax free going out, tax free gains. And we were honestly planning on just using that as an FI tool versus using it for her medical expenses. which we could do, but the plan was just, yeah, using it as essentially like our second even better Roth IRA. Can you put an air conditioner in a yurt?

Because I've been to Moab too. Love Moab, but it's like being on the surface of the sun. It is so hot in the summer. That is a good question. I would, and I'm a bit of a diva. I would not rent your yurt if it didn't have an air conditioner. I imagine we could do a little side unit. And that's the nice thing about doing the land hack where you have a property because you already have electricity that you could potentially pull off of.

Otherwise, solar might be a possibility for a small unit. I doubt that would be enough for anything besides some lights and charging your cell phones and whatnot. But that's, yeah, that's a really good thought. I had not thought about AC. And to go back to your question about how many times, I think that's a really good one. I think Nikita and I have a conversation to have around that. In part of the IVF process, we're a little bit new to it. There is some genetic testing as well as quite a bit of psychological testing because we do have a family member who is going to be a donor.

And I believe those questions would be brought up on that, just like knowing kind of how we're going to do it. I believe the family member only wanted to do an egg donation once, and that's kind of our assumption. So it does feel for me like it would be, you know, we try otherwise foster or other options, but we haven't had that conversation. I think that's a good one to have. Okay. Yeah. And you've got a couple of years to have this conversation and really get comfortable with it, but I think that that's something that should be considered. And with regards to egg donation, I think they get a, they harvest a lot in one go. I don't think they just go in and take one.

Yeah, yeah, that's the hope. It's kind of like we harvest 20, and these are all like maybes. Harvest 20, 10 are viable. Three of those make embryos. One of those makes a baby? So that's, we're newer into the process, but that was one of our first conversations that we had is sort of the statistics around that. Yeah, there's, yeah, just, you know, I just want to plant a seed because that's what I'm here for.

No, I want to plan a seed. That was good. That was great. 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 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 focused 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 in a 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. That's 50% off at Monarch.com code pockets. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed.

When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts.

You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash bigger pockets right now

and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest

Today. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. With over 1,500 corporate guides who are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it,

like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never sell your data. And all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. Let's talk about, well, let's go back to the glamping.

It sounds like you've done your research. But, and I don't know anything about yurts. I think the idea is super cool. I would love to rent a yurt, but I want it to be comfortable on the inside. Moab's a great city. I think, I just read something where Arches actually has to close off the entrance at like 9 a.m. There's too many people. So people are going to, uh, what's the one around the corner?

Canyonlands. Canyon lands. And then Canyonlands, it's beautiful. Oh, my, it's almost better. I mean, I was there before everybody got there, so it wasn't as crowded. But it's gorgeous. That whole area is gorgeous. So I would definitely look into that more because that's a really, really popular area.

But I want to be comfortable in my yurt. So I want to make sure it's warm in the wintertime and it's cool in the summertime. Let's go talk to your, let's go talk about your Muncie rental property. You have a 10-bedroom sorority house that you ran out to 10 women, and I am going to be the one to say, you need to have a plumbing clause in your lease that says, do not flush wipes down the toilet. Do not flush tampons down the toilet. They're not flushable. Here is how you dispose of them in the garbage can.

If you clog my plumbing, I will make you pay for the plumbing repair. And that's the kind of clause in this particular situation. That's the kind of clause you need to have every single girl who rents your property sign right next to, like, initial that right next to the plumbing clause. Read it to them. Tell their parents. I'm assuming their parents are guaranteeing the rent. Read it to the parents and say, I will make you pay for the plumbing repairs because this is huge. Ten girls, we're going to get real girly today.

your cycles all sink up and then you've got a big old mess all at once. So that is something that I would love to see in your property. Now, you said it, you're cash flowing $300 a month right now. Did you rent the entire property to a group of girls or did you rent individual bedrooms to individual people? So we bought the property from another person who was already renting it out. And it came with the tenants in it. It was six girls, I believe, at the time.

So we had them re-sign the new lease, which I will check to see if there's a plumbing clause in there. Otherwise, maybe do an addendum or something like that. That's a very good idea because it is, my wife, when we're buying it, it was like, it was the same thing. It was that. And then also just like the mess that might be made in the very few bathrooms that were available for a 10-bedroom. But we fixed that problem. Is there a legal consideration around that because you would not put that clause necessarily in for a group of men?

Is that a potential problem? I would not think that it is, but I don't know. I mean, he's not, oh, wow, what a good question. Ooh, if you're listening to this and you know the answer. We can also throw condoms in there and then that's put out of this. Oh, there you go. That works. And then should you decide to translate to transom?

transfer from a sorority house to a fraternity house, you put the same clause in there, and the whole clause is about condoms and tampons. Wow. And also, we call it a sorority house because it is a lot of girls in one house. It is not technically, it's not Greek. It's not anything of that nature. I believe some of the girls in there are part of the Greek society, and it is near other, other, it's very close to it's ball state university is what it's close to in proximity and so i believe there are other um uh actual sorority and fraternity houses nearby but it is it is not designated as one and i i'd be i'd be i'd be careful about that i think i think um i think wendy's advice is great with that and not something i would have considered i would just kind of like noodle on and maybe

ask like for your property manager or anybody else if they have any thoughts on that subject and I think it's totally fair if you experience a problem to them be like, if this happens again, you're going to pay for it. I just think that there's a, it would be good to think twice, just make sure that there's no problems that would occur if you do it preemptively based on the gender of the tenants with that. Yeah, fair enough. And I don't know, I didn't, I didn't do the inspection because it was out of state.

but they did have to do quite a bit of new plumbing to do the bathrooms that were upstairs. So they added two bathrooms upstairs and then renovated another one. So hopefully the plumbing is relatively fresh, but the sewer is the main concern that I would have as soon as Mindy brought that up. Yeah, and I would even preemptively have your property manager come in and have a sewer scope or have a you know, have somebody come in and, and really, I think a sewer scope is a good idea because if it's all a brand new pipe, then it's not as big a deal. But if it's an old clay pipe and there's root intrusion, you know, things that are being flush that shouldn't be flush can get caught up on the roots and cause a big backup. Ask me how I know. Also, if it's a cast iron pipe, those rot from the inside out. Ask me how I know that one, because one day your basement is dry and the next day it isn't. All right. So, yeah, that is something we could do because with our current property in Utah, we got it scoped. And it's fine for right now, but we're going to do something to more preventative for it. So that makes sense to do in Indiana as well.

I just had a sewer scope the other day. Woohoo. Shout out to the sewer mall. My new sewer scope. Why do they make it out of clay? What was it? Because there's lots of dumb things that happened in the past. One last question I have, Scott, and then I'll let you jump in, is, does your company

or your wife's company have a 401k match? Because Scott said that it might be a good idea to stop contributing to those programs. But if they have a match, then I would recommend to... continue to contribute until you get the match? The one I am leaving right now did have a 4% match. The one I'm going to has no match. And I'm also needed to wait three months before I can even invest in it as well. So, and that was the thing out of all of the retirement accounts, the one I was most interested

in adjusting. I really like the Roth. And the HSA also seems like an even better deal than the RON. So it seemed like if we continued to put $15,000 to $20,000 in traditional retirement accounts, we're still diversified a little bit, not just going all in on real estate. The other concern that I have is just the crazy real estate market is potentially not being able to find something that does have as good as numbers as I was able to get with my first couple properties.

Are you continuing to look in the Muncie area? because if you like your property manager and you said that your property manager is really awesome, I would want to look there first. And Muncie is a far more affordable market than Utah is. So the thought there, that was our original plan maybe a year ago, is try to continue to build up properties there. It's in the Midwest. It cash flows well.

We won't get a ton of appreciation, but that's all right. but I don't know if that quite aligns with our goals right now of trying to get into a position of having not needing to work as much but still maintaining a reasonable degree of income and that's where I was going for the short-term rentals because it seemed like the immediate cash flow was so much higher it's more work but it's we would have the bandwidth to do it if Nikita left her full-time job. But yeah, I'm open to it. The reason we haven't looked right now is because we did just,

had a big down payment and then a big renovation, and I want to wait to see if that renovation actually translates into the rents that we think it will. And if it does, then potentially going in for another property or two. I like that approach. I think that that makes that makes perfect sense to me. It's not passive income, but it's high dollar per hour work with that. And that seems to align with where you're thinking you want to be in two to three years with that. I think, you know, based on what I'm hearing you say, you're going to have a good chance at driving substantial income through one of those short-term rentals or those types of things in the next couple of years.

And I think that there's a lot of opportunity in that short-term rental market over the next year or two because of the big shortage that we have right now and the travel opening back up in a general sense in this country with that. So I like that thought process. It is not passive. So if you're going to try to do something passive, that would be where I think maybe you go back to Muncie, Indiana, and think about more of those properties. but to me that makes that makes perfect sense i think that yeah i mean validate the the Airbnb rental in your in your at your home and then if you can replicate that a few times and that's way better and it's only a few hours a week that will that will that seems like a winning a winning formula there to me neat yeah i the other thing about the short term that i i tend to like

is okay maybe the property is more expensive but we can cover it with the short-term rentals where with long-term, the margins are just a little tighter. So as soon as the price gets a little too high, you're maybe making $100 a month, which doesn't feel like, even though the mental overhead is a little lower, like you still got to, yeah, every month,

just see what expenses were coming up. And I'd say we spend maybe an hour just kind of doing things. And it's mainly because we tried to, instead of using a normal accounting system, put it into Wadab, which kind of works, but it's not what it's built for. So that's probably what's taking us the most time. What do you think, Bindy?

I like, no, I like that idea, but I really like what you said, Scott, that this isn't passive to have more Airbnbs closer to you. You can make it a little more passive by hiring out everything. I'm not sure. I'm assuming that you clean your own basement Airbnb right now. and if you had something close, you could clean it. I mean, it doesn't take that long to clean a property, although some people are pigs. So sometimes it does take a lot longer to clean the property.

Yeah, we've had really good luck. I mean, we're, I think we started in maybe about three months or so, and we haven't had a bad experience yet. But if we did something that wasn't in our basement, I would very much want to find a very reliable cleaning person. that could also be sort of like the lookout person, pay her or him well, and have that just be part of the cost. So we'd still be doing some of the, you know, in exchanges, booking, answering questions. But there's also a lot of tools that can automate big parts of the process as well.

And so if we started getting into more than one or two, I would look into that automation that's possible. Is your, where, where again are you located in Utah? We're in a city called Sandy, which is south of Salt Lake City. And you said you're by the ski resorts. That would be the appeal for the most part of that town. For our place, yeah. And then also, you know, we're close enough to Salt Lake.

We get a lot of cross-country travelers that would just do one night. So they're going from Boise to Denver and Salt Lake's a good mid-ground. That's what we've been getting a little bit more. for the summer or people visiting family. So the thought that I want to, the seed I want to plant in your mind is what is the cost of the property in Utah and how long will it take you to save up for the down payment because it's a rental property. It's going to be 20, 25% down versus and how much are you going to make versus how much is

a property in Muncie? How much would you have to put down? How much could you make there? Can you more quickly get the down payment for the Muncie property? Probably, unless you're buying another 10 unit that is the same price as one. I know that Utah is expensive and it's just getting more expensive. The ski resorts, I've been looking for a ski property for personal and I can't, like all of a sudden everything is now triple what it was.

Not really. Can I just chime in and say, that's why I like Utah rather than Bunsey, Indiana is because of that phenomenon? Like, I, I buy, I buy in Denver, Colorado. Why? Because I think it's going to get more expensive in Denver, Colorado with those types of things. And I like, I like the rising income and the rising property values that I think occur over a long period of time in a place like this or Utah rather than, than Muncie. But that's a, that's a fundamental, philosophical question is, in 30 years, I'm going to be better off, or, you know, your case, three years. But you also have to keep the long term in mind. If you buy a,

bunch of property in wonderful locations in Salt Lake City, Utah, you know, in 15, 20 years, 30 years, are you going to have a different wealth profile than if you buy 15, 20 properties in Muncie, Indiana with that? And to me, you know, from my seat, that answer seems clear from where I, I, I, it's no, there's no question in my mind that Denver, Colorado is going to outperform Muncie, Indiana over a 20, 30-year period. Now, I think people will strongly disagree with that, but to me, that's how I run my investments and life with that. And if you can cash flow more with the Airbnb, that also seems really appealing since you live there and are willing to do it. So those are some of the things that I like around that. I'm just planting a seed, God.

Something to think about. No, he's planting a seed. I still just joke. Yeah. Yeah, I think that plays into my thinking, too. is just believing in in the kind of the mountain west region. And so like while, you know, prices have been jumping by leaps and bounds, we moved from Austin, Texas, and we lived in Denver before that. So we've never been, we've always been just behind being able to afford a house. We've been trying to buy a house for a decade almost. And as our incomes rose, and they've never risen as dramatically as they did in the last year.

but as they rose, it would continue to be just, no, we could afford it, but we would be house poor. Or, man, do we really want to spend that much money when an apartment is so much less and has a pool and a gym and doesn't have a bunch of maintenance that we have to deal with? And I just could never get myself to want to actually pull the trigger because just the high cost of living areas. Yeah, that is a consideration, and I just want to, you know, throw that out there. Can you get more cash flow in Muncie versus the Utah properties? Well, if it was going to be a long-term rental, I would be negative cash flow for sure. But that's where the short term comes in. Or maybe I can find some places that are break-even.

And I've heard that philosophy a lot that you should have that out. but I don't know if it's going to be possible. This is something that just needs more research as well on my end. I believe that. I believe that that out is important is to have that ability to cash flow under reasonably conservative assumptions. You don't have to, like for me, it doesn't have to be much, but, you know, I'm actually trying a rent-by-the-room approach right now with a property.

and if it was a traditional, yeah, you're, and, you know, or, uh, or, uh, or, uh, or, uh, or, uh, I'm, you know, and that property would be fine. It would be neutral, maybe a little bit better, but like a very poor, like one or two percent cash and cash return, um, in a traditional rental style, but that's, that's a good backup to have. And then it will generate a lot of income as a rent by the room property with that. And so, and it's a, high quality wonderful asset in a great location with that and i think that that's to me that makes that makes a lot of sense because it allows me to kind of apply the fundamentals of the philosophy of buying a great location and wait for the years to drive it up um in value on both sides of that

you know against a fixed debt um fixed interest interest rate debt um and i have a really good shot at getting that additional cash flow. So I kind of like that approach. Again, I come back to it. I like the Salt Lake City market. I think that's a great, I think there's no doubt in my mind that in 30 years, Salt Lake City is going to be even more attractive than it is now to live in or even more price appreciative. So you're thinking, I keep hearing you say Salt Lake, and I've been sort of thinking about the areas that are closer to national parks. But that wouldn't really have a good backup rent by the room, but maybe it would.

So you're thinking Salt Lake is... No, I'm saying I'm going to go rent by the room and my backup plan is traditional long-term rental for each of the units. You're thinking about Airbnb. I'm saying that your backup, I think, should be that traditional long-term rental thing there and making sure that that's very... close to break-even or a little, like, slightly positive, but maybe not, maybe not like great cash flow. That would be a good backup plan for those things.

So you're not having to pour money into the investment over a long period of time with those types of things. I also think that going next to National Parks makes a lot of sense, but you're going to have to build, get really clear on the seasonality of those businesses, of that business. You know you're going to have seasonality in this, but like Moab, to Mindy's great point, If you build a yurt, you're not going to have a new business in the summer, you know, except from a very specific type of clientele for that. And so you need to be aware of those types of dynamics. And it sounds like they're a little farther away from homes.

You're still going to be managing remotely. Three, four hours. If you have any success at all, you're just not going to want to deal with that at all. So that might as well be in Muncie if it's that far away. The difficulty would be, especially with the National Park strategy, I think the seasonality you can you can just plan for and just check on the numbers. It's the finding a good person to run the operations. That would be the big struggle, I think.

And I was also under the impression that you were doing it a little closer to home where you could take care of it by yourself if you wanted to. I know that a lot of people who are running Airbnbs are running into problems, finding people to do the cleaning or finding people to do the management. it isn't so much a problem of getting people to the property. It's taking care of the property afterwards. So if you do it a little closer to home, then there's always that option. Oh, the cleaning lady just quit.

Now I can run over there and clean it as opposed to driving three hours to Moab to clean it and then coming back. And I was going to say, does Sandy have Airbnb laws? And so because other people listen to this, not just you, I'm going to say if you're planning on buying an Airbnb. Well, we're technically an unincorporated white city, so we can do whatever the heck we want. But we're surrounded by Sandy. So we're good on the laws. And we had the paperwork for Sandy set up, but then realized we actually didn't even know we were in this little pocket, which doesn't have any restrictions currently. Yeah, that would be the other thought is the changing laws. And if you go into a place that

you'd want to look into our laws already established. Would they be prone to change? And I wonder if yeah, I would have to do more research if Salt Lake is a better place for that or Moab or Zion or Denver or wherever is going to be more friendly to these short-term rentals. Not Denver.

And yeah. And kind of where where the risk would be for that. Yeah. And in general, it's more, like, the more touristy the area is, the more lenient the Airbnb laws are. That's what I was thinking. And that was part of the reason why I wanted to go that direction. And I might not be as averse to not having as strong a backup option.

Like maybe if maybe my backup option is long-term rental and I lose $200 a month. But I can, you know, I can swing that. until I sell it or whatever it happens to be. But I feel like that area would be less likely to change those laws, and therefore that's a lower risk, and so I can take that gamble. Yeah, I think in these vacation rental markets, I'm a little wary, as a, you know, personally about going into them, because I feel like unless you really know what you're doing

and really kind of understand the market and have some sort of competitive advantage, Those towns are designed to suck money out of the people visiting and buying property into those areas, not put money into your pockets with that. You know, you see the property management rates for people's condo. People are not, you're not competing with other investors in a lot of cases. You're competing with wealthy executives who are buying their second home and are just renting it out to kind of offset the cost of keeping that house. And so that's, I think, a challenge you need to be ready for if you're going into one of these like vacation rental spots.

You know, I don't think it's going to be quite your same problem at some of the national parks. But Moab, I know people like to go to Moab all the time with that during in season. And you might be competing with that phenomena in Moab, for example, or, you know, near any of the ski resorts in Colorado or those types of things. That's what you're competing with. There are ways to get around it, and our colleague Dave Meyer has a really successful vacation rental property out in the mountains. But it's like 25 minutes away from any resort. And it's a big house and an unincorporated place like what you've got there.

And that's how he swings it. And I know he's had lots of trouble cleaning it and managing it. And to the point where he's had to pay people from Denver to drive out there and then clean it because it's cheaper and easier than finding anybody out in those towns. So it can be done. But I think you need to be ready for that kind of challenge. if you're going to go into a vacation rental market. I love the Airbnb concept in your local area because you bring that competitive advantage to it.

And that's part of your strategy is to work part-time in two years or to have that option. And so if you're willing to do that for five, ten hours a week, you can probably have a really good shot at an excellent income with that. So that's why I was thinking I like the Salt Lake City thing. But if you can find that creative, if you're going to invent a new, approach or jump on something that's just just been proven out and you're an early adopter, you probably can be successful with it in one of those towns like the Yerts with that. But that's how I was thinking about it. I like that because we do, I think one of our potential strategic advantages is I'm interested in the finance side of things, like the buying

of the property, getting the interest rate and all of that jazz. And my wife is really interested in the design and the hosting aspects of it. So the idea of having a expensive property management company eat most of the profits when it's something that we would actually enjoy doing doesn't sound all that great. So yeah, the idea of doing it, because we are 25 minutes from a couple bigger ski resorts. And it is legal in our area. And maybe just we'll look at the end of the year, how much, if we had fully booked this out, how much could we have made, and if there's another property that we could, we could do that with, and then we can run the whole show ourselves, and or find a affordable cleaning service because we're close to a major city, and we'd be

able to do that. I like that. Yeah, that's a good tweak to what I was thinking. Great. Well, that's what we're here for. I appreciate it, Scott. All right. That's what we're here for it to plant seeds. Yeah. Are there any other big topics that we can cover that would be helpful for you today? Hmm. So yeah, those two goals

are kind of what we had, which you had some good tweaks on, is just being able to have kids, hopefully, in the next couple of years. And so Mindy's thoughts on talking about how much effort and money we're going to spend towards that goal, if it doesn't work out

for us the first time or two. And then the tweak to being not necessarily full-time within the next five years and potentially be able to do that by buying short-term rentals near us that we can manage that would have a reasonable cash flow and then also a chance of appreciation. No. I'm trying to think, oh, yeah, what are your levers? I've got it in my other notes. So we could spend less.

One of the things that we always talk about is reducing our food bill. I listen to all your podcasts, and families of five are constantly $600, and we're constantly $900, and it's just the two of us. I don't know how we do it month to month. I think Starbucks plus just buying more expensive food is our issue, but I don't know. It seems to always come in high. So, levers, make more money.

I am a pretty good position to continue to make more money. I could work on more side projects. Salesforce is a pretty in-demand skill set that I, over the last year, have built up a good base for that I think will continue to grow. And I think Nikita could potentially start to make more money if she joined an ed tech company. But as we talked about,

that might be a little bit more short-term if she wants to focus on raising a family, spend less and invest more. Yeah, no, I think that's good. The main lever was how can we invest in a way that's going to pay us sooner? I agree. I think you earn a ton of money right now, and that's brand new to you guys, the level of income versus the effort expended to earn it. It seems like to have dramatically changed.

in the last couple of months, and you're going to be minting cash, even if you aren't the tightest with controlling your expenses. Not saying you shouldn't, but you can certainly do that. And I think you kind of, you know, that would be an area to invest, but to investigate. But I think you're easily going to accumulate $50,000 to $100,000 in liquidity over the course of a year. And you're willing and able to do lots of creative things with that. So I think that's where that's the biggest mover you can have in the next year or two,

I think, is figuring out what to do with that. that rather than making other tweaks to some of those other areas. You can still do, it's an and game. You could do both. But I think we did focus the discussion likely in the right area with that. And yeah, I think it's exciting. I think you're thinking about a lot of cool things. And I don't know how it's going to play out for you, but you have a lot of good options. If you're, if you're this interested in real estate, worst case in area, it sounds like you have a great property manager out of state and can get a pretty solid. cash flow compared to what other people can get in the real estate market nowadays.

That's a good backup plan if you don't find anything better in your current market. Yeah, or just VTAASX. So you just throw it in the market. That would be a reasonable backup plan that would probably get us to full FI. And if we continued both working full time, maybe seven years. I think I was running the numbers. So that is an option. And then we have to figure out health insurance and then how to get to 59.

And let me just say other things that we didn't talk about, but that are relevant to your situation, you have basically no debt besides your mortgage. You've got a huge personal cash cushion that's at least eight to 12 months of expenses with this, which fortify it, which is perfectly in line with what you're thinking of the next two years to, you know, keeping that or making sure that you back into. where a position where when you're thinking about starting the family with those things that you maintain that. I think that will be huge given some of the challenges with the health that you articulated earlier. So I think you've got all those fundamentals in place which allow the discussion about asset allocation to be the big one. This is the fun stuff that everybody wants to get to. You're in perfect position to be thinking about this. And it is the biggest lever in your financial position, in my opinion. Yeah, I don't have anything to add.

I think that you're doing really well and, you know, continuing. This is like the slog part of the journey now where you're just saving and saving and, oh, where should I put this money? It's not how do I find money to put it. It's where do I put it that's most advantageous. But I think you're thinking on the right path on pretty much everything. I would just make sure that there aren't any 401k dollar match dollars that you're leaving on the table or that your wife isn't leaving on the table.

And think about the health insurance. I keep hoping that they're going to fix it and they keep not fixing health insurance. And it's always tied to employment. And because of the cancer diagnosis, it is going to be harder to get insurance down the road. So that's something that you have to think about. And you don't have to work. and she stays home.

You could work for a little bit and she stays home. And then she decides she wants to go back to work and you stay home. That's what happened in my life. And that works out great. I have a job that I love. And it provides great health insurance and a lot of other things. So, you know, it doesn't have to be an either or it doesn't have to be, well, now Zach has to work for the next 25 years, at least three quarter time. You know, and when you're good at your job, your company will be more flexible with you.

So you know, you've got a couple of years that you're going to plan to work anyway, just kill it at your job and your company won't want you to leave completely. They'll be more willing to work with you, in my opinion. I like it. Okay. Well, it's time now for the famous four because you have answers to the famous four, which I'm very excited about. Are you ready, Zach? I am very ready. What is your favorite finance book?

Well, everyone does say rich dad, poor dad. That did have an effect on me. Just like the plant of the seed, man, early to want to buy more assets versus liabilities. And I think that was part of the reason why I just, even though, you know, we wanted a backyard, we got dogs, we want to do projects around the house. I was never willing to buy a house where it was going to be just such a liability. I did love SEP for Life. Your money or your life is another really good one that is a little more woo-woo, but I like the idea of like you're giving life energy.

Money is equal to life energy, and I think that's played into the role of wanting to work a little bit less. But I was thinking as a kid, there was this book. So if anybody has a, I would say, 4 to 7-year-old that is into, math and money and numbers, how much is a million? I remember having my mom read me hundreds of times. And I just, it's an older book by Stephen Kellogg, great illustrations with it, and it talks about just like how much is $1 versus $100 versus $1,000 versus $10,000, and showing you the scale of how kind of money works and grows. And if you say, you,

stack up so many dollar bills that'll go to the moon. And I just really like that book grown up. So I thought it would be a different book to talk about. All right. We have not heard that one. I'll have to go check it out. What was your biggest money mistake? So it wasn't a complete life mistake because I did meet my wife in this program.

But I graduated in 2008, which was not a great time to find a job. So after doing a banking job that I didn't like and having some other just, try to make ends meet jobs. I decided to go into teaching, and I got half a master's degree in teaching before I decided that was not a good fit for me, and it was fairly expensive. It's at the University of Denver, so you know. They're not cheap. Oh, yeah, they're... Great campus. Great place. Got to pay for that gold roof somehow.

What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Just starting out and over just overall, finding a good life partner. I don't think Nikita was originally as into FI and all these things as I was, but she's very willing to come along for the ride and we can work together around our various goals. So I think that's a good piece of advice for anyone regardless of where you are in your journey. I don't hear that advice enough, and you are 100% correct. That's excellent advice. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties?

What do you call somebody who does not fart in public? I don't know. A private tutor. I was going to say, I was thinking, a liar. But private tutors don't. I thought you would get it being the pun master. I was pretty sure you're going to guess the pun fly, but. I was going to say polite.

Okay. Zach, where can people find out more about you? I do have a website called Zachary sexton.com. It's probably going to be talking about Salesforce stuff going forward. So if you're interested in that at all, otherwise, that's it. Yeah, I've got a contact form on there if you wanted to chat about anything. Feel free to reach out. Are you in our Facebook group?

I am, but I don't go on Facebook very much. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. I can after the show. how about this? After the show is released, I will be in that Facebook group for two weeks. Oh, perfect. Okay. And you can find that Facebook group at Facebook.com slash groups slash BPMoney. And we will link to everything in our show notes, which can be found at biggerpockets.com slash

Money Show 214. Zach, thank you so much for your time today. This was really fun. And I'm super excited for your journey because you have a lot of levers to pull. and I'm excited to see which ones you pull and how they affect your financial situation. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the advice. Okay. We'll talk to you soon. Okay, that was Zach. Scott, what did you think of the show? I thought it was a great episode. I think he's done a really good job of setting himself up in a really strong financial position. I think his position has exploded in the last year, it seems like, from both the income and time perspective.

and I think he is right to be sniffing the opportunity that that presents to really expand his portfolio over the next two years. And so I thought it was a great discussion. He's built a position of financial strength from which to begin attacking the investment opportunities in front of him. And that requires tradeoffs. But that's the fun spot to be in with this, with all of the foundational work done to a large extent. Yeah, I'm excited for his journey because he does have so many options, and he seems to enjoy doing the research into the options. And, you know, that yurt idea, I think that's kind of fun. And if it had air conditioning, I would consider staying in a yurt.

I just need the air conditioning. So I think we gave him a lot of really great things to consider. And now he and his wife have some good things to discuss. And I'm excited for his journey. I hope he comes back in a year or two and gives us a same. an update on what levers he decided to pull because he has a lot of options and that's really where he's at is such a wonderful place for someone to be because he has the option to pull less spending. He has the option to pull make more money. He has the option to pull invest intelligently

and he has the option to pull create a business. And I mean, those are your four options, Scott, and he's got all of them. It's great. I'm super excited. Yeah. I think, was really fun. I think he's got like, I was like, what do we, what do we do here with this? Well, you are willing, you're intelligent, willing, and able to explore a large number of alternatives that include both totally passive and semi-passive or even that require part-time work to achieve your ends. I mean, that's the world's your oyster from that position, especially when you're minting $50 to $100,000 in free cash flow an annual basis. I mean, he can do whatever he wants with this. And I think he's got very good odds of success. And so evaluating those opportunities

across that spectrum, I think he's got better odds of success doing that outside of the realm, the realm of retirement accounts and traditional things, excluding matches and those types of things there. So I think this was a, I think it was fun to get to get out of that bubble and, and move into the more active side of investing. Scott, I'm excited for his options and I'm really glad we were able to give him other things to think about. He was, and I mean, that's what this show is all about. The Finance Friday is to, you know, when you're in it, you're like, this is what I'm going to do. Oh, well, what if you did this? Oh, I didn't think about that. Like, he was set on getting an Airbnb and Moab. Well, then, like you said, you might as well have something, you know, in a different market altogether.

That's not really local. Have you considered local? Oh, I didn't think about that. There were several of those ideas this episode, which really made me feel good. Okay, now to you, our listener. Have you not yet heard your story? Would you like to share? We would love to review your finances on this show. You can apply to be on the show at biggerpockets.com slash finance review.

Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. From episode 214 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, He is Scott Trench, and I am Mindy Jensen saying don't forget to be awesome.