BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 29: From $200,000 in Student Loan Debt to $150,000 Net Worth in 3 Years with Nick and Alyssa Parros

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

Nick and Alyssa were high school sweethearts, who went to college where their family attitudes toward money came to light. Nick’s “save up for it” mindset saw him graduate with around $50k in student loan debt, while Alyssa’s more spendthrift attitude towards the college lifestyle had her graduating with $80,000 in debt—and her graduate degree piled another $60,000 on top of that. They got married and quickly discovered their vastly different views on money. Through budgeting, communication, spreadsheets and more spreadsheets, they are now on the same page and working toward financial freedom. Their curveball pregnancy didn’t derail them—it strengthened their resolve to get to FI through real estate and traditional investments. Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Money Podcast 22: How to Pay Off 6-Figure Student Loans While Pursuing Financial Independence with Travis Hornsby Brandon Turner’s BiggerPockets Profile BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Forums Do Ask, Do Tell article  Yahoo Finance GroVia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Show, show, show number 29. Don't get overwhelmed with, I feel like people get overwhelmed with, oh my gosh, this person is doing 700 different things, and I don't even know where to start. Start with one thing. Start with writing down what you're actually spending. Start with something. Start with packing your lunch.

You know, start there and then keep building. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? I am doing fantastic today, Scott. I'm talking to you from beautiful southern Utah. I'm getting ready to

attend a family reunion, there's really a big bunch of us and we're kind of spread out all around the country. So we sort of threw a dart at the map and tried to find a place that, well, on Airbnb, we tried to find a house that could fit us all. And two years ago, we found one, but then it burned down to the ground in the fires in and around Tennessee. So we settled on Utah. We've got actually four houses because we can't, they don't have a house here that fits us all. Oh, man. We're going to talk about a different type of fire on today's podcast. with Nick and Alyssa Perez. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that's my transition today. We're sticking with it. Nick and Alyssa actually have a very remarkable story where they accumulated a lot of debt in college and had a lot of conflict within their relationship and their marriage about spending and how to manage their money. And this is a great show that kind of goes in like, hey, we start with a couple of disadvantages, some student loan debt, and maybe some different philosophies in how to manage money, and how they come together, get that philosophy together and get on the same page.

And then they go on to produce outstanding financial results over the last few years. So very excited to talk to them. Yeah, they've really knocked it out of the park. They've only been married for three years. And it sounds like they didn't really have a lot of deep conversations about money before they got married, but realize that they did want to make it work. So they did. And the problem with recording the intro after you actually do the interview is that you

tend to give away some of the parts of the interview. I don't want to do that. So what I'd like to do is bring in Nick and Alyssa and let them tell their story because they're going to do it way better than I am. 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 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 existed. 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 All-Berry. Audible.com slash BP money. 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. 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. Just go to indeed.com. Bigger Pockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Nick and Alyssa, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How you doing? Good. Thanks for having us. Oh, thank you for coming on. I would like to start off with a little bit of your background so people know who we're talking to and why we're talking to you. I, Nick and I met in high school. We are from

Johnstown, Pennsylvania. So you probably haven't heard of where we're from. It's a city of I think the metro area is 130,000 people. We live in Richland, and that is 12,000, 12,000 people. So we went to school together, went to high school together. I was a sophomore, and it was a junior, and we met in foods class. So, and that is history. And we graduated a year apart for each other, obviously. We both ended up at Penn State.

And I found out very quickly in college, not only was a, I interested in nutrition, but I was very good at spending money. So in my undergrad, I studied nutrition, went on to a dietetic internship at University of Buffalo, State University of New York, and I got a master's in nutrition, and I'm a registered dietitian. And through all of that, I graduated my undergrad a year early, so I graduated in three years, got my master's and my RD license in a year and a half. I managed to rack up about $150,000 in student. debt. So I was very good at acquiring student loans. And Nick was in college at the same time. So I pretty much always knew what I wanted to do for whatever reason. I was always mechanically

inclined. So I took mechanical engineering for my undergrad. As Alyssa said, we both went to Penn State. I did four years at Penn State and then started working right out of college. And I still work at the same company. I've since got a couple promotions. did go back to school and got MBA. I did that online. And my undergrad, I only had about $50,000 worth of college debt. I did that through a combination of working a little bit through college to pay for a lot of my expenses. I had a little bit of money saved up from parents' contributions and my savings through high school, that kind of thing. And then actually my master's degree, my work paid for the whole thing. So that was really nice. I did it over a pretty long

period of time. It did take about four years. I did about one class at a time working in the evenings, but it was completely covered through my work, which was pretty nice. That's a sweet gig if you can get it. Yeah. Alyssa, you mentioned that you're saying that you're really good at spending money about some accumulation of student loan debt. Was that mostly just tuition or was there other spending issues that were contributing to that. So I fell into kind of not only taking money out for tuition, but also taking out loans for the lifestyle of college. So I would get my nails done and go out with friends and, you know, do all that stuff and not

really paying attention to what I'm really spending money on. Like Nick and I were dating that whole time and Nick would like go grocery shopping and be like, I spent $20 this week. and I'd be spending like a hundred for myself, which now is bizarre, but I was doing it. So I just was not budgeting. I was not following any sort of path that I should be following. And I was just, okay, you're going to let me take out that much money? Sounds like.

Did your parents talk about money at all while you were growing up? My parents, so all four of our parents are, well, I guess your dad went to college. He's not doing a career with his degree. My dad went to college. graduate and both of our moms went to technical school. My mom's a cosmetologist and his mom is a phlebotomy tech. So college was kind of, I think, pushed in both of our families, but not a lot of experience, I think. It was pushed, I think, in both of our families as a, yeah, you definitely should go to college, but not really a, here's a plan for college. Here's what you should do. It was more just

like, yeah, if you want to be successful, go to college and do that and you'll be successful, but not really a method of of how to do it from my background i just spent a lot less as alissa said i didn't spend a whole lot money i was not health conscious at all in college so i ate a tremendous amount of ramen noodles and i found the local store had a pack of like 40 hot dogs for like four dollars so i ate those a lot i have no idea what was in those hot dogs they were definitely not the best but i mean they were super cheap so they'd last me a while Lips and eyelids. Yeah.

Honestly, there was some crunchy stuff every now. Oh, gosh. No. I think my family, if I were just like, just boil it all down. My family was very,

they didn't want me to worry. So it was like, we have money for this. Like, don't worry about it. You'll be taking care of. Everything will be okay. Like that,

we didn't have, and I mean, we don't have like four houses and like vacation like all the time. Like, And I know that that's financial independence and all of that that we're working towards, but not in the spend more than you make kind of mindset. But I just never had to worry about it, if that makes sense.

And from my upbringing with money, it was more so like we don't have a tremendous amount of it. So don't abuse it. And if you want stuff, you're going to have to save up for it yourself a lot of times. So that's kind of where I got my like saving habits. but I never really until after college built any type of foundation as to what to do with your money once you save it. So that was kind of all figured out after a college. Okay. And you mentioned that you have always been handy and like mechanically inclined and all of that.

So you studied engineering. Travis Hornsby during episode 22 of this show gave a really great piece of advice about choosing a major. And this is obviously before you've already gone to college. Is this the only thing you're going to? to ever be happy doing because, you know, some of these, these majors come with these huge student loans. I didn't realize that dentists had, they came out of school with some of the highest student loans. Veterinarians. I mean, I don't, I don't want to belittle animals because animals are a very important part of a lot of people's lives. But this is like an animal doctor

versus a people doctor. And you're coming out with with student loans as much or even higher than your, you know, average people doctor is coming out of school with. And that's not something that I would have even known about when I was going to choose majors. And, you know, having him share that was really, really powerful. Because if that's the only thing that's ever going to make you happy, then it's going to be a lot easier to swallow that debt or at least just knowing what the debt load is going to be before you get going into this major.

So, Alyssa, did you know that you want to? wanted to be a dietitian or was that you said you really enjoy it? Yeah. I actually went to college as I thought I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't want to go premed because my parents talking to them. They're like, well, what if you don't become a doctor and you just have a bachelor's degree in premed? Like, what are you going to do with that?

So I found out that Penn State had a nutrition program that was a track to medical school. I ended up shadowing a doctor and endocrinologist. actually, who was fantastic, love him. But I realized that when I went home, when the office closed at 4 o'clock, he went to the hospital for another six hours. And I realized that was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So I decided to be a dietitian. And I just pivoted from a medical school track to a dietetic intern track.

And an internship for a dietetic student, unlike Nick had an internship between his junior in senior year of college. And did you do want over Christmas too? Yeah, I went back and worked over Christmas. He got paid. Dietetic interns do not get paid. And also a dietetic internship is not considered postgraduate work. So once I graduated from my undergrad, my student loans came out of deferment.

Whether I went into an internship or not. Not all dietetic internships are paired with a master's program. So if I went to an internship that didn't have a master's program, I would not be getting paid and paying to be in an internship and my student loans would be coming out of deferment. At that point, I think I had probably an $80 or $90,000 worth of student debt that in the internship, I could not have a job and do the internship at the same time. So I had to find a master's program that coincided with my internship because I couldn't afford to start paying back student loans.

So that's fascinating. You're basically forced into this very specific situation because of the way that the student loan program and graduate degree works. Yeah. I guess it's a good time here then to transition into kind of what happened after you graduated college. So what was your kind of path like from that position? So graduated college started working as an engineer at the same company that I interned

with, same company I'm still working with. I really kind of through my internship, learned a lot of the ropes. So I kind of hit the ground running pretty well. and the way that that kind of led me into financial independence is kind of, or the mindset of that is kind of interesting because through college, like I was one track mind thinking engineering. Like I'm going to graduate college. I'm going to be an engineer. That's like what happens.

Didn't think of anything else. Well, pretty much instantaneously once I started working, I started thinking of, okay, like what's next? So we got my first paycheck, had a 401k plan matching 401. So for the next 40 years of my life, I'm going to put this percentage of my paycheck into my 401k. My company's going to match this percent. That's going to compound over 40 years. I'm going to get pay raises of approximately this per year, maybe every X years or so. I think I've forecasted like every 10 years.

I get a promotion that jumps me up another sizable pay grade and factor in for inflation. And 40 years from now when I'm like 62, I can retire with this much. money and it was kind of like, wow, that's kind of anti-climactic. You know, here's the next 40 years of my life in a nutshell. So then it was kind of like what other options are there? How else can I make money other than doing this for the next 40 years? And granted, I really still do enjoy what I do. I've enjoyed all the positions that I've held thus far. But, you know, kind of what else is there? So my first thought was the stock market, like I can become a genius in the stock market and I'm going to make tremendous returns. So I started doing that. I think it's a Mark Cuban quote,

everyone's a genius in a bull market. I figured that out that I was a genius. I made some pretty good returns right away, but didn't realize that it was a bull market and everybody was making great returns. So I thought I was a genius. And pretty much it seems when you're investing aggressively, you can make really good returns when the market's doing really good. But then when the market starts doing bad, a lot of times you start doing more. way worse than the market. So I've been on both sides of that. I started reading some books on investing and learned pretty much, if you're investing in the stock market, the best you can really hope for is to do average. So, you know, pick the S&P 500, about average is 7% return, give or take.

And it's kind of like, okay, we're back to anticlimactic. That's not really a needle mover. So it was actually during work one day, I think it was during lunch, I was watching some YouTube videos and I stumbled upon a Robert Kiyosaki video and pretty much his video was just summing up Rich Dad Poor Dad book, which I later read. But it really kind of got me thinking of, okay, so like maybe there's other ways of going about this. And that's what got me looking into real estate. And I researched it for a little while until I kind of worked. up how I was going to pitch this to her and how am I going to get her to trust me on this, did some research and then pitched it to her. And I was really quite surprised she had like next to no kind of questions or pullback about it or anything. It was pretty much just like, I think we should do this. And she was like, okay, let's look into it.

And then kind of my side of when he started investing in stocks, we were still unmarried at the time. He graduated in 2012. I went into my master's degree at 2012, so I moved to Buffalo. I graduated in December of 2013. We got engaged December of 2012. I graduated with my master's December of 2013. We both lived with our parents until we bought our house in August of 2014, got married in September of 2014.

And then I think that's when you live with someone and you realize, like, how different you are. I know you have a story. So I think it was the first weekend we moved in together. She was like, okay, well, I want to run to T.J. Max and get like some decorations for the house and stuff.

And like for me, whenever I want to buy something, like I planted out like six months and ahead. And I'll have like three to five times as much as I want to spend saved up like just in case. And she was like, okay, I want to run out and buy some stuff for the house.

And she went out and bought like, It was $800 worth of like decorations for the house and came back. And I was like, oh, my God. I'm like, what did you do? And she's like, what? And that's when we were kind of like, okay, we need to like think about what, like, how this is going to work and how we're going to get past the next 50, 60, 70 years of living together. Because this is like weekend number one. Yeah.

So I think I'm married to you as well. My husband will also plan out well in advance. any purchase that he wants to make, he'll compare and contrast all the different options and $800 on house decorations would never come out of his wallet. Well, so I'm interested. How did you figure this out? How did both of you guys figure this out? What was the conversation or agreement that you came to about spending?

I think at first it was a lot of probably fights. Yeah, we had a couple initially. I'm trying to even think. I think it was just sitting down and talking and saying, you talking and saying, this is what we make. This is what we're saving. This is what we have left. Like, this does not fit in the budget. So we, and that's, I think, where we really started budgeting hard and really laying out.

I think from my perspective, I was thinking, well, I'm going to work five days a week, 40 hours a week. and you're telling me like I have to sit here in my house and do nothing for the money that I'm making at that point, you know, in my mind. And so that's when we came up with our mad money accounts. And now it's like our Bible. Yeah. That's really how we survive. What's a mad money account? So the way that we've got our budget to, initially I had this crazy complex spreadsheet that tracked like everything you could imagine.

And we got married and I was like, okay, well, I'll do both of our funds in this spreadsheet. And I've tried, I don't know how many times to show her. And she just like hates my spreadsheets because they're way too boring. I don't need all spreadsheets. I can certainly understand. It's an acquired taste. But we do six different accounts that each kind of have their own purpose. And the mad money is part of that. So the first main account is what I call our billing account.

So we get paid into that account and we pay all of our regular monthly bills out of that account. So, you know, the water bill, the sewage bill, the house mortgage, you know, all those bills come out of that one. Then there's what I call our main joint account, which we buy are kind of monthly expenses that fluctuate, but we still have a general idea of what we're going to spend. So groceries, gas money, now daycare, that all comes out of that. account and I feed that account out of the billing account. So I say like every week I'm going to put this much money into the main joint account. Our two mad accounts is I get $60 a week. She gets $60 a week into our mad accounts. And it's pretty much no questions asked. This is your money to spend on what you want. You can save it up and buy something that you're, you know, really wanting.

You can go out and have lunch with it, kind of whatever you want to do with it. I will say people, whenever we say, like, it's no questions asked, we both have access to each other's accounts. So I can go in and look, not that I really ever have, but if I know that some people are like, well, how do you trust, like, that they're not doing something crazy with that money? Like, one, it's not that much money. But we both, all of our accounts are together. So I have access and he has access. So there's no hidden money anywhere. And then so the last two remaining accounts. There's, I call it long-term investing. So that's what we use to invest in stocks, mutual funds, real estate, that kind of thing. And then what I call short-term investing,

which we use to upgrade our house by stuff that we kind of need, kind of want, you know, like if we want to upgrade our appliance or put something else onto our house, that kind of thing. And then there's actually two additional accounts that I've added just because they make life a little bit easier. They're actually in a different bank. But I call one accruals, which are all of our bills that only happen once a year. I kind of add them all up, divide by 12 and pull out one 12th of that every month. And then whenever we pay them, I just feed that back into it. And then family savings, which we save up for Christmas, birthdays, vacations, that kind of stuff in that account. Okay. I love the accrual account. And I think that's really important. And a lot of people,

overlook it. I only pay my car insurance once a year or maybe twice year. I don't remember. So having that, you know, $600 every six months is not something that a lot of people are going to be able to come up with, you know, instantly. What is the, what's the statistic? People only have $1,000 in savings or whatever. So one unaccounted for a bill is going to kind of knock you off. I really like that accrual. What sort of bills are in there besides like house and car insurance? So we do. car registrations. Like we have an Amazon Prime subscription, which it's only $100, but we put that in there as well.

You pay that once a year. My license. She has a license for her R.D. So I have, dietitian. Yeah. So I have nationally, I have an RD certification,

and I am licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland. So I have two licensed certificates. Those are by, they only come out every other year. But I have those. And then I have an academy membership, which is like journals and they do a lot of continuing education. So I need to do a lot of that for my license.

So that's $300 a year to do that too. So that's all in there. And we also add in stuff. If it's something we know we're going to have to buy over the next year, we'll just add it in and then divide by 12 and put like one 12th of it in until we save up for it. Like, for example, tires. If we know we're going to need tires on the car or something, that's a 400 to 8.

$800 expense. So that's another thing. What I think is awesome about this, I want to point out, is that it sounds like you guys were having a little bit of conflict in your relationship about money prior to implementing this system and that this system, I mean, there's a lot of ways to budget. There's a lot of ways to set up accounts. There's a lot of things. But it seems like you're very clear now on where your money goes, where your priorities are, and what you get to spend in it and with no questions asked.

And that's what I think is so powerful about the system for you guys. and managing towards FI within the constraints of what you guys need to keep your relationship happy. Yeah, I think like the understanding and knowing like where the lines are is really important. Even yesterday I went to FI below and picked up some like knickknacks for my nephew and it was 10 bucks. But I knew that it was coming out of main joint. But I had bought a couple of things just for me. So I called him on the phone. I was like, hey, 10 bucks is going to be coming out of the account.

it's not all main joint i went and bought colt da da da and seven of it's going to be from mad money i'll transfer it later i'm a communication and that i'm drawn of i know what's supposed to come out of here and not all of it was supposed to come out of here so it's going to come out of this account yeah so i think that's really really really important and there's a lot of you know money is the most fought about thing among couples it's like the leading cause of divorce and yada yada yada yada I think this is so important. You could have taken this stance. Well, it's my money.

I don't need to account for every single dime to him. He's not the boss of me, whatever. And that's not how you grow a partnership. I've been married a lot longer than you. So I feel like I can go ahead and give you advice. Plus, it's my show so I can say what I want. But you know, you're a partnership. And if you look at it as an adversarial relationship, you're always going to have a problem.

If you're looking at it as this is my money, then you're always going to. to be offended. And there's so many things to be offended about. Don't look for reasons to be offended. Don't look for fights because they kind of come whenever they come and, you know, leave money off the table. And I still call up Carl and say, hey, do you mind if I spend $15 on a purse? He's like, no, I don't care. And I know he's going to say, no, I don't care. But I still want to just double check with him. And that is absolutely perfect. It is the respect. If you don't have respect for your spouse, your marriage is going to fail. And why are you getting? married just to go to a divorce. That's no fun. I've heard. I don't know.

Let's transition here and say, and you know, it sounds like you guys graduated from college with about $200,000 in combined student loan debt and maybe enough cash to get by to move on with things. This system that you've put in place has helped you with your relationship, but let's talk numbers. How has this helped you as a, you know, a couple that I think many people, many of our listeners can relate to, how has this helped you guys attack that student loan debt and grow net worth and investable liquidity? So I do have the numbers here. When we first got married, our what I called our savings rate, or really the money that we made every month that wasn't accounted for somehow was about 15%. So that's 15% of the money that we brought in that we

could put towards paying extra on loans, putting towards long-term investments, that kind of thing. Now up to a 30% savings rate, so 30% of the money that we bring in can go towards those types of things. That's not including what automatically goes towards my retirement, though, because I don't include that is income that kind of just automatically comes out. Even better to not include that. Yes. We were able to pay off, up until now, we've paid off about $80,000 worth of college debt. Wow. This is actually, thank you.

I actually heard this tip. I forget where it may have been, I don't remember. Okay. But people worry about planning for their children's college a lot of times. But this person said, why don't you just figure out how to pay off your home before your kid goes to college and then that money can go towards their college. So I kind of work backwards to say, okay, well, if we pay at least this much towards college debt, how fast can we pay it off? and then if we pay that off, how much do we need to pay to pay off our house before our oldest child goes to college? Okay, well, we can definitely do that.

And that's without putting any more towards it than we are currently, which the plan is, you know, our living expenses are pretty well fixed. As I get a raise, she gets a raise. As we make more money through real estate, we can put more of that towards paying off loans and getting out of debt. So we can definitely achieve paying off college, paying off our house, getting completely out of debt by the time our kids are in college. And then that unlocks a tremendous amount of money to help with college for them and hopefully keep them out of the same boat that we were in. And then another number that I have. So we didn't start tracking net worth immediately. We only started tracking that January 2017 is actually when I started.

looking at that. Following kiosakis. And that was actually right around the same time I started looking into net worth because he had his whole, if anybody's watched any of that kind of thing, it's, you know, your income expenses and then assets and liabilities. So I was like, okay, I wonder what our net worth is. Well, January 2017, it was negative $6,000. And now we're at about $150,000. That's awesome. I'll give you a round of applause, too. That's amazing. And I mean, Well, even looking at the January 17 net worth of negative 6,000 when you came out of school with negative 200,000, I mean, that's really fantastic. Nice job. How old is your oldest?

He just turned two in April. So Broderick, we call Brody for short. We found out we were pregnant with him in August of 2015, which was a surprise. I was actually at work feeling sick. something in my head was like just maybe and my first person to find out was my boss I went to her office crying like what do I do and she goes do you want to go home and I was like no I'm just going to do this there I might as well get paid for doing this so as luck would have it Nick happened to be on a business trip and the doctor wanted to see me right away

So I had the happy pleasure of telling him over FaceTime. So I put up like a random picture. I think it was a pregnancy test and it says like you plus me equals three or something. And he was like, ugh. I remember. What noise is that again? I was laying down in my hotel bed at the time. If I wasn't laying down, I probably would have passed out.

We were in the process of talking about, you know, like when do we want to have children? And that's kind of funny because I feel like the weekend before that we were like talking about like, oh, maybe like six months or a year from now or something. You know, we start to look into that. So it was like the week after that, I was on a business trip down in Western Virginia. And then this happened that I was like, holy cow, is this a joke? Yeah, it was not a joke. So yeah, so I thought he was going to have to take off work. So we did, We had appointment that Friday, so this was Monday. And he was supposed to come home Thursday.

So I knew that he needed to be there. So he needed to know so that he could tell his boss he was not going to be at work on Friday. And how else do I tell you than tell you? Yeah. So that's awesome. The reason I was asking that is your plan is really admirable here. You're going to pay off your student load, get out of completely out of debt by the time your kid goes to college. But this brings to mind the concept that Brandon Turner, who's one of our colleagues in hosting,

or the Bigger Pockets podcast has for getting his kid through college, which is he bought a fourplex. He's put it on a 15-year mortgage. And his goal is to pay it completely down and then either refinance, take another load to pay for college, use the cash flow to help or sell it and pay for college. And you're doing that same approach with your home. It seems like you pay it off so that you can refinance or sell it for college

education. So I think it's an interesting way to use real estate as a savings vehicle for college education. Yeah. While also reaping the benefit. of the cash flow until the kid goes through, goes to college in Brandon's case. And, you know, you might move up and keep this house to put the bill for the other. And we discussed real estate and researched it for about a solid year until we actually

made our first real estate purchase. So in that year, there was a lot of, you know, reading books and listening to Bigger Pockets. I believe that was before the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, but then Bigger Pockets Money once you guys came out with it. So we're very familiar with, you know, Brandon's kind of plan. We've kind of discussed that similar thing. We might get to that point. I actually think his daughter is about Brody's age. I think so. So in the years after you graduated college, it sounded like you started with around $200,000 in student loan debt. And then you worked to begin paying that off and incrementally reduce your savings rate from 15% to 30% through good budgeting and money management. Then you read Rich Dad Poor Dad and those concepts seem to register

and your net worth explodes. You go from negative $6,000 to $150,000 in wealth, which I have to imagine is a drastic acceleration of the rate of wealth that you're building. What did you do to drive that? So around that time I got my first promotion. So this was almost around the time. I was graduating my MBA. So that was part of my... That was a year before. It was a year before, you're right. That was part of my kind of leverage in the interview process.

And one of the things that I said, you know, hey, I'm almost done with my MBA. You guys are investing in this and me. This is going to be a great opportunity for me. I started out as an engineer. I applied for a position as a manufacturing manager. So I got that job in... I think it was in November or December. No, it was August 20...

16, I believe. And that gave me a pretty decent pay bump. And we were able to put pretty much all of that towards investments. I know there's different trains of thought, you know, one put all your money towards paying off debt right now after you have a small amount of savings. Another put all of it towards investments in real estate. I kind of split it right in the middle. We do some with stocks. We do stocks, mutual funds, indexes. funds, that kind of stuff, some towards real estate, some towards paying loans off. So it was really dividing that money out. Once I got put into management, I was on our managerial bonus plan. So I got a bonus that year, a pretty good chunk. We used that for our down payment on our first property we bought. And I believe you got a different job. You took a different job that was a pretty good pay raise around the same time. So those stars all kind of aligned at the same time. And, and I believe, And then since then I've actually accepted another position. I'm now the engineering manager for my company.

So that was another promotion for me. That's great. It sounds like you got some raises and additional cash inflow. But I find it there's got to be some other things that play as well when you have $150,000 in net worth increase. I imagine you didn't get $150,000 in cash saved in those 18 months, right? So our first property, we bought played a pretty good role into that. We bought a triplex values, probably around 100,000.

It was on the market for a while in a little bit of rough shape. We got it for, I think, around 70,000. That was 72,5. So I did a lot of renovations to it, putting in new flooring, new fixtures, new countertops. Yeah, a lot of different stuff to new paint. That was a big one. Made it look a lot nicer. That was our first one. And then just recently came in to our second property, which is a five unit also locally. But I'm buying that from actually a family member that whenever I got into real estate didn't even kind of really think of until one night he was back in town. And we were just kind of talking. And I had mentioned that I bought a triplex. And he was like, well, why don't you buy my house? I want to sell it. You know, I'm getting close to.

70 years old. I'm done with this. I'll give you a good deal, you know, being that your family, and that was another, it's worth over 100,000. And we got it for around 65,000. That's awesome. Yeah. Wow. And how are you financing that? Because I know a five-unit property is commercial. Are you getting a commercial loan? Is he being the bank for you? He's the bank for us. So it actually worked out for this one. Yeah, really nice. And kind of how we talked through it, because his initial pitch was like, well, you just manage the thing and pay for all the expenses. And then in five years, you'll own it.

But expenses are around $10,000 a year. So I was like, well, that's kind of a lot to pay per year. Are you looking for, yeah. We wouldn't be getting any profit either. Right. I was like, if you're looking for monthly income, I can pay you over a little bit longer of a term. I'll even give you, you know, money up front and then give you a monthly payment, but I still need to be able to cover all my costs and still make a little bit of a profit while I'm doing that.

So he said, you know what, that works. So we agreed to like a 10-year term with a small down payment. And that worked out for him. He said, well, you know what? This is working out for me too. I'm getting 10 years of income still from this property even after I don't have to deal with it. And we have ownership then after 10 years. Okay. So the bossy mom and me is just wanting to say, did you get that in writing? Yes. Okay. Okay.

We're actually still doing paperwork for it all. Yeah. But I have an attorney. He has an attorney. Perfect. Yeah. The best time to do a deal is when everybody's still friends. We hammer out all the details when everybody still likes each other.

And I am in the Bigger Pockets forums all day every day talking about real estate. And people are like, oh, hey, I got into this partnership. and I didn't do anything in writing and now they want to do this and I don't want to do that and I'm like, oh, it's kind of too late for you. So it's not too late for you and I don't want to dwell on it. But I just, I'm so bossy. I just have to say that. So, okay. I don't think I mentioned our first property was through just a regular bank loan.

So we have a mortgage on that one. And we actually, even though it's a triplex, we did a commercial loan on it. So it's a 25 year loan, amortized over 20. 20 year loan amortized over 30 with a balloon at the end of 20 years. Oh, at the end of 20 years. That's a good commercial. Wow. We need to have you on the bigger pockets.

Real estate podcast. You have eight total units or we'll have once the five flex goes through. Okay. So that's awesome. That sounds like you just leverage some great advantages, continue to accelerate your savings rate, and intelligently deployed the excess capital that came into. your situation. So,

congrats on all that rapid success there. What's next for you guys over the next couple of years? What are your goals? For as far as us, we want to double units every year. So initially our goal for this year. So we closed on our first property on December 29th, 2017, the last business day, 2017. It was my New Year's resolution to buy a property in 2017.

And I made a thousand. in Excel sheets and drug my feet the whole way. And she said, we were getting towards the end of December. She was like, Nick, this is a good property and you know it. All of your numbers say it's good. Even your worst case scenarios say it's good. Are we going to buy this or what? We only have a couple weeks left. And I was like, okay, yes, we're going to buy it. And we closed the last business day of 2017. So for 2017, we had three units. So our goal for 2018 was to get three more and double. So now we have eight. So then next year, I guess we'll go to 16 if we don't buy anything else for the rest of the year.

Because of the way we financed this property, we still have some cash in the bank that we could do another down payment on another property before the end of the year. Just because you didn't mention, but instead of doing the down payment in one lump sum, we're actually doing part of the down payment at the beginning of the loan. And at the end of 10 years, we're going to do part of the down payment at the end. So we're only paying like a third of our down payment at the beginning. So because of that, we still have a lot of money in our reserves that we can actually deploy into another property if we so choose. If we find one. Yeah. Okay.

I'm going to jump in here with a real estate tip. I wrote a whole article on the Bigger Pockets blog called Do Ask, Do Tell. And the number one way to get, I shouldn't say number one. I use that too much. One very great way to get more properties is just to tell everybody you know what. Like you do. Uncle, if you don't tell him, because guess what? Everybody is terrible at reading minds. Nobody is going to know what you have in your head unless it comes out of your mouth.

So tell everybody you know that you are interested in investing in real estate or you want to be a babysitter or you're trying to start your catering practice or whatever it is that you want to do. Tell the world. The real question, though, is when do you get to increase the amount of money you put aside in your mad accounts? How much cash put you need for that? That even talks to this guy. Nick's like, stop, stop, stop. Once we get a sizable enough pay increase, usually what I'll do is if we get to the point where we say, okay, I can put another, you know, $100 towards paying off loans, $100 towards savings,

maybe we'll put another $5 or $10 a week towards. I remember a conversation. Every property we get, we get $5 a week. I don't remember that. Suddenly, Alyssa starts. Every property. Yeah, I don't have that in writing. Suddenly, Alyssa starts recording every conversation from there on out.

Okay, so. This is great. It sounds like you guys, I mean, you guys have a great story here of getting into a lot of debt, slowly and consistently, putting in a system that works for your relationship and your financial picture to begin over time, increasing that savings rate. And then the light bulb seemed to have clicked on in early 2017, and you made some really big significant strides in both your career and your investment portfolio over that time to dramatically accelerate your net worth. And it seems like that's something that you expect to be able to continue going forward with these purchases now that you're kind of getting comfortable. Where's the finish line for you guys?

Is it just going to double for every couple of years? We talked about this. And we're not quite sure. There may be a point where we reach, I think we're estimating maybe. 10 years from now, reaching financial freedom, and just saying, okay, this is it. Like, we're done. We're just going to manage our properties for the rest of our lives and we're just going to be happy. Or right now, we might just keep going and see where this takes us. I've said, you know, having the ability to be able to say, you know, I'm free. I can do whatever

I want is a nice thought that I want to be able to have. But at the same time, I still enjoy what I do. I've always enjoyed what I do. So I don't have any plans to not do what I do or kind of, you know, try to climb the corporate ladder. Ultimately, my drop dead goal is, so we are planning on having another child eventually. And the thought is when that child is out of college, I want to be able to retire, which would put me in my early 50s, certainly might decide I want to go before that. if I want to, but it's still kind of up in the air. And then as far as how many properties, you know, maybe we get the 50 and say, you know what, that's good. It's enough work for us, but not too much. Maybe we build a team and, you know, keep going to 100 or more. It's all kind of up in the air right now, but we at least know the direction we're working towards. Okay. So you said in the beginning that you really enjoy your job. And Alyssa, you said that you also really enjoy your job. So just because you get to financial independence doesn't mean you have to quit.

And I saw an article this past week on Yahoo Finance written by a guy who said, oh, financial independence isn't this, you know, great thing. This is why I hate the financial independence movement. And he goes on to talk about how people, they seem to assume that you hate your job. Well, there's not that many people out there that really love their job. I really love my job. I said this a ton of times. It's like my favorite thing. I feel guilty when I go to work because I'm leaving my husband to, you know, home with the two fighting kids. I'm like, well, sorry, I'm going to go have fun. I'm going to go record a podcast.

Wow, what a horrible life I have. But you don't have to retire. So just getting there, you know, getting there is really, really fantastic. And then it gives you its freedom to do whatever you want, including continuing to work. Now, you had mentioned that you have one child. and then you said you might want to have another one. Kids are really, really expensive and they can kind of, well, okay, if you read all of the stories and you believe what you read on the internet, can't put it there if it's not true,

right? Yeah. One of my favorite quotes. Oh, my goodness, I could go down a path. But what are some of the things that you do to kind of mitigate those circumstances? Because one of the things that I get a lot, one of the questions I get a lot is, you know, how do I handle daycare expenses? How do I handle all these child expenses that, you know, maybe I had a,

child unexpectedly or maybe I even plant it out and I'm like, oh, yeah, wow, they really are expensive, you know, because they, the expenses just add up. Yeah. As far as actually having him saving into, if you are lucky enough to have an HSA saving into it, helped us tremendously as far as actually paying for having him. Now budgeting to have a baby, like to live with a baby is different. But I don't think, I think we set it up in a way that he is not that expensive. wood so far we're doing a pretty good job with them um so i put a couple bullet points down like things that i can think of of ways that we really mitigate the cost of having a baby buying clothing purposefully is one so simple things mix and match separates that you can wash and wear and if you need to change

the bottom you don't need to change top i am very particular even in my closet like i am not we might be getting a walk-in closet, but I don't really need one because I really don't like clutter. So whenever I'm buying clothes for him in one size, this is summer season. So he gets 14 short-sleeved, seven long-sleeve, 14 shorts, seven pants, two pajamas, one jacket, and two pairs of shoes. That's his wardrobe for this size. And he's in like 24 months, two-tie right now. And then in the winter months, like, I'll alternate, you know, 14 long-sleeve and seven

short sleeve. But that's like our simple formula to keep me from overspending. Like I don't buy like I'll buy him Christmas pajamas, but I will not buy like Halloween pajamas. I won't buy him like a Halloween pajamas. Like he dresses up. But like the clothing that you can wear for one day like Brody does not own. Right. My parents still buy me Christmas pajamas. Mine too. This is my favorite pajamas. That's my favorite statement from you ever, Scott. I get a whole drawer full of pajama bottoms. That's like half my clothes seem to be Christmas pajamas.

I've collected over the last 15 years. I will say one pair. So we get fleece pajamas because we live in Pennsylvania. So we get quite a bit of snow where the, what, second snowiest city in Pennsylvania or something? Third. We'll get an official count later. But I will get like one winter set. you're really going anywhere in pajamas.

And then he gets like one like Santa's coming pajamas. I love it. I love it. So that's one way. Second thing is so if you can as a dietitian, if you can breastfeed, that is a huge cost saver. If you cannot breastfeed, fed is best. I stand by that. I was formula fed.

Nick was formula fed for part of his childhood. We both came out. Okay. I'm not shaming anyone who needs to formula feed. or chooses to do so. But it is expensive. So talk to mom groups. I'm a member of a bunch of mom groups on Facebook,

and there are always people with coupons, and they'll say, like, who needs this coupon? I got it in the mail. I don't need it. Check your doctor's office. They have a lot of coupons or ask your doctor. If you are a parent of a baby who needs, like, a special formula that is broken down,

so you have like a preemie that needs, or you have gastric issues or allergies and you need to get a special formula, Those are even more expensive. Talk to the hospital, talk to a NICU, or even call the formula company directly and see if there's anything they can do. Also, check your insurance. Sometimes your insurance, if it's a medical necessity, you can get it covered under your insurance to you. Oh, that's a good one.

I didn't formula feed my children. So I would take, they inundate you with coupons. If you sign up for one thing, all of a sudden, you've got like, and every coupon was like $5 off. It's not even a small amount. It's a considerable amount of money off of the formula. And I did give them to people who needed them because I didn't need them. But I didn't know that you could go, like, call the formula company itself or the NICU. That's a great plan.

That's a great tip. Or what else is the thing I say? There's, I can't remember. It might be simulac. I can't remember. But we signed up for something right whenever I was pregnant. And they sent us two cans of formula. I mean, if you're from the feeding us, like you want to pep, it.

actually times like Brody needed. So Brody had jaundice. So the kind of jaundice he had, I needed to formula feed him and alternate breastfeeding, which is super fun. So I had to utilize that formula. So even if you think you're going to be breastfeeding, it's not a bad idea.

And I ended up having some leftover. And our church actually had a formula drive. So I got to donate the rest of it to another family that could use it. it was all still in date and still not opened or anything. So check, yeah, check your churches. That's another good point. I should say that. Check your churches.

What about child care expenses? How do you care for Brody? Okay. So childcare is a puzzle. We mentioned that I got a different job. I was very lucky to get a different job where I went from going five days a week. Now I work four days a week. And I actually make the same amount of money that I did at my old job.

So I am with Brody one week, day a week. And then my mother typically, once in a while she can't. And once in a while, your mom can't. Typically, my mom and his mom both take a day during the week. And then he is in daycare two days a week, most weeks, otherwise three days a week, if one of them can't do it. So daycare, we looked around for a while because we knew that he was going to be able to be part time, which is hard to come by. Most daycares, if you look into them, they might let you go part-time, but they will charge you as if your child is there five days a week. So we had to do some research in living in a town of only 12,000 people.

There's not that many daycares around here. I went to see one. I talked to a few. This was the second one I actually went to see, and it was the one we ended up with. I think the biggest thing, now two years into being a parent of a child going to daycare, he's been going to daycare since he was. 10 weeks old. Interview them. You are the parent.

You are entrusting your most precious gift with people. You need to feel comfortable with who you're leaving them with, who you are leaving your child with. Be honest with what you're looking for. We cloth diaper, which is another hurdle to get over in the child care realm. We are so fortunate that we have a daycare that will cloth diaper him because it's another way that we can save money. ask those questions and anything else that you're looking for.

They were really open to, I was really particular with how he was fed, you know, sitting him up versus laying him back because we didn't want him to be a lazy eater. We still wanted him to be a good nurseer. So start early. We started, I think I was doing April. This is actually kind of late by pregnancy standards, but we started like around the holidays. So like Thanksgiving, Christmas, we were looking. I know people who start like the day that they find out they're pregnant.

You just start early and get on that track. That way you're not really settling. You're not trying to like scurry around and find what works best for you. And understand that you're going to be giving up control. So no facility will be perfect because it's not going to be you. And that's something that as a working parent and as myself a working mother, you have to like the first days are rough but you will get through it and you will get over it and I think as time has gone on I love the socialization that he gets I love the mix of child care that we have and I know we are so fortunate to have that but understand that you're going to be giving up a lot of control when you you look into daycares as far as cost for daycare now we're at what you know that it costs $26.50 for the two days that he's there but we have to reserve a third day even if he's not there but that's half

price so seven it's like $70 a week a little with taxes and now it just recently went down because he turned two yeah so as they get dollars a week that's that's a lot less than I thought it would be that's awesome for it's two and a half or three days a week depending on what you're it's a lot less than comparable ones I know her sister lives down in the DC area and it's easily double what we pay per day. I think she pays $250 a week. Yeah, kind of the densely populated areas, you pay a lot more than the more rural areas.

Well, it's also point out that you guys, your professions could have probably taken you to other places. Like, I assume you could get similar jobs in a city that would pay more. But you've chosen to live close to family, it sounds like. And you reap the reward of that by having, you know, grandma involved in the child's life. and also there's a financial benefit to that as well. So I think that there's, you know, that's a choice you made, which I think is to your benefit. Definitely.

Yep. I mean, I think everything down there is probably about twice the price. Yeah. Anything else that you want to add in about your journey to, you know, where you started, how you've scaled, what your goals are in the future, how you've kind of taken your lumps and, you know, I'm brave, I guess, a baby's not a lump. A baby is an unexpected, uh, delight. Wonderful delight. Yes. Got his child with.

I'm childless. Sometimes I phrase those things poorly. But anything you want to add before we move to this famous four? I think having a child for me was the light bulb. Nick, I think, was more in that direction already. But having a baby really changed everything to me. I loathed coming back from maternity leave. And I said previously now I've come to know that I need that time away.

I don't know that I need to be. full time four days a week works pretty well for me right now but that was the click that I needed was I don't want to have to leave you like it's okay if I choose like you said Mindy like I love my job I want to go but there's a difference between wanting to go and having to go so that was that light switch where when we found out we were having Brody and I actually had to leave him having these things set up like using cloth diapers and instead of using regular diapers, that's a big difference. I have the numbers here.

I actually did my own spreadsheet. Let it be known. Let it be known. Nick rubbed off on Alyssa. I did. I did a spreadsheet of, so I did pamper's. Diapers are the most popular. Cost for pamper's.

This is from Pamper's website. It takes 36 months on average to diaper a baby. That's the now the average is three years old. They potty trained. Brody's potty training right now. So, woo. Yay. That's huge, Scott.

Yes. I don't know. 27 months old, it's a big day. You'll never talk so much about bathroom habits in your life. Pambers are the most popular diapers and from their website 36 months. And from their website, I went through the average amount of diapers you will use every day. So it depends on the size of the baby. And the cost to have one baby in diapers is $2,200 for three years.

Wow. Oh, my God. I can't. And, you know, when you're spending it $50 at a time, $30 at a time, it's been a while since I bought diapers. But when you're spending it $30 at a time, you don't add it up like that in your head. And I think one of the big things, I also clothed diaper. and well I did like a combination and I think one of the big things that is such a hurdle for the

cloth diapering aside from the laundry which is not that bad if you're already if you have a baby you're already doing way more laundry than you were going to but aside from the laundry is the cost there's an upfront cost and I'm not going to steal your thunder but that's that's an all up front but then you never pay for anything again so share the share the cloth diaper yes so our our diapers we spent $575 on cloth diapers and that was with their

the company we used called Grovia. I am not affiliated with them. I just love them so much. They've been with us for two years. And so they have either Earth Day or Black Friday. They have two sales where you get 20% off.

And so that's what we did. We bought them around Earth Day. $575. I think we had about 12, 12-ish diapers, 12, 20, 20 diapers. Grovia is a more expensive cloth diaper company. You do not need to spend that much.

There are people who can spend less. I bought them all new, which you can actually buy, use cloth diapers, which I will get to. So that is, and that's it, $575. But like I said, Grovia is a more expensive brand. They have a very active BST, which is buy-sell trade, and you can actually sell pretty well-used diapers for half the cost. So not only will, can we use these for our next baby, but we can sell them afterward.

So 575 divided by two babies is what, $200 and say, what, $30 something, dollars. And then divide that and half again for selling them. It's like a little over $100 a baby. So it's crazy. And it's not that hard. It's not that hard. And you can't reuse those disposable diapers.

No. That was my, that was part of me. My little bleeding heart was the diapers. Okay. We are going to move on to the famous four. This is the new famous four. These are the same four questions that we ask everybody who comes on the podcast. There's actually five because we don't count properly.

It's only a money show. We're only talk about numbers, but let's not count. Okay. So what is your favorite finance book? I will go first. I have two Mr. Scott Trench. is one set for life. I read it, I think as it came out, I read it.

I actually listened to the audio version, which I like when authors read their own books. So that is a good one. And the second book that I listened to on audio, on Audible is the 10X role by Grant Cardone. I highly recommend this one too. He does a lot of ad-libbing in Audible, which I think I forget what podcast I listened to.

Maybe it was Bigger Pockets he was on. He talks about how he just adds in all these things. And I loved it. And it really changes your perspective on what goals you want to set and how far you want to reach. So I loved both of those books. I couldn't choose. And my favorite was a cash flow quadrant actually by Robert Kiyosaki. So I kind of read them out of order.

I watched that YouTube video, which really kind of summarized what Rich Dad, Poor Dad was. But really it seems like Rich Dad Poor Dad is really kind of a good story to get you in the right mindset. but cash flow quadrant really kind of goes a little bit more detailed into ways to make money. So that's kind of why I liked it better. Awesome. What was your biggest money mistake? Hmm. No, this is an easy one.

College debt. I wouldn't say going to college, but the way I went to college. However, I will qualify this with, I don't know if I can say it's a regret or a mistake, because I might not be sitting here with you lovely people today if I had not made it. So I work with it. Some days I struggle more than others. I'd be lying if I didn't have a guilt trip

every now and then over college, but it's gotten us here. And my biggest financial mistake was actually back close to when I started working. So it was probably my first big boy car that I purchased. And I only had it for about a year because I didn't like it. And I lost probably about like $3,000 by buying it and selling it within the same year.

The reason I didn't like it is I drive about 45 minutes to work. And we have a good bit of snow in Pennsylvania and they throw rocks all over the road. And it had this design at the back of the back door where it like just kind of caught all of the rocks. I'm not going to say the brand because I don't want to damage the brand. But it rusted like, and it was only a couple year old car. And it rusted there, like, immediately. And I'm pretty handy. So I ground the whole thing down to like bare metal, got all the rust off, primed it, repainted it and everything.

Actually put like clear, that clear like plastic car protection tape over it. And by December of that year, it was already starting to rust in that spot again. So I sold it. I think I bought it for like 16,000. And then less than a year later, I sold it for like 13,000. Wow, yeah, cars are always a big money mistake. Almost everybody has a car money mistake story to tell. But it sounds like you did a pretty good job salvaging the situation. Yeah. And now I actually do pretty interesting stuff with my vehicles. So I still use my

mechanical abilities. But what I do, as I said, I drive a lot to work. So the fact that my cars were always depreciating kind of bothered me. So I figured out that if I buy salvage title vehicles, which are wrecked vehicles, I can buy them for what they would be valued higher than what I could purchase them for after I fixed them. And then say, okay, if I drive it for a year to a year and a half and put 15 to 20,000 miles on it, what will it be valued a year from now and what can I sell it then for? So I buy a car for, let's say, $5,000 into it for the car parts, paint everything to fix it. It's worth $6,500, $7,000 all fixed up.

Once you fix it, it becomes an R title. And then I can sell it a year from then for $5,500, $6,000 and buy another car and do the same thing again. And theoretically, not really depreciate my car. Wow, that's a nice hack. Yeah, flipping cars instead of flipping houses. Okay. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Okay.

So my advice is for the spenders. Don't get overwhelmed with, I feel like people get overwhelmed with, oh my gosh, this person is doing 700 different things and I don't even know where to start. Start with one thing. Start with writing down what you're actually spending. Start with something. Start with packing your lunch, you know, start there and then keep building. If you are the saver in a relationship and you're trying to get a spender to come to your, come to the, I guess the bright side, not the dark side, come to your side of the fence,

trusting, gaining that trust in your relationship. And the best advice, I actually work in long-term care as a dietitian. and I love working with people wiser than I am. The best advice I heard was from a 95-year-old man who was married to his wife and she had passed away. But the advice he gave me was in a marriage, you always need a leader and a follower. You don't always need to be the leader

and you don't always need to be a follower, but you can't both be one of them. You can't have two leaders or your butt heads and you can't have two followers or you won't get anywhere. So trust your spouse. and lead and follow when you need to follow. And you'll get there. Perfect.

That's good advice. That's great advice. Yeah, it's best. And my advice is make a budget. It might not look good at first, but if you at least make it and can figure out what's coming in and what's going out, you can figure out where to look. But you can't really get ahead until you know those numbers

and know what your current state looks. like and you have to figure out in your day-to-day, month-to-month life, how much money are you spending and how much money are you making before you can start making tweaks and getting yourself on the right path. Awesome. Love it. Hardest question here. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? I am not funny at all. I am like standing in the corner talking to one person, but if I talk at all, it'll be a friend's reference. So that's all I have. That's all you're getting.

I can't, I'm not funny. I'm really not. I'm normally sticking my foot in my mouth. Since she doesn't get to tell a joke, I get to tell two. Because I love telling jokes. And after I tell the first joke, I'll tell you why I want to tell the second one. So the first one, there's three kids and there are. arguing about whose dad is the cooler dad.

And so the first kid says, my dad is the fastest dad in the whole world. He can take a bow and arrow and shoot it at a target and run and catch the arrow before it hits the target. And the second kid goes, no, no, no, my dad's the fastest dad in the world. He can shoot a gun at a target and go catch the bullet before it hits the target. And the third kid says, no, you're both wrong. My dad's the fastest dad in the world. My dad's a contractor.

He gets off work at three and gets home at 2.30. That's a very appropriate real estate joke. And since I've offended all the contractors, I now have to tell an engineering joke to make fun of myself so people don't get mad at me. So how do you tell an introverted engineer from an extroverted engineer? I don't know. How do you tell you? The introverted engineer will stare down at his shoes while he's talking to you, while the extroverted engineer will stare at your shoes while he's talking to you. As someone married to an introverted engineer, I can say yes.

That's hilarious. Okay. You're sure you don't have a joke, Alyssa? I don't. Okay. Where can people find out more about you guys? I am, so we don't have a website right now, but I'm active on Facebook. You can find me at Alyssa Paris.

I guess my name, A-L-I-S-A-P-A-R-O-S. On Instagram, I'm Alyssa. Paris. And I'm really active there, too, on bigger pockets, Alyssa Paris, on LinkedIn. That's where the best place is to find me. And for me, I have a Facebook as well. I don't do a whole lot of Facebooking,

but also Nick Paris. And Bigger Pockets, I do try to talk a good bit now that I am kind of knowledgeable, at least a little bit in the real estate market. So I try to answer people's questions. I feel good when I can help people out. So I definitely am active on Bigger Pockets. Awesome. And we will have links to all of these, all of your social media and all of your, like your

Facebook and your BiggerPockets links in the show notes of this show, which is biggerpockets. com slash Money Show 29. All right. Well, thank you, Nick and Alyssa, for taking the time out. of your day to share your story with us. I really appreciate it. And thank you for reaching out so that we could chat. Yeah.

Thank you so much for having us. Thanks for having us on. This is a lot of fun. Okay, we will talk to you later. See ya. Bye. All right, that was Nick and Alyssa Paris. They have been doing a great job.

And I thought that was a fantastic show. I mean, what a lot of great lessons there about how to manage your financial philosophy within your family and how to, you know, construct a budget. How to change your mindset from. just budgeting and paying off debt to building net worth and then take the strides necessary to make that happen while working full-time jobs with a child and potentially planning for a larger future family. Well, and not only that, but even more basic is just figuring out how to work together with

your spouse when you have a disagreement. You know, this was a pretty big disagreement about money that they had right at the very beginning. Like, what did you say, the first weekend and she goes out and spends $800 on supplies? and I can totally see where she's coming from. This is our first house. I want to make it great. If you don't make conscious spending decisions, money just kind of flies out of your pockets.

So instead of saying, hey, this is going to be a really big problem or instead of having massive fights about it, they figured out how to work together and now they're both on the same plan. Yeah, and that plan is working and producing real results. $80,000 in student loan debt paid off, $150,000 in net worth in 18 months, $156,000, at least net worth created. in the 18 months, using the advantages that are there for them with family in the same town, getting a great deal, having a grandma come in and help with the child care and watching their

baby. I mean, they're just making smart decisions left and right. And I think it's just a fantastic example that's got a lot of great things that are repeatable for a lot of people out there. Yes. And, you know, having a kind of a curveball thrown at you with an unplanned. baby can really derail your plans and they didn't let that stop them. So I really like that part of that story too. Awesome. Well, should we get out of here? We should. I am going to go

hang out with my family and you are going to go. What are you going to do? Do whatever it is I'm going to do this evening, you know? Oh, mystery. No, my girlfriend runs a summer tech camp. It's a really prestigious program and she's that runs the whole thing with hundreds of students and dozens of employees. So she's actually asked to stay over there a couple nights a week. And so tonight I have a lonely house to myself. So I'll probably, I don't know, play video games and make popcorn. I was just going to say, let me guess. Let me guess you're going to play video games, Scott. Yep, something like that. Okay, well, I will not keep you from your video games. From episode 29 of of the Bigger Pockets Money Show, this is Mindy Jensen over and out.