BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 63: Financial Freedom With 5 Kids IS Possible with Jordan Klint

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

One of the most common misconceptions of financial independence is that you can’t do it with kids. But Jordan Klint doesn’t listen to what other people say. He became financially independent with kids—and not just one or two of them. He did... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 63, where we interview Jordan Clint. Don't copy my exact story. I don't think I could copy my exact story. Adjust it a little bit. If you're not gifted here and you are here, change it. And that's totally fine. And I'm not at all saying that mine is the only path. But get with somebody and have somebody there alongside of you or behind you, kicking you in the butt, whatever you need. And move this along and get the train going. Because once it rolls, the thing rolls, there's no stop in it. 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 doing fantastic. It's a beautiful day.

I guess maybe. It's snowing. But it is. I always love snow, so it's a beautiful day. I'm really excited for today's episode because Jordan Clint is our guest today. He contacted me when we back a thousand years ago when we said we were looking for people who would reach financial independence while having kids. And Jordan doesn't just have kids. He has five kids. And conventional wisdom said, well, I guess conventional wisdom around FI isn't really a thing. But everybody says you can't do this with kids. And Jordan's like, well, okay, I'm just going to do it anyway. So he did.

and this is his story. With five of them by age 33. Five, yes. Not only did he hit FI, he hit FI with five kids and by age 33, so he's not like even 50. Yep, if you're looking for a repeatable down-to-earth story, someone who just works at it year after year

and achieves it in a pretty timely, but not super flashy manner. This is the show for you, I think. Yes, and you know how he did it? He had a plan. That's right. This is not something that is just going to happen to you. Financial dependence is something that you have to plan for. But like we have said, in 62 other

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Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobooks. 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 in indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Jordan Clint, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today.

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. So can you walk us through where your journey with money begins? Yeah, I can do it up. So it started. I'm from Southwest Michigan. I know Mindy's been there. It's pretty awesome place right by the Lake Michigan. I was the oldest of six kids.

We were all homeschooled growing up. So that's a little bit there of my background. My dad was an industrial electrician. So his work was very contract-based. When there was construction, things were good. He worked 13 days, 12-hour days. That's the most you could work. But he would do that for several years.

And then there'd be nothing. And then he'd be off work for the winners and stuff like that. So I really learned some of the principles I applied later in my life were just there every single day. It was something we saw. So when times were good, it was peanut butter and jelly and hot dogs. And when times were bad, it was peanut butter and jelly and hot dogs. So it was very consistent. That's how it was. Probably looking back on it now, I'd say we were lower middle class, I guess, growing up.

It didn't feel like that because we never saw those ups and downs as the kids. We didn't see that. It was just one of those things that just kind of happened, I guess. I always knew I wanted to stay in the area. So eventually met my wife and we got married when we were, I was 20 and she's a little bit older than me. So I was 20 when we got married. We were both in school. She was studying to be a nurse.

I was studying to be an engineer. We got married, stayed in the area. I guess that's a little bit of the background. So you are financially independent, but you don't have any kids, right? Because you can't do this with kids. Yeah, I have five kids. So it's not the same as zero. Five is a different number.

Yeah. Slightly longer. Slightly larger. Definitely larger. When we got married, I had this engineering co-op job while I was working through school. So I would do three months of school and then three months of this co-op opportunity. And I remember it was some Sunday night and I'm like, I don't know if I can even go back tomorrow. And my wife was we were talking through like, yeah, you're going to go back tomorrow.

I'm like, okay, fine, I'll go back tomorrow. I think I can do this for 20 years. And then I need to be, I need to be done with this. So right then I set this 20 year deadline. my head. I'm like, I got to get out of working for the man in 20 years. I had never heard of anybody even doing that at that point, you know, of my life. It was before I was, you know, in with Mr. Money Mustache. I was probably before he was even on the internet and things like that. But it was something I was committed. And I'm like, I can do this for 20 years. If I set a final,

a final deadline. I didn't know how I was going to get there. I didn't know what it was going to look like. I mean, we didn't have any kids at that point. But it was just one of those things I committed to and we're like, we can make this happen. Okay, so let's talk about this. You're schooling for a little bit and then the 20 year mark. How old were you when you said I could only do this for 20 years? I guess I would have been 21, I think, but somehow the 20 years was going to be 42. When I turned 42, I had to be on my own, had my own thing figured out by 42.

So it must have been somewhere in that neighborhood. That's when I graduated from school. I was 22. So maybe that's what it was, but it was something like that. But I know 42 was my dropped dead year. So by 42, I had to have this all figured out or I was going to be an internal failure or whatever. So no pressure. No pressure.

So with your schooling, I really like this co-op thing. Was this through a school or was this? Yeah, yeah. Kettering University is the school. It's primarily engineering based. They have a few other degree programs you can do. It is pretty cool. When I went and looked around, I was going to stay in Michigan, you know, for my bachelor's.

I did two years of community college. So I had an associates, which is a very, very smart way to do it. And I would recommend that to anybody that's looking. gives you two more years to make a decision on your schooling. And, I mean, community colleges are a tenth of the price of, you know, for private institutions or four-year schools. So I had my associates, then I transferred over to Kettering, and they have this co-op program where it's a requirement to graduate

is this back and forth between paid internships, essentially, and then school. And then you go back and forth. And really, it helps you develop your engineering side. I couldn't imagine graduating and have never been in a facility. before and then showing up and, you know, yeah, I'm going to justify this huge paycheck that I'm earning and I've never, I don't know how to fold a blueprint. I don't know how to find the bathroom. I don't know how to do any of that. I couldn't imagine that. So it really was beneficial. And again, if you're interested in that, it's Kettering University and amazing program. You could, you could do it on your own through other

institutions. I know by us, Western Michigan, they have a good engineering program, but everybody has to find their own internships. So if you have those connections, it's worth it. But Kettering was was pretty cool because it's a requirement and they have guidance counselors and things like that to make it happen. So you have a very intentional education here that prepares you directly to earn a good living as soon as you graduate. You do it at extraordinarily low cost because of all this stuff. What is your financial position in terms of income and assets upon graduation? Yeah, so I did take out a little bit of a loan. We borrowed about $20,000 to get both of us through school. So we had a nursing degree and an engineering degree and we were about, you know, 21,000 in the

hole from that. I think we could have done it different. It just wasn't a priority to do it with no debt because it was still really good. Yeah, yeah. No, I was again, junior college and then bleed over into those. So we graduated and nursing and engineering are two of the fields. Like you could find a job in almost any economic climate. You can find those kind of jobs. So we were able to land really good jobs in our area. We didn't have to move anything like that. So again, those are like vanilla, bland, basic. We can get these jobs anywhere. It's not a problem. So what did you do right after that? But you got those jobs. What did you kind of, how did you begin approaching your personal finances from the get-go? Yeah. So we were, I guess early on, we hooked up with that Dave Ramsey kind of thinking.

So, you know, try to avoid this debt. It was pretty bad. Again, I love Dave Ramsey for the, you know, if your net worth is minus up till, you know, 50,000. I think that's really like the bank for the buck area. And if you can set those principles of here's what a budget is, can't spend more than this budget, avoid monthly payments of any kind, all these kind of things. Those really set you up to really launch your spending going off from that. On our personal side, we bought our first house. It was before we were married, actually. I bought my first house. It was a live-in flip that I did. My dad financed it. And then I did the work and got it done. And then we split the profits on the back in after we got married, we had lived there two years and then sold that with the,

you know, the homeowners exemption. I am familiar with that plan. Yeah, yeah. I like that plan a lot. So that rolled over, we split those profits. That rolled over, you know, my dad got half. I got half. That rolled in my down payment on my, you know, our first real house where it was just my wife

and I. So was that a launching pad for your, your financial position going forward after that? I think what it really did. Yeah, it's a good thing to have that down payment, you know, on your first place. take a long time to save up for that. But it really set the principle for us was we can do this. It doesn't matter what it is. We can figure out a way and we can kind of accomplish that. So that's one of the things I think that's worked out well for us is we've never had a roadblock. We just get to it and say, we figured out the last time. We'll figure out this time. What can we do to

gradually change this or increase it and we can get through this next step? What was your, you know, you said you were following Dave Ramsey and all that kind of stuff? What were some of the things that you think you were maybe doing differently when it comes to your household expenditures relative to maybe some of your, you know, some of the folks you knew that were in a similar position income-wise. Yeah. We've never had a car payment. We've never had a new car. But those car payments, I just couldn't, I couldn't even figure out how people would try to justify that kind of stuff. That's one of the big things that Dave says, you know, who are you going to put on the payroll? So every time you get one of those monthly payments, that's putting

Netflix on the payroll that's putting GM on the payroll. I don't want them to be my first employee. I'm not going to do that. So that kind of mentality really helped us. I mean, we have a few monthly subscriptions now, but that's one of those things. If you can avoid those things, I mean, they just add up over time,

and that really kills you. So we drove rough cars, $1,000 cars and things like that, but that's one of the things you just learn over time. I can find a good deal on the purchase and I can take care of this, especially with YouTube now. anybody can replace a wheel bearing, just find somebody on there that's done it before,

and you can really copy that. So it doesn't take much. I mean, I think I'm naturally handy, and that's what's going to come out of my story. But I don't think that that's a barrier to anybody now. I think you can overcome that through the use of the internet and a bunch of other, there's other avenues to get over some of those things. And again, my story is just my story. If I was 10 years older, it would probably look a little bit different.

And if I was 10 years younger, it would look different. but I'm not saying you can't do any of these things. You can get over all these little hurdles if you just have that mentality. Okay, I'm going to jump in here and say that I am also, I don't want to call myself naturally handy because I'm not. I am YouTube-billy handy. You can find out how to do almost anything on YouTube. I think they don't have like self-openheart surgery videos,

but everything else you can find on YouTube. So if you don't know how to change out a light switch, you can find a YouTube video that shows you exactly step by step. You can find a YouTube video that shows you how to fix anything like specific down to the actual thing, whatever kind of car you have, whatever part you're missing. Like YouTube is amazing. I can't imagine doing this. I mean, I did it before I had YouTube, but I had books. But like I can't imagine not leaning on YouTube to do this. And you don't have to be naturally handy. You can just watch somebody do it and it's not that hard. Yeah, I totally agree. That's how we.

did our first flip there was a couple of the skilled trades we'll call them you know that that live in flip that we did where we didn't do them like plumbing we had somebody else do it just because that seemed complicated but then after i paid that big bill to the plumber and like well i cut into my you know back in profit quite a bit i'm like i think i can figure this out so going forward and all the flips i mean we do whatever we can legally do i do want to preface that you know but that's one of the things you can figure this stuff out and there's there's no obstacle now that is very interesting that you say whatever you can legally do because I only do live in flips. So you are legally allowed to work on your own house. You don't have to hire a plumber to do plumbing work in your own house. But that's a

good distinction because when you're flipping a house that you're not living in, then you do need to hire somebody. In most cases, the city or the municipality will require that you hire someone licensed. But yeah, when it's your own house, you can learn your own self. And a lot of that is based on insurance as well, right? So you may be allowed to do it. Maybe it just may not be insured and you may be liable for the problems that arise in the future. Is that right? Well, when I do it, yeah, I'm reliable. I'm liable for the problems that happen when I don't do it right.

I just do it right. So, Jordan, how long were you married before you had kids? We were married three years, I think, before we had our first. And had you graduated college and you had real jobs? We had graduated college. We had gotten into our first real house. You know, we'd already done that one flip or whatever. But then our first house, you know, where we were on our own kind of thing.

we were in there. That was another, our second house, you know, was our, another flip, was another living flip. We added a second story on. So that was pretty awesome. And we did that, you know, we started that with no kids and finished that. We had definitely had some kids about the time we finished that one. Wait, it sounds like you didn't just do that in like 12 seconds. How long did that?

No, no. So that two year window when you do a live and flip, you need the two years sometimes because there's two years worth of work. You know, again, we were at this point, we had when we started that, we both had full-time jobs. so it sucks up some hours, but that's one of the things we always found enjoyable. So date nights where, you know, you go down to Culver's and then you head down to Menards.

That's a date night. We used a lot of those. So our, you know, nights and weekends is what we called it. That's where we found our hours to do all these kind of things. And, you know, you really built kind of a side hustle. You know, again, this is before we would have called it a side hustle even. But you built this side hustle on nights and weekends and TV time. We didn't watch any TV.

So there you go. It sounds like these first two or three years before you had kids, that you're really going all out. You graduate with a very little bit, a low amount of debt. You get good jobs. You're saving a lot of money. You're driving.

You're not assuming a car payment. You're leveraging your housing position and your house to take advantage of the living flip with all its tax advantages and all that kind of stuff. It gets your thing. So what position do you kind of end up with two or three years down the road?

If you paid off all the debt and are starting to stockpile a sizable amount of investable liquidity? Yeah. So we were, again, this is kind of where we started to diverge a little bit from that classic Ramsey approach. So we never paid off our house all the way. That wasn't something that we did.

We liked the lower interest rates and we kind of wanted to just see what was out there and kind of stick around. And then, you know, this is about when the crash would have started right about this point. So it's like, okay, so we're going to keep a little bit of this, you know, liquid as liquid as we can. We're not going to, you know, pay it off into the house and things like that. So that was one of the things that we never quite did. But yes, we were investing a lot into these living flips at the time. but we were doing pretty well and it was definitely enjoyable. One of the things that we built was when we had no kids,

we were investing all of this time in our day jobs and then into our night and weekend activities. But that really became kind of ingrained into who we were. So once things changed a little bit, we were still the people that were going to, we hustled a little bit. We worked pretty hard and we enjoy it. And that was kind of what we built on. So I think that was probably the number one thing we got out,

even more than the financial position was we can do this. We've done night and sweepings before. We can figure out how to do this. And then as we got one kid, two kid, three kids kind of built through that, it changes with kids. It's definitely a little bit different, but you can find a way to make it all work still. Once you've already laid that foundation,

you know, starting with five kids, it would be different, I'm pretty sure. But I think the principle is the same. But again, you have to lay that foundation. So for us, we just added one more brick into that and you just kept going. it wasn't something ever that was a big change. Were you saving anything at this time?

Did you have any sort of savings and investing outside of the live-in flip? So I've always invested up to the 401K match, you know, or HSA match if we were in that kind of insurance system. But only I would only put into the match because I never really, I didn't want to invest the time it took to learn the stock market, I guess, and then just throwing money in there always seemed like gambling if you didn't know what you were doing. And so I wasn't going to be putting in a ton more away in there.

But again, we would build up. And eventually as we start buying, you know, we buy some rental properties, eventually in this story. But we would save up and then we would buy one and save up and buy one and save up and buy one. So that's pretty much how that worked on the back end. That's where we were at. We were definitely probably around 50% of our income was going towards some kind of either investment or savings, but not straight into the stock market.

That was one thing we didn't really do. I'm sorry. What was that percent? Did you say 50%? About 50%. I don't have the exact numbers because that's not how we thought about it at the time, but that was probably where it was.

And then as I got raises through my career, I was very blessed and I did well in my field. My wife would step down. So I'd get a 10 grand raise. She'd step down 10 grand worth hours. Basically, as we were having more kids, each time we had a kid, she wouldn't go back to as much work,

wouldn't go back, wouldn't go back. And then eventually it was just stay at home now. So can we walk through that? What did that look like when you have? had your first kid. So what was your position like at that point? Financially or? Yeah, just financially. Yeah, we were strong at our first kid. While we had the kid, she was still at the hospital in those like three, you know, three days or whatever before she came home. And I went back home

and I installed all the windows in the house because she said windows had to be in the house before she was bringing the baby home. So I'm putting all the windows in. And then when you're putting in windows by yourself, that's a little complicated. So I missed my partner on that, you know. That's funny. This sounds like my life. But so you have your first kid and does your wife step down immediately to a lower number of hours? No, no. It definitely didn't happen.

I don't think with our first kid. So about that time, probably she changed to a relief position at the hospital, which actually pays better. But you have to be more flexible in the department you work in. So you don't always work in the same department. So she was like a floater, I guess. But that helped off some of that. And then she would do her own scheduling. So if she wanted four days this week, she could put in for four.

And then if she wanted none the next week, that just kind of worked out. That's how the scheduling worked on that. So it worked out pretty well for us. She was on, I guess she was doing evenings at that time. So there was a couple days a week where I had that one kid, I guess. But I was daddy and remodeler and everything at the same time. Okay. So what were you doing for child care while your wife is working and while you're working?

We have some people who ask these same questions over again, childcare, healthcare, and that kind of thing. Yeah. So health care at this time, when I was full time, we had, you know, health care through my place of employment all the way through until I wasn't there anymore, I guess. Child care-wise, we are in the same town as my support structure. My family is there.

So it worked out pretty good. Again, she was working second shift for most of that time. So, you know, I'd get off at four, I guess, and she'd head up at two. So there was only a couple hours on days that she worked. There was only a couple hours where we actually needed to sit her. We could leave her up my moms or my sister or something like that. And then I could pick her up, have dinner there with whoever was watching them, and then take them home and finish up the project.

So again, some of that works well for our situation specifically because we had this support structure. But I think that's one of the things you need to consider. We made the commitment at some point is I could make way more money if we went down to Houston or out, you know, in the oil fields out in North Dakota or whatever. There's things that were way better opportunities, you know, just on the incoming dollar side. then it's going to change your expenses on the backside. And you've got to consider some of that. So definitely thanks to my mom and my dad.

They really helped us out there. But that's how we pulled out the sitters. Did that continue with all of your kids? It gets more complicated when you say, I'm going to drop off five kids for a few hours. Yeah. So it definitely changes. But again, as our life changed,

we adjust what we were doing on the side. So we change that structure. So we do less flips now, you know, outside of the house. So the living ones aren't as complicated. because you do, you know, you're there with the kids and that's, that's something that's easier to pull off. So flips in other outside residences, we do less of that now just because it's a little bit more complicated. But yeah, we still, eventually we started to pay for a sitter because with five kids, that was a big burden, you know, for anybody. So we do have a sitter now. It's a standing date night. She comes, watches the kids, puts them down and it's great.

But we just factored that right into our, that's just like a marriage expense, I guess, we would call it at this point. And so you got to put in the work that you need on that side to keep everything, you know, pretty strong, pretty healthy. So I have asked this question of a lot of people. I've asked this question, like, of people in my life and, you know, people on the show. And childcare just seems like something you're going to have to plan for. If you don't live by your family, like you said, if you don't live there, then that's just got to be an expense. I had somebody send me an email once, oh, what about this expense? That's going to be an expense that's, you know, unique to you.

you're going to have to factor that in. So what I've discovered after asking so many people the same question is there's no just magic button for child care. If you want to have children, you are going to have to factor in some sort of child care options for them, whether that's you're a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad or you have family that can help or you can't. And you can't be a stay-at-home parent and you can't have family. You have to hire somebody and that's just going to be an expense. I think that's just there's no magic, you know, oh, just leave them in the trunk. Like you can't do anything that isn't safe. You have to provide care for your child.

So that's interesting that you had made. Was that a conscious choice to stay by your family? Or was that just like you just wanted to be there? So, I mean, it definitely was a conscious choice. We, it's a vacation community. I mean, it's a pretty amazing place. And besides January and February, the rest of the year is pretty awesome. So actually, that's what.

the beach picture behind me. We are in Florida right now, and my mom does have my kids. It was minus 10 degrees when we left, and it was 78 when we landed. So that was a pretty big change. So we're a little good away for my wife's birthday, but you are still able to pull some of that stuff off, you know. But yeah, you just have to decide if it's more important to keep the, you know, the income side of that and keep that elevated, you can do that, but there's tradeoffs. And we didn't want to do two, two incomes the whole time that wasn't ever part of the plan. We didn't want to have them at, you know, eight hours of daycare. That wasn't really the plan ever. So we just didn't. I mean, but those aren't, I don't think those are limiting factors, like you said. It's just a different

set of inputs into your formula. Well, and you said the word plan. You have a plan for what you want to do. And I think that this is, if financial independence is your goal, then you have to make a plan. It's not just going to happen. You can't just be like, oh, whatever. and then all of a sudden you have enough money. You have to make a plan. So two years into this, you start having your first child. We talked about how you kind of navigated some of the hurdles with child care, obviously making the intentional choice to not go after the big income,

but stay around your family. When did you become intentional about building passive income? Yeah, yeah. So again, like I said, I set this 20-year goal, had no idea what I was going to do, didn't really ever even, I hadn't heard of somebody that had been able to pull that off. I mean, I guess there's the people that win the lottery and sell your tech, startup and stuff like that, but I wasn't in tech and I don't play the lottery. So neither of those

were going to work out pretty well for me. So one of the things we started to look around was, okay, what are we going to do next after we finished, you know, our second, our second live and flip, which we actually held on to for a while. So we didn't sell that one right away. We did put that second story on, but it took us a long time to decide to actually to move from that place. But we started looking around. This was right about probably the bottom of the recession. So we're up to like 2008 now. I think we had three kids at that point. And things were, I guess no, we only had two kids still. So yeah, so bottom of the recession. And we started to look around and was like, some of this real estate that was pretty expensive a little bit ago was starting to look

cheaper. It's definitely on sale, you know. So we started looking there in the fall of 08 and then picked up our first place in 2009. And that's where we went from there. So going into that purchase, how much did you stockpile? How did you come up with the liquidity to purchase that deal? So, well, the very first deal, we had some cash, obviously. And then we did have a ton of equity in that house that we were living in. So the first one we actually rolled was, you know, just a line of credit on our personal residence. We were able to pull off that first property. And that's because you added lots of value to it in spite of the market went down,

but you'd added so much value to it through sweat equity that you're still able to pull out a big chunk through. Yeah, the market probably went down almost 50% probably in our area. again, we're a vacation community. So things are really different. I'm sure there's some people out there that are familiar with that. But, you know, the high ends are crazy high and the low end is still pretty high because everything kind of gets compressed in the middle there. So the mid-range houses got hurt pretty bad.

But yeah, no, we had a ton of equity in there because we had done so much in the previous point. And I was, we were in a position where even if the thing sat empty for, you know, the whole year, it wasn't going to affect too much. So we're very conservative in that. We have a conservative, you know, debt to value. We don't want to get aggressive in anything like that. So our story probably went a lot slower. I know sometimes I listen to these people on here and I'm like,

holy moly, they did it so much faster than I ever could even think about doing it. But we weren't going to ever put ourselves in a position where it was going to be a stressful situation if we had some vacancy or if we had some kind of major problem or whatever. Everything went a lot slower than it could have gone. But again, that's what we were comfortable with. If we weren't looking to get rich quick, that wasn't one of the things we were even thinking about. Again, I had this 20-year deadline. So when you got, well, now it's down to 15 years and whatever, you know, and it's, but it's getting shorter and shorter.

But you still have a long runway on something like that. So we didn't have to get aggressive. Well, let's go into this first deal. So you take a line of credit, you buy this first deal. How much passive income does it produce? This is your first cash flowing investment? Yeah, yeah. Again, we didn't quite know the formulas.

We didn't quite know that there was probably an easier way to predict some of this. I knew the construction side of it enough, and I'm looking for solid houses. So I avoid weird additions, things like that. To me, that's going to affect the long-term maintenance on something like that, because you don't know what kind of Yahoo turned a screened-in porch into a bedroom. You don't know what's really going to be there. So those are the things I kind of avoid. I avoid slabs.

We do have a few slabs up in Michigan. But, you know, because again, it's just one of those things like I'm not really interested in something weird. I do love roof problems, so houses that have water pouring in, that's a good value to me. I can fix all that. But you got to find your little niche there. So this was a house. It was a foreclosure. It had some roof issues.

I'm like, I can fix these pretty quick. Again, I didn't know about the 1% or anything like that. I didn't really know that. But I knew a year and a half earlier, this thing would have sold for over 100. And now we picked it up for 59, I think, or 60, something like that. So once you fixed it up, how long did it take you to fix up and what were you renting it for? We put somebody in it, I mean, basically, immediately. The beginning rent, again, we didn't know.

But I'm like, if we rent it for $6.50, I know we can make some money on this. I didn't know even how to look and see what other stuff was renting for. Again, this is our first shot at this. So I'm like, let's try $6.50 because it's going to more than pay, you know, this line of credit that we have. And it's going to, you know, we knew what the insurance was. we knew what the taxes were going to be. So I'm like, I think we'll be okay there. 660 was way too low for the market.

So we had it filled up in a matter of no time and some great guys. But that became one of our principles going forward was probably every time we list a place, we could get a little bit more money. But that wasn't always the point. We wanted to get a little bit better tenant is what we were looking at. So if we leave 50 bucks on the table, that wasn't going to be the end of the world to have a better tenant. I love it.

I think a lot of investors come out. it with the complete opposite approach. They're like, how do I get the most rent but deal with the least amount of repair problems? You know, like, give me the structure with the repair problems that are up my alley. And then I just want a good tenant that won't give me any trouble. Then I'll sacrifice your rent on that. Yeah, but that's one of the things. I don't want to put down anybody else's perspective on this.

So if you have an avenue or you think that you have something else, then you should exploit that. But again, I knew what mine was. I'm an engineer. I don't really want to interact with 40 tenants. That's not really up my alley. but I can fix a roof problem. So give me a roof problem. Let me have better tenants,

make a little bit less money, and I'm going to be okay with that. So I think what would be awesome to hear next is, how did this kind of progress right up until a point where you actually discovered the concept of financial independence and began going down that rabbit hole? Like what was the journey up like up until that point from here? So probably up, you know, all through this point,

and we're going to get to it later. But I was probably thinking, oh, a construction company. If I open a construction company, that way I wouldn't be working for the man anymore, and I can have that rolling, and then I can phase out of my W-2 employment and into the more of this self-employment thing.

So for the first, at least 10 years, that's what I would have been thinking is something more along that line. Like I could find I'll do the work that I want to do. I'll be honest. I'll call people back because if you can call people back, you'll have a business.

And that's all I really need to do. So that's probably where I was thinking that I was going to go. had not thought at all about passive income being the key there. Definitely, you learn that over time as you're more involved in this and less involved in that. And you start figuring out, hey, maybe this is a better path. So that's probably where we're at. After that first rental property, do you acquire more rentals?

Did you invest your money somewhere else? Did you stockpile cash? What did that look like? Yeah. So we got the first rental. And I'm like, well, this one worked out great. You had a great tenant. Then we're like, hey, we'll just look for the next one.

you know so then the next one was a short sale which i had never done a short sale didn't know what a short sale was going to be so we put in our offer and it was like six months the bank sat on it and we're like okay that's probably not going to happen so we didn't worry about that one so then i went hey there's going to be an auction like right down the street from my first rental property i go over to this auction take a look over here so i show up at the auction there's only two bidders at the auction and one is a couple that i really respect and or one of the people that i always kind of thought, hey, maybe they're doing this thing. I'd never actually spoke to him about it, but I'm like, you know, the millionaire next door kind of thing. They didn't look like it,

but I always had this suspicion. I'm like, they got something going on there. So they were there at the auction and then my tenant in my first property was there. So those are the only people that were there. The older couple said, okay, we're not going to do this. And then I'm like, I can beat out my own tenant for a house. This is going to be. So I beat him out and then, you know, I got my second one there. And then the short sale called up and they wanted to close. So we closed on the same day on our rental house number two and three we closed the same day which was kind of stressful and again not probably how you would have planned it but that's definitely how that went and then my good tenant he did eventually find his own place and he moved out so you kind of find out he's looking when he shows

up at the auction with you you know well so you have you have these three properties now do i assume you fix them up or do you get a tenant right in there going from there but basically i want to i want to know what how does that portfolio keep building over time until you kind of it built exactly like this it was slow and it was boring and there's it is nothing just amazing to say about the whole story so we basically we added to pretty much two doors a year that's kind of how we are looking that's about what we could you know cash flow on our own side we occasionally would pay for them straight in cash and sometimes we would we would have enough saved up you know to pull it off and pay for it or use the you know use the home equity so we would pay off the home equities and then fill them back up and pay them off

and fill them back up um before the banking rules changed i was able to get a home equity on one of my investment properties, which was pretty awesome. I know they've adjusted the rules like four or five times since then, but we had that one for a long time. So that's how we kind of used it. So we just went up and down, up and down and added a couple here and there, only looking for the stuff. I was very selective. I wasn't going to stretch it. I wasn't going to buy something that wasn't a good fit for us. I wasn't going to buy something far away. Every house we own is within five miles of our house, probably something like that. Wasn't interested in something else. There's a couple markets that are a little bit further away that you can do better, your numbers will look better,

but we just were like, we're not going to touch those. Those are out of our scope. So we really limited it down. And that way, you knew when you're going to find those two houses a year, because there's only going to be like four houses that fit your criteria and you're not going to win all four of them. So you're going to win a couple of them. You know, that's kind of how we looked at it. I mean, I love it. What you're talking about is so repeatable, right? Have a strong savings rate, right? You have low expenses in your housing, transportation. I presume you're living responsibly everywhere else. So you're stock buying a lot of cash. You're buying solid singles one after another that you're extremely comfortable with that are really convenient for you at every aspect.

And you're just doing it slow and steady over a period of years. Where do you end up? What's the next? I had a couple different jobs. My W2 jobs changed a couple times. I wasn't really in tune with what my goal was yet. I still had this 42, you know, age 42 number sitting out there that I was thinking about every once in a while. And, you know, I would adjust my 10 year goals and my five year goals and everything. to make sure that they were somehow on track for this. But again, I didn't really know how I was going to get there. Eventually, I was at a job, and I got this great promotion, and I was super stoked about this promotion.

And within three months, they promoted somebody else, like, from below me to above me, and then it pushed me down, and it got all messy, and I was not thrilled about this. And I'm like, well, this was kind of a good thing, and I was really excited about it. what am I going to do now that I have this boss that I didn't want to have? I would never have signed up to come and work for this position. So it just kind of happened. And I'm like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to knuckle down.

So that's really when we figured out, hey, we're going to get this whole thing up and going. We're going to make sure we've hit our numbers. We're going to make sure we get the right number of houses. We get them paid off. And we're going to be able to pull this off because I love my employers that I had. but when it comes time to it, your W2 employer is going to let you go. If it's good for them, it's what they have to do. I mean, there's no other way to look at it.

So that stable income that you get every other week or every month or whatever you getting paid, that's not really that stable because you don't have control over the back end. So they lose a contract. They have to let some people go. And one of those days it's going to be you. So I did survive a few layoffs, but you see that, when you see that happen, And you're like, how did I survive this layoff? And he didn't survive this layoff.

And that was just kind of, you know, just how it went. So you learn ways to stay employed. And then you learn like, this is not that stable of a paycheck, honestly. So it sounds like, it sounds to me like this line of thinking became it, you know, more concerning to you because the position at work changed for the worst. So you were liking it. So you weren't really as it wasn't as central to mind that the paycheck could evaporate. But then as soon as this boss, this new boss came in place and you weren't like in your

position as much, the risks became magnified. You're like, not only do I not like this, but it's also risky and I'm and this kind of things come to light. Is that, is that fair to say? It was definitely, like I put that sense of urgency. It really kind of kicked me in the pants. And that would have been 2013, I think, 2012 or 2013, somewhere right around there. And I'm like, we're going to step on this now. Again, step on it. Again, I'm pretty slow, pretty conservative. So it wasn't like that next year we had it all rolling or anything like that. But we really ramped it up. So we started. to do some stuff that you know we doubled up on a few things we made sure we had some flips going outside and personal flips we moved we moved back what was your position like at that point

how many properties did you have and what was your passive position at that at that point where when you kind of have this motivation yeah so that we would have had probably six properties or seven properties something like that we had a couple loans the rest of them would have been paid off we weren't up to the point, like, they wouldn't have paid for our lifestyle at that point. But we were very conscious, like, hey, we're going to really double down and commit to this. So we had a pretty level, you know, we hadn't bumped our lifestyle that much. But we did cut some things out then. I'm like, we're going to cut back.

We're going to save a little bit. We're going to scrimp. We're going to try to lower our spending side. Quicker you lower that spending side, the quicker you're going to get to it on the passive income side. So it's one of the things we really, we really hit it pretty well there. What were some of those changes on the spending side? So we dropped eating out, like it just went away. We cut back on a few other things like that.

We didn't do a ton of vacations before, but we dropped all the vacations, you know, things like that. Most of the time, like a vacation day for me was we would take it off to work on a big project. So some of the jobs, you know, you get a roof or whatever. You can't always pull a roof off in a weekend. So you take a Friday off and a Monday off from your day job. You can get a roof done in a four-day weekend. You can make that happen. So that was one of the things we look at a week.

that we started to pick up some work, like just actual contractor work. I have my builder's license, so I'm approved in Michigan to do some of that stuff. We picked up some side work and did that too. My wife helped out a ton. She enjoys that. And again, we had built our lifestyle where we were able to stay on our feet and keep going for lots of hours every day and weekends and things like that. But she was supportive of me, and she wanted to make sure that we were in a position

where we were going to be stable. And again, I love my employers. That wasn't the thing. It was just you realize at some point you're like, if it comes down to it, they're going to let you go. And then you're going to be back on the street and you're looking for a new job. And nobody wants to do that, especially an engineer.

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Definitely not at that point. But that's why we had to step on it. And we knew we had to step on it. What were your lifestyle expenses before and after you're kicking the pants there? Yeah. We probably were able to cut, probably. $600 a month out of our expense side and not change our back end of our lifestyle a whole lot. But again, we were very aware of our spending and we're very in tune, you know, as a marriage.

We're on the same page. So some of those decisions are a lot easier for us. But again, we ramped up some of the side income stuff and then really committed that we were going to get some more doors basically and make that happen. Did a couple more flips. Then it really started to roll. I mean, again, there's a great time. if you're going to pick a time in history to really start doing this stuff, start in 2009,

and then ramp it up in 2013. It's a great time to do this stuff. So again, I'm definitely blessed by the situation that we were in. So let's fast forward to the next milestone, right, that you perceive in that. Yeah. Yeah. So that would have been November. We go down to my uncles for Thanksgiving.

So I love going down there. And he has a different outlook on life and a different take on things. And that's one of the things. So we sit there and we talk and we go over some stuff. And we realized probably in November of 15 that we had gotten to a number. It wasn't the number that I originally thought. But if we scaled back our lifestyle just a little bit, we would be stable. So I was within spitting distance of that FI position.

And we're like, okay, if we just build up the courage here over the next little bit and get a little bit more passive income coming in, we'll be in a position where we can back this down all the way. but it took me all the way from November of 15 all the way till August of 16 to actually step up and commit to that position. So again, I'm slow. I'm a little nervous and jittery. So it took me a little bit of time. That's not that long.

But let's walk through that, let's walk through that 10 months period. Yeah. So August of 16, we were definitely in a spot. I wasn't sure how my W2 employer was going to take it when I came in and said, I'm going to retire. They were not prepared. I would have been, how old would I have been in? That would have been 33, 34, 33, 34, something like that. Seven, eight years ahead of schedule.

Yeah. But again, we had really pushed down on the spending side. That was one of the things I want to make sure people understand. If you can commit, it's so much easier to cut a dollar of spending than increase a dollar of income coming in. I mean, I can't express that enough. And wave your hands and clap, whatever you need to do. But that is a point.

So if you're at $4,000 a month spending, and if you can get that to $3,000, that changes your 4% rule. It changes any kind of passive income. I mean, those are just huge numbers. And think about what you're going to gain if you can give up, you know, eight hours a day of sitting at a desk or whatever you're doing. I mean, think about that. So we were at the position in August of 16 where worst case, if I had to do a little bit, of outside work, I could pay the bills. So I went in that time with my boss and explained this. And you could just see the like, what? So I'm obviously, I'm obviously a little bit different.

You know, I got the big red beard and everything. So people don't always know how to take you in a position like this. And again, as you're getting, you're getting up into the FU money numbers. So you have a whole different outlook on life and it changes how you perform at your job. That's one of the big things. like I can do what needs to be done and I don't have to worry about somebody having a problem with me because I have a problem with me. I'm going to do what's right for the company

every single time. That's not an issue. You can't really touch me. So that's one of the things I think is a, it's really good for the employer in the back end, but it makes her some weird conversations because they're not used to, you know,

losing that leverage all the time. So you come in and say, hey, I'm going to make a change here. If you want to work something out, we can work something else out. Otherwise, if it's all or nothing, I'm going to take the nothing instead of the all. So that's where we were.

They were very, very gracious and decided that some of me was better than none of me. So we did work out a part-time position going forward. My role did change a little bit, but I was still able to help them part-time, which again, that cushions the, you know, if it's a plane coming down to land or whatever, you got a nice, soft runway then. And that's what you wanted, right? That was the best possible outcome for you? It probably was the best possible outcome.

I went into that meeting 100% uncertain of the outcome. I had no idea if they were going to rip away my key card and throw me out of the door that day or if they were going to work out some kind of part-time deal. I was not at all sure. Probably should have been more confident that they would have worked something out. But again, I was uncertain.

And that's why I had waited so long because it's just a little scary to go in and tell them. If I had to do it again today, I would probably be just as scared. I mean, that's not something, and I know if you're in that position, take a shot at it and do it, but realize that if you're a solid employee, they're going to want you to stay around. And I know we hear stories about this happening all the time where people are able to work out remote gigs or part-time gigs as a way to kind of cushion, you know, and do a gradual step down.

So it definitely worked out for me and it can work out for you. So with this, when you went into this, right, you know, one of the big, I think, concerns that a lot of people have when they're about to do this is health care, right? So I got all the numbers in place, but like that's an expense that now all of a sudden comes in place. Were you prepared to handle health care expense if they had cut you off? Yeah, I started preparing that day that they gave me the new boss that I wasn't super thrilled about. I'm like, I'm going to make sure this is all ready to go in case this gets really bad. I know, I've got to have something lined up that day. You have five kids.

Yeah, even though my passive income wasn't going to be there, you know, back in 2013. I'm like, I got to be ready for this. So, yeah, we are on one of those meta-share. type deal. That's what it's called, right? Yeah, the medical health share. Yep. So it does qualify for Obamacare insurance,

but it's not insurance. So don't get them confused. It is like an interagency donation program kind of thing where essentially we're just helping each other out. It's what it is. So it's a little bit different and you've got to get used to that. But every insurance plan now is a little bit different than they were even two years ago.

So there's some getting used to for even regular conventional W-2 insurance. Price-wise, we pay less than we paid in my other job. So it actually, you know, even though that I don't have anybody else contributing, my personal payment is less every month than my payment was before. So it definitely works out good. Ours does have a religious component while we had talked about that before, but it works out well for us because we are appropriately religious.

Yeah, and I think Philip Taylor from episodes, 38 went into the health share plans a little bit as well. They can be a really great option when health insurance is so expensive. You still have a job though, right? You're still I still work at that same employer. Yep. I'm still part time there. My wife says I like it too much to quit. I don't know if that's true. I'm not sure, but I'm still there. I really enjoy helping people out and my actual skill set lines up really well with what they need. So it works really well. I don't have a lot of reason to change it at this point. So if you want to say semi-f-I, I'm fine with that.

It's semi-retired. I'm fine with that. I don't really need the definition. That's not going to change it. Pretty happy with my current position. And as long as it stays something that we both can be happy, it's going to stay. I don't see any reason to really speed it up and change it. How many days a week where you work at your obviously full-time before?

And then how did that change meet after the conversation and what's it like now? Yeah. So it took a little bit of time. to actually change my role. So I was engineering manager at the time. I had a bunch of reports and things like that. So we gradually fades out some of that. I went into more of a project-based position.

And still engineering projects, a lot of cost savings and improvement ideas, things like that. And I also picked up some software stuff that wasn't in my background before. I'm not a software engineer. So I did pick up some of that just because the role was available. So now that's one of the things I do with quite a bit of my time. It went down as soon as we got the transition, it went down to three days a week. So I work three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

So my Wednesday is my Wednesday, Friday, which if you want to know a way to make your other employees smirk and hate you, call it Wednesday, every single week, and then you leave and you don't show up until Monday, and they work Thursday and they work Friday. And then text them on Thursday and Friday a bunch of times that you're off and you're home and you're doing the other stuff. So that's a good way to motivate other employees, right? Yeah, so my Wednesday, Friday, that's my thing. The big thing is Wednesday, Friday. That's awesome.

And you still work in three days a week now? Sorry. Yep, yep. Still three days a week. Again, it's not, it's pretty flexible. I do work from home some and I kind of come and go when I need to. So it doesn't really get in the way. And when you have time off like that, I don't need to take, I do still have some vacation time.

You know, it's a little different in this position. But you don't have to take days off to go get doctors appointments and things like that. So you don't have to worry about a lot of those kind of things because I do have open days every week already. So it really kind of works out pretty well. Awesome. What has changed about your lifestyle then? Do you go on a lot more trips, travel? You know, what's what are some of the? So again, one of the one of the things that was important to us, obviously is our family and our kids. So we homeschool our kids as well. Well, the ones that are old enough, I guess. We have a 12, 10, 8 and then two four-year-olds.

So the four-year-olds are young still. So I help out on Thursday and Friday. I guess I'm part stay-at-home dad, but then we push a lot of our project work on some of the rentals or any of the flips that we're doing. We do push that to the Thursdays and Fridays as best we can. You know, there's still the emergency calls. But I'll do that. I wait back to school. I've started my, to get my doctorate. So I work on that some. But pretty much, I mean, I think that's what retired life is supposed to look like. So I'm doing whatever a 35-year-old semi-retired guy would do. That's awesome. As far as finances go, do you have plans to continue building the portfolio? is that, are you kind of done? Yeah, no. Again, I'm going to build it the same way. We're going to go

slow. We're going to be appropriately cautious. We're going to let it grow a little bit. We've switched over. We've done a lot of things in our community to kind of change that. So I feel like I don't know if made it is the right word, but I've gotten to the point now and I want to help other people and I want to give back a little bit. So we've done some land contracts with some people where we've giving them pretty good deals and made that happen where they might not have been, they're not financedable at a regular bank. So we've helped some people out like that. And I really, I mean, I like it.

It's kind of fun. And then we've done that. We've looked at a few other different kinds of projects because you can open up your, your horizon opens up a little bit when you get that flexibility. So we've looked at some weird stuff and haven't always decided if we wanted to do weird stuff yet. And then we do have an offer accepted on an apartment. So that'll be our first multifamily at all. So that's there.

So we're going to try that out. Baby steps again. It's a five unit with a standalone single family. So it's six doors together. But we don't have anything like that. So it'll be a little bit different. And it needs a ton work. But I think we know how to make that happen.

So again, go slow, go steady. And then we'll just keep going. I don't know where it takes me in the next five years, 10 years. I'm not really sure. There's nothing pressing at this point. There's no need to change it up a ton. I did some construction work this summer outside and found some stuff that I liked and some stuff that I didn't, didn't like as much. So I think there's a guy I've been working with and maybe next summer we'll do a little bit of that.

Maybe we won. But one of those things you don't do it in the winter, you know, that's no fun. So we don't do that in the winter. I love it. I mean, you've won and you're just like, great. I'm going to enjoy it and figure it out as a... I definitely don't want to say we've won. That doesn't sound right.

I don't want to say we've won. You won. You have won. I will say it. You don't have to work anymore. You get to work at a job you love. You choose what you want to do. You don't do what you don't want to do.

There are people who have to be doing all that stuff in the wintertime because they have no choice. You won because now you can choose to not do that stuff when you don't want to do it. I will say it. The Lord has blessed us a lot. And you say you did it slow, but you know, most people don't have five kids while they're doing this and don't do it at 33. So, you know, that's two. And two, and my live and flip was really, really difficult. Yeah, we did just, we bought a farm, we did move, bought this farm, needs a ton of work.

It's 100 and something years old, which is pretty old for Michigan. So it is cool. And we're trying to claim it back from the wilderness. You know, the wilderness takes over so quick. So that's a new little, new little treat. We don't have any animals yet. We don't have it cleared up like to that point. But I know the kids are kind of interested in doing some of that stuff.

And that's something will play out. I don't think I'm going to get like a combine and do all that type of farming or anything like that. But it's pretty cool. Yeah, you never know. My friend Mr. Frugal Woods has this awesome tractor and maybe not a combine. What's a combine? Is that the one that picks the corn? That's the one that harvest like corn, the giant.

Yeah, okay, no, you don't need that. But you definitely need a tractor. If you have a farm, you need a tractor. I got a backhoe. As soon as I bought the farm, I went out and got a backhoe. I'm like, I'm going to get a backhoe. because everybody wants a backhoe. I want a backhoe.

No, you can just smash so much stuff. It's so fun. So, yeah, I had to go out and get the backhoe. That was the first big purchase. I did not take it on payments. That was a cash purchase. Don't buy a backhoe on payments. You can't buy it in cash.

Don't buy it. That's going to be the quote that we'll do is to market the show. Yeah, so that's the fun stuff. Yeah, again, I'm super excited to see what it goes from here. One of the things that I've really tried. to work on now is talking to other people and trying to figure out how do you actually change somebody and get them the perspective they need so nobody came to me and said hey you could do this so between 18 and 24 I could have used somebody to come and say what this was and tell me what it was

but there I didn't have anybody nobody or maybe they did and I just was too dumb to hear it I don't know but there was nobody thinking that stuff I was going to say did you listen would you have listened Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But now I'm here and I'm like, hey, you can do this. We got to figure out. Like, what it's actually making it take? So one of the things I try to do a lot of work, you know, with my W-2 employment there, where I talk with other people. So people love to complain and they love to tell you how much they hate their job. And I do not like listening to people tell me how much they hate their job because you can change some of that stuff. Like there's tons of stuff. So I had one guy come up to me and say, I hate this thing or whatever. and my daughter was, she was probably 11 at the time or whatever. And I'm like, okay, well, what are you going to do where in 10 years, when my daughter comes to work here, she's not your supervisor? And he's like, what do you mean? Your daughter's like younger than me.

I'm like, yeah. But if she's on a path, she's going to be your boss in 10 years, and you're going to be doing the same job. And you're going to say, I hate this job. And you're going to tell her you hate this job. And I don't want that for her. I don't want that for you. So what can we do to next year where you have a different either outlook on your position,

or you have a different position. These are all things that can change. Well, I don't have a degree in this. You don't need a degree in social work to help people. Don't tell me that. You can help people. There's so many ways to help people. You can have your current job,

and on the side you can help people. You don't even need to change positions. So, like, when people tell me these things, that's one of the big things that I try to work through is what can I do to help them see that they have this barrier in front of them, and they're using this as an immediate roadblock. I have five kids.

I can't do it. No, you can do it. do it. It's just going to look a little different. I don't have a degree. I can't do it. No, you don't have a degree. So it's going to look a little different. But we can get over this. And that's one of the things like, I want to be the one there that says, hey, you can do this. This is really doable. That's perfect. I can't add to anything on that. This is doable. You can do this. In the beginning, you said that your story isn't, what did you say? It wasn't exciting or it wasn't like. There's nothing flashy. Yeah, there's nothing flashy. But you know what? That means that it's

repeatable. Scott and I talk about this over and over again. These stories that, oh, first I was born into wealth and then I won the lottery and that's not repeatable. Hey, I bought a property that I could afford and I put a tenant in there who was really awesome and then I bought another property that I could afford and then I put a tenant in that one who was really awesome. And that's the story that other people can do too. You can do this. Anybody can do this. You just have to make the plan to do it and then follow through. You can't just sit there, oh, I wish I was. Well, what is this saying? You can wish in one hand and blank in the other and see which one gets filled up first. Yep. So yeah. Well, if you do wish, then Jordan's daughter will be your supervisor

in 10 years and you will be complaining about it. Totally. Yeah, I'm going to make sure she gets on that track where she can, she can come in and actually pull that off on something. But that was just, it was just, it's more just, you just have to have these conversation points where you can get somebody awake and alert to what you're actually talking about. Because most of the time people hear the words that you say and they make a sentence, but that sentence doesn't mean anything to them. It just goes right in. And I'm like, how can I say this stuff where it's not just a sentence full of words

that don't mean anything and actually try to make the difference and really to try to help somebody out? I mean, this isn't, again, don't copy my exact story. I don't think I could copy my exact story. Adjust it a little bit. If you're not gifted here and you are here, change it. And that's totally fine. And I'm not at all saying that mine is the only path.

But get with somebody and have somebody there alongside of you or behind you, kicking you in the butt, whatever you need, and move this along and get the train going. Because once it rolls, the thing rolls, there's no stop in it. And it's that Newton's first law, right? An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object is at rest, stays at rest. So if you're at rest and you're dissatisfied in your job, you are going to be in that job and you're going to be, or a different position at a different company, in 10 years.

you're not going to change that. But if you get this ball rolling, you can make a little incremental improvement and you can be somewhere different. And once it really starts rolling, you can't even stop it. You just watch it. It's almost like it's doing it on its own.

After you get, you got to push it a little bit, but then it starts going. And yeah, that is Newton's first law. There you go. That is perfect. I didn't know it was his first law. I didn't study that. College, I studied fashion design.

We don't talk about Newton there. Okay, Jordan, is there anything else that you want to share with us before we move on to the famous four? I want to make sure that my kids get a perspective of money that's very similar to what I have. But I can't replicate what my parents did for me because my situation is different, just like my situation is different than your situation and my parents was different than your parents. I understand that. But I want to make sure that they're picking up some of those highlights. And again, I'm not at all saying I'm doing this right.

but I'm trying and I'm going to make some mistakes and make adjustments. I got five kids. So there's a chance that I'll get one of them to work out just right. But I want to make sure. So again, being, I don't know, well off or arrived or whatever you want to say, we can afford a lot of stuff. But stuff isn't the thing that's going to make you happy. And I want my kids to realize that.

That's one of the things I really try to press on them. So you could stand in the line at the store and there's we could buy every single Lego, whatever. We could clean out the shelf at Walmart. That's really just going to be Legos to step on. You know, it's not going to actually change it. It's not going to make you happy. And it's probably not a good use of money.

And they don't have a passive income stream and they don't have an active income stream where they're going to generate that kind of that kind of money. So one of the things I want to make sure that they pick up is what are these underlying principles? Yes, my background's a little different than my folks was. But how can I get this same? attitude towards life to pass through. So we are, growing up, we didn't talk about the actual dollars and cents that much. Like, I didn't know what my dad made. I didn't know what a mortgage

cost. My folks paid off their house and I didn't even know it. Like, it didn't even come up in conversation. Maybe they said it, but it wasn't, you know, they had those like deed, you know, mortgage burning parties and things like that now or whatever. But like, I didn't even know that they did that. So that's one of the things I try to be way more upfront with those details. and be like, this is what it costs. This is what a tenant pays every single month, and this is what it costs us to have that asset sitting there, you know? And you can see there's a little difference there.

But I want them to start picking up on the stuff that I just go through daily. And as a responsible grown-up, I guess you don't even think about all the things that come in and out. So they understand, like, bills aren't just mail. Bills are different than just mail. Do you want a lot of bills or do you want a little pile of bills? So that's some of the things that we, We try to make sure that they're picking up because, I mean, society is even different, you know,

and there's a lot more things going on and you can spend a lot more money. I really hate those monthly subscriptions, man, because they get you, you know, like, it's nine bucks. Who cares? It's nine bucks. Well, that's nine bucks every month. And then, you know, once you open that floodgate, nine bucks turns into 90 and who knows what's going after that.

So cut your cable, cut your cable. Get rid of that. That's the first thing, right? You don't need that because it's wasting your time. You're stuck at home. You're not making money watching TV. I haven't heard anybody say they're making money watching TV. You find me that guy.

If you can cut all that stuff that, you can buy a backhoe, which does buy the happiness. You can buy a backhoe. I don't know if it buys happiness, but it's fun. And then... That would be awesome. But you can smash stuff. The smashing stuff is not... You can't overrate smashing stuff.

Do you let the kids smash stuff? I have let the kids smash stuff? That's awesome. I think that a backhoe equals happiness. So I will. You put that on a t-shirt, Mindy. I bet you could sell a lot of those t-shirts. A backhoe equals happiness.

Okay. What's your address? I'll send you one. A t-shirt. Okay. Okay. It is now time for our famous four. These are the same four questions and one demand that we ask of all of our guests.

Jordan, what is your favorite finance book? So I love a lot of the books that are talked about all the time. So I think Millionaire Next Door really changed my mindset a lot. Dalsh Shell Prosper was a great one. All the Kiwasaki, Kawasaki, however you say his stuff. Those are all great. But that's not the one I want to talk about.

Here's the one I want to talk about. It's called Leadership and Self-Deception. It might not sound like a business book or a finance book. And then it's a super easy read. you're going to breeze right through it. And it's not going to make you comfortable. You're going to squirm. So if you want a book that's going to make you squirm a little bit,

and you're going to realize that you've been doing some stuff wrong. But I think on my point is it's going to change your outlook on your family, your job, your kids, your marriage, all those things. There's a chance that you could affect all of those. And that's like the underlying foundation that you're going to build your wealth on anyhow. So if you can make some adjustments to that part of your life, you're going to be surprised how far you can go. Love it. I'll have to check that one out.

Yeah, I've not even heard of that book before. I know. Nobody ever talks about it. So I went through a real tough patch, you know, four years ago. And then this was like a thing. And it was, it opens up your mind. You're like, I never even thought about this. But if you can change some of that, again, it's that internal head perspective. And I think that's really where you're going to build all of these,

these monetary decisions and you're going to get the ball started rolling and everything like that is built out of your headspace. So you've got to get some of that headspace cleared up. And this is going to help you. you're going to like it. Great. I'll definitely check that one out. It doesn't have an author. It's written by like Ambinger Institute or Rbringer Institute, something like that.

So I would tell you the author's name, but it doesn't really have an author. Okay. Well, check that out. Number two here. What was your biggest money mistake? So I kind of went back and forth on this one. But here's the one I'm going to talk about for sure. In 2010, so recession, we've got to remember recession,

working at a manufacturing shop, engineer, great job. They say we're moving the plant down to North Carolina. I'm like, well, not moving to North Carolina. They said there's nine months runway on this move. And I'm like, well, perfect. There's nine months. In nine months, I'll be able to find the job. Even in the recession, I'll be able to find the job, right?

Engineer, be no problem. They're like, and because you've been here so long, you get a severance. And it was like six months severance. So I'm like, oh, this will be great. So I'll just roll right into this other W-2 job. I'll take my nine non severance. I'll double income, you know, myself for nine, you know, whatever, six months, whatever it was. And this will just be fabulous, right? And that's exactly how it played out, which just sounds like super boring, right? But here's the thing. Like, if I had

been a little bit aware, they were going to pay me for six months to do something else, right? Which is what they did. They paid me to go work at a different place for six months. They could have paid me to actually start something. And I didn't use that as an opportunity to really kick my own self in the but I could have rolled probably at that time it would have been more of a construction company or something like that. But if you had a six months head start where you're getting your full old paycheck for six months, that really is going to transition you well into that next thing. So I do think about that one probably. I mean, again, it didn't cost me, it didn't cost me money, but that was one of those things like you don't get a chance like that. Like I've never had another

shot where somebody pays me for six months to do nothing. That's the best mistake I've heard on all of the money. I didn't want it to sound like that. That's the best mistake. I really, I mean, it just sucks that you don't think about it in the right sense. I thought I was doing the safe thing. I thought I was being responsible or whatever, but that might not have been the best thing to do. And we know tons of builders got ate up in the recession.

So again, if you could have called people back, you could have started a company in 2010, probably. It's all it takes. I love it. Hey, six months, huge opportunity, and I missed it. And I think that's just great perspective that we don't get very often. from folks about, hey, I missed a very, a shot, an opportunity that I could have taken right here that might have played out. That means where my goal is much faster. Yeah, I know they talk about engineering your layoff to do those things like that.

There's that book, right, or one of those guys, I don't remember who it was. But he wants you to, he wants you to like set it up where they lay you off and give you this severance so you can go do your next thing. And I had it and it was all laid out. And I just, I didn't even think about it. So that is Sam from Financial Samurai who has that engineering your layoff. He engineered his own layoff. And that's great. But you also need to look at, well, okay, so I got double salary for six months. And who knows, I'm sure you're awesome at building, but who knows that you would have been able to make this? No, no, no, totally. I used that six months. I actually bought a house and it was horrible and I fixed it and I still have the house and it's

beautiful. So, I mean, that's what I did with it instead. But it's one of those things like if I had to go back and I did that 10 times over again and you got me 10 more chances, I'd probably try the other thing 10 times straight. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? So my best piece of advice is right along those lines that we talked about a little bit earlier. But there's this interview question. I've done a lot of technical interviewing, which technical interviewing is you see the resume. The resume is going to work. But then you've got to figure out what this actual person is and if they're going to mesh with your culture and things like that. So one of the questions I always ask in my technical interviews is I asked them how they would rate themselves. A scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate yourself?

Scott, how would you rate yourself? Overall, life, relationships, work, finances, how would you rate yourself right now? Oh, man. Maybe like a 7, 6, 6, 8? Those are the answers I always get. Yeah, so I get a ton of 6s and 7s and 8s. But now I say, I didn't care what their answer was before. I don't tell them that.

they stress about the number so bad. Because they don't want to sound too good and they don't want to sound too bad. So they stress about it. But I didn't even care what they're going to say. As long as they don't say 10, that was the only thing I don't want to say 10, right? So giving away my interview questions now too. But then I say, what are you going to do a year from now? What are you going to change in your life?

So you can come back a year from now and tell me, instead of being a six or a seven, you're a seven or an eight. What are the things that you're going to do? And then I sit there and I listen. What I'm trying to pick up is, are they able to identify some, weakness in themselves, something that they're causing or a way that they're looking at an opportunity as a roadblock or whatever, and are they going to be able to turn that into something else? What I hate hearing is, I need to get a job where I make more or my boss sucks or something

like that. Don't ever tell somebody an interview your boss sucks. Don't ever tell a landlord when you're looking at a new place that your landlord is sucks. Don't ever say any of that stuff because it's like, you know. great that's a very good advice that's one of the things like let's eliminate these obstacles identify it in yourself and let's make a change because you can make these changes and i'd love to be part of the one helping you make them or somebody else's going to help you but if you can identify that in yourself you're prepared to actually to go out there and nail this no i love it i actually um you know

just share a little tangent here every year i have this little journal that i work in and i basically like rank myself and hey how's my fitness how's my uh my profession my business going how's my personal financial situation going how's my relationship going how are how are my uh how's my lifestyle how are like that how's my spirituality how's my mental segment there's probably one more that i'm forgetting but and then i rank myself on those and i say okay where's my biggest weakness and that frames my goals for the for the following year kind of along these same lines i think it's i think it's a very good exercise and for a while it's finance, but then, you know, after you probably reach some of your financial goals, then the weakness in your other areas really becomes glaring and you go after that.

That brings up one more thing. You guys can put it here or you can stick it somewhere else. In the first year that we were semi-retired or whatever, between my wife and I, we really kind of did a health focus and we changed a little bit of the structure of how we were living our lives on that side. Because when you're just going and going and going, it's so easy to like, I deserve this or that or I want a whole cake, not just a piece of cake. I'm going to get a whole thing. Things like that. So we actually lost a ton of weight. Between the two of us, I think we lost like 90 pounds.

Oh, my God. And that was pretty awesome. So we had gotten a little bit lax on looking at that, and that wasn't something we had even considered. So that's another opportunity. Quit your job, go down part-time, and then lose some weight. Love it. So now that you're retired, you attend a lot more parties

because you have Wednesday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, right? No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. I have to go to any parties. And even though you don't have to go to you now because what are they going to do?

We're breaking stereotypes here. Now you're a party animal. Well, when you do go to these parties, you know, what kind of jokes do you tell? Do you have a joke? Do you have a joke? Your favorite joke you tell at parties? So I do have a joke and it's pretty good. But I also have a landlord story. I don't know if I can say a landlord story in my joke section.

Let's do both. Just use it. Okay. So here's the joke. We'll get that one first. How can you tell if you're talking to an extroverted engineer? Because you're talking to them. I don't know.

They look at your shoes instead of their own. It's true. It really is true. All right, so what's the landlord story? That's my joke. My landlord story, this is my best landlord story. I do tell this one a lot. So I got a house. There's a lady living there, a young lady. She says, can she have a roommate move in? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, we'll work it out. This is before I knew you probably should get your lease change when you let a roommate move in and all those kind of things. Maybe there was a party or two or a few. It had clay tile for the drain. So I don't know. know if you guys are familiar with clay tile. The thing that happens with the clay tiles, it gets

little holes in it, then the roots get in and, you know, yada, yada, yada. So this was a house that had that problem. We would get it rooted out every once in a while. It wasn't that big of a deal. I already know where the story's going. They had a party. Yeah, this is a, I don't know what the term that I'm supposed to use for the family show, right? So they call me up and say, oh, it's not fleshing. Okay. So I do all my own calls at this point, you know, I show up there. get it out, start rotoruting, pull it out. There's, I don't know what I'm supposed to say here, a condom, you know, you get a condom. Yeah, that's a word. Send it back in. I get like five more. Send it back in. I get a lot more than five. I have like a five gallon bucket and there's a ton of

them in here. I have no idea. Like what, what am I supposed to say now? Because, you know, two younger ladies and I don't want to say anything exactly. So in my very passive, my best passive landlord way, I left the bucket there. You know, I left it there for like three days and then came back a few days later to pick it up. And I'm like, I think that they'll get the message about, because I didn't know how to have that conversation and maybe that makes me a bad landlord or whatever. But I wasn't quite sure how to deal with that.

But very honestly, I left the bucket, came back a few days later and picked it up. didn't have any more problems related to those kind of things. Oh my goodness. Yes. Only flush human waste and toilet paper down a toilet. I did eventually. We dug it up. We got the PVC put in.

So it's great now, whoever the prospective tenant will be next. Don't worry. Yuck. Yes. That sounds like, I'm listening to your story and I'm like, that's me, that's my life, that's my husband, that's my experiences. those people are the people, the ladies that have the party, they live down the street from me. I have a house down the street from me,

and they have adult parties where people can come over and do adult things together. Maybe it had happened over a period of time, too. I don't know. I didn't ask, that was for sure. We're not joining any of these religious co-ops for health care. Yeah, I don't know. Well, that was a delightful story.

But a good story, yeah. Okay, Jordan Clint, where can people find out more about you? I'm on Facebook with my wife, Leah Jordan Clint. I'm also on Facebook. I got a, I don't know, a different page or whatever that I post some of my musings and interesting stuff. That's called It's Not Just About Me and My Dream of Doing Nothing, which if you get the reference points for you.

But find me there. Probably Facebook's the best way. On LinkedIn, too, you'll see the giant red beard. You try to track me down there. Awesome. We will link to all of these in the show notes for this show can be found at BiggerPockets.com slash Money Show 63. Jordan, this was awesome.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for sharing that you can, in fact, have financial independence with children, with more than one children, with five children, which is, as you said, in your interview or your pre-interview more than some people have. More than zero, yeah. More than zero. Yeah, that's more than zero. That's a lot more than zero. It's five more than zero. Learning grade school math as my children are going through grade school math. I do not remember any of the sixth grade math that my sixth grader is going through right now. But that's another story for another time. Okay, Jordan, thank you so much for taking time out of your vacation to chat with us today. I really

appreciate it. It was a pleasure. Okay, we will talk to you again soon. All right, that was Jordan Clint. Mindy, what did you think? I love his story. I love that he didn't listen to conventional wisdom. Again, I said conventional wisdom. There is no conventional wisdom when it comes to financial independence. But I love that he didn't listen to other people. He's like, you know what? I don't want to work there anymore. So I'm going to do what I want to do. And I'm going to have five kids and I'm going to be retired. And real estate plays a big part in his life because

real estate is kind of a really great way to reach financial independence. Yeah, I also loved how he's a bit competitive. He didn't like that someone got promoted ahead of him at work. And he was like, well, I'm going to use that as fuel to go leapfrog right into financial independence. I thought it was great that he started out the entire process without having a game plan handed to it. I had a game plan handed to me. I had the fortune of reading Mr. Money Mustache and learning from Brandon Turner about the house hacking strategy. right out the gate for my career to kind of accelerate towards this.

He didn't have those things, and he still was able to kind of go about this in a really intelligent way, a build a financial financial financial financial financial for himself just by figuring it out. And you know why? Because he had a plan, and this whole thing is not that hard. He had a goal, right? He had a goal. And then that plan shaped together over the course of years, right?

You know, five, six, seven years. Yes, he had a goal. He devised a plan to reach his goal. He got there eight years early and with five kids. And I don't think that we stressed enough during the show that he had five kids. He has five kids. And that's five mouths to feed. That's seven mouths to feed because he's got a wife too plus him.

And this is just, it's a doable thing. You have to make a plan. What does your life look like? What do you want your life to look like? And then form your finances to help you reach that goal. It's not rocket science. I also like how he was pretty humble about it in some cases as well, where he was like, yeah, I don't know if I want or not.

He's one. He's one. Yes. You win life when you get to retire when you're 34 with five kids. Yeah, I've got a friend who brags about his finances all the time. He'll tell me, my credit card company calls me almost every day to tell me that my balance is outstanding. That's horrible, Scott. Hey, the blame for that joke could fall on Garrett, who sent me that joke.

Garrett's a listener from Woodbridge, Illinois. Garrett, that's a terrible joke. I've been waiting to use that one, so I don't know, I had to force it there. But I thought I was great. I chuckled. Well, I'm glad you chuckled. That makes one of us. No, actually, I did laugh.

That was kind of funny. Okay, I was just kidding, Garrett. That's a lovely joke. Thank you for sharing with us. Okay, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. From episode 63 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench saying Sayonara.