BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 62: Taking Advantage of ALL Opportunities Life Throws at You with Anna Li

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

Anna Li moved to America from Uzbekistan when she was 22. On today’s episode, she shares the opportunities she’s been presented with—and taken advantage of—from an opportunity to learn at the first non-government university in Uzbekistan that... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 62. Change is good, right? So if I'm going to end up with a different department or whatever it is, I'm still going to be excited. But we are on our way towards financial freedom. And what it is for us, it's not necessarily stop working. It's just ability to do whatever we want to do. 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 Minnie Jensen. How are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I'm having a fantastic day.

The sun, I guess, isn't shining. It was when I got in this morning. And it's Girl Scout cookie season. So my girls are selling Girl Scout cookies and really just going crazy with them. I found a Triplex I want to buy just around the corner from my house. I'm getting ready to make an offer tonight. So very much a lot of excitement going on in my life right now. How are you doing?

You always ask me how I'm doing? And I never return the favor because I'm rude. Scott, how are you doing today? I am doing good. Been watching a little bit of Nuggets basketball lately, which is pretty fun. They've been pretty good this season. And I have recently joined a CrossFit gym. So I'm now one of these like total CrossFit tech bros, which everybody

hates. There you go. So that's what's up with me, I guess. Katie just asked me on Monday if you looked like you lost weight. Oh, there you go. So Scott, who was already super fit, is now even more so. Good for you. Good for you. I am very excited about today's guest. She is a listener who sent me an email and said, hey, I have this story that I'd like to tell. And I looked at her email address. She actually used to, she works for the company that my dad worked for when he retired. And I thought, wait a second, that's weird. I wonder if she knows him. It turns out she doesn't. But her story is really, really interesting. She is not from America originally. She moved here and to the land of opportunities and took advantage of absolutely every opportunity she could. Oh, wait, we're spoiling her

story. She tells it better. But it's, it's a story of perseverance. But usually when I hear that word, you know, oh, it's a story of perseverance. That means that she's like slugging through all these really horrible things. She's not really. She just has opportunities that she takes advantage of. And I think her story is really relatable and applicable to anybody who's listening. It's applicable to their life because here's things that she's doing that you can take inspiration from. You're probably not going to buy a $1,000 Saturn, but you might.

But hey, she bought a low-cost car, I'm going to buy a low-cost car too. Don't take inspiration from the fact that she took a third of her savings and spent it on a car. Take inspiration from the fact that she bought a low-cost car. What I think is also really cool about her story is that there are several points in her life where she goes through what I think is basically every middle class to upper middle class Americans' worst nightmare, which is a forced moderate reduction in, you know, lifestyle, you know, where you go from earning $90,000 a year to earning 75 and have to make some cutbacks and it's a really, you know, big hassle. For some reason, I think that this is like the worst fear of people in the

fire community or people in the middle class. And it's like, it's not that bad. It just takes grit and perseverance and a willingness to like say, you know what? People are going to make a comment about the fact that I had this job and now I have to work this one that's a little bit less glamorous for a little bit and get through that. And, you know, on the other side of that, by having been through that a couple of times and taken in stride, her and her remarkable husband as well, them kind of getting through that, I think that that set them up for the fantastic financial success that they've seen in recent years and the fact that they're well on their way to financial independence and feel comfortable taking on the world in spite of uncertainty that could come in the future. Yeah, you know, if somebody makes a comment,

on a situation that happened in your life and it's a maybe not a positive situation and somebody makes a negative comment about that, those people don't matter. And I wish there was a way to put an asterisk in front of my words because obviously if it's your mom, she matters. But her opinion of you having a lesser job shouldn't affect your life because you are there for you and your family. and go on and do what you need to do to put food on the table, to further yourselves down the path. And if it's delivering pizzas, like Patrice Washington's husband, did he deliver pizzas?

He was in-to- Taco Bell. He worked at Taco Bell. He was some high-falutin guy with this great job, not high-flutin guy, high-flutin job. And he went and worked at Taco Bell because they had health insurance, and that's what he needed. He needed to put food on the table. He needed to provide health insurance for his family.

So he did. Don't be too proud to just take something that's there. Yeah, I mean, if you spend up to the amount that you earn, when, not if, when you are forced to make a reduction in your lifestyle, you really have two choices. You can allow that to unravel your marriage, your life, your social relationships, or whatever, or you can suck it up, take the next job, and get on with it, right?

And the way you prevent that from ever happening in the first place is by listening to our Bigger Pockets Money podcast, of course, and spending less than you earn and building up a significant nest egg and always just kind of perpetually increasing your passive income to the point where it's never going to be an issue that you're going to potentially run out of money or have that force reduction in lifestyle in the first place. I can't add to that at all. That's perfect.

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not a bank. 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 200 29 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or 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 is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible

originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BPMoney. Anna Lee, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How are you today? Good. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for reaching out to be a guest on the show. I really like your story and I would love to share with our listeners. Let's start where you think your story with money begins. My story begins probably from the childhood. I was born in Soviet Union when I was eight, Soviet Union collapsed. Our republic became its own independent country.

It's Uzbekistan. So I grew up in this country in the midst of a lot of changes. I witnessed my parents, my grandparents going through a lot of changes. It sort of went from, you know, stable, predictable environment. to everything collapsing and everything restructuring. And everyone around us was essentially going through the same change. So it was a humbling experience for all of us, but also gave us an opportunity to learn.

And I think my dad, I really look up to him. He took this opportunity to be very entrepreneurial. He used up every opportunity to show us that you can take any change and turn it into your own advantage. I think when he realized that so he knew he was collapsing and then the inflation was going to go through the roof. He was one of the last people to probably take a government loan to build a house. And by the time the house was built and he had to return the payment, it was basically willing of a two loaves of bread. So the inflation was just so crazy that, you know, he kind of so that in a, you know, in the way that helped him.

Most of the stories are actually said, I'm not as happy as this is. So the cultural too was very different. We would save for 10 and 15 years to get a car, to get a house. I think the environment of having a mortgage or auto loan was not so popular. So people kind of technically saved up for a lot of big expenses. I think that also helped us when we moved to US. And I think what my dad also instilled in me is kind of this entrepreneurial spirit. I remember being a 10-year-old. going to the nearest parking light by our house and trying to offer people to wash their cars to just earn bucks. So I was always trying to find a way to go to work or find a way to make money. And I think my dad was always encouraging. He would try to help me set up this private stock to start a soda business in school. I mean, it kind of failed when I tried to explain what stock and options and investing is in my school, but it was a cool learning experience for me just to know what stocks are and how it can, you know, sell investors on trying to start something

out. So from that point on, I was liking to go to college in Uzbekistan, actually still, but we had this pilot program. It was very new. It was first non-government school that partnered with the University of Michigan, actually. And we had either American teachers, teachers or our teachers who went to Ivy League schools and they were all teaching us in English. We had an equivalent of a bachelor's degree in finance, equivalent to the United States degree. So that helped me a lot when we finally moved to US. Not only that it helped me with the language, but it also helped me with actually relating to the economics of US. So after I graduated, I worked for about a year in the international company in my home country.

I think that's when I first became a millionaire because the salary that I was offered, it's very funny talking about it now, but it was $350 a month. But that meant that if I made more than $4,000 a year, that meant in local currency, that was $4 million sums. So I was a millionaire when I was just graduated college. Then my husband wanted, you know, at the time we were dating, but he won a green card. And, you know, we decided to move. I think United States does offer that opportunity of stability.

In our country, we were, I think our last president, dictated president was there for 20-some years. And it was never stable. So we decided to move because we knew that in the United States, based on some of our friends or relatives who were there already, you can't have that opportunity for stability. So we borrowed $3,000 from my parents and moved. We started with minus 3K. And it was a very humbling experience again. It was again a big change. But we used $1,000 to buy a very old Saturn, which we actually did.

later two years down the road traded on for $800, which I thought was the best deal that we could possibly have. And we started looking for jobs and it was very hard. I thought that with my education, I can probably get an entry job in the corporate, but I don't know why. I never, I never get a callback. So I started working in the shoe store because I said, I don't care. I just need to work somewhere. And my husband started working at the warehouse in the textile company. But I think with a lot of grit and a lot of enthusiasm,

people at my husband's office so that you're not supposed to be working in the warehouse. And he quickly moved up to the office and he had a nice progression on his career there. I was lucky to just accidentally lending myself a job in Vanguard.

And I love my time there. And I live and breathe Vanguard. So I'm a big supporter of the company and slowly but surely I now work in another company but I kind of moved up the latter too I mean my husband was later laid off from his company and that was a couple years ago I think that was another big change for us but I feel like every time we were taking that the change has an opportunity for something you know one door closes the other door opens we kind of stopped and said, well, what's next? And yeah, and that's how we started an adventure into

real estate. Going back a few a little bit here, one of the things that, you know, a big part of this story, I feel like has to be your upbringing in the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Soviet Union, growing up in Uzbekistan and all those changes and stuff and coming over to the U.S. You know, one of the books that's mentioned on the show a lot, one of my favorite books is called the Millionaire Next Door, right? And this author did. a study of millionaires in America. And he found that households with Russian ancestry, maybe we can extrapolate that to Soviet ancestry, make up less than 1% of U.S. households, but nearly 6% of millionaire households.

This is in 2009, he came up with this data. So, interesting statistics? Yeah. So you see, you know, what that says is that households with Russian or, again, extrapolating Soviet ancestry have significantly higher likelihood of accumulating wealth. And I was wanted to kind of get your thoughts on, are there things that you might is seen amongst your upbringing and then maybe in social circles of folks of similar industry who are in the United States, do you think that there's any qualities there that would back

up that statement or do you kind of find that more to be coincidental? If anything, I think that has to be grit. I mean, we are all brought up with movies about the World War II. This is kind of our core thing. And we brought up with a huge history. You know, people went through. a lot of struggle with Stalin, a lot of struggle through the war time. And, you know, our grandparents would always tell us a story how they had to stay in line to just get this one piece of bread and that was their allowance for a day, right? So a lot of the perseverance and grit, I think that's what's helping a lot of us, you know, a lot of my grandparents' stories were, well, I was the first one to ever go to college. And that's after the war. So hearing that, it's almost inevitable

that you have to try as hard as they are. So maybe that's what's causing it. How does that impact? How do you kind of apply the word grit to your relationship with money? Is that a work ethic thing? Is that in the income front? Is that in the, is it grit in terms of denying yourself luxuries and spending less than you earn and spending well below your means. What does that kind of mean to you in terms of your relationship with money? I think I personally went through evolution of my relationship with money. I think the very cultural thing for us to do is to actually save up a lot. So I think that's how we started.

But again, being exposed to U.S. with all the consumerism you do want to spend, right? And we were guilty of that too. we knew to never have a credit card balance. That part we could never accept. So we always paid off our balances for credit cards, but still spending money when we earn them, I think that was a change when we moved to the United States. Now, honestly, because of your show,

I was introduced to financial independence concept in general. I think I just got this inspiration and just intent itself was that everything is possible and it kind of formed into actual framework, right? Before I knew that saving is good. Before I knew that being financially independent is great, but it was almost like, you know, a make-believe story. But now hearing a lot of these stories from you guys

and every guest that you bring to the show, it's almost like, okay, there is a framework, there is a path, and we can just follow it. And it's magically kind of align. So you sort of know what you want. want and the opportunity to just presents to you one after another. So Scott seemed to really relate to the grit part of your answer, but I like the perseverance comment better.

But what I like, what I'm really latching on to is the fact that you had a college degree and a U.S. equivalent college degree in finance and you didn't say, oh, I'm not going to take any job except a finance job. You said, you know what, I need to work. So I'm going to work at a shoe store because there who's calling you back. And my husband is, what is his degree in? Actually, his degree is in IT, but it's such an old-school Soviet IT and we're like stature is behind

where the West Standard is. He went through a lot of different jobs, too. The last job he had was actually he was a radio DJ and producer. Wow. He was ready to do anything. You know what? That right there. He's ready to do anything on the path to financial independence, on the path to living in life

in a new country. You need to be open to all the opportunities. that are there. And if the shoe store is the only opportunity that's there, hey, that's money coming in. I can't remember who I know that did this, but they lost their job in a tiny little town and he wouldn't go and accept a job that took him outside of his town. He said, nope, I'm just going to live here. And nothing's available, so I'll just be on unemployment. Well, that runs out eventually. And why would you want to just sit there and not do a job? Why would you not want to work? I don't know. I mean, my husband, as I said, eventually my husband actually lost his job because the company closed, but we took that as a great opportunity.

I think we both realized that one of us would eventually want to have our own business, you know, because the United States is the best country to actually have your own business. And we decided on a real estate and on the flipping, but we didn't have enough money to start. So he said, I mean, I'm going to go and write Uber. And again, he went from being, you know, this manager at a very nice company, but he said, I don't care if that's what it takes to start a new business. If that's what we want, I'm going to do that. And he enjoyed every little minute of that. You know, I think that that mentality is just very powerful.

And I think a lot of people struggle with that. You know, I think that mentally, it seems almost harder for people to go from a reduction of a $200,000 a year lifestyle to a $100,000 a year lifestyle or job. or whatever, that it is to have almost like total collapse. Like for whatever reason, that seems to be so mentally devastating to so many people to have any force reduction in their standard of living. And it's fantastic. And I think a testament to where you guys are today that you have had that happen multiple times and each time have taken in stride, rebounded, hustled, and gotten back.

It sounds like to me, is that, is that accurate? Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, I'm going to always remember that feeling when I go, got my first job and they offered me $350 a month and I thought I made it. This is it. This is like the end of my story because this was amazing achievement. I think I made more than my dad was making at the time with all of his experience. So I always have an anchor of $350 a month.

And that humble and experience would always be my anchor. I can survive on the $350 a month. I think that helps me a lot. Well, let's go into your financial journey and a little more detail here. So you come to the U.S. and you're working in the shoe store and your husband's working in the factory and you have negative $3,000, right? That's your $3,000 in debt, right? That first year, what is your like income expenses and wealth accumulation look like after a year there? What was driving that? So we spend $1,000 on a car, probably $500 in some expenses. We lived for a few months at my relative. house, which was amazing support. And then we just found our own place. And we just started budgeting. This is how much we make. This is our rent. And this is how much we have left. So that was enough for food at first. Maybe some clothing. We never went out. I don't think we even had like a desire

to go in out. It wasn't really that, you know, we didn't even know where to go out, to be honest. And then slowly, but surely, you know, when we started moving up the ladder and I actually found a job in Vanguard, that was another great experience. I was at the very, very bottom and I got $13 an hour. And I said, oh my gosh, I made it again. And that was great experience. It was very common. What year was that? That was 2005, November 2005.

I remember that. You made it. Yes, yes. We made it again. And my husband got, you know, into the office. So we both started working sort of like an entry-level corporate jobs. And I think that was plenty. I actually felt like we make too much money because, again,

we come from the experience of not having that much. We already were shown by another fellow immigrants where to shop to save up. So we never struggled financially from that moment on. So let's go in 2005, right? In 2005, when did you move to the U.S.? What year was that? 2005. So May 2005, we moved a few months it took for us to find the jobs and then move up outside for the corporate. Okay. So once you moved out of your relative's house, right, and we're renting,

that was also in 2005 after a few months? Yeah. Okay. How much were you paying for rent? What do you think your overall lifestyle cost for the two of you guys? Well, first of all, to save up, I think my parents moved to United States right after, together with my sister. who was at the time in the high school, we didn't care. We said, why don't we live together to save up? So we rented a two-bedroom apartment, one-bedroom for each couple, and my sister was living in the living room, which was fine. I mean, I used to live with 10 people in the two-bedroom apartment,

so, again, that was totally fine for us. And I think that rent was $1,000 a month. And you split that between the two couples? Yeah, I mean, we cooked together, we had fun. I don't think that our grocery budget was more than $400 a month, to be honest, for all of us. But that was 2005 too. You said that other immigrants kind of showed you where to shop to save money. What was that kind of, and how was that different from how maybe non-immigrants were shopping?

What were some of the tips that they gave you that you thought were to your advantage there? I know that old E.5 community goes to Aldi now, but that's kind of, that was a secret for immigrants. That's where you would go for shopping, right? Yeah. Yes. And I think 2005, maybe not so much. Either we didn't know about Costco, or maybe it wasn't so popular, but we would go to specific Asian stores or there's actually a very big Russian community in northeast Philadelphia.

We would go to a Russian grocery store and they're surprising would have, you know, cheaper prices there too. So, yeah, I mean, navigate some secondhand stores maybe even for the first time. But then we also realized the clothing, surprisingly. in the United States clothing is way cheaper than it was in Uzbekistan, which is amazing. I was making $350 a month, and I had to spend probably, I don't know, $50 on any given clothing item, which was just a mediocre quality, right? That was nothing fancy.

Okay, so let's fast forward a year or two, right? What do you consider to be the next milestone that you make in your financial journey after you're living in that apartment with the family and you're working at Vanguard, those types of things. What's like the next step? And what is your net worth change to? You go from negative 3,000 to deposit at some point there. When you can begin thinking about that number?

How do you think about the next stage of your journey there? So after we lived together with my parents for about a year, we decided to rent our own place. And I think at that time, both my parents and us were better financially suited for that situation. So we rented an apartment for not a year. And I think we were saving up, but nothing very significant. I want to say maybe a couple hundred dollars a month. And even though I was tracking the budgets always, we did not have exact goal.

I think the first few years for an immigrant is more like a survival model. right you're just trying to figure it out you're trying to just go go go right so you go for no apparent reason you just go and for that reason I don't think that I even remember you know how much we would save up but by the end of that year that we spend in that apartment and they when you maybe in three months the rent is I guess the renewal for the leases is due both my husband and I were actually playing in a pulley and we really needed to practice and then my husband said, well, we should buy a pool league, like a billiard pool league.

Oh, billiards. Yes. And then he said, we have to have a billiard table because we go to the bar and we have to spend a lot of money to just practice and exercise. So I feel like it's a good investment. And I said, nobody would let us have a billiard table in an apartment building. I mean, like, it's just impossible to what he said. Well, maybe it's time to buy a house, which was not a good idea to buy a house just to have

a pool table in it, but that's how we started looking for our house. And I think maybe six or nine months later, we actually ended up buying a house. And our only condition for a realtor was, is there enough room to fit in a pool table? The only condition, that's got to be easy to find out. For my husband, that was just a must. And for me, I mean, I brought up, well, it would be nice to have a yard. It would be nice to have a couple of bedrooms. I mean, honestly, we knew that at some point we're going to have kids. We haven't even thought of, like, do we have enough room to even expand in this house? We just said enough room for the pool table.

So not the best decision in our life, but we made it and we bought a house in 2008. From one hand, it was the worst time to buy the house price-wise. But from the other hand, we did get the, what was it, the government's program that gave you a credit, a first-time home-purchase? buyer. Yes. So at least we got some help with that. And going back to your question, how much we saved up, well, we only had probably $2,000, $3,000 saved up. And somehow our mortgage agent said, well, you can afford to buy $250,000 house. And I mean, we just blankly followed that advice. Well, if we can afford it, we must buy $250,000 house. We just didn't have enough money to put down payment for even 3.5 FHA down payment. We didn't even have enough money for that. So my husband said,

okay, after work, I'm going to go and deliver pizza. We'll get some cash. We'll have enough money for a down payment. And he saved up. We had enough money for a down payment when we moved to the house in 2008. Awesome. So what did that mortgage payment look like for you at that point? What did your rent some mortgage change to? Oh, that was actually quite a lot. We went, from $800 rent to probably $1,500 mortgage on top of all the utilities and maintenance that comes with that. We made another decision to actually live with my parents again. So they helped with half of that mortgage.

And at that time, I was pregnant with my twins. It was another surprise, another added expense. So we thought we would need some help. And we would need some help both financially and with kids. So we decided to make that call and they lived with us for a couple more years. Were you still making $13 an hour when you got this $200,000 mortgage and doubled your housing? Well, no, did you really double your housing expense? Because you went from $800 to $1,500.

But then your parents moved in and paid half. So now you're actually less. Yes. So I think overall we probably did not feel that big of a difference because we moved in with and they were helping out with half of that. I did go through, by 2008, I probably went through at least one or two promotions at my work. So is my husband.

So I think maybe at that time I was making somewhere around $40,000 or $45,000 and my husband was making probably $50 or so. I would say with those numbers, you could fairly comfortably afford this mortgage. It's just such a jump in cost. Yes. One thing we didn't anticipate that we were going to have to put our kids to daycare and putting two kids in daycare at the same time was not something that we anticipated. We didn't realize how much expensive daycare cost was and double that was probably the largest expense for

us. How much was daycare? Do you remember? Remember. It was actually $1,000 a month per kid, but we made up a deal with the daycare center where we would pay $18,000 for both kids if we prepaid the whole thing in advance, which was a great savings for us, $6,000, but we had to make that payment in advance. So that was my first introduction to a 0% APR credit card. And so we racked up with some points and we prepaid our, whole daycare bill and just slowly paid the credit card bill

every month. That's an awesome hack. I never heard that one before. I haven't heard that one either. Did they suggest that to you or did you suggest that to them? I think it was somewhere that they had in their rules and probably only

because the daycare was just launching. They build up a huge facility and they needed to fill that daycare with probably at least 100 kids, if not even more. So they needed to build it up very fast. I think that's why they offered up that opportunity for folks who were just starting up.

Wow. Yeah, that's a really excellent hack because you are saving, what, 25% on your daycare costs. You put it on a credit card, which is, like you said, you got points. And then you have, well, back in 2008, Scott, I don't know if you even had a, had you graduated from grade school yet, Scott? back in 2008, you could get a credit card with zero percent annual fee for like six months or a year. They had balanced transfer promotions where you could transfer a balance to a zero percent balance and also pay nothing to transfer the balance, which is, boy, did you hop it around or did you

pay it off before you had to hop it around? I didn't. It was 12 months promotions. So that was perfect. I was paying off the monthly bill. just not to the daycare I was paying it to a credit card company. That's awesome. Okay.

So you're making 90. You've got two kids in daycare now. And your parents, how long did your parents live with you? For about a couple years until they were ready to actually buy a house too. So maybe even actually, not I'm thinking about, maybe less because I remember that when my kids turned one,

we had to send them to daycare. So we had to come up with that amount of money. together with my parents leaving and we had to come up with the rest of the mortgage payment. So I think there was another kind of big push for us where my husband made everything that he could possibly do and actually asked his boss to get on the track to be promoted because he needed the money.

And I did the same thing. But in Vanguard, I would have to jump probably three levels just to make up how much money we needed to come up with. So I made the call to look outside of the court, which was a very sad experience for me because I did not work with that company at all. And that's when I found a job at the company that I'm working with right now. And we were able to both that same year to make up the gap in how much we needed to pay. Simply because there was a problem, we had to fix it. So we found the ways to come up with extra money.

You've got basically 1,800 divided by 12 is what, like $1,500 a month in child care expenses, plus $500 a month in mortgage expense. That's $3,000 right there and cash coming out your pocket before you get to all the rest of life's expenses, right? So how much were you spending on a monthly basis at this point? Good question. I probably won't be able to say how much I was spending every month, but I knew that when I switched the jobs, I did get $20.

$20,000 extra. And I remember that that plus whatever my husband got through his promotion was just enough to cover all the new expenses that were associated with kids and our parents living out. So after this transition, were you guys just kind of maintaining the status quo and able to kind of get by for a couple years? Like, what is the next kind of leap forward in your financial journey look like where you begin to maybe begin accumulating wealth? Right. I think we were always sort of kind of catching up, right? because we would stretch ourselves because we didn't know any better. I mean, with the same, with the house was exactly the same thing.

And the next couple of years, we were both growing in our companies and both kind of gradually making more money. But then my husband brought over his mom and his daughter. They both started living with us. So there was some additional added expense to this. So we're kind of catching up to all the adventures that life thrown at all. us and all the family members that we wanted, they needed to help. Probably the biggest savings time for us is happening in the last couple of years. And the reason for that is,

again, my husband, when he was laid off and decided to work in real estate, the amount of money that he made an Uber was definitely not enough to cover what he was making in his corporate job, but we knew that we were making the sacrifice for him to learn and work in his first slip. We were ready to either break even lose the money. That was his real estate university life school, but we made that conscious choice because when you, once he learns on one flip, from that on, it's just going to be a geometrical progression going forward. So with him losing a job, it also created another opportunity. And what year was this that he lost his job? That was

2015. Okay, so 2015. And how much do you have... So in 2015, it sounds like a big milestone. Your husband loses his job. He begins to Uber. And you're like, what do we do next? You know, we turn to flipping, right?

So I got two questions about that. One, why did you decide on flipping? And then two, how much cash did you have that you'd set aside to get started in that pursuit? Okay. So we had probably 30,000. saved up by then and that was just our only liquid cash available so whether it's emergency fund whatever but that's how much we had we decided enough flipping because somebody that we knew

was doing that very successfully and he introduced us to that and that was something that didn't require any education like formal education going to school and it was also part of working for yourself. It was part of having your own business. So we said if one of us works hard, it might as well be a business that brings you, you know, when you work for yourself. So yeah, I mean, that's how we, that's how we started. I think we worked hard on saving up a little bit more because his first slip that he bought, he bought it for $45,000. So we literally put everything. We thought hard and long time before we made that decision to finally invest in the first flip. But we sort of covered the worst case scenario that we would be down to $40,000.

I think me being in finance, I've tried to calculate all the worst case scenarios possible. When was this deal? That deal was 2015-16, I want to say. That was a transitional. He bought it 15 and sold in the 16. So it sounds like this is the turning point for you guys, right? This is the mental turning point. So in 2015 and 2016, your husband gets laid off.

And I would bet, and tell me if I'm wrong, that while he's driving Uber, you're also, this is like, now you're getting really serious about the budgeting and you start cutting back on some of the expenses as well. He starts picking up some side jobs like Uber and finding creative ways to make extra money. And you really aggressively accumulate that last 15 grand. Is that right? That is correct. Actually, remember one of the other, if you can call it the daycare hack that we did, we found out from our neighbors who would send their kids to Catholic school that Catholic school daycare or pre-K was half the cost of our usual daycare. So we have to check this out. And we went to school. We loved it. It was really amazing. We said, how come nobody else told us about it?

We could have saved so much more money. We're Catholic now. A couple of school that accepted kids and families of any religion. You didn't have to belong to a parish or anything. I mean, we're Russian Orthodox, and they said we welcome anyone. So it was half the price. And I think it's because they're not-for-profit, so you kind of cut down from the profit margins that they have to make.

So we cut the costs by doing that. We probably did a couple of things, you know, when it comes to a grocery budget. Typically, we're trying to do all organic for the kids and maybe we didn't go out at all. But, you know, we did everything that's necessary at the time. I never remember this being a struggle. It's like this is what we have to do. We're going to do it. Yeah.

No, fair enough. But it sounds like you got a little tighter. You figured it out to order to get that last bit up, right? So how did this flip go? it took him probably a good seven or eight months to build. He did the work himself? No, he wanted to. But knowing that we're building a business, I told him right away,

I said, if you're going to start working on that, and I'm sure he could have, he's very handy. I said, you're going to then get into the weeds of actually doing it yourself, and now becomes you've got yourself another job. If you want to run business, you have to run and manage, right? So he hired a crew. He had to learn a lesson. So sometimes you have to watch their quality.

Sometimes you have to watch their time. Sometimes they would just work on other projects in parallel to his project. So he learned a ton. And I learned a ton from him telling all the stories. I also realized that having a real estate license is a huge saving factor on both the buy-in and the selling point. So I said, why don't you just study for the real estate agent test? And he did.

And this is another thing. when I look at the opportunity cost of having a real estate license, I said you probably spend, what, a couple hundred hours at most? But then the savings of every hour that you span is exponentially higher and higher, the more houses that you flip and sell, because then you don't have to spend as much on the real estate agent's schools. So he did that. He passed a test fairly easy.

It took him nine months to finish it, and he sold it, then he made $12,000, which I felt was an amazing achievement. We were ready to just break even just to learn. Awesome. Wait, he made $12,000 on his first flip. Yes. That's like you hit the gold mine again. You made it.

What was your quote? I did it. I'm here. I'm a millionaire. He made it again. Yes. Now, during this period of time, was he bringing in income other ways? Was he also Ubering when he wasn't working on the flip?

He was also Ubering. Yes. He would wake up. I remember he would wake up 4.30 or 5 o'clock in the morning because the best clients that he realized he would have would be like corporate customers that would need an Uber ride to an airport. So he'd get up very early, Uber until 7 o'clock, then drop the kids to the daycare, and then go control all of his contractors at the job side. I'm sure he was doing something.

Maybe at least the cleanup. I just know him. He just likes to do that. and then bring the kids home, have a dinner, and 8 or 9 o'clock p.m., he'll go again and Uber. And sometimes he'll go and over on the weekends too. We had a target on how much he needed to make. And, you know, I would say sometimes maybe you have to take it easy,

you know, just have some rest for yourself. But he was very determined, and kudos for him. I mean, I felt like he was doing a great job. So he didn't have a traditional job. And it doesn't sound like this is where you're coming from. But I know that there are some people who would maybe resent that their husband isn't working a traditional job while they're working. You know, oh, you're just Uber. You're just driving around.

How hard is that? But, I mean, I've sat in traffic. It can be really frustrating. You guys sound like you're both on board, like on the same wavelength when it comes to finances. And like you're in this together. And I think that's really important to point out that when, you and your partner are not on the same wavelength and you're not partners on it. It really just makes your life struggle even more.

I agree. And I have to give my husband a huge, huge credit. We come from a culture where even his mom would make a comment, how can you just go from being this manager, director, to being a driver? Aren't you supposed to support your family? And, you know, it's hard. A lot of the stereotypes are there in your face. And we had a different upbringing too.

We have our own culture that we brought. And that's how it was. Huge kudos for him to be able to just change that mentality. And you're right. We both agreed on that's what we need and that's how we're going to get there. You know, if I already had a corporate job and I had a medical insurance that we needed for all of our kids and, you know, the whole family, we made the right choice. That was his time to do something.

towards our common goal. Yeah, and that's great. You know, that's, I'm not Russian, so I only know what I've heard from friends, but there is this, you have to provide for your family mentality towards men. And I mean, well, you know, frankly, so it is in most patriarchal societies, including America.

But, you know, it doesn't matter if your husband doesn't have a job as long as you're on the same wavelength. I love that you were supportive of him. And I love that he was like, you know what? this is what I'm going to do and I don't care what other people think and that's really that's really got to be in your mind especially on this financial independence journey oh you're going to quit your job how could you just walk away from such a great job well because I want to live the life that I want to live and that's flipping houses or being completely retired and not having a traditional job so I can spend time with the kids or you know work on my projects or whatever exactly and when we talk about it and when I say when one door closes the other opens, with him not having a job that was stable and my company opened an office in Switzerland.

And I was kind of contemplating and I said, you know, maybe we should consider it. Maybe I should apply. And at the time when he had a job, he said, well, we have two stable incomes. You know, why would we ever do that? Because then I would have to lose my income and then we would have to move to totally new country and, you know, make it from the beginning. and now he didn't have a stable job. It was an Uber, but he started doing real estate.

So we had another conversation whether we should consider, you know, applying. And it was a perfect opportunity. I've applied. I got a job and we took it. We moved to Switzerland. So I think if that didn't happen, it would have been harder. But all the cars were kind of just getting into our hands. But before we get to this move, well, actually in conjunction with this move, you make $12,000 in this flip.

Right. What's the timeline for the completion of the flip to this new job opportunity? Do you complete another flip in the meantime or is it just the one? It was just the one and it was kind of harder to find another one. So it probably was maybe three months after we sold it. That's when I got the job over. So it was also a little bit of a hard decision because we said he started a great thing and it's showing good results. How can we do that when we move?

And I think the mentality of instead of saying we can't do that now, asking yourself a question on how you can do it helped us to actually for him to continue to do that even here from Switzerland. I love that mindset of just how can we do it, right? That's the whole goal, right? Whatever, you know, I'm talking to somebody about personal finance or whatever on the show. Like, I hope that we can convince people to stop saying, like, I can't do this or whatever. And instead go, hmm, how can I achieve this result rather than I can't or I'm not going to or it's too hard or whatever? So to that point, you move to Switzerland. How do you then continue moving towards financial freedom?

And what's the next turning point for you guys? Well, first of all, going into even exploring this opportunity, we didn't know what comes with having an expat job. And this is one of the things that I want to probably highlight, because I don't think that it was ever mentioned the benefits that come with being an expat. All the corporations or even the government jobs offer that, they realize that they move the whole family overseas

so you don't have a support. So they have to provide for that. So what helped us is that we got the housing allowance. we were able to rent our own house in U.S. And in Switzerland, we have a house with the rent allowance, and they cover utilities, which is amazing opportunity for us to save. They provide the car allowance, including insurance and maintenance and even gas. There is a school allowance, and our kids are going to the international school,

which is another tremendous benefit that our kids, get to learn with kids from all over the world. They get to learn geography for real. It's not something that you learn in school anymore, but, you know, they have friends from friends, Egypt, Belgium, Japan, Korea, you name it. And they all learned out those cultures just by being exposed to the children around them. So that in it itself just brings so much savings because we are done with our U.S. expenses. we are actually making money on our house that we rented, and we don't have to pay anything here.

So I really want to highlight that having an expat job can actually boost up your savings and can allow you to maybe shorten your journey in the five of pursuit from, I don't know, 10 years to five years. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier.

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Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. So what are the numbers here? What were your expenses previously to run your life? and what are they come, what are they now? So we had two car payments, probably $300 each. We had insurance for each car, another $200 for each car. We had mortgage payment of about $1,400.

We had utilities, $250 a month. So I want to say overall, the expense that we cut in U.S. is now down to, you know, we had about $2,200, $2,500 that we no longer have. So we were able to just instantaneously save that much up. And I don't even count gas or anything else that just comes along with those larger expenses that you normally have. And I assume this came with a raise, too, in terms of money. Yes, yes, it comes with a raise.

And every time you move to another country, if you go from the, a low cost of living to a high cost of living, they just pay you extra, depending on that rate of difference. Okay. So you wipe out $20, $2,500 a month in fixed expenses, get a raise, and you just completed a flip. So while you made $12,000 in the flip, you have 12 grand plus the 45 you put into it. So you got nearly $60,000 in cash, and your expenses are cut. And I assume, So after you settle in, it sounds like it had a tenant in your home that you had in the U.S. And you have all this cash and savings, right? Is this a turning point for you?

Is this when you begin to kind of consider financial freedom? Or when does that come in? I think that actually came in at the same time. So we are in Switzerland now 18 months. And I want to say that's probably when you guys started the show, either 18 months or two years ago or something like that. It was last January. So, yeah, just a little bit. Yeah, so I just remember that on my commute to work, I always listen to Bigger Pockets podcast.

And then I've heard that you guys are starting a new one. And I said, oh, I have to check this out. And then when I listened to the first one, it's just that whole world of, oh, my gosh, how did I not know about this, open up for me? And through you, I got exposed not only to your guests, but then I started looking into overall FI movement with

Mr. Monty Mustache and everyone else in the field. And I've learned so much. I said, oh my gosh, there's so many tools and there's the sheer

breadth of knowledge is available. How come that everyone is not doing this? So now knowing all of this, I feel like we have tools in our toolkit. We have intent.

And, you know, everything is just normal now at this point. It's fascinating how much has changed in just the last two years, the savings rate that we are now at in comparison to what we had three years ago is just tremendous. And all it is is just now we have an intent. So what did that intent drive? So what's your picture at this point?

What are you doing right now for work? What's your husband doing for work? Let's start with the income. What's that look like? So my husband continues to flip. since we moved, he flipped successfully, one more house. We have my dad who is helping he is in the US, yes. So my dad is helping manage the project. Our goal is to find a deal, finance the deal, and my husband is a real estate agent, but we have good relationship with

his broker. So my dad just uses power of attorney to just close us on the deal. So we don't even have to fly on the closing. Everything is done internationally. And on that last slip, they made $50,000. And that's not counting the real estate agent income that my husband got from buying and selling that house. And the arrangement with my dad and with him, since my dad is doing most of the work managing it, he doesn't bring the cash to the table, but he gets 50% of the profit. Well, for us, it doesn't matter. my husband spends maybe an hour, a couple hours a night to just be on the phone with him

and maybe a broker or somebody else that he needs to follow up. But he has all this time to support our family here at home because, you know, we have kids, we have all this extracurricular activities. So he's spending the whole day with children and a couple hours at night because we have a time difference, which is a perfect timing for us to call you us. And yeah, I mean, that's his line of work right now. He's been an amazing father and amazing husband, a supporter for all of us. And he's making money while doing all of that, which is, I feel this is amazing.

Okay. And that's awesome about the long distance flips there. What are you doing to invest outside of that? Is that your major piece of your investing philosophy? Are you investing elsewhere in stocks, bonds, other types of investments? Right. So through my job, I have 401K. because of you guys and the knowledge that I'm getting now, I've heard about the solo 41K,

so all the flip profits are going into the solo 41K because the LLC that we're flipping under is split between me and my husband. So we both get to open solo 41K and we just pretty much max out employee contribution as well as the employer profit sharing. We also bought a condo last year. our goal also to buy and whole properties and have as much of the passive income as possible. He is working on another flip right now, which is about to be finished probably end of March. We just bought another house for a flip. And yeah, I mean, just maxing out the profits from the flips and going into more rentals. We just understand that maybe managing rentals right now from overseas is not maybe as easy,

but we are looking for a team that can help us manage it from the project management perspective. And as soon as we find it, we're definitely tapping more into that. So have you thought about taking these flips and turning them into rentals instead of selling them? Well, the ones that we had so far, they would probably be 0.3% legal, right? It would be 1% rule, right? It would be 0.3% rule. But if you sell it, I think our target right now is to just make $50,000 per flip. So it's a way bigger opportunity to save that much up. And then possibly when we'll go back and my husband is able to fly locally within the United States,

we'll do more of a, you know, we started looking into Carolinas or maybe even Florida and maybe doing some sort of smaller multi-unit investment. And that would be for rental income. Yes. Do you have a timeline before, for how long you have to stay in Switzerland? Yes, my contract is just three years. And we just cross our midterm. So we have until summer of next year.

Now we're going home. This is awesome, by the way. Just to kind of put in some more color into what you kind of were talking about there. When we go through, when we talk about what the solo 401K means, right? You can flip a property. Let's say that you do two flips a year. and each one makes 50K, right? And this is oversimplifying things, right?

That's solo 401K, you can literally put up to, like, somewhere close to $50,000 each as a married couple into a solo 401K to max that thing out, right? So all of that flipping income is not taxed, right? You're deferring it by putting it into the solo 401K, right? We have to pay self-employment. So the biggest difference between the passive income and real estate and $4.4.4. is we still have to pay self-employment, but we don't have to pay our federal tax. Yes. That's right. So it's a huge tax savings, right? So this means that overall, you guys are

generally, and are you then redeploying that solo 401k money into more flips? Is that what you're doing with that money? Yes. So for now, we actually looking into the notes investments. And that's my way of tapping into, again, education within real estate, but still diversifying it somehow. So I'm trying to find a way, because I've heard, that on average, you know, smart investing in notes brings you 18%. So that would be amazing if we can make that much money. Here's why I love all the things that you're doing right now, right? So you have very low expenses.

You have this great income coming from overseas. You're making this work overseas. You're taking your active self-employment income and sheltering it from taxes in a very effective way through this solo 401 strategy. Then you're going to use that money to invest in notes, which is also a very smart strategy because that note income that if you're getting 18% interest rates or whatever is taxed at a very high rate, but not if it's in a solo 401k.

No, then it's just a straight investment. And you're not paying Ubit tax on that. Yep. It's deferred taxes. So you do pay taxes eventually on this, right? But it is a very effective approach to doing that, right? And that means you're saving up additional money outside of that, which you're then going And all of that, you're going to invest in real estate for long-term buy and holds,

which is a very tax-effective real estate investing strategy. I mean, this is a fantastic plan that is really aggressive in every direction. And I imagine is already paid huge dividends, literally negatively. For sure. And the other way with the other view within the soul for 1K, is the reason why we do it now, is right now we're bringing, I'm not going to call it too, much money. But we're at the very high income level right now. And of course, our federal tax rate is higher. But when we do achieve that financial freedom, when we can do something different and not

have as high of our income, that would be a perfect time for us to tap into the solar 401K. So we plan for what's coming. And that's why we're deploying the strategy right now. Love it. And these are all things you've learned about in the past year, a lot of this, is that right? Yes. Yes. I mean, bigger pockets, I cannot say enough. I met my tax advisor through Bigger Pockets. I mean, through you guys, there are so many avenues that I just went and explored further on my own. And it's just you kind of open the door. And I think that's what matters. Well, that's fantastic. We always love compliments about bigger pockets. Yes, we always love compliments.

Scott, you said something just a moment ago. You said this is a very aggressive way to invest. I want to point out that this is aggressive, but not that risky. She's investing in solid assets in the form of real estate, in a market that she knows well. Her husband knows well. And I'm assuming you have another exit strategy. Should the market just collapse tomorrow, you could rent it out. It's not a huge profit, but it's still. renting it out, you're not going to lose your shirt. The beauty of a flip is that in general notion, it's a short term in and out investment. So my goal, when I, again, being a finance nerd, my goal is to calculate enough profits that if the market is going to turn that much. I mean, the last house we sold was $350,000, but we made $60 or $50,000, right? So we're talking about a significant reduction in price for us to lose money, right? So going in, we're already contemplating that at the market drop tomorrow, we're still going to break even because we're putting so much profit into the assumption.

What do you think your position is going to be when you go back to the states and your contract is up? Well, part of the benefit as an expat, you're guaranteed to get a job within. your company. So I'm probably going to still continue to work for my company. And I honestly don't know where I end up going to be, but I'm open for anything. If life taught me a lesson is change is good, right? So if I'm going to end up with a different department or whatever it is, I'm still going to be excited. But we are on our way towards financial freedom. And what it is for us, it's not necessarily stop working. It's just the ability to do whatever we want to do. And I do want to spend more time with my kids. So that part is definitely weighing in, you know,

any corporation only gives you that much of a vacation time. So I'm going to try to find this balance between the work and life. What's the number that you want to be at in order for that financial freedom to be a reality for you? Is that a passive cash flow number? Is that a net worth number? What does that look like to you? So before we actually, we had two metrics. We did one goal for passive income through real estate. But we also, when we found out about a 4% rule, we also said how much do we need?

What's the equivalent of that in cash too? So in order to cover our expenses and live comfortably, I think that we need probably $80,000. I want to say for now that the kids are growing, because most of our expenses are going towards their education. And it's not a private school, but we do value all the extra activities that we can possibly provide for them. I don't want to save on that. So probably that's how much we would need to be financially free,

but $80,000 means we need $2 million in the savings account. So that being said, I think listening more and more people that are on this journey, I'm leaning towards just having enough for a few years because I felt like we can figure this out, right? If I'm no longer working for a corporate, we always figure something out. And with my husband growing more and more in his flipping business, eventually he can come up with enough money to cover our expenses.

I mean, I can either join him or we can start another business, but we are opportunistic in what we can do. As long as we can feel that the worst case scenario, we go back and get ourselves jobs, then we'll be okay. So I'm not sure that we're aiming for a number anymore. It's more so being comfortable too. I think that's great. Looking at the fact that you guys are flipping houses and you're going to move back to the States and you have this uncertainty, how do you think about how much cash to have on hand

in your bank account rather than investments in stocks, bonds, whatever, do you like to have a large amount of cash? Yes. I want to say yes. I think by the time we go back, I'm not going to count the equity that we have in our rentals, but we'll probably anticipate to be at probably $400,000, right? So.

In after tax liquidity, like this stuff in your bank account, right? Yes. That's a huge number, right? And I think that that is, I want to get on this point because I think that that's very important, given what you're trying to do, right? a lot of people in the FI community don't like to have that much cash. They think it's under efficient utilization of capital.

But you use the word opportunistic. You use the word, we're ready for anything. We're going to start businesses, all that kind of stuff. I think it's very interesting that you say that. And then you also have this large cash position. I think that that's probably correct for someone that's looking to do what you're trying to do, right? And I mean, the nature of a flip is that you have to sit on the cash and you can't invest it because it goes through cycles.

But I figured out another. In this case, I think that we're going to use at least, at least $250,000 or $300,000 of that and just pay off the house that we're going to live in. And some people will say, it's stupid. Why would you do that? Like, you can deploy that cash. But I realized with a new tax reform, we can no longer deduct the interest on our own house. What we can do, we can get a HELOC on our house that we paid off.

And we can use that in our flip projects. Well, HELOC interest turns out is deductible. So we can use that and use it towards our expenses and flips. We can still have an access to the cash that we have. And the top of everything else, we're not going to have mortgage payment. And that's another, when you're looking at the budget, when you know that you need to cut down your annual budget as much as you can, I think not having $1,500 to $2,000 a month, that's a huge savings. Yep.

I can't argue with that. No, I didn't realize that I didn't pay attention to it because we recently got somebody to do our taxes for us, but I didn't realize that mortgage interest is no longer deductible, but that a HELOC still is. I mean, it is deductible, but most people will fall into the standard deduction for a couple is $24,000, I think, and a lot of people won't have enough of their itemized deduction

to actually exceed the $24,000. So for us, in our situation, it becomes pointless to carry a mortgage note. So we thought, you know, we need access to cash. We can't invest this cash anywhere else because we need to use it in flips. That's our working capital. But we can always access to it for HELOC. And you can self-finance your flips. And then once you keep going along, you might have a paid off flip that you keep as a rental.

And you can he lock that out and do the same and kind of do twice as much or whatever. Yes. get the helock before you stop working. Oh, yes, that's for sure. You know, if you're interested in, so this is for the listeners, right? So I'm talking to you, the listener right now. If you're listening to the show and you're interested in these real estate kind of stuff, right, there's a recent podcast on the Bigger Pockets real estate podcast with Jay Scott.

I forget which number it is. I'll look that up while you're describing it. But he, you know, talks about some things going into a recession. And one of his tips is go out right now and think about just getting the cards lined up to get a helock, right, on these things. You can take the money out. You could just set it up or have it there. But if there's anything coming forward, there's no harm in having this liquidity, if you've got it in a home equity, to present yourself with some options to kind of do some of this other investing. Should opportunity present itself?

Should J.B. right? And there's a recession coming. And it's right around the corner. you know, that's not a bad step to take. That could be a pretty low-cost insurance to help you seize some opportunity. And I would encourage you to go listen to that episode and consider his advice. And it sounds like that's something that, you know, whether you're intending to or not, Anna, you're doing that in the way that your timeline is playing out over the next 18 months as you come back to the U.S.

Yes, yes. That's for sure. I actually listen to that podcast, lots of good information. I believe that's episode 311 of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Investing podcast. And you can find that, of course, where you found this podcast, or you can go to biggerpockets.com slash show 311 to listen online. I just love the way that your story kind of came together right as you moved, right? Just complete the flip, all this hard work, years of grinding it out,

and then it all comes right together as you make this one big change and you discover FI at the perfect time, right when you have all this liquidity, right when you've completed your husband's completed his self-education. on his first flip. And you're going to come back from this three-year stint. I'm sorry, is it Sweden or Switzerland? Switzerland, yes. Sorry.

You're going to come back from your three-year stint in Switzerland and be in just such a phenomenal position to grab life by the horns and go after it for financial freedoms, businesses, whatever you want. It's amazing. And it's so intelligent and so tax-optimized and aggressive. I like how she's taking advantage of opportunities. There are opportunities that pass people by every single day

because they're not grabbing life by the horns. Like you said, they're not taking advantage. Oh, I wish I could. I was guilty of that. Earlier, Anna said, oh, I don't want to say I can't. I want to ask how I can. I was guilty of that two weeks ago. A triplex came up literally around the corner from my house and like,

oh, it's not the right time. I can't do that. It went under contract. It popped back out. And now I'm like, okay, how can I do this? If it fell out of contract, if it fell out of contract, it's assigned to me from the universe that I have to own this house. Yes. So, yeah, how can I do it?

And I'm talking to a lot of different people and I'm figuring it out. And I am taking advantage of it. But it's so easy to say, I can't do that. And Anna, I don't know that you've ever said I can't. Oh, I probably did. Everything is not so perfect. But I feel like just listening to other people's stories is always another opportunity for us to say that person could do it, then I could do it too. So it's always nice to hear from other people.

To round this out and to circle all the way back to the beginning, right? What does it feel like to you now? What is what do you consider to be the situation you have to be in to say, I've made it? To be honest, I feel like I've made it no matter what at this point. I feel like it just comes with time to just realize that no matter what life throws at you, everything is possible. And I'm so, so grateful that we actually came to United States. United States allows you to have so many different opportunities that at this point,

whatever we're going to have, we still need it. I love it. That is perfect. Okay. Is there anything else you would like to share before we move on to our famous four questions? Well, just one tip, since we live in Europe, I actually found out that a lot of the universities in Europe are free or very cheap. So another college tech, if you're thinking about sending your kids to school, consider Europe because I think the most expensive that I've heard was

$1,000 per semester. What? It's a thousand dollars a course here. I think, I don't know, I haven't looked into it yet. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. How do I send my kids to college in Europe. Let's say we're going to England or some other country where they speak English because that's the only language my kids speak right now. How do I get in? How do I qualify for that? I was just looking this up, just, you know, prepping for the podcast. I looked up online and I think Germany's probably the country to go for that. They actually offer undergraduate programs, all levels of programs that are actually available in English and there are free. So you only only have to pay for, they call it like registration fees or something like that.

To non-citizens? Non-citizens. And actually go online and just look up Americans studying free abroad in Europe or something like this. And you'll have lists. People actually write about this. And I know a lot of people that I met here, young kids that go to school here in a Bern University, and they told me they literally pay $1,000,000 francs a year, which is the same as $1,000. Huh, that's the first I've ever heard of this. So I have some research to do on this. I do too, because my kids are older than your no kids yet, Scott. So they're going to be in college a little sooner than yours are. Yeah, this is way better than my real estate plan.

Brandon's real estate plan, yeah. Yeah, Brandon thought he got a good deal. I guess Rosie could still go to Germany. We'll share that tip with him. I've not heard that before. So that's two tips. that we have heard from Anna, the American Study Free Abroad, and the childcare hack. Childcare is one of the biggest questions that we get. That in insurance, do you have any insurance tips? No, no, no insurance. That's part that we're still gonna have to figure out,

that's on my list to figure out for basically when we go back if we ever not work for a corporate job. Yeah, we just need to find out what to do. It's one of those mysteries in US. Anywhere we go, people don't have that issue, but in U.S., it's definitely a problem. Listen to this. I just typed into Google. Sorry for not paying attention to us 30 seconds here.

And this is a website. It says, amazingly, all public colleges in Iceland are free for American students. International students make up 5% of all students. Let's see. If you are an American in France, then we have some good news. It will cost almost nothing. University tuition at public institutions in France It occurs only a small fee of $208 per year for an undergraduate degree and $290 per year for

masters. Plus, you get to live in France or Iceland. Norway is great, but I've been here for a while. Czech Republic, Germany. Yeah, like you said, I mean, this is a whole rabbit hole to begin exploring. So, you know, we'll have to kind of think if we can get a guest that can come on and talk through some of this stuff at some point. Yeah, and I highly encourage probably to, I've heard of those folks.

got some information from them too. Our rich journey blog, I think. Our rich journey. And they were sharing some information on even where to find expot jobs. So the listeners are interested. A lot of the corporations right now in US, Google, hotels, pharma companies, you know, M3, you name it. They have a lot of international assignment jobs.

U.S. government always have jobs overseas. I think it's USAJ jobs.gov, where you can look for those. teachers or any profession associated with school, librarians, coaches, consulers. I think the website is, I made a note for myself, teachaway.com. And the other interesting part that I found out from them is woof, W-O-O-F. It's worldwide opportunities on organic forms. So it's almost like a house hacking. It's not an actual job.

You don't get paid for that. But you get to live somewhere internationally and you work on the organic form and they provide you with food and they host you in their homes. So if you want to go for a summer and enjoy, you know, a summer without any expense in Europe, I think that's another good opportunity for a lot of young folks. Huh. Very cool. We'll link to all those in the show notes. Yes. And what's his name from Show 55, the couple that travels around, Bryce and Christy.

And Christy, Bryce from Millennial Revolution. Sorry, Bryce, it's been all day. Bryce from Millennial Revolution has some great tips, like I said, on episode 55, for getting health insurance. An expat health insurance for any place other than America is dirt cheap on several websites. So you go and you work at the woof farm and you've got most of your expenses covered and now your health insurance is covered too. It's like something like $30 or $60 a month.

Yeah, it has to be not that. Maybe not in Switzerland, but I think everywhere else it's pretty cheap. Yeah, it was definitely very inexpensive. Oh, this is awesome. Thank you, Anna, for those extra tips. Okay. Are we ready for the famous four? I'm ready.

Okay. These are the same four questions and one command that we ask all of our guests. The first one up is what is your favorite finance book? I wouldn't probably call any finance book specifically, but I think it's really good perspective. The reason what I read was Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. And I think that that books really helps to just grow exponentially. So it's just a setup for mentality to grow whether it's financially health or any other way. So I probably use that. I love that. And I think that it's a different perspective than we often will get on the show here where some folks are very formulaic about how

they're going to approach financial freedom. And I think that the problem with modeling it out in that kind of level of detail and not being opportunistic is that if you kind of take an approach that you're taking, you know, where you, you know, kind of optimize on all fronts and take some business chances at the same time, you can really make the pun intended big leap here and move really quickly toward financial freedom if you're allowing for that opportunity that outsized performance to come in in certain ways. So yes, that's true. All right. What was your biggest money mistake? Probably buying a house when the only intent was to have a billiard table at our house.

So I think that's probably the worst mistake. I mean, it all turned out for good. We rented that house. That's the house that we actually still live in. And that's what we ended up renting. But yeah, that's probably not the best decision initially. Do you still play a lot of billiards? Not as much.

You know, it's funny because we moved into that house. and then we had twins. It was just not enough hands to play billiards. It's so funny. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I say the same thing that just helped us. Framework, intent. As long as you know what you want,

everything else is just going to fall through and how you want it. You just have to be ready to accept it. On this subject, do you have like a goal-setting mechanism? Do you write down goals or what does that process look like for you? I do. I actually write down goals for everything. I have, you know, our personal budgets and being in finance. I even build long-range plans.

I'm doing everything very nerdy and financially. I go with goals for flips, for investments, even for my job. I think everything that we just outline for ourselves in education, health, I just have a journal by my bad side and I always write in it. How frequently is that? Is that once a week, every day? Some goals I get back to them maybe every quarter. Others could be even weekly or daily. So it just depends. I just mentioned that because you mentioned the word intent. And for me, in my head, intent goes along with having written goals

and just like consciously deciding to make progress towards them as one of the major points of my day where my day is not productive if I just did a bunch of stuff, but didn't actually take progress towards my top three goals, even if it's small. Yes. And I think the biggest thing, too, is to set up the goal and I feel like for me, it helps me a lot. Just let go. Because everything else is just naturally, you already have an intent. You already have a goal. Everything else, the right people, the right opportunities would just probably come along with. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Okay. All of my jokes come from kids. So this is very, uh, kids.

friendly joke. Ham sandwich walks into a bar and orders a beer and bartender says, sorry, we don't serve food here. I like it. Sorry, that's all I have. I'm going to tell that to my kids. Okay, where can people find out more about you? I mean, I don't have a blog. I don't have anything to promote. So feel free to reach out to me on Bigger Pockets. Just for this podcast, I anticipate if people have any questions, I would love to just pay it for it. So I'm all for helping out with any kind of advice that I can. So if you have questions on expat jobs or, you know, education in Europe, let me know. I created an email today. And I came up with this boring name, but that's all I could find on email. So it's Anna on Money. At

email.com. Anna on money at gmail.com. Awesome. We will put links to this and your Bigger Pockets profile in the show notes, which you can find at BiggerPockets.com slash Money Show 62. Anna, this was fabulous. I love your story. I love the perseverance. I love the willingness to accept new opportunities because that's really how you break out of the status quo is doing something that nobody else is doing. So thank you. Thank you for reaching out. This was great.

Thank you so much for doing me. Watch out because I'm betting you're going to get a lot of emails. I'm glad to answer all the questions. Awesome. Thank you so much, Anna. I really appreciate your time today. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

You too. All right. Big thanks to Anna Lee. Mindy, what did you think? Oh, my goodness. I just love this show. I have 100 people. I want to send it to, especially there's somebody in my life I brought up in the show who wouldn't

change jobs, wouldn't move away once they lost their job because they didn't want to leave this life. Okay, like Anna said, don't say I can't. Ask how can I? I am also taking this, I can't and turning into a how can I? And fingers crossed that I get the duplex. But yeah, this is a really, really, really, really great episode. And I love her story. And I'm so happy she reached out. I mean, I think it's just, I think, like, grit, perseverance. Those things came up several times. And then the big point, the big thing, though, is intent, right? It's amazing how behavior and the financial position just dramatically explodes

without any reduction in happiness or how people are approaching their life or whatever. Once they discover the concept of financial independence and it clicks. I mean, how many times have we heard that come up in this show where somebody, you know, people are chugging along, maybe doing the right thing. right, some wrong in terms of managing their portfolio. They discover FI, nothing changes about their happiness level, but their wealth just balloons. And it's in a really short period of time and really effectively. I mean, look at what she's done in the past year and a half. It's amazing. Oh, it is. And she said in the show today, she said, I never remember this being a struggle.

This is what we wanted. So this is what we're going to do. And that people from outside the financial independence space when they first are presented with this, there's a very common response of, oh, I could never do that. Oh, I could never give up. And I don't know what they think this is. Beans and rice and peanut butter and jelly and, you know, living in a hovel on the side of the road and dressing in rags and never having anything. That's not what this is about. If you're really, really struggling and you're hating it, you're doing it wrong. Yeah. I mean, it's coming back to the very, simple premise at the end of the day is like what do you want and are you is what you're doing getting you to where you want right and i don't think that i think that a very tiny fraction of the population

goes through that very simple thought exercise right you know i mean a lot of people just seem to be doing whatever to do whatever it's just not like an intentional like how do i want my life to look and how do i back into that yeah do you remember uh scott rickens from a couple of weeks ago episode 59 He said when he was talking to his wife and getting her on board, instead of just saying, hey, this is what we should do? He asked her, what does your life look like? What is your ideal life? And she wrote down the things that she wanted. And some of the most expensive things they were doing didn't even make her top 10.

So what life do you want? Sit down and really, you know, Anna talks about goals. I know you have a goal list that you go through every day, every week, every month. make me feel like a total slacker. Scott, thanks. But you have goals and you're constantly pushing yourself towards your goals, which could be why you are the youngest CEO in Bigger Puckets history. I don't know. Setting goals takes time, right? It takes some time and thought and it's imperfect. Like, I don't know what I want. What I think I want now is way different than what I thought I wanted three, five years ago, right? But I set what I wanted and I worked towards it intentionally, aggressively, all that kind of

stuff with written goals and then you move towards it and then it'll evolve over time it's always a work in progress what you want right that's always going to evolve over life but i just think that it's you know it's just that simple with a lot of this stuff and financial freedom is just such an effective way to allow you to get whatever it is that you want you know regardless of what you want financial freedom is probably going to be useful such a setup in order to get you there well and let's say you have financial freedom and then your goal changes okay now you have the free to go and follow your dreams. Follow your dreams.

To pursue, yes, that's it. When you have financial freedom, you have the ability to pursue whatever you want. Yeah, I think, I think like if you know what you want, if you know what your dream is and you're not in position to pursue it, financial freedom will help you get there. If you don't know what your dreams are and you're not really sure what you're going to do, financial freedom is a great goal, placeholder goal while you're figuring that out.

The only people who shouldn't be really pursuing financial freedom are like people who have a very short time window or they need to pursue something. For example, one of my buddies is an aspiring musician, right? For him getting a job, saving up 50% of his income and all that kind of stuff, not a good idea right now. He can come back to that in three to five years. He should be following his dream while his window exists, right? But basically, except for this kind of unique situations, I think that this is a very useful tool to go after for just about everybody. If you're going to be a baseball player, you know, whatever, go be a baseball player and do that while you can and then go figure out financial freedom afterwards. But those are the exceptions, I think, to the rule.

I don't know. If you're a baseball player, you get financial freedom by not spending every dime of your $5 million salary or whatever you're getting. Oh, yeah, I've talked about the miters and that whole slugs. Okay. I don't know anything about that. Well, we'll get to that other time. Regardless, financial freedom is a pretty good pursuit. And, you know, if Anna can pursue it from Switzerland in the way that she's doing it, I mean, that's got to be inspiring and door opening for a lot of people that are here in the U.S. I don't see how you can't be just absolutely excited to jump into this with both feet after listening to Anna's story.

Love it. Well, should we get out of here? We should. From episode 62 of the Bigger Puckets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, signing off.