BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 35: Hacking Your Life to Live for (Almost) Free with Craig Curelop

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

Graduating from college, Craig Curelop had amassed an impressive $25,000 savings account - AND $85,000 in student loan debt. Conventional advice is to pay off your student loans BEFORE investing. In this episode, we hear how Craig ignored this advice... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 35 where we interview Craig Kierlop from BiggerPockets.com. And so just kind of polishing and you just have these like weeks where you just spend such little money. And it's and I still have fun because I know the activities that I enjoy doing, which are hiking, just hanging out with friends, playing volleyball in the park, Frisbee, all that kind of stuff. They don't cost any money. So I would just go do those things and still lived a very fulfilling life. But I just didn't go out to the bars and spend $400 in the table at a club. 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, here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? I am doing fantastic today. Scott, how are you doing today? I am doing great.

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Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at Audible. Craig, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going? Hey, thanks for having me, guys. It's going great here. How are you guys doing? I'm doing really great. So Scott was just saying that you invest in real estate in Denver and you're doing very well with it. But you're 20-something. You just moved here. It's a hot market. There's no deals to be found. So obviously he's full of crap. Yeah, it's kind of full of crap. Yeah. I mean, you know, Denver is definitely a harder market to invest in nowadays, especially if you're just going to go about the traditional route. I'm sure there are better cash flowing markets out there. But, you know, for someone my age and I guess like in my

situation, it makes sense to kind of try to, you know, you got to figure out like, you got to take what the market gives you. And that's kind of what I feel like I've been doing. You can't really overpower the market. It's like in sports and stuff, especially in basketball. My basketball coach used to always tell me, you got to take who the defense gives you, whether they give you a jump shot or you can give you like a lane to drive the hole in, you do that. So in Denver here, I feel like the play right now is single family homes rent by the room. And that's kind of how you can get a cash flowing property that also has a high likelihood of appreciating over time. Awesome. Well, let's tease all of our listeners with that preview and then jump back to the

beginning and start with your story here so that people can get acquainted with how you built your financial position such that you can actually invest in Denver and do it successfully here now. So let's start with maybe when you, what your situation was like graduating college. Yeah. So when I graduated college, I guess let's take it even a few years further back. Or even in high school and so like that, basically I've been working since I was, I mean, I've been working for my dad since I was like five years old. But I've been working for someone that's not my parents. Like immediately when I could get a job at like 14 to get a workers permit, I started working. And I've always been just a basically like a perennial saver.

Like I've always been saving, saving, saving. And so I didn't know what I was saving for. and I was just, I always enjoyed watching that number in my savings account go up. And so, by the time I got into college, I had a couple grand saved up. And I had a whole bunch of student loans and all that kind of stuff. And I didn't spend all that much money in college. I always worked throughout college. So again, I kind of just broke even all throughout college. So I came out of college with a decent amount, still in significantly negative net worth because

of my student loans, but at least some cash in the bank. And then that kind of just as I was, you know, I went to a school too that did internships. And they were all required to be paid internships. And you got paid a reasonable salary for someone in college. It was like $25 to $30 an hour for these internships. Wow. So it was, yeah. So it was like basically a normal living wage.

And I did not really have school expenses during that time. I was basically like a real adult in college. And so that allowed me to save even more during those times. So by the time I graduated college, I had about between 20 and $30,000 kind of just saved up. In your bank account? Yeah. Okay. So where was college?

College was Northeastern University in Boston. They have this co-op program where basically students do these six-month internships. Basically they go six months of classes, six months of internships, and they do that rotation for three years. And for a business person, they're mandatory paid internships. So they have to pay us. And that's one of the great parts about Northeastern to give my hometown a homeschool a shout out. Yeah, I'm going to give your homeschool a shout out too.

So instead of going for nine months on school, no job, whatever, you're attending school for six months. And then for the other six months, you're working in a mandatory paid internships. It's paying you $25 an hour. Yeah, it ranges from like 15 for your first one up to 35, even 40 for your last one. Yeah, but $15 an hour is an intern is amazing. Yeah, no, it's a really good program. Wow. And you get the experience too, of course.

Well, yeah. So you graduate college with a degree. and how many years of experience? Like two solid years of experience. Yeah, it's like two years. Like when I graduated college, I had like four legitimate jobs on my resume to go send out to potential employers

that I could work for. And I was, yeah, 22 at the time. So I think that was probably the most valuable thing that Northeastern has to provide. Well, so it sounds like you had a really fantastic college experience that really prepared you to enter the workforce, but then also you were just smart with your money in general in college.

What was your mindset at this? point. Was it, I need to save this up so I could make an investment or was it just, I'm going to be frugal and conservative? Or what were you kind of, what was going through your head while you were accumulating that cash? It was just like, it's like in my blood. I swear, I don't know. It's just I've always been like taught to save. I guess my parents have always been pretty frugal growing up. I've always been, you know, don't live in a super nice place, just kind of I'm living. I just want to live with a bunch of buddies and have fun, you know? So I didn't have my own bedroom until my senior year of college. And so that was, I was fine with that. But sometimes you get kicked out and whatnot.

But yeah, we don't need to get into that. But family friendly, family friendly. But yeah, that's, I think that's part of college is like, you know, the whole roommate dorm kind of living. So. And why weren't you, why did you choose to save that cash as opposed to pay down your student loans at the time? I just did not even think of that as an option to pay down my student loans at the time. I was not very financially aware. I just knew that I needed to save, I enjoyed saving money. probably would have been a better option to pay down the student loans because they were just basically interest-only loans garnering interest at the time. But yeah. Fair enough. So what happens afterwards? So after school, I got a job at my last internship I had in Northeastern. I got a job

out in California at a job I enjoyed for the first six months and despised for the last 12. And so that was kind of during those 12 months of me not loving my life, I just kind of stumbled upon, I guess, financial independence through just basically, you know, having a weekend where I wanted to spend time with someone I really enjoy spending time with and not being able to spend time with that person because of because of work, you know, coming home on a Sunday night at 10 p.m. having to get a report out Monday morning. And that was just kind of like a, I feel like that was a preview into the rest of my life thinking, man, like, I don't want to be spending my Sunday nights when I have a family and kids working for someone else because I need to get this report out, you know.

And that was, so that was when I was like, okay, there's no way I can be working for the next 40 years like this. I don't enjoy this. And so then I stumbled upon Brandon's book on rental property investing and kind of stumbled upon bigger pockets and financial independence and all that kind of stuff. And then just went very far down the rabbit hole. You know, that's funny. You say down the rabbit hole, that sounds like everybody that we've ever talked to is like, oh, once I discover financial independence, I just, I can't get enough. I keep finding all these different blogs and all these different concepts to try and figure out how I can make it happen faster. So you found Brandon Turner's the book on rental property investing.

Yep. That was the first one, believe it or not. And you? Yeah, I typed in like real estate investing in Amazon and bought the first book I found. And I thought Bigger Pockets was like this sketchy site at first, honestly. And then I saw that it was touted in the rental property book. So I figured it must be legit. And then I realized that you guys published the book.

I was like, okay, now it all makes sense. That's awesome. Totally a legit book because, totally a legit site because the book. The book mentioned it. So during this period, I'm assuming this is in that latter 12 months, why you despised the job is that's when you kind of discovered this concept. What was your approach to money like in California working at this other job? Were you still, I guess, saving aggressively?

Were you investing? What was your kind of mindset there? So this is a debate, I think, a lot of, among a lot of people. I was not saving any money from my paycheck per se on like a month-to-month basis. However, the big reason for that is my employer offered a 100% 401k match. So up to $18,000 per year, they matched it dollar for dollar. What? Yeah.

And I wasn't making all that much money at that time. And so I basically, you know, I put every dollar, $750 a paycheck into my 401K and they would match it for $750 every single time. Oh my God. So I did that for a while. So I was probably losing money from my savings account that I initially built up because I was just taking the advantage of that. And so that's kind of what I did for a couple years. So that's why, you know, I built a fairly sizable 401K for someone who's like 23, 24 years old at the time. Yeah, I bet.

Yeah. But no, you said you're, you're. probably losing money in your savings account. No, you're using that money to live off of while you are making a 100% return on your investment instantly by taking advantage of this situation with your employer. No, that was a really smart move. Don't say, oh, I probably didn't do this. You did that absolutely right. At the time, I didn't know, but now I know. Yeah, well, now you know. That was a really great move. So what was your living situation? You were in the Bay Area, which I believe is a slightly elevated price range.

Yeah. So for a lot of that time, we found this dump of a house. And like, everyone that I've ever visited the place always made the comparison to the house of Breaking Bad. I don't really watch that show, but I'm sure a lot of our listeners have. And so I guess you could, whatever the Breaking Bad House looks like, looks very similar to that. Which Breaking Bad House? The one that, one with the meth. The meth addicts?

Like the one that the meth addicts live in with all that junk crumbled everywhere? Yeah. It was like the doors didn't close. The bathroom was stained. There was like red stains in the bathroom. That's just rust. There's just rust, yeah. And then we found out maybe like a week after signing the year or the six month lease that the prior person living there killed himself in the house.

And it was like a, it was like not like a take a bunch of pills to kill yourself. It was like he used a gun and shot himself in the head, killed himself in the house. And we're like, oh, this is great. It's just like adds to the story of the house. But you got a great deal. We did get a great deal. I mean, we were paying, so we lived two blocks from the office in downtown Palo Alto, which is like a really like yuppity kind of place to live, like walking distance to all of the bars and restaurants, walking distance to work. And we were paying $750 for like our own bedroom. So wow. That was like, I've never heard of anyone have a better deal like that in the Bay Area. If you have, feel free to send me a message and prove me wrong. But yeah, it was great. It was like a bloody good deal. Oh God. Oh, stop. Oh, yuck. Oh, oh, I just realized. I just realized Craig and Scott are the two guys that go back and forth with all the puns in the office.

Oh, the end of the show is going to be. This is going to be a really funny episode. We'll see. That's horrible, Scott. I'm sorry. We'll move on. And California is one of the states, I believe you have to disclose a death in the last three years. Yeah, you do.

So now, by giving you guys a six-month lease, it's not the last owner or the last tenant. It was the tenant before them or the tenant two people would go or whatever. But still, that's gross. Is it haunted? Some people would say it was. I never saw anything. The creepiest thing that happened was there was like an earthquake in the middle of the night. That's kind of freaky.

That just happens to all the houses. It's not your house wasn't special. No, I know, I know. But when you see everything's shaking and everything is moving, you're like, oh, my God, what is that? It's like, it's like, I'm a dival horror all over again. And I guess the ironic part of that was that it was actually like one house away from Tim Cook's house. Tim Cook, the guy from Apple. Yeah, like the CEO of Apple lived like one house down from us.

So that was really funny. I wish I had known that. Did his house look a little different? Just a little bit, yeah. I was going to say, why? There was a lot of, like, there was a lot of apple trees in this yard. Why are you living in this dump of a somebody killed themselves house and then Tim Cook is down the street? Every year, it seems, by the way, on bigger pockets, there's like a new thread that comes with a debate about, are you required to disclose a haunting?

Or what should I do if a tenant sees a ghost? So that's why I was asking this. There's no consensus among the community about how to deal with that. It's definitely state by state. It's definitely state by state. You aren't necessarily required to disclose. In California, you're required if it was sensational. Maybe, no, maybe in Colorado it's sensational.

I can't remember. I did some research on it because my neighbor died in his bathtub. And then they sold the house with no disclosures. But in Colorado, you don't have to disclose. So that's kind of gross. Did you ever feel weird? staying there? I never felt weird. Some of my roommates felt weird. I'm not really like a afraid of ghosts or anything. I'm just like I try to like think through ghosts logically.

Like these things are they're like transparent. They can't pick anything up. They can't touch me. The worst thing they can do is like blow through me and give me some cool air, which I don't mind once in a while. So I never really was like afraid of ghosts. So we're going to tweet that later. That's going to be the tweet headlight of the show. I try to think through ghosts logically. So I don't care about ghosts either. They don't affect my life. My house is not haunted. It turns out 40 years ago somebody killed themselves in my garage.

Wow. They hung themselves. However, that was the original garage. That garage has since been bulldozed and they turned it into like this garage Mahal kind of giant garage. And whatever rafters were there aren't there anymore. I don't feel any ghosts. It's not like there's unexplained things going on. And I don't care.

It doesn't affect me. I think if you're looking for something, you'll find it. Didn't Debbie say that? Debbie E-Mix say that? Different context, though. Very different contexts. And you know what? Here's my thought.

If one of your tenants sees a ghost in their house and they want to get out of their contract, let them out of their contract. You will be far better off just letting them go. See, I brought this up mostly facetiously, but it looks like we're going with it. Let's go back to money. Yeah. So you're living in the haunted house. You're saving a boatload of money because it's bloodstained bathroom, former murder, you know, what happens next? So after a few months there, we moved down to San Jose, which was like a got another.

Basically, I've, I moved, I jumped around the Bay Area. I live in San Jose. I live in San Francisco. And I've never paid over $1,000 a month for my own bedroom and rent in San Francisco and San Jose. And so that was just a matter of like, I was just on Craigslist for like three to four hours a day at the job. I loved those so much and was just basically looking for good deals. And so I would just, and I would email them and go on interviews and all that stuff. And I kind of just got lucky and found the fairly cheap places to live.

And that really didn't, you know, they weren't luxurious or anything. But they were decent enough for me. And I still allowed me to save a decent amount of money each month. So that's really interesting that you never paid more than $1,000 a month and you got your own bedroom. I had a friend who was living in San Francisco. He is a little more particular and less frugal than you. you, he would not pay less than $3,000 a month. He would have his own place.

It would be like a studio because he's only paying $3,000. Of course, it's a studio. Yeah. That's amazing that you spent this time. Now, how long did you sign leases for? So one was for a year. One down in San Jose was for a year and that was with my buddy. So that was just a very good time.

And then in San Francisco, I actually didn't have a lease. The lady was just kind of like, I don't know. She was like, I call her my San Francisco mom. because like she just like she took me in and like I don't know she would like do all these like nice things for me and I don't know. Like it was more of like a family type feel than like I'm your landlord type feel. But yeah, I just paid her $1,000 every month and I always paid her early. And I think she appreciated that.

And so we always got along nicely. Yeah. Pay your rent early and your landlord will love you forever. Okay. So that's interesting. You chose, you didn't know about house hacking at the time, I'm assuming? No, I did not. Okay.

And but I mean if you're making not amazing money in San Francisco. Diego or San Francisco, you're not going to be able to buy a house. Everything there is like a million plus. Yeah. So your house hacking in a sense because you are still, you know, looking for these low-cost properties and finding them. Right. Yeah.

Housing is your biggest expense. You have cut that down. What did you do for a car out there? So we didn't have a car out there just because I always was particular about living close to the train station. So I would take the train from San Francisco to Palo Alto or San Jose. at Palo Alto. In San Jose, I had a bike that I would use to bike to the train station. And then in San Francisco, I got a place, actually, the place that I was renting was right next to the train

station. So I just walked out the door, rolled out of bed, and hopped on the train. Okay. And so, yeah. And the train was paid for by our, it wasn't paid for by employer, but we could pay for it pre-tax through our employer. So it would save you a couple hundred bucks a year. Nice. Yeah. Okay. And then what's the third biggest expense? Food. What did you do for food? food i was mostly just going the grocery store i didn't like i knew going to the grocery store was cheaper than going out to eat and so that's kind of what i did i would always just buy you know stay all on the outsides and buy the stuff that's healthy for me the vegetables and all that kind of stuff maybe i'd venture into the aisles and buy a pick up a jar of peanut butter or something but you know

that was pretty much the extent of me going within the aisles and uh i don't just healthy food that's relatively inexpensive i mean i ate fine you know chicken salmon all that kind of stuff So what was your position in when you left California to come work here at Bigger Pockets? What was your financial position as a result of all of this? So I still had a fairly significant negative net worth when I left San Francisco coming here. And that was mainly because of the student loans. But I had, you know, probably about 30,000 saved up at this point. Just in, you know, I had, I use a Betterment account.

So went through Betterment. And so I was kind of like, you know, I could probably squeeze a down payment if I wanted to go out, come out to Denver and do that. And so that's what I did. I got the, I was fortunate enough to land the job here at bigger pockets and went through, kind of came here. I had to like buy a car. And so I bought a car. And then right after I bought a car, I bought a house like a month later. So that was kind of like the things I needed to do while coming here. And I just made a list of things I had to do and did it. So to prepare yourself financially to buy your first property, your first real estate investment in Denver, really it boiled back all the way to your college experience where you'd saved up a ton of cash,

then got this job in San Francisco. You pile all this money into your 401k. You're not really saving anything, maybe slightly depleted or keep around the same amount of cash that whole time in your savings account from your net pay funding your lifestyle. And then you come out to Denver where it's a better market for opportunities to invest in real estate, I guess. And that's when you're able to then leverage this 30K that you've got in order to buy your first place. Is that accurate? That's exactly correct. Yes. So tell us about that first investment because you had an interesting spin on. how this works in the Denver market. Yeah. So I have to talk to you, actually, I just realized that the place I was living in San Francisco actually kind of inspired this investment in Denver. So the first property I bought was a, it's a duplex about a mile and a half from the office, which is a pretty decent location, about five blocks north of Denver's largest park. And so it's like a townhouse duplex.

So I have like a duplex on the end of like a row home. And so my strategy was to rent out the top unit and live in the bottom unit. but I wanted to completely cover, basically completely eliminate my living expense. And so I had to get a little bit creative. And so I basically rented out my bedroom on Airbnb. And I put up like a sketchy divider and curtain and basically slept behind a curtain for a year unlike this futon that I could then transition out when I, after a year. And so I Airbnb'd out the bedroom.

And so that allowed me to cash flow fully on the property. Okay. So why did you have to live there for a year? and what do you mean you rented out the top and then Airbnb at the bottom? Can you explain that a little bit? And then I'd like to talk about numbers too. Okay. Yeah. So I had to live there for a year because when you buy an owner-occupant loan, so an owner-occupant loan allows you to buy a property for basically from three to less than 20% down. So I chose a three and a half percent FHA loan. And as a stipulation in that loan, you have to live there for a year. If you don't, that's mortgage fraud and you can get a lot in trouble. So I decided to live out the rules of the loan. and lived there for a year. And so what was the second question? The second question was,

what do you mean you rented out the top and then you Airbnb at the bottom? Yeah, so I rented out the top, like a full-time tenant, signed a lease, all that kind of stuff. And that went very,

well, pretty well, and then I Airbnb'd out the bedroom because in Denver technically, you have to, in order to Airbnb, you need to be living in the residence. And so that allowed me

to Airbnb be the bedroom out while still living in the unit. Okay, and this is a one-bedroom unit. Yeah, it's a one-bedroom unit. Okay. So essentially, somebody else is sleeping in your bed and you're sleeping on the couch.

I love that. I love that outside the box thinking. So many people would be like, oh, well, it's a one bedroom. I can't Airbnb. Sure, you can't. I probably wouldn't. I'm a woman. If I was single, I would probably not Airbnb the house that I'm living in.

And I don't do it now that I have kids either. So I like that you went that direction. What are your numbers? What is your mortgage on this property? because this is where it really gets fun and really makes a lot of sense. I can hear people, like I just said, oh, I would never do that. I can hear a lot of people saying I would never do that. But let's talk about the numbers to show them why that's not such a bad idea.

So your mortgage was. Yeah. So my mortgage was about $2,000. Okay, $2,000. You rented out the top half for? For $17.50. And that includes principal interest taxes, insurance, and PMI, right? Yeah, T, I, T, T, I, everything.

Okay. So rent was $1750. So now you're paying $250. $50 a month of your mortgage every year. Right. If I just do that, yeah. Okay. And then what did you Airbnb your property out for, your bedroom?

So it varies from winter to summer. And the summer is closer to $1,500 a month. And the winter, it's like just shy of $1,000. So I just say like $1,100 to take the average. Okay. So wait, you were paying $250 and now $1,100 minus $250 is more than $2,000. More than $2,000. So what is that?

We're at $2850. So you're making $8.50 a month? Yeah, I was making $850 a month. So in a hot market where you can't make any money because there's no deals to be found, yada, yada, yada, you're making $850 a month and sleeping on the couch. Yep. And my first reaction to this was, man, this is going to really destroy his social life. But that ended up not being true, right, Craig? Yeah, no, that's not true.

It was really good. And, you know, I like, I think the best part about Airbnb too is that, you know, you get to meet people. As you know, as many people like to know that I really enjoy traveling. And so when you host an Airbnb, you meet travelers from all around the country and all around the world. And so you get to basically talk to, they satisfy my travel bug because I could talk to people from Portugal and Australia and New Zealand. And I just have like a new visitor every single day. It was just really cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you're making $850 a month with pretty little effort on your part. Yeah. It was very, yeah, hardly any effort. I mean, it's just a, in the, in the,

the whole living situation is, you know, you just get used to, it's definitely weird for like the first week maybe, but then you just get used to it. It's like anything else, right? It's the whole hedonic adaptation thing that Scott describes in his book where the first week or two, it takes a little while to get used to whatever it is, but then after the third week, you're just, that's just your life and you're, you know, you're used to it. It's a habit. But this was not your permanent plan. You went into this property. Literally, you just mentioned one year is my commitment for this mortgage. After that, the intention is to move out and do something different. So you went into this with the intention of making this an investment property, right?

Yeah, for sure. What are you doing now with this property and what are you doing now for your living situation? So this property now, I'm now renting out this property full time. So I've moved out. I've turned the couch, the futon that I was sleeping on. I purposely bought a futon for this reason, and I turned it into a couch by just lifting the handle. And then I took a I took away the curtain and I threw away the cardboard box that was falling apart by the time I moved out. You used to cardboard box to create your, oh my gosh. Yeah, you know, and I paperclipped the curtain to the box so there was no space that you can see in between.

Oh, my God. That was pretty innovative of me. No, no. Basically, like the next MacGyver. That's pretty 22-year-old of you. Okay, so now it's a whole unit. So now it's a whole unit. So now I rent that out full time.

And it's making me pretty easily over a thousand a month. So you've got this duplex now that I'm assuming the top still renting for 1750. Now you're making 2750, 2850 somewhere in that. I don't know what the rent is on the top unit now. Yeah, it's still. Yeah, still the same. Okay. So you're making not a killing, but probably some reasonable cash flow if you consider that

operating expenses and all that are going to be in vacancy are going to be a couple hundred bucks a month. You probably still cash filling a few hundred dollars a month net of all of that. What was your down payment for this? It was 17,000. That includes, so three and a half percent, that includes the down payment in closing costs and everything that goes into it. So all in 17,000. You're probably making a pretty decent cash on cash return for that 17 percent down. And you're going to be benefiting from appreciation and loan pay down and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you factor in all of the wealth generators of real estate, I've already made my money back on that.

That's awesome. Pretty handling. That's fantastic. And for people who aren't in the Denver market, this is really important to realize that in the Denver market right now, there's this thing called the 1% rule where you rent out the property for one percent of the purchase price per month. So a $100,000 property rents for $1 a month. And in Denver, you can't find a 1% rule. I mean, you can. Obviously, Craig has come pretty darn close to that.

No, no, you've done better than that. Well, no. No, no. I've bought it for $3.85. So, I'm not quite there. 385. So you're not quite there, but you're pretty close. What I'm seeing in, when I'm analyzing deals is 0.5%, 0.6%.

And that's barely enough to cover the mortgage with a 20% down loan. So you're really doing well just having a property that cash flows in general, but it's cash flowing really well for this market. That's awesome. Most definitely, yeah. While you live in there, what are you doing with your financial position? Where are you investing and how are you preparing yourself for the next move? While I'm living in the duplex.

Yeah. So at that point, I was just kind of heads down, you know, focusing on working at bigger pockets and just trying to save as much money as I could at that point. You know, I was making sure to go out, you know, don't go out to eat all that much. If I were to go out with friends, I would just kind of, you know, get a water and an appetizer rather than like get a whole bunch of drinks and all that kind of stuff. I actually spent, you know, I did pretty much a little over a year without even having a sip of alcohol. So that helped a little bit. The vacations I took were any vacation I take is always

reasonable. And so just kind of just kind of polishing and you just have these like weeks where you just spend such little money. And it's and I still have fun because I know the activities that I enjoy doing, which are hiking, just hanging out with friends, playing volleyball in the park, frisbee, all that kind of stuff. They don't cost any money. So I would just go do those things and still lived a very fulfilling life. But I just didn't go out to the bars and spend $400 in a table at a club. Awesome. So when you buy this place, so tell us, tell us about the next, the next transition, the second place that you just bought. Yeah. So I was looking again for a duplex in Denver and, and as Scott alluded to earlier, there's just very hard to find here in Denver. So I went a little

outside of Denver, I'm about 10 miles north of Denver in a town called Thornton now. And I bought a large single family house, so a five bedroom, two bathroom, single family home and put five percent down and now I live in one bedroom. I have my own bedroom with like a door and a closet and two windows and what a little bad. Yeah. I tell you, man, you become really grateful after you spend a year behind a curtain and then you get your own bedroom. The first day, I was just opening and shutting the door. Yeah, so I'm living in one room and renting out all the others and it's doing really well. So are you comfortable sharing numbers with that? Yeah. So what is your mortgage? So my mortgage there, Again, it's about $2,000, just north of $2,000 a month.

And you are renting out four bedrooms. Four bedrooms, yeah. Okay, so what does the rent, do you want to just give a total for what that? Yeah, it'd be easier. Yeah, the rents are a little bit different. So the total rent is $3,100. So you're cash flowing. Is that including your room or do you not include your room?

I do not include my room. Okay, so you're cash flowing $1,100 a month on rent from just having roommates. And how much should you put down on this? I put about 20 down and I put another 10 in for like some rehab stuff. So $30,000 in. All in this 30. Yeah. Okay.

So on $30,000, you're making $1,100 a month pre-vacency and expenses. Pre-vacency and operating expenses. Yeah. Outside of insurance and taxes. That's awesome. That's great. That's probably several hundred dollars a month in cash flow net of everything. That's like phenomenal here in Denver for any investor.

Yeah, no, for sure. When I move out, too, that's going to be another $700 or so dollars on top of that. So that's very, I think that's going to be a fairly lucrative property for me in terms of a cash flow position. It is in Thornton, so it's not going to see the appreciation that Denver would. But I'm okay with that. It's 10 miles from Denver. It's not Longmont. No, it's a very nice place.

You're still able to bike to work, right? Yeah. Again, I strategically bought a place near the bike path. So I'm able to hop up. on the bike path and it's 90% bike path the way here. So it's a 10 mile ride to work every morning and it's wonderful. I didn't realize. I see you biking to work all the time, but I didn't realize that you were biking to work from Thornton. Okay. And he rents out his place to roommates that are also workers here at Bigger Pocket. That also helps. Tax season is one of the

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I wouldn't want to. Well, you wouldn't want to. You know, this is something that I don't think is spoken enough about in real estate investing is, you know, being able to afford the property. So many people got caught up in the economic downturn where their properties were all of a sudden they were vacant and they can't afford the mortgage because they've got 27 properties at zero percent down and, you know, these high mortgages. Yeah, for sure. I just want to reiterate, I knew you, I already knew the answer to that question. I know you can afford it. I just think it's really important to be able to afford it or be comfortable with the

amount of leverage that you're at. Yeah, I think neither of these investments sound like they were anything that you depended on working out in order for your financial position to remain secure. They're both additive to your financial position and you obviously hope to produce the cash flow and all that kind of stuff. That's going forward there. but you're not dependent on the financial performance, meeting your projections exactly on either of these, it sounds like.

Nope. No. Yeah. Nope. I should be out. And that's the position from which to invest. That's why, in my opinion, very likely to be successful over the short, medium, and long term is because each of these investments is a very calculated, thoughtful approach.

That's creative. That makes the most of your situation in the market that we're in. Yeah, for sure. Yep. It's exactly right. Well, and what does rent cost in Denver? I haven't looked for a property in Denver, but if you're just going out to rent, you're not going to be saving that much money from the mortgage payment that you're already making. If you were going to go out and get a one-bedroom apartment, that's at least $1,000.

It's probably way more than that. It's probably, yeah, depending where you are, probably between $1,500 here in Denver. So, yeah, the mortgage isn't all that much more and you can use your roommates to make it even less. What would the rent be without roommates if you just rented it out to a, to a, to a, family, yeah. To a family. I would say it'd probably be about 22 or 2300, five-bed, two-bath in that area goes for about that much. So this was my problem. When I'm looking at the Denver market, I'm looking, I'm analyzing at Denver, including the 25-mile radius of Denver here. There's very, almost nothing that I'm seeing on the MLS where you can have properties rent and cover the mortgage by 500 to 1,000 bucks or more.

You're making it work because you're being creative, finding places that allow you to rent by the room. You can't rent by the room in Denver in the same way without violating some of the laws here. But in Thornton, the rules are such that you can actually do exactly what you're doing. And you can take these properties that are being overlooked as investments. Probably most of your competition was private or families or folks that are looking for a large single family home. You turned it into an investment opportunity. Yeah, exactly. So that was a big revelation for me is just because the traditional method,

is not working right now or is extremely difficult doesn't mean that there are really good ways to make this work and you know when you're thinking about it from a downside perspective in a down market rent by the room is not is going to be one of the least affected probably that you know versus these nice you know luxurious complexes yeah yeah these guys who are living here are just they just want a fairly inexpensive place to live they're quiet they're clean it's very like that's all they're looking for it's like a cheaper place to live they don't care about the roommate situation all that kind of stuff. So definitely. Yeah, that's nice. And the property that you bought a five bedroom two bathroom property, that's not going to be as attractive to investors or tenants. Did you have a lot

of competition with that property or did you get it under contract fairly easily? I got it under contract surprisingly easily. I don't know if it was because I actually, the guy who was selling it was just kind of like a family guy. I didn't really know too much about real estate or anything. But I just had like a really good conversation with him. We were like playing with his pets and stuff when we were looking at it. And it's like, it's like, I don't know. I think like that actually played into a part of why he accepted our offer because we were just like, he just felt like we were normal human beings buying a house. You weren't like really, you know, we were like genuine people. That or there was another grisly horror story that we, you know, aren't aware of yet.

Have you Googled your address? I have not. Maybe I should. Okay. Wait, we'll be laughing after that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No.

Sorry, not laughing. Okay. So what is going on with your financial position otherwise? Like, besides from real estate, how else are you approaching things? You know, are you still not, you know, what are you doing with your student loan debt, for example? Yeah. So after purchasing this property, I have basically started to more aggressively pay down my student

loans because now I'm at the point now where I believe once I pay my student loans off, I feel like I'll be at that financial independence number. So that's kind of been my main goal here is, is kind of pay those down. But I'm still kind of, I've kind of split. Maybe this isn't the best way to go about doing it, but I've split my, the way I save now and kind of I put anything generated from my properties goes towards like buying another property whereas anything like extra I make through like, like, you know, some side hustles and stuff like that would go towards my student loans. Okay. So you've mentioned your student loans a

couple of times, but we've never asked how much student loan debt did you start off with and how much do you still have now? Okay. So at the start of this year, I was like, I was fortunate enough to spend new years in Aruba. And so I was like swimming in the ocean and all. And I was just thinking, I was like talking with my mom and I was like, I'm paying out my student loans. By the end of 2019, my student loans we paid off. And she was like, okay. And I have 80, at the time I had $85,000 in student loans. Oh.

Yeah. And so. I'm glad I asked. So that's a significant sum of money. Yeah. It's a significant sum. And so now they're a little under 60. So I'm at like $59, $58,000.

And that's just through aggressively saving throughout the course of this year. And, and yeah. What's the interest rate in your student loan debt? it's about five and a half, six percent. And I want to point out here that, you know, I don't know how if you ran the calculations or did the math, but I bet that if you went back and looked at your approach to this over the past couple of years, that you've done it pretty much exactly right according to the projections that the expectations that you might have set for what you're trying

to do and invest. Starting with the 401K match, you're getting 100% return pre-tax on your money and you're deferring all of that, right? And you're getting $18,000 a year in free money, right? Silly to pay off your student loan debts with any extra cash rather than make the minimums when you have that kind of return. Then you move to Denver and you house hack, right? And I assume that your projection model and what you're putting in there says, hmm, I'm going to make well over a hundred percent return on the investment I make on this if things go averagely well. Of course, things can go poorly and you can lose, but, you know, if things go average you well. You make a second house

hack, again, with similar projection models. Now what's happening, however, is your net worth entirely outside of your student loan debt is starting to climb, right? Probably approaching or exceeding a couple hundred or maybe even more $1,000 outside of your, you know, against your student loan debt, right? It's much harder going forward. It's going to be much harder for you to get significant returns on significant chunks of money like you were with these first two house hacks.

If you run it in a modeling fashion. And now you're starting to turn your attention towards your student loan debt, which to me, walking through this, maybe I'm giving you more credit than you'd give yourself. I don't know if you've done all this. But this is perfect. I appreciate it, though. But this is a really, this is a fantastic kind of approach and example for other people to kind of hear from is, is you had great investment opportunities. You're probably going to have more opportunities in the future. But they may not be so astronomical and with such significant portions of your investable net worth that it makes.

investing in student loan or paying off your student loan debt's much more attractive. Right. Well, people always mention at first, like, you know, you want to get rid of all your debt first. I don't know if I 100% agree with that because, again, if you have an opportunity such as house hacking, if you just wait a couple of years to start paying off your debt, you can start paying it off much, much faster than, as you can see, than if you were just to like paid off all at once, you know. Yeah, I think, I think it would have slowed you down considerably to have paid off the student loan debt prior to getting into the position you're in now. Yeah, I wouldn't have, I still wouldn't have a property at this point. So that's a good, that's a good point. And that's

not something that I have looked at the other side of, I'm always under the assumption that you should pay off your debt first. But I like the way that you explained that. It's not always the best option to pay it off first. Right. And I just want to mention like, and remember that this is like relatively low student, like, it's not like credit card debt. It's 15% interest and it's not, you know, so people could argue either way, whether you pay off aggressively a 5 or 6% loan. Right, right. No, the 15% loan, I would absolutely say you really need to either transfer that to a different

percentage rate or a different interest rate or, you know, just pay that off. Yeah. And you talk about your fine number, you know, I don't know what that number is, but it's going to be fairly low for you, I assume, because you're going to have no housing. expense. Once you pay off your student loan date, you're going to have no student loan expense. You have a paid off car and get around primarily by bicycle and you eat pretty healthily normally with your food, right? Is that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, yeah. Well, you're missing a slight point that I no longer have a car. But, uh, that's right. Yes.

We can tell us about that one. So tell us about how you hacked your car and how that worked out for you. Yeah. So, okay, so this is, yeah, I think a lot of people have questions around this. So I'll absolutely share this story. So after coming to Denver, I bought a Toyota Prius C, which is, if those you don't know, like a really good gas mileage, like 55, 60 miles per gallon car. And so the original intent was to Uber. And so I Uber for like three months and got sick of that pretty quickly. And so once I basically got my first property, I decided to rent my car out on this site called

Turo. Basically, it's like the Airbnb for cars. And so someone would come in, people on vacation or who needed a car for a day or two would come and rent the car. I'd give them the keys and they'd go on their way. And I would bike to work and I just didn't need my car very much. And so for a while, that was making me, you know, between like 400 and 700 extra dollars a month for about a little over a year, basically from like July, 2017 through August 2018. But recently last weekend, so it was like last weekend, I got a call from someone renting my car.

And he calls me up and he says, hey, Craig. So you know your car? I'm like, yes, I know my car. I can't imagine any conversation starting off. So you remember your car? It's like, yeah, you should probably forget it. Basically, that's how it. So the car, the car got totaled.

Like, it completely jacked up. The whole front of it was just completely mingled. And we could put pictures in the show notes if you want to do that. But it was just completely totaled. And thankfully, he was okay. And his girlfriend who was in the car was okay. Everyone was okay, which I look at the car and I can't imagine. Every single air bag was deployed.

It looked like there was like a head that would have went through the windshield. But I don't know what it was, but it wasn't their head. I asked him. And it was. Bowling ball in the backseat. Yeah, I don't know what the heck it was, but I'm glad it wasn't their head. Yeah, so the car is completely totaled. And so a lot of questions people have had around Toro is how does the insurance and how

does that stuff all work? And so over this past week, I was talking to the insurance engine and all that. And so I received the claim back. And basically after renting it out for a year, probably made about six or seven grand over the course of the year just through the car rental, they're giving me a little over $11,000 back for the car. And I only paid $10,000 for that car. So I actually ended up, like, this was like the best possible thing that could have happened to me. Because I was going to take it off of Toro in about like six weeks or so anyway. And the fact that it got totaled,

everyone was okay. I got all of my money back plus more for the original investment in the car. And I was making money over the course of the last 13 or 14 months or so. It's the perfect, the perfect scenario. What are you going to do with that money? So my plan is to buy a car that's, I was going to, like, my original intent was to like spend half it on the car and keep half of it. But I still don't know if I want to buy like a $5,000 car. I don't know if I really, I don't if I deserve that quite yet. So I'll probably get like a $2,000 or $3,000 like Subaru Forrester. Good Lord.

And then just pocket the $8,000. You slept behind a curtain for a year. Yeah, I don't know. I just don't get the need for a nice car. I just need something that is reliable and gets me somewhere. And the thing is I feel like I'm in a position where because I don't drive a lot, I can buy a car with a lot of miles on it because it's going to take me probably five or 10 years to put 50,000 miles on this car. I'm just going to use it to maybe go to the mountains once in a while and maybe on a snow day or something when I have to come into work, bring it for that. But for most days, I will continue to bike.

So, fair enough. Wow. So this morning, Craig sent me a note via our inter-office communication. And he's like, oh, my car's not on Turro anymore. can talk about that today and like, oh, I thought this is going to be a really juicy story. First of all, I'm glad that everybody's okay. But I thought you had a problem with them, like with the company itself. Oh, no. They're actually fairly, fairly easy to work with in terms of that. Yeah, that's really nice. And I'm glad that everybody's okay. Yeah. So is this your only side hustle? You mentioned side hustles.

Do you have other ways to make extra money? Yeah. So one thing I'm doing is one of my friends has an Airbnb. or sorry, he has like a condo and I am renting the condo from him and Airbnb being the condo. So basically I pay him a rental fee every month. I put the property on Airbnb and he knows about it obviously. And basically I pay him rent every month and then I keep the difference for the Airbnb. So that's another way to make some arbitrage. They call it like Airbnb arbitrage. That's kind of what that is.

And it helps especially in the summertime. You make $1,000 or $2,000 more than the rent through air. Airbnb. So that's one of the strategies I've been using to pay down with student loans. Nice. I like that you told him you were going to do this. Yeah. Oh yeah. You said he knows about this. You told him you were going to do this. I like that you told him ahead of time. We had an interview on the Bigger Pockets podcast with Zeanna McIntyre who did this, how she started getting into Airbnb as she was just Airbnb being her own property, but she didn't tell the landlord. And then she started feeling really bad about that. She did

eventually tell the landlord, or maybe she got caught, she doesn't do that anymore. I just want to point out that this is not a good way to make money is to lie to your landlord or lie by omission and just rent a property and put it up on Airbnb. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble that landlord will probably evict you. I'm seeing more and more in leases that can this property be rented out on Airbnb or similar? Yes, no. And so landlords are really cracking down on this. So if this is something that you want to do, double check with your landlord. Not every landlord is going to say yes, but not every landlord is going to say no. Right. Yeah. You have to make sure to check with your landlord that just like anything you do, just kind of, you know, be moral and don't do any,

don't cheat. Don't do anything out of the, you know, out of your ethical code. So. Exactly. Airbnb is getting better and better at preventing like the horror stories too. You know, like you're not hearing nearly as many of like, oh, a bunch of, you know, frat boys came to my house and destroyed the place because you have these reviews, both the rent, the Airbnb tenants and the hosts both have reviews now. So you can kind of get this into a, you can create a situation where you actually could rent these out with high probability and the landlord shouldn't be as scared as they were in the past.

If a tenant came to me and said, I want to Airbnb be my place. I would say, sure, as long as you pay me extra, whatever, a portion of the split, right? Yeah. Because that's actually what I do with my friend too. Yeah. And it's like, I mean, at this point, I've had hundreds of Airbnb guests. and I have not had a horror story yet in terms of everything trash, completely wrecked, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, knock on wood.

I mean, obviously our stories are fairly similar in that, but, you know, I mean, you've taken the things that I did a couple years ago and taken them farther and done better and getting a much better return than all that kind of stuff. One of the things that I think we share in perspective is that doing this right out of college with your first few years in the workforce as a single person, is a huge advantage in kind of getting a huge leg up on this. Like, it's going to be, it's much more difficult, it seems like, for a family or whatever to replicate this rapid acceleration towards FI that you've created or that maybe I did in

the first few years. What's your kind of thought on that? And is that, you know, is there a way around that for somebody else? There's no way around it. It's absolutely easiest for like someone who's just getting out of college to do this. And I think Scott, you and I were fortunate to stumble upon, I think you stumble upon Mr. Money Mustatch and I stumbled upon bigger pockets very early in our lives. For those who have families that are just figuring this out now, there are changes you can make,

but they're just not going to be as rapid or as aggressive as like the way Scott and I have pursued it. One thing is purchasing a house with an additional dwelling unit. And you can Airbnb that additional dwelling unit. And they will, that could potentially save, that could potentially cover your entire mortgage. Stuff like that. I understand that if you have a family, you don't want to be sharing your house with strangers. Or your bedroom.

Or your bedroom with strangers. Yeah. That's one way I can think of it like off the top of my head that a family could potentially do it. Yeah. I think I think that, you know, what's great about your story is that it's, it is repeatable. Anybody who is single and willing to make a sacrifice for maybe a year can have very good odds of replicating the kind of results that you've produced, right? Yeah. This is not like some sort of like secret formula.

It's simple, discipline, hard work, a little bit of sacrifice. And now you're sitting up quite a bit of money from where you, were a year and a half ago. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I look back at, they always say, like, you know, you track your net worth and stuff over time. And I look back at chart it too, and you look at the chart. And it's very nice to see that chart go up into the right. And it's much faster than it was, you know, a year and a half ago. So we like up into the right charts. Up to the right. Yes. I'm just, I'm laughing because Craig says he charts it. Craig is our Excel guru at trigger pockets. And he's always on these spreadsheets. Yeah, we yell at Craig,

whenever one of our graphs is not up into the right thing. I just delete the numbers and put new ones in. Same. Same. That's why my metric looks so good. Okay. So do you have any other side hustles besides Airbnb? That is pretty much.

I guess, I mean, starting something now with my cousin, we're starting to do some burring out in Jacksonville. So we just actually, we're under contract on a property right now. We close on Friday. So that's like another thing that we'll get going, hopefully close and get some get it rehabbed and rent it out by the end of this year. Okay. And that's kind of the next thing. Not everybody who listens to this show listens to the Bigger Pockets, real estate podcast. So can you explain what burring is?

That's B R, is there four R? B R R R R. R. Yeah. So it's like when you're, so it's like when it's like December and you're outside playing in the snow. Shut up. No, no, just kidding. So, Burring is a, it's a real estate investment strategy, which it's an acronym and it stands for buy, rehab, rent out, refinance, and repeat. And so the idea is you buy a, you know, and Scott

actually helped me out with this strategy in terms of thinking it through. You buy a really crappy house for like $30,000, $40,000. You put $50,000 into it and appraise, you know, so that's $90,000 totally into it. Hopefully it appraises back at $120,000. And then you can basically get an 80% mortgage on the property and you pull all your money out that you invested. And now you have basically a cash-loing property. And again, I think, for free, for free. Yeah, you put all-and-and-you-and-and-and-and-and-and-and-and-and-and. And you said you're doing this in Jacksonville.

Jacksonville, what state? Florida. Okay. And does your cousin live there? So one of my cousins does live there, but not the one that is provided, is my partner on the deal. and he's not like the boots in the ground or anything. We just kind of picked that place because we just looked at the housing prices and it made sense and talking to Scott and David Green, some of those guys and they all like Jacksonville.

So with those things, I think you could you could look and try to, you could spend years trying to find a market to invest in. I think you just have to pick one and run with it. And the deal is kind of on a deal by deal basis, not on a market by market basis. So I'm sure there probably is a better market to invest in, but we just pick Jacksonville and we're going to run with it. So this is the approach that I was thinking I would pursue. And I may still pursue it in addition or outside of Denver because I was so frustrated at the lack of rental like rental opportunities here in the market.

So now I talk to Craig and he's doing what I guess you should be doing, which is both. Yeah. We'll see. I guess that's still that's still in fruition. Yep. I mean, you could, again, you could certainly lose. But the way I perceive what you're doing is it's fairly high probability. It's better odds than not taking action.

Yeah, exactly. better as in just running analysis all the time. Well, awesome. Anything else we should cover before we get to the famous four? I think that's all unless you guys have something else. I could talk to you for hours. Yeah. We'll just have to have you back. Yeah. That sounds good. I would just talk right after this. Okay. So it is now time for our famous four questions. These are the same four questions that we ask every guest. What is your favorite finance book? My favorite finance book. There's a book on rental. I feel like I always have to say the book and rental property investing, because that's like the first one that came to

came to my mind, but I don't know if I sent him a finance book. Well, it's not, but if you got financial advice from it. It has to be a non-bicker pockets book because you work here and you can't plug their own books. I hate how I hate that's like the one bad part of going to bigger pockets. I can't,

I lose all credibility. But I did pick up this book before. We're going to pick up this book before. Probably, I just have to go with the rich dad, poor dad. I know it's super cliche, but I mean, And that's the one that basically got, my wheels were spinning like crazy, but it like took everything,

all of my thoughts that were jumbled up and just articulated them so nicely into a very little book that's very easy to read. And so I enjoy that one. Awesome. What is your biggest money mistake? I go, unfortunate to not really know, but probably like student loans, I guess. So not the fact that I went to Northeastern because I think that provided me with a lot of great opportunities, but not knowing that $85,000 coming out of school with $85,000 of debt was

be significant and not trying to find ways to pursue, I guess, like look for scholarships and all that kind of stuff to try to make that amount a little bit smaller. Okay. So you didn't get any scholarships to college? No, I did. I did. But like I probably could have like applied to more. I was just like the ones that were basically given to me.

I didn't really apply it for any. Although I would like to add this. someone came to my school one time. This is like a tip for anybody in college or going to college. One time, someone came into my school and said, hey, you should just go to your like financial services department and literally just ask them for money, like ask them for a scholarship. And so I did. And they said, oh yeah, I just write me like, write us like a paragraph and we'll see what you can do. And so I went home. I wrote a one paragraph, basically statement saying why I deserve a scholarship. And they gave me $5,000 every year for the next three years from one, from one

From one paragraph, just but to my, so. Whoa. Yeah. And so, like, that was the easiest $15,000 I've ever made. And there was more, there was more out there if it was that easy to get that scholarship. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

I probably could have done more, but I was just really happy with that. And so anyone in college or thinking about going to college or if you have kids about that age, go to your financial services office and just ask them. The worst they're going to say is no. So. Yeah. Yeah. What is financial services office? office. Is that at high school? Oh, no, sorry. It's at a, it's at your college. Oh, at your college. Yeah,

yeah. So anyone, you know, the college will give you a loan and stuff to, they help you out and they help you with financing, all that kind of stuff. So if you don't know where it is, look it up, but I'm sure your college has one. Okay. So I'm going to get my aunt on to talk about student scholarships because she is, my youngest cousin is 18, I think, and she just went to college. My aunt had this really amazing description of how she and her daughter applied for all these scholarships. And her first year is completely paid for. And it was the way she says it, it's so easy. Like there's so much money out there.

People want to give you money and just it goes unbrab. All these people set up these little like scholarship trusts and then no one applies for them. Which defeats the purpose of setting up your scholarship trust. Yeah. Yeah. Or one person applies. Well, maybe that person gets it because one person applies. That absolutely could have been me.

What I love about this is from a guy who seems to make very few financial mistakes in your life, your biggest one that you reflect back on is the one that was passive, that you just accepted the student loan debt mostly passively, it sounds like, without kind of thinking through the ramifications of it or all that. And that's, you know, what millions and millions of people do when they're going to college. But that's like the one thing. That's like what you refer as your biggest mistake is just something you did maybe without thinking it through and analyzing it the way you've applied that analysis to every other decision.

And it's just a shame that more people don't do that with college debt. Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, it was really easy. Yeah, I'm going to call my aunt and ask her if she'll come on. Yeah, you should. Okay, what is it? Red ant or black aunt? Sorry.

Oh, man. Oh, come on now. You could do better than that. What did the Pink Panther say when he stepped on an aunt? Did aunt? Did aunt? Did aunt? Do you even know who the Pink Panther is?

Isn't it like Steve Martin or Chris Martin? What was the guy's name? Jeff Martin? We've got to the next. Sorry. Yeah. Do you remember in the beginning of the show? I said, oh, yeah, Craig and Scott are the one.

They're going to suck now. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out on their financial independence journey or just starting out in life? Find ways to be creative and save as much as you can so you can just get into that first investment property. that first investment period. You know, it's definitely worth the quote-unquote sacrifice right now. You can sacrifice and work really hard for five to seven years so that you can have 40 to 50 years of freedom. I mean, get uncomfortable and just save and do the things now. And again, like,

even living behind a curtain, it wasn't even that bad. Like, it sounds bad and we laugh about it now. But a year was a long time. And I didn't really like hate it all that much. Like, it was actually pretty fun. So again, just get uncomfortable. and figure out ways that you can save money and get creative. I mean, you're sitting on two investment properties and multiple streams of income outside of your job and freedoms that most other people don't have and you're the crazy one. Yeah. Well, people, I mean, people think I'm crazy, but that's okay.

What does it matter? Cool. Yeah, I don't care. Yeah, they're like, okay, they think you're crazy. They, like most people your age, most people are age, are saving less than like $100 a month, maybe outside of their, maybe if they contribute to a 401, This is most people with good jobs that are, you know, that are, that are able to fortunately make in that kind of median to upper middle median income in their 20s. Like, they're still not, they're not accumulating nothing.

My opinion, there's, there's a definition of crazy that you're, you don't fit. Yeah. No. Well, it's like the whole, it's like what they say, right? It's live like no one else now. So you can live like no one else later or whatever that quote goes. Like, I just think that quote hit me hard. I'm like, yeah, it's so true.

Like, do what everyone else is doing and you will live, you'll have an ordinary life, do things that no one. you'll have an extraordinary life. So I hope to have an extraordinary life. You will. You're on a good path. Okay. Before Scott asked this next question, I'm leaving. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell it parties? I'll read tell it to Mindy because she can't hear us anymore. Okay. Well, I can at least you actually left. What kind of party are we talking? Is it like, if it's like a Super Bowl party or something, usually we like make puns out of the names of people, but we'll assume it's very good party. So we usually start the party off with what comes before part B. Part A. Part A. Oh my gosh. I can already tell it was terrible. No, I don't need to listen.

Oh, you're not done. I know, this is like a marathon. Why do, why do seagulls fly over the sea? I know this one. Oh, you do? This one I heard from like my like four-year-old cousin. Because if they were over the bay, they'd be bagels. Yes, exactly. Which would make a lot of people very happy. But I like seeing the sequels. Nice. Oh, my goodness. Keep going. No.

Let's see. What else is? What do you mean? Do you want to say that you keep going? What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup? I don't know. You can roast beef, but you can't pee soup. Oh, man.

All right. All right, let's move on to the last question here. Mindy, what, do you want to go? He actually laughed at that one, though. I'm not laughing as though I think it's funny. I'm laughing like, oh my God, I can't believe. Craig is laughing the hardest. Yeah, I can't believe I've started this.

And we're recording this at 10 o'clock in the morning. So I've got the rest of the day to hear this. They're going to be going nuts with these jokes. Okay, where can people find out more about you? So you can find me on, you know, on Picker Pockets. I'm pretty active. You can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn. I do have a Twitter.

I don't really use it much. So I would say Facebook, LinkedIn, and Fair Pockets are the three best. Okay. And we will include links to all of his social media links on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash money show 35. All right. Craig, thank you so much for your time today. This was really fun.

I love your story because so many people, I mean, you're a millennial, right? That's your generation is millennial. I am not, obviously. You're a millennial and millennials are bad with money. and they never own property and you live in Denver so you can't possibly find a property that cash flows because and you're like, you know what? I don't care what you're saying. I'm just going to go do it anyway. And I just, I love that. You're so optimistic. And look, it worked out. I like this quote, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Do you think you can't?

You're not going to try. You think you can. And look, bam, you did. So I just, I love your story so much. Thank you for sharing it today on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys. Really appreciate you. Okay. We'll talk to you later. See you guys.

Bye. All right. That was Craig Curlop from BiggerPockets.com. One of our colleagues. What did you think, Mindy? I love talking to Craig. He's so funny. He's so, well, maybe not funny.

He does all those stupid jokes you like. You think he's so funny. I think he's hilarious. I think he's so optimistic and he's such a nice person. And, you know, thinking outside the box, he has changed his whole financial trajectory for life. And one of the things that I didn't say during the actual recording of the show was he said, oh, well, if you make sacrifices, you know, right out of college, it's not that big a deal. How is that a sacrifice?

You're just continuing to live like you lived for the last four years or three years or however long he was in college for. You're having a roommate like you just did. It's not like you used to live in this lap of luxury and now you're living in a slum with 100 people and 27 rats, you're just doing what you've continued to do. Sam from Financial Samurai also did this. He had a job at like Goldman Sachs or something making ridiculous money. And he lived in a one bedroom apartment living on the couch or living in the closet or something, like having a roommate so that he could save up all this money. And he had a very short career and now goes

around the world doing nothing. Nope. I certainly was able to continue, maintain my basic college lifestyle in the first year and a half outside of college and had no trouble with that. I had my own bed. What is you, or my own bed, my own bedroom. I was going to say, you shared a bed. Without that wasn't sharing, I wasn't sharing that with another, another human being in a tiny, confined space with cement walls. You know, oh, so everything above that was a huge step up.

And I didn't, you know, I didn't care about sleeping at friends' couches or whatever when we would go out on the town or, you know, visiting another place. It didn't matter. That was more fun, and I was a huge step up in luxury over what I was doing previously. And then it's just been a small incremental boost ever since, just much slower than I think what most people go through when they go out of college. Yeah. It's just such a great story. So should we get out of here, Scott?

Let's get out of here. From episode 35 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, where we interview Craig Curlop from BiggerPockets.com. This is Mindy Jensen over and out.