BiggerPockets Money Podcast - $90K in Debt to Coast FI with $1.5M (Here's the Blueprint)

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Ericka Young did what most people think is impossible—she went from 90k in debt to Coast FI with a seven-figure net worth. In this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, she's pulling back the curtain on how she did it. What You'll Learn: How to eliminate massive debt without living in total deprivation The debt snowball method in action (and why it works psychologically) When to stop paying off debt and start investing aggressively Investment strategies that built $2.5 million in net worth The mindset shift from "getting by" to building real wealth Perfect for: Anyone in debt who wants a realistic path to financial independence, or for people looking to accelerate their wealth-building timeline. Ericka's a financial coach who's been exactly where you are. Her story is proof that financial freedom isn't reserved for high earners—it's about strategy, discipline, and knowing when to shift gears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it take to go from $90,000 in the red to coastfi with $2.5 million? Erica and her husband did exactly that. And Erica is here to walk us through how they did it. We're talking about their debt payoff, the investment approach that accelerated their wealth, and their portfolio today. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my budgeting pro co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy.

Great to be here. and today we're going to talk about a wonderful financial model in Erica and her fantastic journey. We're so excited to welcome Erica Young, a financial coach who's experienced financial rock bottom so that you don't have to. We're going to break down her journey from $90,000 in debt to $2.5 million in net worth and Coast Phi and discuss some of the options that she's considering with her own personal portfolio, including whether to pay down her mortgage, buy a rental, or pursue other investment alternatives like building a cash position. Welcome, Erica, to Bigger Pockets Money. Thanks for having me.

I'm glad to be here. Awesome. Well, let's kick things off and start with this debt background. How did you rack up $90,000 in debt? And what did that feel like? Yeah, you know, honestly, I was pursuing the American dream. I think it's really easy to go in debt. It's just hard to get out.

Or I would say you need consistency to get out. And we did what everybody told us to do. My husband and I were both, you know, people who wanted to get a good job. and we thought that was the path to go to college. And that was some of the debt. That was a good portion more than half of the debt. And then we wanted decent cars. We're from the Motor City. And so you got to have a nice ride. And that came with a loan. And both of us had one. And then we also got, you know, taken to the cleaners when we were in school when everybody was on campus trying to get us to get the credit cards. And we both fell for it to the tune of about three apiece. And max those out. So honestly, we did debt well, right? Like, we just knew how to like take it on. That is how our $90,000 came to be. And like I said, most, you know, half of it was the student loans.

And we thought we had to and we didn't have people who could help us financially go through college. But honestly, this is what a lot of people go through when they don't necessarily have the cash to pay for stuff or know how to navigate without debt. We ended up being, you know, just the poster child for all of the different kinds of debt you could have. and we lived there for a hot second. At what point did you realize that this wasn't how you wanted your financial life to look? I'm an engineer by trade. So my degree is election engineering, and I had a good job.

My husband, he started in sales, and so his career grew. But in the very beginning, I realized an engineer shouldn't have this much trouble paying the bills, right? So we got married, and for about a year, we floundered, we got pregnant right away, we had child care, and the expenses were adding up, and the money just wasn't stretching as far as we wanted it to go, because when we looked at our student loan debt at the time, this was years ago, I won't date myself, but it was years ago. And that student loan payment was $451 because we had consolidated it, and we had, you know, child care and we had car payments. We had a lot of obligations, and when we added it all up, it was over $1,200 a month in debt payments. And so that was,

scary. And we had our child in that first couple of months, our car died and we had no credit. We had no cash to fix the car. And they'll give you a terrible loan when you don't have great credit. And we did that in order to get another car. So that was kind of our rock bottom moment when we realized we didn't have like $1,500 to fix the car, but we could go get a loan for another $20,000. That was pretty crazy. What happens next? This wake-up call happens. How do you begin resolving the situation? Honestly, we found Uncle Dave. My husband had a long trek to work, and he found Dave Ramsey on the radio, and that was our first insight into there could be a way out of this. But I'm also an engineer. So when I heard about, you know, what it looks like to

create a budget to get out of debt, I was like, okay, I like this. And so I just started number crunching in Excel and figuring out what worked for us. But there had to be the trigger and it really was finding someone else who, you know, would hit you upside the head and kind of talk to you real sternly because there was no one out here, you know, telling us to do something different than to keep the debt besides him. So we went down that path and it took us about five years to get out of the $90,000 in debt. We used the debt snowball and budgeting was a big part of that puzzle to stay on track. What was your lifestyle like on a day-to-day basis before and after this mindset shift. We didn't have a whole lot of fun at first. I mean, we didn't have a lot of

money. Our incomes didn't stretch enough with these payments in order for us to have a whole lot of fun. So there wasn't a bunch of travel. There wasn't a bunch of spending money. Little thing that I did without sharing with my husband was dining out for lunch with friends at work because that was the thing that was accessible, you know, just spending 10 or $15 without his knowledge on a credit card. And when we realized that that was sabotaging our efforts to move forward, he put it on ice. Like he literally took all of our credit cards and put them all in a bowl of water in the freezer to physically represent not using it again. I love that suggestion because it's still there. If you get a $1,500 car payment or car repair bill again, you can go over there and saw them out

and go use it. But it's such a block. Literally. it's a block of ice, but it's such a block to just swiping and swiping and swiping. And it's not, I don't think it's the big expenses that are the budget killers. It's the little death by a thousand cuts, the $10 here and the $15 there. And it's only a dollar. It's only $10. Well, only $10 every day is a lot of money that adds up every month coming out of your ability to pay off your debt. Absolutely. And for us, $10 every day at work was over $2,000, almost $3,000 a year. And we We just didn't have that. And so we had to stop the bleeding in addition to do some more aggressive things in order

to get free of all of that debt. During this period while you were paying off the debt, was there any accumulation? Did you just literally follow Baby Step 1, build a $1,000 emergency buffer and pay off the rest of the debt? Or did you take a 401k match or begin investing in any way while you were attacking the debt? Yeah. So that's where Dave and I disagree. We always got our free money. We definitely always got our free money because we could afford to do so.

I mean, if we were in such dire straits that we couldn't afford to do that. Maybe we would have said no, but no, we wanted that free money. We were young. And, you know, with time on our side, that stuff can grow. And that's 100% return in my book. So, yeah, we definitely took that on and didn't touch it. So you took your 401k match and then applied the rest after that to your debt. Absolutely.

Yep. I think Dave Ramsey sometimes gets a bad rap, especially because of these baby steps, because so many people think, well, you know, babies. step one is great if you've got no emergency fund, then yeah, save up $1,000 for an emergency fund. But there are, you know, is $1,000 enough? Hey, it's better than nothing. So yeah, start there. When you have a goal of $1,000 and you currently have zero saved up, that can seem unattainable. So having a goal of $10,000 is even more unattainable. And when you have unattainable goals, it's easier, so much easier to be like, ugh, I'm never going to get there. Why bother?

So I love Dave Ramsey as a first introduction to this just because he can be a little mean. And I'm not a little mean. I'm like, hey, you know what, Erica? You made mistakes. That's past Erica. I'm talking to present Erica. So let's just these are just facts now and let's move on and build from that. But Dave is like, oh, I mean, sometimes he can be like, oh, you're a terrible person for making all these bad mistakes.

Like, well, I never had the education. So how am I supposed to feel so bad? He is a great first introduction to this idea that you can fix your finances. Here are some little ways to do it. So I love that you found Dave. When did you find fire, the concept that you could actually retire or retire early? Man, a lot later, a whole lot later. I mean, almost to the point where we were at Coast Fire when we figured it out, it was a long journey, to be honest with you.

And I honestly wish that we had found it earlier. we realized that this was a community that we were, we call it adjacent to and not and didn't really know it. It took a long time. I'm going to say it took over 10, 15 years for us to actually find the fire community. Let's go through a couple of stages in the journey. You know, it sounds like one year after you graduated college is when you began to really transition the way you were thinking about paying off debt and aggressively pay it off. It took you five years. And during that time period, you mostly just attacked. the debt but took the 401k match or other free money at work. When you paid off the debt five years into your journey, what was your net worth at the time? Was it a few thousand bucks, tens of thousands

of bucks? What did things look like? Yeah, it was just a couple, few 10,000 of dollars. I mean, it wasn't a whole lot to speak of, but we were consistent because it was around five or six years where we were taking that minimal, the minimal amount to get the match. We didn't make aggressive progress with our financial future until there was the point when our kids didn't need the child care and the business, financial coaching business was actually born and we were making some money. And so it took a few years, honestly, after that, to actually get a little bit more aggressive. So we weren't doing more than that minimum for a few years. And then when we really started to get aggressive, we just would add every single year, every single time we would

increase our income over time until we could max out all of our pre-tax retirement dollars. And that took a little time. It took a good 10 years before we were able to max it out fully. We have to take a quick break. But while we're away, we'd love if you would head on over to YouTube and subscribe to our channel. You can find us at YouTube.com slash bigger pockets money. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their

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everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Welcome back to the show. So after five years of debt payoff, we're at zero and you just continue to say, you just continue to save. But now, instead of paying off the debt, it's going in a tax-advantaged order of operations. It sounds like the 401K. You were maxing out the 401k and applying every dollar to that that you could. There wasn't really much after that because there wasn't enough of a surplus to go down the next layer into the stack, into the Roth or those types of things.

But as your income grew, you were able to then begin maxing out the Roth and some of these other accounts. Is that the right way to describe it? It is, Scott. And I will add one thing that I think is real life for a lot of people. is there was a point when we were out of debt and we had these child care payments and we said, let's really go, like, give me the opportunity to go all in and help other people with their finances because I wanted to utilize our journey to help other people get free of their own debt through the use of coaching. And so I left my job. So, you know, I did coaching on the side. I moonlight nights and weekends. And then after a year of doing that, I was like, okay, you know, engineering is not

suited, honestly, to my personality. Enjoy the creation and the statistics and that kind of thing. But some of that was just not something I could see myself doing long term. And I really wanted to be people facing versus computer facing. And so I left my job. So that was an income dip. And that was part of the shift as well is, you know, this is why for a why. We were just doing kind of the minimum into our retirement accounts because we needed to regrow income in a new space. And that took a little bit of the time into why we weren't necessarily growing our investment portfolio. Got it. And before you switched full time to this entrepreneurial pursuit, did you build up a

cash position outside of the retirement accounts for a time? We did, yeah. But it wasn't big enough. Like I tell people all the time, I wish we had 12 months of expenses. We had just over three months of expenses. We were just out here thinking this would be enough. And thankfully, nothing traumatic happened. And it took about two years in order to really grow the business into some income that we could see at home. But yes, we did have an emergency fund. We didn't necessarily have to use it, thankfully. But I think that that's a smart thing to call into this conversation because you don't want to leave without any money. Yeah, three months is actually on the lower side from other entrepreneurs that we have talked to.

We've heard, you know, 12 months. We've heard 18 months from one particular entrepreneur, which I thought was a little much. When you left your job, did you do the math and make sure that you could live just off of your husband's salary while you were building your new business? I will tell you, I was the budget queen when I figured out how to create a budget.

So we made these dollars stretch and work. And honestly, I will say that once a year, We lived in Arizona at the time, and we could drive to Disney and stay in a hotel for a couple of days or go to San Diego or be with family on a vacation. So we didn't deprive ourselves of those types of things. Again, it was just once, maybe twice a year. And we used cash. So we didn't say no to everything.

But when we were at Disney, we didn't eat their food. We had our little sandwiches and our little thing that we got from the grocery store in the car. And then we went back into Disney to have our little fun. You know, we just had to do it differently in order to still enjoy ourselves and not spend a ton of money doing so. I love that you incorporated fun into your journey because I didn't. And my journey, I bet, was a lot different than yours. There were lots of times when we weren't having any fun. And we, you know, we didn't live close enough to drive to Disney, but we didn't go to Disney.

And we didn't do all of these fun things. we put our nose to the grindstone and we just kept going. I think it's just so important to incorporate enjoyment into your life so that you can then continue on the path. Absolutely. I think that having fun along the way is how you are sustainable. Like it makes it real. And then we had two kiddos. I mean, so I think the other part of this was life is short and we just wanted to enjoy those younger years and find a way to do it on a budget. You know, one of the biggest things that we did in their child's was they had like a pass, a city pass in our town. And we did all of the museums, all of the free things. We went on the free days, the free evenings. So we had lots to do that didn't require

cash out of our pocket. And that helped us tremendously because we really got a chance, one, to see the city, but also to make sure that, you know, we weren't stuck in the house. Fiddling our thumbs or just, you know, playing with crayons all the time. Honestly, like, we got out the house. It's so easy to just throw money at things and spend money to do things. But it's equally easy to use your creativity and the internet. I mean, we've got the internet now. And it tells you all the free things you can do in your city and surrounding cities. So it is really easy to get out and do things with your kids without breaking the bank. Absolutely. Okay. So let's look at some real numbers. You were $90,000 in debt. What was your income at that time? When we got married, we were right at around $65,000.

between the two of us. I mean, let's be real. This was a long time ago. And then it grew a little bit. So when the both of us, after around six or seven years, we were right at around 100 because my husband was in sales and basically half of his income was from commission dollars. And then he found another job where it was just a bit more stable than that. And so we were able to, that's when we were able to say, all right, Erica, you know, we can let that income go for a while until we build up this business. And so, Frankly, for a while, we just hovered right beneath 100 grand for a while until the business started to grow. But we started at like 65.

We had more debt than we had income. It was scary, especially with two kids. Yeah. And I think it's really important to note that this was several years ago. When you said 65,000, I was like, wait, you're a double E. What do you mean 65,000? But I remember back when I got married and my income was a walloping 24,000. So, of course, you're 40.

Yeah. Yeah. Who's 40? You're 40. Me? In my mind, you're 40. You know what? I'll take it.

I'll take it. Just looking at these two numbers, you were $90,000 in debt and you were making $65,000. If you could live totally for free, which you cannot, it would take you a year and a half to pay that off. Yeah, for sure. So paying that off in five years, that's awesome. What were your expenses when you were making the $65,000? Were you spending all $60,000? thousand of it? Well, okay, so let's be very clear. We were givers. So we definitely were people who

prioritized giving. We were people who, you know, when I learned how to get the budget down, we were spending quite a bit of money on paying down the debt. But we did live on the rest. I mean, there was about 3% going into our retirement accounts. And so we lived on a good 70% of that income. And at the time, we had no choice. That was what it was requiring in order for us to live as a family of two, then three, and then eventually four within those four years. Okay. Let's talk about your Kosti numbers. Have you used the Fionnaires Coast Fy calculator? Woo-hoo, yes. So we stumbled, we realized that we were at Coast FI a few years back. And we were like, yes. So we hadn't calculated until we were right about there. And it took us about two years to kind of complete the

number, but we were excited about that. So yeah, so our Coast 5 was about 1.5. And so we're still going, we're still going strong. And it's been a couple of years. So that number has increased. And that's only for our retirement assets. It doesn't include our home. Okay. So your Coast Phi number is your, that's your FI number that you will have at age 65. Well, this was what we needed to hit so that we were there. So we needed to hit the 1.5 in order to hit our number when we're that age. And frankly, we don't want to wait till 65. My husband is dead set on it being 59 and a half. So we'll see. We'll see. Good. Well, 59 and a half is attainable if you just continue to contribute nominally. And if you're self-employed and he's still doing his sales work,

that could really reduce your taxable income by contributing to your 401ks and your IRAs. There's a lot of opportunities for self-employed people to, like, super contribute to their 401 case. Yeah, we're doing all of those things, even though if we stop now, we would be fine. And we wouldn't have to contribute another dollar, but we're just continuing to stay diligent because you just never know. And I think the biggest thing that we're doing now that we've learned from fire is to get our cash position more solid. Because at any time, what if we decided that this was a time we're really.

like, you know what, we're done. We're done working. And we want to have a more solid cash position or funds that are not necessarily tied to the retirement accounts. And that's the piece that we're working on right now. I'd like to go back to when you started your business. It sounds like it took two years for you to get that up and running, which is not uncommon. I want to focus on, one, the low cash position and two, what the transition was like from a time perspective. Were you able to focus full time on the business with two young kids? Or was that diluted in some capacity. And because it took two years, talk us through how much of that time was directly going to revenue creation and how much was going off on tangents, which I think are normal for

new business. That's a really good question. So let me back up even further. When I realized that this was a business that I wanted to do, I spent about a year doing research and talking to people and having some potential clients just to kind of see if this is what I enjoyed. And then also getting trained. And so I did do some training prior to jumping in with two feet. And then when I did, it was a good part-time business. And I just reinvested that first year. So, you know, I just put dollars in back in. I could have pulled money out, but I didn't really want to.

So I needed a website and I wanted to do some other trainings and I wanted to figure out what was needed. It's a low-cost business. Let's be very honest. But I didn't want to pull funds for myself unnecessarily because. because, you know, we could live on that one income. And then I would say it was a good part-time. I did grow my client base. I did have some people during the day. So I was working with a couple of businesses to see if that's what I wanted to do as well to help businesses with their cash flow as well. So that was something that I could do during the day. And so that wasn't

taking up all of my nights and weekends. The beauty of all of that was that I figured out what I didn't want to do because I did not want to do bookkeeping. And I think I had to do some of that because, of course, that for businesses can go hand in hand with their cash flow planning and forecasting and things like that. And it took not too much time for me to realize that's not what I wanted to do. And so I just had to double down on the business. One of the biggest things that I did that helped me to grow, this was back in a day when snail mail was fun. I sent snail mail to everybody that I knew. I captured all of their addresses and I just wanted to let them know. Here's what I'm up to. If you or anyone you know could utilize the help of a financial coach,

send them my way. And that was a big way. I mean, I sent it and I tracked who these people were and their referrals and all of that good stuff. And it was awesome because that really helped me. And today I would tell someone definitely text, email, send this snail mail, continue to, you know, do more than what I did. I did the letter. And that helped me get off the ground for sure, but I would do a little bit more because we have more at our disposal as well. But that helped. And then I said, okay, after a couple of years, you know, I've been in this work and I started just reaching out to partners, financial advisors, even, you know, tax people and just seeing, you know, how can we partner so that you, one, know who I am and that you can refer folks my way.

and that was a little bit of a boost as well to getting into the full-time space. What is a financial coach exactly and how does it differ from a CFP? The way that I define financial coaching is a person who is helping sometimes with the mental and emotional and the communication around money. So sometimes it doesn't actually have to do with the numbers themselves. But specifically when it does have to do with the numbers, it's the basics and personal finance, the foundations, the budgeting, the cash flow planning, the reality check of what you're spending. if we're talking about the baby steps, getting you through baby step three.

So making sure that you are out of debt and that you have an emergency fund. My goal is to hand off a good client to someone who is a financial advisor or a planner so that they actually know how to take their next steps should they choose to go that route or, you know, if they want to look to do that on their own. But they are at a point where they can invest a bit more aggressively because they don't have debt in the way. Given this awesome career and business that you've built, what do you, personally invest it and what does that portfolio look like these days? Oh my gosh. I am a very lazy

investor. Let's be very clear. 40 rental properties, right? You know what? You know what's so funny. We did have a rental property, but I honestly felt like we did it backwards. I do definitely feel like we did it backwards. We got taken in the shorts a little bit on that one and didn't return. So we are mutual fun, easy peasy, let it grow. We do work with an advisor. You know, we're index investing. I mean, it's just simple buying and holding. Don't touch it.

Leave it and forget it. There you go. I love that answer because so many people make it so complicated. It doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to be in all the things. You don't have to. I'm going to throw crypto under the bus again. If you don't understand crypto or don't want to be in crypto, you don't have to.

If you want to be a lazy investor and I'm using air quotes, it's because I don't believe that's lazy at all. I believe that's smart. Your investing should not be exciting because exciting means risk. Exciting means my portfolio's up $100,000 today. And then tomorrow, my portfolio is down $150,000 today. Like those highs are great, but those lows are really, really, really hurtful, especially if you don't have the risk tolerance to ride the roller coaster. So lazy investing for the win. Yeah, I'll take it. And I'll say maybe we can, can alter it and say it's a little boring over here. Like that. There we go. There we go. We're going to do a rebrand. It's a boring way to invest. It is. It's not sexy. But it works. It works. I mean,

and I'm going to be very frank, because y'all do numbers on this show. I know you do. And so, like, the first million is hard. Like, I feel like it took us a long time to get there. I remember when we were close and we were like, okay, it's going to be, I don't know, we were thinking another year or two or something like that. Our overall, overall portfolios to $1.5,000 of that is our home. So that second did not take as long as the first at all, like because we were being way more aggressive. So we're more aggressive and with how much we put in to our boring investments that buy and hold so that we can have, have it over time. And I think because we're also closer than most might think to making a decision if we want to like step

away from working, that colors it a little bit different for us too, because You know, my husband might tell you he's less than 10 years away. And I, you know, honestly, I'm not working if he ain't working. You know, I might write a book and do a couple speaking events here and there, but I am not going to be working super hard if my honey is trying to travel to world. We're going, we're traveling world. But I think it can get more boring when you are closer to making a decision to want to tap into those funds.

This is our final break. And we'll be back with more after this. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture. including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier.

It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware, and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth

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they're typically 100% in passively managed index funds allocated to, broad stock market indexes. However, we've been talking a lot on the money show this year about the transition from that accumulation portfolio to a retirement portfolio. We've talked about 6040 stock bond portfolios, and we've talked about the risk parity portfolio, which might have allocations to five different asset classes, for example. Which one of those are you in right now? And if you plan to transition, if you're still in an accumulation portfolio, do you have any thoughts about what a retirement portfolio might look like for you or how you might transition. Yeah, we are definitely in the accumulation. We are still making sure that we're, we have very

little bonds, less than 20 percent, and we do still spread it around the different, you know, asset classes. We're pretty balanced, I would say. So it's still over 70 percent stocks. I think we're going to stay there for a little bit longer. We're playing around, I shouldn't say playing around, But I, you know, when we're talking about cash, I don't necessarily mean cash in, say, even a high yield account. We're talking about a brokerage account with, you know, index investing. And so in that regard, we're still going to be, we're still in market, right? So we're not quite getting conservative with our dollars yet, but we do have a mix of mutual funds that we invest in. You mentioned that earlier.

Are you building up that a year of cash? Is that what I heard earlier? We're building up to 10% of our portfolio. So it's going to be more than a year of cash. It'll likely be too. And then last question on the portfolio, many people, but not all, choose to, actually, I would say it's a mixed bag, frankly, choose to pay off the home mortgage in anticipation of retirement earlier otherwise.

What is your plan on the home mortgage fund? It's so funny. You asked that question, Scott. We were in this decision this year. Do we pay the mortgage off or do we do a renovation? We have been in our home for 13 years and we had the cash to pay the house off. And we were trying to decide because we have waited for about three years almost for these bathroom renovations. It was just the bathrooms and nothing else.

And we decided to do the renovation. And so we are within months of paying the house off. And we just, honestly, part of our decision was because we didn't want to have our goods cost more a year from now. If we were to wait to do the renovation. And so we said, let's not let the tariffs, you know, catch up to us on this one. let's get all the stuff and do it now. And we're really glad that we did. We love what we have done.

And so we will be paying that house off. The other thing is I do think we're going to get back into real estate because I am definitely interested. One of our next goals is to have a rental property that we can utilize for ourselves, but also for others, we do want just a vacation home. And so my grandfather had a cabin in Upper Michigan. And so we're just thinking about outside the box. on what it could look like to reclaim something like that.

So that's one of our next steps in the next couple of years. I have a billion questions. I'm fascinated by all this. One, is the mortgage payoff and this potential rental going to come from just cash accumulation that you're going to make and earn and save over the next couple of years? Or do you plan to potentially sell off a portion of the stock portfolio or investment portfolio to fund those? That's a good question.

We used cash for the renovation. We're done. We're not planning on doing anything significant in the next coming years. It might just be some carpet, but that won't derail anything. And then for the rental property, no, I don't know. I don't think we're pulling anything out. We are likely going to take on a mortgage, a small mortgage for that. We'll have some cash for a down payment and make sure that we're not taking on any additional fees because we don't want that. But yeah, we're probably going to take on a mortgage for that. And that's where my, see, this is when we disagree and we are still working it out so we haven't made a decision because hubby doesn't want to take on a mortgage and I don't mind and I want something nice. So we'll see. We'll see how that turns out. Okay. I have a question. I think you said you have the cash to pay off your current home, but you have not yet paid off the home. Is that correct? That is correct, but we don't want to dip that far into our cash. So the house will be paid off in a couple months. Yeah. So my thought is you probably have a lower interest rate primary mortgage loan on the current house. Rather than paying that off,

I would take the same amount of money and throw that at the rental because you won't get two, three, four percent loan for the rental property right now. That's true. That's true. Thank you, Mindy. That's a good idea. The mental is going to be tax deductible and the home interest is often not tax deductible, which is something to work through. on those depending on how you file taxes. That's a good point. I love it. I love it.

Yeah. Lots of different ways to look at where your money could be going. I am totally in camp. Don't pay off your mortgage. Scott is totally in camp pay off your mortgage. So both camps are valid. Yeah. I paid off my mortgage or I bought my house in cash more specifically because interest rates

were higher at that point in time. But with my rentals, with a, low interest rate mortgages, I do not pay those off. Yeah, that's a good point, though, because one thing we hadn't thought about, because it didn't on our mortgage, I mean, yes, it's a lower interest rate right now. But gosh, when I just looked at interest rates recently for someone else, I was like, this is a mess. And you're right.

I probably wouldn't want to take that on. So something to think about for sure. So if you've got that money in the account that you haven't thrown at your mortgage yet, maybe, you know, run those numbers and see, okay, I'll continue making my nominal home. mortgage payment while I then throw this money as something else. Because it doesn't make sense to throw money at a 3% loan and then take out a 8% loan. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely not doing that. Yeah. There's also second home mortgages and those have a slightly higher interest rate than your primary mortgage, but it's lower than an investment mortgage. So talk to lenders, especially before you

find a property, just talk to lenders and see what options are available for a house like this. Because right now, lenders aren't that busy. They got lots of time to talk to you and talk to mortgage brokers, talk to just different options. Credit unions are awesome. I've got a great credit union lender in Colorado, but he's only licensed in Colorado. And I can call him up because I'm a real estate agent. I refer people to him all the time. I can call him up and I mean, he'll do this for anybody, but I call him up. I'm like, hey, let's talk about this such, such thing. He's like, oh, and by the way, did you know about this? Did you know about this? No, oh, those are new products, or that's a new thing that my company is doing. So there's just, there's lots of options available,

but you won't know until you ask a lender. And I'm not a lender. I just know enough to be dangerous. I love it. I got a question here, and I don't know how to phrase this. I'll just, I'll just ask it fairly directly here, but you're accumulating a lot of cash. So clearly things are going fairly well from the career front and low expenses. That's enabling you to, both or simultaneously or in some capacity in some sequence, build up enough cash to build multiple years or at least a year of cash position, pay off your home and accumulate a down payment on a nice vacation home. I imagine that is coming at the expense of at least some aggressive investments in stocks to continue to pile on. Is that at all influenced by the market right now

and stocks being at very high price to sales multiples, price to earnings multiples, those types of things. Or is that just a different course of, you know, priorities in life and where you want to spend the next incremental dollar? Well, I'll tell you this. It isn't all happening at once, right? So we've been saving for this reno or saving the cash, yes, for a couple of years.

It's taken us a couple of years to get to the place where this was something that we can do. And then the other part of it is likely the rental problem, property is going to take a couple more years from now. It's not like that's happening in 2026 even. So we're having conversations around how we're going to get that done. And so that's why I appreciate this conversation with you all because you've given me food for thought. And we have not reduced how aggressive we are in saving for retirement. We, that, that won't change. And we definitely believe in dollar cost averaging. So quite frankly, you know, things are looking fine right now.

I know earlier this year, everybody was taking a hit, but it didn't deter us because we were still buying and still, you know, sometimes you get them on sale. And so, yeah, our strategy, again, is pretty stable, boring, and it works over time because it definitely has paid off so far. Well, thank you for sharing so much about your story and your current situation and what's next. It's been really fascinating to get to know that and learn that. Where can people find out more about you, Erica? Well, one way that they can find out about myself is on for better and worth. For better and worth is the podcast, my husband and I have, where we talk about the intersection of couples and money and just having those conversations that people have a hard time having. And so you can find that on all of the platforms as well as on YouTube. Professionally, for the work that I do on a day-to-day basis, you can find me on Erica Young.com. And that is where I do all the things concerning financial health, wellness, and working with financial institutions to sure that their teams can employ financial coaches in a great way. So that's where I met. Erica Young is spelled E-R-I-C-K-A-Y-O-U-N-G.com. That's correct. We're a little extra over here,

so I need some extra letters. She's the best of both worlds. There we go. Thank you for an extra detailed and specific and transparent episode today. You're really, I think, going to inspire a lot of people. That's a really tough position to dig out of and then blow past to a really really elite net worth and tons of options. So super excited to see what the next few years bring for you and let us know what happens on the rental property front if you decide to present. Thank you. So glad to be here. Thank you, Erica. And we'll talk to you soon. Okay. Thanks. All right, Scott, that was Erica and that was a super fun story. I love that she shared her numbers. I don't love that she was in debt, but I love that she was able to pull herself out and now go from 90,000 in debt to positive.

2.5 million? That's an awesome story. What did you think? One of the best, most relatable, most inspiring, best examples of a money story ever on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Thank you so much to Erica for sharing all of that detail. It was fantastic. It makes a ton of sense. There's no particularly special or unrelatable or unachievable milestone on that. It's just hard work over a 25 plus year career, building and building and building, grinding it out, paying down debt, investing consistently. loved it. Yeah, nothing she did was not repeatable by anybody who is listening who has any level of debt right now. I love that she shared those numbers. That's always super helpful for our guests to share their numbers so our listeners could be like, oh, yeah, she did it. I could do it too. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Indie Jensen saying stay keen, Jelly Bean.