BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 99: 3 Personal Finance Bloggers & Their First Real Estate Investment with Scott, Lauren, and Philip

Episode Date: December 4, 2014

Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we’re excited to bring you another “newbie podcast” with 3 new real estate investors who are excited to share with you the story of their very first real estate deal! This episode we are talking with three investors who share a common trait: they all have a deep understanding of personal finance and it’s role in the real estate investing space and write about it online! Today you’ll hear from Scott Trench, Lauren Bowling, and Philip Taylor as they share how they found their first deal, financed it, manage it, and more. We cover everything from house hacking to creative finance, dealing with fear, and numerous other topics so, without further suspense, let’s get to the show! In This Show We Cover: How to find deals in a hot market Finding and working with a great agent Down payments: how much is really needed? Three different “house hacking” methods (one from each guest!) Using government programs to finance properties Wrapping repairs into the loan and creating immediate equity The one rule you need when renting to family or friends How to thrive when your home is worth less than you paid for it Doing your own work vs. hiring it out How to cash flow your property and save on taxes at the same time The #1 personal finance tip from each guest Plus MUCH more! Links From The Show: BiggerPockets Ad Sales Confessions of an Ex-Banker: How to Get Your Next Loan Approved, Guaranteed. Books Mentioned in the Show Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller Brandon Turner’s The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down BiggerPockets’ Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte The Skinny on Real Estate Investing: An Introduction to the Subject by Jim Randel The E-Myth : Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco Connect with Scott Scott’s BiggerPockets Profile Connect with Lauren Lauren’s Blog – LBeeAndTheMoneyTree.com Lauren’s Twitter Lauren’s Instagram Awkward Money Chat Connect with Philip Philip’s Blog – PTMoney.com Philip’s Blog detailed post about his cash flow report on his rental Philip’s Twitter FinconExpo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 99. Gonna party like it show 99. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from. BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What is going on, everybody?

I'm Josh Dorkin. Hosts to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Here with my co-host over 99 shows. Oh, my goodness. 99. Crazy. It's Brandon Turner. What's up, man?

What's up? 99 shows. I can't believe I'm still talking to you after all this time. You're, must be crazy. Most people don't want to talk to me after 99 shows or 99 anythings. Well, no, this is good. This is good. I'm a little under the weather. So are you. So is Scott. So is everybody today. Apparently, a little cold is going around. But, you know,

we're going to, we're going to fight through. We're strong. We are. We are. We got this, man. Yeah, you know, I'm very much excited about this show. We've had a couple technical difficulties in making this show happen. However, today's guests came through in spades for us. We had a guest that unfortunately couldn't come on and... Also got sick. Also got sick, but all three of our guests today managed to come on last minute. So we're really, really grateful to them.

But otherwise, things are good, man. Life is good. Thanksgiving was fantastic. I got to spend some really great time with my family, which was outstanding. My kids were ecstatic. And it was great. I know you had a great thanks. Thanksgiving, you have new writing on your arms, and, you know, things are, things, things are great.

Josh is making fun of my new tattoo. But, yeah, on Thanksgiving, I went Thanksgiving evening to Walmart just to watch that chaos of what happens there. My wife do it every year. It's our Thanksgiving tradition. Wait, are you making fun of people who shop Walmart on Thanksgiving? Yes. Wow. But we, I mean, we just lost half our listeners.

I know, I know. It's a lot of people. But it's fun to watch. I like watching crowds go like crazy. So, I don't know. It's a good tradition. We've been doing it for a few years now. But with that, I'm going to lead that into our quick tip.

All right. So, okay, this is not a quick tip. I just thought, 100. We've got to do something, man. I have a funny story. This is funny. I don't think I said this on the podcast. So I started doing this new thing.

I thought of it because of when I said quick tip, you'll see why. I started doing this new thing when I go to a birthday party and we sing happy birthday. What I started doing is whoever's the loudest voice, everyone follows. I've learned this. So what you do is you slow down. So it starts a happy birthday. So by the, I'm not even kidding. Nobody will know who did it.

But by the end, you're going, by the way, don't sing that song because they. Oh, that's right. That guy. That guy. So anyway, by the end of the song, it's like, uh, like that's how it is. And everyone's looking around like, how did this happen?

And it's the funniest thing. So anyway, try that out next time you had a birthday party, real good time. So anyway, today's quick tip is. Yeah, I don't know. What was the point? It's because I slowed. down quick tip and I made you draw it out a little bit. See, I tied that in.

All right. Now, today is quick tip. This is something that happened in real life to me this week and so I wanted to share it. I hired my guy lives at our apartment complex. He's kind of our sort of resident manager to go in and do smoke alarm checks just to make sure everyone unit had smoke alarms in him because legally you have to have them. Right. He, in our 24 unit, he went through 70 smoke alarms.

And we put them in every single unit when a unit goes vacant. which means that over the past like three or four years, people just get rid of them and they throw them or whatever. So the quick tip is do inspections because you don't have smoke detectors, most likely in your unit right now. You don't have them. Who does that? I don't know. I think what it is, it's like it starts beeping because the battery's bad. So they walk over to the wall and just tear it off and throw it in the gar. Yeah, garbage. Yeah. Anyway, so that's my quick tip is do inspections for things like smoke alarms. Also, we found probably 10 like water leaks that are costing us probably I would guess between

$500,000 a month in water that we're going to now fix. So anyway, inspections every six months or sooner. Great advice. Very, very good advice. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. All right. Today's show. You guys, today's show is really cool. We have three brand new investors who are all super smart personal finance writers. So they bring a really great perspective to the show. We've got Scott Trench, Lauren Bowling, and Philip Taylor today in that order. And I think you guys are going to love this, especially if you're getting started.

You know, it's, I don't know, I mean, even though we've been around the block for a while, hearing these new guys and kind of their experiences, you know, if you've done it, it kind of brings you back. Maybe you get a little excited and maybe you're inclined to go and help some newbie out who you know or whatever. But, yeah, lots of cool stuff. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress.

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slash B-P pod. All right, well, let's get to the interviews. First up, we've got Scott Trench. Scott is actually working in the operations here at Bigger Pockets, and he just purchased his first property, his first rental property and his first property. So he's here to tell us all about it, and I'm excited to beat him up a little bit and bring him on. A poor guy puts up with my nonsense all day. I give him a hard time.

and so he's a great sport. And we love having him on the Bigger Pockets team. So Scott, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you. How's going, Josh? It's good to be here. I have been a big fan of the show for a long time. So it's awesome to be here on the show with you guys.

So I got to tell everybody a story. I was sitting here in the office and just working away. And one day this guy who works in the co-work space with me comes over and he's like, hey, can I bring somebody in here? This guy really wants to meet you. I'm like, yeah, what's up? So he comes over and brings this guy. He looks like he's like 14 years old.

He's super excited. He's like, hey, I'm a huge fan of you guys. Oh, my God. It's so nice to meet you. I was like, hey, what's up? You know? And he's like, hey, I'm Scott. And here's who I am.

And, you know, I'm really interested in getting into real estate. And that was the first time we met. And it was like, it was cool. He was so enthusiastic. about getting into real estate and about us and the bigger pocket podcast which you'd been listening to. And so it's awesome, A, to have you working for us now. Scott is, you know, working on our operations and sales team. And B, now you've just closed on your first rental property. And so it's really cool to have you to discuss it.

So let's take it back to the very beginning. What, first off, what made you interested in real estate? So I guess my, first of all, it's great to be a part of the Bigger Pockets team. Yeah, I remember that day, walking in and meeting you guys. That was one of the cooler experiences I've had in my life. Nice. Yeah. Although one thing you've left out there is I tried to work for you on the weekends and you're like,

nah, nah, nah, just kind of move on here. And then a week later, I hear back from, hey, maybe you can come in for an interview. We'll talk about this. Awesome. Why did I get interested in real estate? I guess I've been interested in personal finance for a pretty long time. somewhere in the course of reading those books that have been mentioned time and again on this podcast, like a four-hour work week, rich dad, poor dad, millionaire next door.

I kind of really got this goal of early retirement and creating a lot of passive income. And I guess if you're really thinking about passive income, early retirement, and investing, eventually, at least for me, I arrived at real estate. I think that's going to be the case for a lot of people who really think that their whole portfolio through. And so it was about a year ago probably when I really got serious about it and I decided, you know, I'm going to really start the process of getting into the, you know, buy and hold rental game as soon as I can. Okay. Okay. So you got interested in this. You were a year ago, you were 23 years old. I mean, you know, you're still just learning what a beard is and, you know,

pimple cream and all that fun stuff. He had a pretty nice beard last, like last week. I didn't notice you shaved, but. Yeah, his Movember was hardcore. It was a good-looking beard. Somebody call it good-looking. Somebody call it scruffy. In the Northwest, we call that good-looking. I mean, we all have kind of the lumber-sexual look out here. My and dad, we're not sorry to see it go.

We're Thanksgiving. Nice, nice. All right, so, you know, you're a 23-year-old kid thinking about real estate investing, and a lot of people say, well, you're 23, how do you prep for that? I know you well enough to know that you got, you have this mindset where you say, you know, I need to, I'm not going to go out and blow all this cash. I'm not going to, I'm not going to spend all my money on partying and clothes and different things. I want to save up and really get myself prepped. So let's talk about that really quickly. What's this mindset that you've got going on here?

So I guess my first mindset is, you know, with the concept of early retirement, one of the first things that comes to mind is how do I reduce my expenses? How do I reduce my lifestyle expenses? as low as possible. And then how do I get as much passive income from that? And so I guess with my, you know, in order to invest in real estate, I think you need cash. Obviously, Brandon Turner here is a master of the no money down game. Low money down game. No and low money down game. Yeah. But, you know, for me, I thought there's, there's some risks involved with that. There's some strategies that you have to do. There's some creativity that that net needs to be, uh, implement And I thought that a better way for me to get started was kind of with a simple traditional approach.

And to do that, you need a lot of money or you need a sizable trunk to invest, which I consider to be in the ballpark about 20 grand. And so the plan was, how do I get to 20 grand as rapidly as possible? And in my current situation last year, the best way to do that was cut costs. How do I, I'll live with a roommate. I'll cut transportation costs. I'll shop at Costco, make my own food. I'm not going to not have fun on the weekends and go out and hang out with my friends, but there are certain big lifestyle expenses, I think, that you can reduce to help you get that

savings rate that you need to get that first property. Yeah. And in your case, I mean, you bike to work, right? You don't take a car, so, you know, save on that. You know, he's a member of the Crockpot Ladies. Yeah, oh, yeah. Ladiescrockpot.org, fantastic. So, you know, great way to save money.

You've got the roommate. All these things kind of coupled together, you know, represent a considerable amount of savings, correct? Yeah, yeah. And then another thing is, you know, how do you make your lifestyle expenses, the things you do for fun cheaper? So, for example, I play on a club rugby team. And there's ways that you can carpool with that.

There's ways you can, you know, share costs associated with events around rugby. There's ways you can carpool to skiing, you know, borrow old skis, you know, any type of lifestyle expense that you do for fun, you can always, there's always ways to creatively reduce that cost. still have the same great time. Yeah, I mean, I know some guys who go out and, you know, like, they look better than I do and they go shop at thrift stores and they have, like, fancy clothes. And it's like, that's just another way to do it too, right?

Absolutely. I used to be a total thrift shop junkie. I even had a shirt that was that said. I bought it a thrift shop and it said thrift shop junkie. Nice. It was amazing. Anyway, that's awesome. Yeah, I stopped that.

So you've done all this to cut costs. And, you know, you've been kind of putting together this plan, right? hey, what do I do? How do I kind of kick things off? And you eventually came to a decision that you wanted to purchase a multifamily, correct? So tell us the genesis of that. How did you get to that? And also, before you go there, I know you're also part of an investing group in town here in Denver. So maybe you could kind of lead us from there to the decision to make the duplex purchase. Absolutely. So while I was at my old job, which was a kind of corporate finance gig, I got really interested again in this whole personal finance, you know, early retirement idea.

And I talked about it a lot. This is something I would talk about with people I met, people that I, you know, ran into, people I would meet, you know, at lunch or in the park. And I happened to run into this guy while I was going for a jog one day. And we got to talking about investing and all and the early retirement concept. And he said, you know, I've got a group of guys here that are all kind of have that same mindset. Why don't you come and meet up with us? And little did I know that this real estate or I guess entrepreneur group would end up being

a huge asset in getting helping me to kind of launch my investing career here. There's different guys in the group. All the guys in the group are self-employed with the exception of a few, including myself, but they invest in various types of real estate. One's a lawyer who does commercial brokerages. He's also a commercial real estate broker. One is a house flipper. One's got to buy and hold portfolio.

a an agent. There's all different types. And they've been really great guys, really friendly. They've given me some great advice on which neighborhoods are likely to appreciate in the future, how to kind of estimate expenses in the area, and then how to kind of estimate rents. And so that really helps me kind of get more of the practical, the nitty gritty in the neighborhoods and properties that I was looking at and kind of get a good feel for the area. And then it came time to decide what kind of house do I want to buy? What kind of property will be a good first investment? And in that regard, my property is probably not the traditional bigger pockets investment.

I'm living in a place called Five Points, which is a neighborhood just to the northeast of downtown Denver. And property there is not the cheapest. It is not a $30,000 property that's going to meet your 2% rule. But for me, for Scott Trench, that property makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. First of all, it's a duplex so I can get a tenant to pay most of my mortgage. And it's also within five miles of the bigger pockets headquarters. So I can keep Beacon to Work, and I love Beacon to Work. Nice.

Josh, you have to talk about that all the time. Yeah. And then it's also in one of these neighborhoods that, you know, we decided there's a pretty good shot of depreciation at. So that would be, and there's a pretty good chance of that icing on the cake without appreciation. Gotcha. So you're taking this guy, Brandon's concept of house hacking, essentially.

and buying a duplex, you're planning on living in it, and you've also got plans for a roommate. That's the week, correct? Yep. Okay. So let's talk about the deal more specifically. Again, it's a duplex. How did you find this deal?

I actually found it on the MLS. An agent that I met on Bigger Pockets actually pointed it out to me, and she said, hey, I think this might fit your criteria pretty nicely. What do you think? I looked at it, and I've been looking at a number of things. of properties over the last six months. And this one kind of seemed to fit my, you know, my situation the best. It was kind of on the lower end and the price side. It was on the closer end in terms of distance to where I work. And it just kind of seemed to work out for me. So,

nice, nice. So how did you, I guess I want to know about more the, the market in Denver, because I know, because I've been, you know, kind of casually, you know, sort of looking for maybe something there. And I know it's crazy expensive. Like, I mean, compared to Podunk, Washington here, where I do have the $30,000 houses. It's a whole different world. So I mean, what does that like to shop in a competitive environment like that? Like how hard was it to find a deal? Well, it's kind of, I mean, it's kind of scary because you look at a property and the property be gone in two days, you know, it'll be and it'll go for higher than what it's listed at. And this has been going on for months now. And this property for, I actually got kind of

on because it was initially listed with Home Path Financing. Home Path financing cannot be bid on by competitors. It has to be bid on by someone who intends to occupy the place as an owner occupant. Yep. So that was how I was able to kind of get a little bit more time to get my numbers together and kind of, you know, make sure that this property did make sense for me in the end. Yeah. I mentioned that somebody yesterday, too, they said they're in a very, very competitive market. How do they find a good deal? And that's what I said is if you find a a property that's like a HUD home, something that's owned, you know, foreclos done by a HUD or in your case, a home path, but kind of the same gist of it. They have those restrictions on

investors so that investors can't bid for the first, you know, sometimes three, sometimes 10 times times 30 days. That gives, you know, owner occupants, people who are house hacking, a tremendous advantage. I mean, tremendous advantage. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's awesome that you did that. And I think that, you know, with the owner occupant thing, you know, it's not about buying a property that meets the 2% rule or that necessarily hits all the criteria that other investors seem to talk about a lot. It's about what property makes sense for you. And I think this property makes a lot of sense for me, even though it might not be the

best for an investor looking to hit that high cash flow number. Yeah. And what, you know, so your kind of, your plan was, let's get a roommate. You know, that'll cut my expenses. That'll increase my gain. Let's let's put somebody in the other unit. Are you going to end up having to spend any money, I mean, on a monthly basis, rent-wise, or mortgage-wise, or are all your expenses pretty much covered when it's all-set-and-done or pretty close? When it's all-said and done, all-set-and-done is going to be about $1,500.

That includes some FHA mortgage insurance, which I plan to refinance out of in a year or two. Okay. But even with that mortgage insurance, between a roommate paying me rent and the other half of the property being rented out, I should be able to at least cover the mortgage. There may be some expenses that I have to pay for out of pocket, you know, depending on what the maintenance ends up costing me. It'll be much better than my current situation where I rent for $600,700 a month. Yeah. And I was going to say, and that's something that people ask me a lot, too, and I just hear across the forums and all that is if I'm house hacking or if I'm going to do that, do I have to live completely for free. I mean, yeah, that's kind of cool if you can live for free or get paid to live for free.

But sometimes if you can just get it significantly cheaper than you would otherwise, then it can still work out to be. good deal, which is what it sounds like it's going to be for you. So I think that's awesome. And you get the experience as well. And you get the on-job training. Yep. Absolutely. And part of it is, again, it comes back to what makes sense for me, right? I could go find a property that's 20 miles away where I will live completely for free with the house hacking strategy. However, I don't want to do that. That's too far. That's not, that's not conducive to my lifestyle here. Yeah. And part of that, part of the investment for me is how can I reduce my total lifestyle expense? Yeah. That's great. That's great. So tell us about working.

with the agent. I mean, you know, obviously this is, well, not obviously, this is your first purchase, your first property purchase. So what was that like? And then I also want to hear about, I mean, this was not a quick close. I mean, it took a little while there were some kind of hurdles. Tell us about that as well. So my agent, first of all, was fantastic. Again, I found her through bigger pockets. And we had a pretty complex transaction here. I was using FHA financing, and I was buying a foreclosure. So between that's two, I mean, for, you know, people that are kind of new to this. Those are two very slow moving entities in the real estate game. What is FHA for those people who don't know? Like what's special about that? FHA, I can't

remember exactly what the initial stand for, but it allows you to put a little. Federal housing administration. Federal housing administration, yes. So for me, that meant that I was able to put down a low down payment on the property, but at the cost of having to insure my mortgage. So that's going to end up being a couple hundred dollars per month extra on that mortgage payment. You can think of that kind of like interest plus a sizable cash payment at closing. Again, part of that insurance. But at the end result was it allowed me to put much less down on the property and get in there sooner. Gotcha.

And then on the agent. Yeah, on the, I'm sorry, what about the just just the general kind of process of the transaction itself. I mean, I know that we've spoken, you're like, you know, there were a couple of headaches that kind of came in. I know I had headaches as your boss. I had to go back and forth with the lender and lots of documents back and forth with the lender, but, you know, verifying employment and those things. But what else? Well, anytime there was any type of delay with the property, you know, with paperwork or, you know, with inspections or appraisals, this kind of tended to be compounded just because of the two entities I was dealing with, which, again, I wasn't dealing with just, one seller. For example, a couple weeks ago, they sent the FHA appraiser there to kind of determine

the value of the home, and he was unable to turn on the water. Part of the FHA kind of deal is that the property has to be livable in order of them to approve the loan. And if you can't turn on the water, it's not livable. So actually, that ended up being a pretty nice little benefit for me because the bank was then forced to send in a plumber, fix all the plumbing, you know, I thought, what I had estimated, I would have to be paying for after I closed in the property. But because of the covenants of the FHA, you know, terms, they had to go in and fix all the plumbing, make it workable and at their expense. Nice.

But that, again, took two, three more weeks for us to close. Yeah. Well, hey, that's a nice, nice little gimmie, huh? Yeah, it was a nice little gimmie, but it was also kind of frustrating that, you know, okay, this could have been done two days after the appraiser. went in there, but no, it took three, four weeks. Do you mind me asking me a couple more questions about the finance inside of things? I mean, like, how much did you actually pay for the property?

And then what was your down payment on that? Sure. So my, uh, the purchase price was 240,000. And I put down, uh, 12,500 for that. Okay. That's not terrible. Like you said, I mean, those are things you can save up for if you need to, you know, by cutting expenses or increasing your living income, whatever it takes.

So very cool. Uh, well, Let's move on, shift gears a little bit. I want to know about, is there anything that you would do differently now that you've been through this process? I mean, three months ago, somebody just like you was starting out, let's say, you know, where you were three, four months ago, what advice would you get, give them that they should do differently or maybe do the same as you did?

I guess one of the things that I would kind of have done differently is maybe been more prepared with my funds. I had all these funds. and I've been a really big investor in with personal finance. So I had all these funds in different retirement accounts and different brokerage accounts. It might have been easier if I had kind of had these all in a liquid format ready to go at the time when I was looking to purchase properties. I think that there's more opportunity when you have that all settled and all together in one account where you can make offers and kind of deal with sellers more easily. in this case I was limited in my opportunity to buy because of the illiquidity of my assets.

Nice. Gotcha. Makes sense. So you just closed. I mean, you literally just closed on Thanksgiving weekend. So you just closed on this property. There's still some work to be done. Obviously, you know, I know you've talked about the roof and all sorts of other stuff that you need to kind of get together. You know, this is a show for newbies.

This is a show for pretty much everybody. I'm curious, you know, what's your emotion? First off, like, how do you feel? You just closed on your first property at 24. Are you scared? Are you excited? And what's kind of your plan to get it filled and move in? Well, it's funny because when I closed on the property, I actually closed.

My family's lives back in Maryland. So I went back to Maryland for Thanksgiving. And the bank insisted that I closed right then, right when, they were ready. So that happened to be the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I'm back in Maryland. And so they send a notary to my parents' house, 1,600 miles away from the property. And when I go through the two hours of paperwork and close on the property, and at the end, you guys, the notary says to me, you know, normally this is like a big moment in people's lives where, you know, there's like a bottle of champagne, they hand you the keys, they shake your hand. But here you go.

Here's the paperwork. I guess you'll see the property on Monday. So. That's funny. My emotion kind of, I guess, was different than a lot of people who make their first purchase where they're like, oh, my gosh, this is my home now. Yeah. It's because I was at my parents' house. I guess I kind of was more businesslike, you know, when I actually landed in Denver on Monday, I went to the property and checked it out.

And that's kind of when I hit it. It hit me, you know, this is mine. This is my property. This is my house. I can do whatever I want. I'm excited to get to work on it. Yeah. And my last question to you on this property.

is you and I have talked and somewhat battled over the past couple days about your plan, right? Get it, let's, you know, hey man, let's get this thing fixed up. Let's get it stat, you know. And I know your plan is a little more reserved. You're definitely methodical about how you want to make sure everything gets taken care of, and I think that's great. But, you know, for somebody who just bought a duplex that needs some work, you're not going to move in first and then worry about the other unit, right, you're going to do something, you're going to fix the unit that you're going to run out first, correct?

Yep. So I plan to, well, the biggest thing is with the duplex is there's going to need to be some work on the roof, and I'm going to need to put in, do some additional plumbing work. They did fix the water, but they didn't add any hot water. So that's pretty useful if you want to live in or rent out a property. And so once those two, once those two big things get done, I'll be able to move into the property. And then I can start doing it almost. everything else on my own. I think I have the skill set and the handyman skills to kind of do all the remaining repairs. My plan, I guess, would be to make one side perfect or, you know, at least up to code for the tenants and then move in the other side as soon as that's done and get a tenant in there. And that's going to start this weekend. Again, I close in a place on Wednesday and I've

been planning and contacting contractors and trying to get all that in place for this weekend and next weekend. So in other words, you're not going to live in the unit while you're fixing it up. You're going to fix it up first, then move in and then fix it up the other side and then move somebody else in. I'm going to do a bare minimum of fixing up to both units at first. Then I'm going to move in once I've got hot water and a new roof on it. And then I'm going to start repairing it. Yes. Cool. That's exciting. I had a, I had a friend two years ago who knew that I did real estate and I worked at a bank with her and, you know, two, three years, I think it's three years. I think it's three years ago now, man. Anyway, in this property came up on the market for $60,000.

It was a triplex with like a whole separate big house and then two other units in the back. The best like owner occupant, you know, situation you could imagine for that kind of thing and for 60 gram. I mean, she'd be making, I mean, bank cash flow every month. Like I said, three years ago, I just asked her the other day if she's gotten the units rented out yet. She said not yet. And so for the last two and a half three years, those units have just been sitting empty. And they need about a thousand dollars worth of work. Maybe it's like they need paint. That's about it.

Yeah, like there's something that stopped them. So I guess my encouragement to you and everyone else is get that done as quick as possible because it's very easy for months and months to go by and not do it. And that's just, I mean, you know this, Scott. Like this cash in your pocket every month that you don't have it rented. You're a finance guy. You get these. But yeah, some people don't.

So anyway, that's my encouragement. No, I absolutely agree. and I'm going to try to move as quickly as possible. But again, I'm kind of limited to afternoons and weekends. But I'm really trying to get that done as fast as possible. However, my projections financially start, you know, with having a tenant in there by the end of February, which I think is pretty conservative.

So I'd like to get them in there much sooner. But that's my, I'll be fine on my projections if I... Have you thought about... And I love that, by the way. I love that he projected, you know, so many months out, you know, it gives him time. He had cash in, you know, in hand, ready to kind of have this property empty for a few months and wasn't going to be in deep trouble if you didn't get the tenant by then. I think that's a really good idea to be conservative, especially the first time that you jump in

and do this. Yeah. I think a lot of people underestimate how much work a property takes to get rented. I mean, I know I did. Like I can think of probably 20 times in my life where my wife and I would be up till, you know, midnight one, two, three in the morning trying to get units rented out for like a week straight because, you know, we wanted to get it rented out by this date. And we just completely underestimated how long it actually takes. So, um, nice. Yeah. Nice. Right on. Well, Scott, where do you see yourself going forward with real estate? Big goals? What's kind of the long-term plan here? So I'd like to, um, so this year I purchased two properties and it's my kind of first year out of college here. Next year I'd like to purchase, or I guess, I consider the duplex two units.

Next year, I'd like to purchase four, either a fourplex or two duplexes, whatever. And I kind of like to keep trying to play that doubles game as long as I can here. I am not convinced that my next property will end up being in Denver. It could be a couple hours away. I think there's plenty of properties that meet kind of the more standard investment criteria around the country, especially within 100 miles of Denver that I can start investing in. So I think that's going to be my plan going forward is get those kind of 2% properties. Nice.

Perfect. Well, let's move on, I guess, wrap this thing up with our world famous. Famous for. Something wrong with your voice there, Brian? All right. The famous for. That was awkward. It's always awkward.

The Famous Four, these are the questions we ask everyone. And Scott, I know you've heard us ask these people, ask people these questions before. So I'm excited to be able to ask you them. So I'll start out with number one. Do you have, and if so, what is it, your favorite real estate book? My favorite real estate book. You know, I'm going to plug Brandon Turner here and say it's the book on investing in real estate with no and low money down. Yeah, what's real.

What's real your favorite? Which they can get at bigger pockets.com slash no money. Yeah. Anyway. Ultimate beginners guys, good bigger real estate book. Are you giving him suggestions, Josh? That's the book I read before I heard of bigger pockets. Millionaire, real estate investor.

Gary Keller. Nice book. Cool. Good book. All right. All right. What about a favorite business book? Famous business book.

It's not really a business book, but I think that one of the my favorite books that really changed my mindset and how I think, I'm a very number, I'm a big numbers guy. So I really liked how they kind of projected it. And that's the millionaire next door. Yeah. I think they did a great job of kind of very quantitatively proving what helps build wealth. Gotcha. Good book. Cool. T. Harv, I think. All right, what about hobbies? You said you play rugby. In fact, it was funny. One day, I'm at work.

And then Scott walks in and he's got like a big old Shiner from rugby. So, you know, wild child. What else do you do? Yeah, well, I'm a big rugby player. I played my whole life. I'm a big skier now that I've moved out here to Colorado. I love that. I try to go at least once a weekend. Nice. I've been to a couple mountains. Love biking, love running, anything, anything physical.

And I'm a big reader. Cool. Cool. Awesome. You're also a very good large, what's the game called? Large jenga or whatever? Oh, giant jenga. Giant jenga, yeah.

He and me and Brandon went downtown Denver and kind of, you know, one little bar hopping for a little bit there. We had a good time. I hear you, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you, he's a legend. He's the legend. And then just you to topple the tower everywhere. Twice. Yeah, thank you. You screwed us on that. That's all right. You know, I forgive you. I don't hold grudges. Jerk. All right, final question. What do you believe sets apart successful investors, those who actually take action and get things done and move forward versus those who fail, give up, never get started? What do you? you see in successful investors? I think it's a mindset.

I think it's goals. If you have a clear objective that you want to achieve and believe that it's achievable, I think that's what will help you keep going because, I mean, again, I think that the hardest step to take in real estate investing is going from not investing to being an investor. And for me, what that took was about a year of saving and, you know, projecting and, you know, projecting and, you know, planning to get that down payment ready for this property. Yeah. It's nice.

Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Otherwise, where can people learn more about you? Biggerpockets.com. You can check me out at biggerpockets.com slash Scott Trench.

I think it's a user slash. Yeah. Slash slash Scott Trench. And yeah, I'm always here. I'm always available. Any questions about bigger pockets or newbie real estate investing. Or ad sales. Or ad sales.

Or ad sales. You want to advertise in Bigger Pockets. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good plug. Nice, nice. And also, Scott is, Scott's been doing some writing for us on the Bigger Pockets blog about personal finance and kicking my butt in terms of traffic, comments, everything. It's very depressing.

All them are loving, though. Doesn't matter. You write well. Yes. Scott, this has been really fun. We are glad to have you on the Bigger Pockets team, obviously. And I know Josh and I talk about all the time. We love having you here.

So, we appreciate it to be here. I think it's the coolest job in the world. And I got to be on the podcast today. Yeah, world famous. Fantastic. Awesome. Scott, thanks so much, man.

I'll see you in about six seconds. See you then. Bye, by Scott. Bye, guys. Very cool. Very cool. Good interview.

I like that guy. I sure like Scott. Yeah, he's, you know, even though he's listening, yeah, if he weren't listening, we might have something else to say. No, Scott's great. And I'm excited about this new deal

for him. It's, uh, it's been fun to watch him go through the process, you know, seeing how, how excited he was. You know, I, I know that you and I both were kind of beating him up when he was looking at it about just different things and, and really trying to make sure that he, uh, was smart about what he was doing and, and, you know, really considered everything. And, and he did. And, and, and, and he did what worked out for him. And, and, uh, I think this will be great. So, um, you know, just to add on to that, what I was thinking is, you know, a lot of people are probably thinking, um, and, and, and, uh, and, thinking, well, yeah, Scott works at bigger pockets. Of course, he's going to have, you know, a good, he's going to buy a good investment property like he did. But the unique or kind of

cool thing is, like, one, Scott did most of this on his own. Like, he learned in the forums. And the second thing is, everybody listened to the show has the exact, exact same opportunities that Scott does. Because every day, Josh, me, all the bigger pockets team, all of, I mean, people way smarter than us are in the forums every single day and asking and answering questions and just hanging out. So anyway, just let that be encouragement to people. Jump in. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market.

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One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NREG.com, B-P-P-P-P-Pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P-Pod. Yeah, awesome, awesome. All right, well, let's move on to the next interview with Lauren Bowling. Lauren's a writer over at LB and the Money Tree.com, and she's doing the house hacking thing, well, it's similar to what Scott's doing, but a little bit different than anyone else we've had on the show.

So why don't we bring Lauren in? Lauren, welcome to the show. It's good to have you. Hi, thanks for having me. Awesome. We are glad to have you. And thank you again for coming in last minute. I know we just asked you a few hours ago. So yeah, you definitely saved us here on coming in to do this interview. So thank you. Today we're going to talk to you about something that I did in the very, very beginning. And I thought it was one of the best ways to get started building a, you know, real estate investment business or whatever you want to call it. So maybe can you kind of tell us what is it that you do with real estate? So I bought my first home. in July 2013. I knew I wanted to get into having, you know, passive real estate income, but because I was just starting out, I knew I was going to have to live in it. So I actually own it. It's my first home technically. And then I also rent it out to people. So I'm just

starting out on this sort of real estate investing adventure. And it's a single family house, right? And you rent out the bedrooms like to roommates. Yeah. Yeah. It's a single family home 2,000 square feet here in Atlanta. And it's three bedrooms. And the addict's actually a master suite. So I live up there and then run out the bedrooms downstairs. Nice. Nice.

Yeah. It's always a great way to get going. You know, whether it's a single family or, you know, a duplex, other kind of small multifamily, you know, as Brandon dubs it house hacking as a means for kind of kicking things off. I actually, I have a question for you. and it's going to be very pointed and don't get mad at me. But why are you taking the master suite instead of the small bedroom and not getting all that extra money renting out the biggest room in the house?

Because I like my privacy and I live with people I know. And so I kind of just like having that sort of separation between me and them. All right. Fair enough. I'll admit. I took the nicest room as well when I did that. All right. All right. So, you know, let's talk about it.

How did you find this property? And when you did find it, was the intent, hey, I'm going to buy this to start renting it out? Or was it, you bought it? Then you're like, oh, you know what? Maybe I can use this as a means to build some income and start becoming a landlord. Well, that's a very interesting question. Actually, I was engaged when I bought the house. So we bought it thinking that we were going to live here as a family.

It was a total fixer-upper. I put about $60,000 worth of renovation money into the home. And then we parted ways, but I legally owned the house. So then I was like, you know what? I'm going to turn this bad situation into a good one and run it out and recoup my money that way. It's his loss for me. Well, totally. Yeah, this house is beautiful.

Yeah. And, you know, he's off trying to find somebody. He's never going to find somebody as cool as you. So, you know, don't worry about it. It was a long time. Well, not long, about a year ago. But thank you. All right. All right. So you took a difficult circumstance and you kind of turned it around.

What, you know, what's it like renting out a house that was your house for you and your, you know, and sorry to kind of go there, but like you and your, your fiance, you know, living with these tenants. Is that different? Is it difficult? Or, you know, how does it feel like to have tenants in the same unit as you're in? I've actually looked out one of the tenants is my brother, so he kind of understands the situation and treats the house like it's his own. We had another roommate, and she kind of treated it like a rental, you know, and she would throw her things everywhere, and she would be really messy, and it's like, this is my home. Like, I've doubled down and put everything I have into this.

So that part is difficult. I think not from a, you know, he and I were going to live here in memory's perspective, but just from the fact that I've invested so much financially and emotionally, it's hard to see people come in and just kind of treat it like they would an apartment in a complex or something, if that makes sense. I exactly know what you mean. I get irritated all the time when I look at a property. Like I fixed up. You know, we used to flip houses and then we would turn the flips into rental properties because the market started crashing. And so I look at these houses that were one time just gorgeous.

And like I look at the pictures and then I drive by today. And I'm just like sad because it just looks like every other. rental around. Like it, you know, they don't care. They don't maintain it the way that a flip looks or the way that I wanted it to look. They treated just like your average blue collar neighborhood. And it hurts every time. Like I just feel like irritated that they don't treat it to the level that I would. So I feel you there. So, well, how do you deal with that? I mean, as a landlord, as somebody who's renting out a property and who lives with the other person. I mean, you, you see this. Yeah. I don't know if that person's still there living with you.

and if so, hopefully they're not listening. But, you know, I mean, what do you do when somebody's just kind of, you know, disrespecting the property a little bit while you live there? Yeah, it's definitely difficult when you know the person, at least a little bit, because then you kind of dance around those conversations, whereas you'd probably be more direct with somebody that you didn't know so well. She doesn't live here anymore. It was one of those situations where me and my brother both tried to talk to her about, you know,

she was keeping the house and the way she was treating it. And eventually we had to part ways because we couldn't agree. Yeah. And I think that's an important thing, right? Like when you live with people, obviously you have to get along with them. I mean, when you have a tenant that lives next door, lives a mile away or 100 miles away, you don't necessarily have to like them. But when you're living with them, you kind of got to like them at least somewhat,

which makes it weird too with the whole, like I have a rule. Like I don't rent a family or friends. But when you're in that situation, you kind of, you don't have to, but you just, generally either become friends with the person or you rent to your family. So I've done both. I rented to my brother-in-law and I rented to one of my closest friends back then. Nice to see you following the rules, Brandon. I know. Well, I didn't have these rules. Right. And honestly, it's been to be broken. Who cares? There you go. Yeah. So, I mean, it's an awkward place because you want to be friends with people that you live with. You don't want to be, you know, weird. But

the same time, you want to maintain that professionalism and, and that this is, it is a business. Whether or not it's a, you know, you're not selling a product per se, but you are running an investment business just by having that house. So I don't know, do you have any good tips for people who are doing the same thing who have roommates for, or renting out a room in their place for dealing with that kind of thing? I would just say get it all in writing. You know, when you, you're with someone you know, it's kind of more casual. It's like, oh, well, we'll do kind of like a handshake agreement. And you can't go back to those when, you know, stuff hits the fan. So that would kind of be my number one rule. And also just to be

careful. I think sort of the bad situation with the person who was living here before has kind of turned me off to being a landlord in some ways. And so if that's something that you want to do, I would say starting out, just make sure all your ducks are in a row. So that way you can, you can keep doing and keep up that bandwidth. That's great advice. And, you know, I'm glad you actually said that. I mean, I'm not glad that it's happening to you, but I'm glad that we're talking about it because I think it is important. And I think a lot of people experience, you know, get that one or two bad experiences early on and they're like, I'm done. I've had it.

If this is what it's going to be like, why would I want to continue? Why would I want 10, 20, 50 units if just having one or two, you know, people are going to treat me terribly. And so, you know, at least from our brief conversations, it sounds like, you know, you have plans to kind of continue going forward and eventually potentially moving out and renting the property, so this hasn't totally turned you off? No, definitely not. And I got lucky. I bought in sort of an up-and-coming neighborhood here in Atlanta. So I bought sort of the bottom of the market, and now things are turning around. And I have a lot of equity in this home that I hope to one day

leverage into another investment property or either a home that I will just live in me by myself and then rent out this one and have this be like the sole source of income. Yeah. Do you mind if I digging a little bit on the numbers like what did you buy? No, absolutely. Cool. What'd you buy it for originally? I bought it for $65,000. And then I got down payment assistance through the city of Atlanta through a a Lyft program that they were doing to revitalize neighborhoods that had been hit hard by the economic downturn. And then now I think it's worth like 140,

150. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, my phone's going off here. And you said you had put in about 60 and repair. Is that right? Right. Okay. And so how, so that puts you at, you know, 120, you got a little bit, you got some equity. Tell me, tell us about the program because, you know, I'd be curious, what's that like?

Do you have to put money down or do they just give you full assistance or 100% or how does it all work? So it's a soft loan. So they gave me $15,000 towards a down payment and closing costs. And it's forgiven $5,000 for every year. year you live in the home as your primary residence. And I had to pay $1,000 just as like a program fee, but then at closing, you know, they put that money in and I was able to, I think I paid maybe $800 at closing. That's it to get the keys to a home. Yeah, which is, you know, what a lot of people pay to get into a apartment. So I lucked out. I found it through just researching. They don't

offer the program anymore because they ran out of grants, but for anybody looking to do that, looking to house hack, I would say, and research your options for down payment assistance because a lot of, you know, first time owners who make a home, their primary residence can qualify for that money. And how would, what would I do? Would I just look for down payment assistance? And like, you know, if I'm in Denver, which I am, I would say Denver had down payment assistance plans or, or, I mean, is that pretty much what you're Googling or? Yeah, you could Google that or you can talk with your mortgage broker. They won't mention it to you, but if you ask, they'll probably tell you, um, if something going on or if they know of a program that would be a good fit for you.

I was going to add a real estate agent. Like they get paid when they get people in houses. So agents are usually like really good. Agents and mortgage people both are really good at knowing about those programs. So it's definitely something to ask because you never know. I mean, I know there's programs like that in almost every city or there was. Every major city had something like that. And some of them are still going on today.

So it's worth looking into. So cool. Well, let me ask you about fine. We talked about kind of financing then. I guess the down payment assistance, they covered that. Did you still have to go to a regular bank to get the loan then? I did. Okay, so you went to just a typical bank and I guess what was that process like?

Was that difficult for you? You weren't any issues in that? It was only difficult in terms of there's more paperwork always when you go through things like that. So you have to be really hyper-organized and make sure you have they wanted letters from all of my previous. landlords, the bank, and then also the down payment assistance. They wanted to ultra-verify my income and a few other things because I also freelance. They wanted a little bit more proof of that than the bank had asked for. Okay. Gotcha. Hey, in terms of organization, I think that's something where a lot of people find issue. I know Brandon has this problem. You know, I work for them every day and he's

I have a lot of problems. Well, you know, we could talk about them now if you want or we can just use it as an aside as an example. I mean, I'm mostly organized, but what kind of advice would you give for somebody in terms of organization? What, you know, somebody who's buying their first property, what kind of things do they need to kind of get together? How organized do they need to be? What do you do? I would say if you know that you're looking to buy a home within the next, you know, three to six months to go ahead and start pulling your tax returns, you know, your W-2s, rental history, maybe start maybe kind of reaching out to your previous landlords. That's something that you feel comfortable doing, just saying, hey, you know, can I have a

letter saying that I live with you and then I was a good tenant? Those things go really far. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I think it's great. And I wrote an article last week on the blog about how to get a bank to say yes to you every time.

And I talk a lot about what you need to have prepared to get a loan and how you can organize that and stuff. But anyway, you can check it out if you want to. It's on the blog, everyone. and I'll link to that in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 99. 99. That said, I want to move on and ask you about the repairs. You said you did about 60 grand of repairs in that.

Did that come out of your own pocket or did you get any kind of financing for that? Or how did that all come together? No, I did a 203K renovation loan. Okay. So they lumped the cost of that into my mortgage. And since I bought the house for such a low price, it was well within what I had been to be qualified for. I didn't have any problem, you know, taking out that much to finance the house.

And I actually was really thankful that I had that available to me because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do any of that. So it was a great way to renovate a home without having a ton of cash on hand. Yeah. So can you explain, I mean, what is it, 203K and how, you know, how do you go looking for these things? Again, if you talk to your mortgage person, there's lots of literature about it. If you, most big banks like Wells Fargo, Chase, that kind of thing, have like their own brochures about the 203K renovation loan. You just, you have to have a contractor come out and estimate the work he'd like to do on the home.

And then you can take out a certain amount. And then they put that amount into sort of like a separate escrow account for you. And then you have an inspector come through and check the work at these checkpoints and say, you know, yes, the floors were done. Yes, the kitchen was repaired. And then he'll release those funds to you, give you a check to sign, and then you hand it to the contractor. So you never actually touch the money except when the check comes made out to the contractor. You just have to sign it.

And paperwork is, it was pretty straightforward. It was all lumped into the basic underwriting process of the initial mortgage. Okay. So I can't really speak to how that qualifying process works, but I know that it is available. Sure. Nice. Yeah, I'm a huge, huge. I'm a huge fan of the 203K loan.

I mean, I talk about all the time. I write about it. It's in chapter two of my book that I just wrote. The entire chapter is like about kind of house hacking and that's one of the main parts of the 203K loan. So I don't know. I think that's really cool that you used it and used exactly the way that I think people should. And for those people who are interested in doing that, just so you guys know, you can do that with a one or a two, three or four unit property.

So you can actually use a 203K loan on a fourplex or a triplex or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of that because you do you get to do exactly. exactly what you did, right? You bought a low price property that needed work. You fixed it up using the bank's money and then you added instant equity in when you did that. And so you kind of get to gain all these different sides at the same time. And now you get the cash flow because you're renting it out the rooms in there. I mean, just all around. It's just an awesome, awesome

thing you're doing. So I commend you on that. Good job. Thank you. Yeah. What about mistakes? Anything you did wrong? Anything you redo over? I think just because it was my first time renovating First of all, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I would not recommend such a massive renovation. I bought a foreclosed home. It had no plumbing. It had no HVAC, no nothing. And so I was basically starting from scratch. And I know a lot of first-time buyers just kind of do like cosmetic updates on the home.

And so I think I bet off a little bit more than I can chew in that respect. And then I also didn't super do my due diligence with the contractor. Luckily, there were, you know, guards in place through using the 203K program. that prevented him from completely taking advantage of me, but I was not satisfied with his work in that respect. You're not alone. That's one thing we complain about on the show all the time. Every guy, same thing.

It's dealing with contractors as one of the most difficult parts of being in the real estate industry at all. Which is an absolute shame. And, you know, there's these sites that have these referrals with ratings. And you know what? I've used contractors who've had plenty of high ratings. and I've been screwed by them. And so, you know, it's, you know, referrals is really, really one of the best ways to find a good

contractor talking to other real estate investors and find out who they're using. But, you know, we've all been there, so, you know, don't feel too bad. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because my realtor actually referred him to me. Oh, fired. He went to her church. I don't know if he'd ever done any work for her actually. But so that's that's probably where I went wrong.

She seemed nice. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is great. You know, I have it all in one little package. I tell you what, I think that's one of the worst ways to find a real estate agent and to find anyone else is to go through a personal, like I think personal references are great to some extent. But when you're talking about somebody who's going to be part of one of the biggest purchases you're going to make, you know, they're friends with my mom or somebody who went to my church is a really easy. it's so easy to go that path. And so many people do it. Yeah.

That's not a good thing. Right. But like, you know, the agent that you're using to buy that, you know, four family may have never sold a four family. May not know how to analyze it. May not know enough and may be giving you, you know, not the best information. So I, you know, I'm not trying to pick on you or use you as an example. I'm using you as an example.

But don't, you know, I definitely recommend vetting folks. primarily through a network of people who may have worked with those individuals, not necessarily because they're friends or churches. And that, you know, again, it's convenient, but sometimes it can be problematic. Yeah, it ended up costing me thousands of dollars because I just didn't vet him properly and because he didn't do the work right the first time. So, yeah, that would be my biggest piece of advice is just do your homework. And then do extra homework, whatever you think is appropriate to do more than that.

Well, and I do like what you said about the 203K loan. One of the nice things about that is they don't release funds to the contractor until the work's been done and expected. And so it does, there is a few more safeguards to make sure that they are not complete, like you said, not completely ripping you off. And that's just one more benefit of the 203K that I like. Because like, it's not my fault. It's the bank's fault.

Sorry, you didn't do that right. I don't have to be the one yelling at the contractor. But that's something that newbies should and experience people should be doing as well. you know, I mean, releasing, you know, giving half the money up front to a contractor is just a really bad idea. You know, you definitely want to have milestones and, and really organize the process. And if you find a contractor who says, well, I want 50, 75% up front where I'm not doing this, move on. You know, there's always going to be somebody else. What I typically do, if they want all that money up front, it's usually because they need

material and the guys in my area don't have any money at all. Right. So I'll say, well, I'll tell you what, I'll buy the material. You just, you know, get. it all together at Home Depot. Yeah, call me. I will pay for the material and that'll be your 50% up front. And I'll give you, you know, whatever else, 20% as you're down, yeah, as your starting fee or whatever, you know. And that's usually worked out good for me.

But anyway, so we got to move on, wrap this up. But I guess my last question is, where do you see yourself going in the future? Do you plan on buying more? You said earlier you might turn this into a rental or we talked about that. I mean, like a full-time rental. Like, what are your thoughts going forward with real estate? Yeah, I definitely see this home. I don't think I'll be here, you know, for the long term.

like I had initially thought when I purchased the property. But it'll definitely turn into a rental. I would like to buy more because just collecting that check every month does get addictive. So I would like to be a little bit more in that. I'll probably, I don't know, maybe hire somebody to help me with the property management aspect of it if I ever start having more than one or two. Just because, as I said before, I'm a little turned off to the landlord thing right now. Other than that, yeah, I definitely want to keep going.

Nice, nice. Well, and my last question is you're a personal finance writer. So I guess I would say besides real estate, what else do you recommend people do to financially prepare for the future? You know, what's your biggest and best tip? I mean, we've an audience of real estate investors, but, you know, they're all primarily interested and concerned about their personal finances. So, you know, what's your big takeaway? I think other than real estate, just creating multiple streams of, you know, passive or not passive, but just multiple streams of income. So I freelance, I have the blog, I have my full-time job, I also, you know, rent out rooms. I'm just trying to have as many different avenues as I can to make up this total income pie. That way I'm not so reliant on one thing or another to make my living. I don't like having that pressure. So that would be my one tip. That's kind of what I write a lot about on my site as well.

That's great. Awesome. That's kind of like a different side of what earlier on this podcast we talked with Scott, who he's really big on cutting expenses. Like that's his main, his push. And I like, I like there's two sides, right, of building wealth and it's cutting expenses or adding income. And so you kind of add that side to the personal finance stuff. So I love that. Cool. Well, let's move on to our world famous, famous four. Famous for something wrong with your voice, Josh? No. Puberty. All right, good. These questions we ask everybody. And, you know, we'll see what you got to say. Number one, do you

have a favorite real estate related book. I know you're not like, you know, gung-ho buying lots properties, but do you have any books that come to mind when you think real estate? It's okay if you say no. It's okay to say no. I'm going to say no. Okay, that's fine. Right now. That's fine with us. No. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good answer. How about business book? What business books come to mine? Oh gosh. I just read one. It's not necessarily a business book, but it's just about work-life balance. It's called Overwhelmed. It's by, she writes for the Atlantic. Her name is Bridget Schult.

And it's just about how our lives keep getting busier and busier. And that kind of ties into the revenue question. But just how can we make it so that our lives balance out with our work and that we feel good about ourselves. And we're not just heads down in a cubicle nine to five all the time. So it's not super business related, but it was a really good one I read recently. Awesome. Nobody's ever recommended that one.

So I love new books. Hey. What do you do for fun? What are your hobbies? So I work out a lot. I do yoga. I walk my dog. I go hiking.

But then I also perform in community theater shows. I have a theater degree. I was a professional actor in New York for a while. Actually, like, a year or two. What year? 2009 to 2010. Oh, I've predated you by a decade, but okay. Yeah. So I still do community theater. I like to be in musicals. I love rehearsing and it's completely unrelated to writing or finance. It's a really good outlet for me.

What's your favorite musical? I'm a huge fan of musicals too. Thorly Modern Millie's my favorite. Really? I have not seen that one. Oh, it's so cute. It's so good. Maybe I'll watch that sometime. You guys having a moment? We are having a moment. You know, theater nerds. All right. Last question. For me, anyway. What do you believe sets apart successful? I'm going to say open it up, not just real estate investors, but just successfully financial people, people who are financially successful. Thanks, Mom. From those who never, you know. So what sets apart successfully financially successful people from those who continually struggle in life and never really kind of gain any traction or get anywhere?

What would you say? I think what sets people apart is just having that, I want to call it an investor's mindset. knowing that it's a lot of small actions over time that make you successful, that very few things happen overnight. And realizing that difference between sort of flash in the pan, fast success and the kind of stuff that you build over time is, I think, what makes people successful with their finances. Because I don't know anybody who's gotten rich overnight, literally overnight. So I think that's what I... Thank you. I think it's great. Well, awesome. I, you know, my last question is,

Where can people learn more about you? You've got a website. What's the URL and tell us and about that. So my website is LB and the MoneyTree.com. That's LBE and the MoneyTree.com. And that's based off my nickname. People call me LB. Or they can find me on Twitter, Instagram, at LB MoneyTree.

Or they can find my web series, awkward money chat using the hashtag awkward money chat. Cool. Awesome. It's nice to find me. just watched an awkward money chat today, the one with Paula Pan. I thought it was excellent. Thank you so much. I love that. Season two. Yes. Very cool. Well, thank you very much. And Josh, you want to take us out? All right. Thank you so much. I'll take you out. Lauren. Thank you. It was great. We really appreciate it.

And thank you for, I mean, seriously, thank you for coming in last minute. And big thanks to Letitia as well for helping us scoop you up and get you on the show. So much appreciated. You're welcome. Thank you guys. Take care. You got it. All right, guys, that was great. That was our interview with Lauren, and I hope you all got some really good information. I know I did. If people want to know more about her, you can check her out at LB and themoneytree.com.

That's LBE and the Moneytree.com. Cool. Yeah. And I do love that strategy, the 203K thing. That loan is such a fantastic loan product. I talk about it all the time. So like I said earlier, if people do want to learn more about it, pick up a copy of my book, The Book on Invest in Real Estate with No and Looney Down by visiting VigertPockets.com slash no money.

I just want people to know if they want to learn more about the book, you know? It is a good book and you find every opportunity to plug it. I find every opportunity to plug it. You do. You do. We're going New York Times bestseller. It's getting there. Nice. All right.

All right. With that, let's move on. Today's third guest is Philip Taylor. and I'll tell you a little bit about him. Phil is a writer at PTMoney.com, and he's a great guy who turned a potentially bad situation into a really great financial opportunity for himself and his family.

We'll talk all about it. And again, we are grateful to Phil for coming on, and it's been great knowing him over the past few years, so I'm excited. So, Phil, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you. Josh, totally glad to be here. Hi, Brandon.

Looking forward to the chat. Hey, look at that. He actually said hi to me. Most people don't say hi to me. Josh, like, welcomes them and then they ignore me. Like, I'm chopped liver. Isn't that the phrase? Oh, look at you.

Yeah, chop liver. You've been using that. Remember the tribe. I love it. Well, I see you guys in pair everywhere I go. That's true. We're kind of joined at the hip. I can't leave you off.

Yeah, he's my other wife. Well, I'll put that on my Twitter today. I'm Brandon, Josh's other way. All right. Phillip, let's this start early. I mean, like, how did you get into real estate? Like, how did you buy, you got one property? So how did you get it? Like, when was that and how did that happen? Yeah. So my one property is my old home. So I'm sort of a quasi-accidental landlord. And I say it like that because we bought it in 2007, October 2007. It's a townhome across town now. And, you know, when we, When we decided to move out of that property, selling it would have, it wasn't an underwater situation, but we would have lost some of our down payment, a small amount of our down payment. And my wife and I just were not in the position to do that. We just didn't feel comfortable doing that. It was like a pride thing, you know. And luckily, my income at the time was enough to support a couple of, you know, mortgage payments if things went wrong.

And really, when we bought the property, we sort of knew that it would be a potential. rental property for us. And so we kind of had that in mind, we bought it. So it's, we've owned it for seven years now. And it's been a rental property for the last two, two and a half. Yeah. Nice. Nice. And how has that been for you? It's been very positive. For, you know, for me, it was something that I thought, you know, I always wanted to get into real estate in some level. And so it certainly gave me that opportunity. You know, I decided to, if I was going to do it, I was going to do it all the way, DIY 100%, you know, rent it out myself, repair it myself, and manage it myself.

Nice. And so I've done all those things. And you guys know that I'm a writer. I'm a financial writer. And so I was able to get a lot of good content out of that experience. And so it's been good. It's been a very, you know, something I was a little nervous about. I'm a pretty conservative guy.

But for the most part, at the end of the day, I can say that, you know, I've been really happy and blessed to have gone through it. And now I see it as something that's going to be a big part of our future, you know. Yeah. So you mentioned you're an accidental landlord. Tell us about what, you know, tell us a little bit about what that is. This is really a show aimed primarily at newer investors and newer real estate folks. So what's an accidental landlord and other folks who may be finding themselves in a similar

position? What advice do you have for them to get through? And you haven't really told us the experience necessarily. get through kind of some of the challenges that come with being an accidental landlord. Yeah, so for me, how I would define it is someone who needs to sell their house for some reason, but ultimately can't sell it and has to turn it into a rental property because either the market doesn't produce a buyer or the market produces a sale price that is either below the equity that's in the house currently or is just a sort of a negative, for our case, it was,

Barton starting to bite into our down payment that we had put down on the house. And so, yeah, so that's accidental for us. And, you know, I would say, you know, I'm a fairly conservative guy, and so I don't like to lose money. And so in this situation, we luckily had our finances lined up where, you know, we could kind of handle both properties at the same time. And I would say that, I don't know. I mean, for me, I wanted to be in real estate eventually at one point.

So this was almost an excuse for me. If you're not someone who's slanted in that direction, I would say be wary of doing something like this. I would rather that person get out from under the property somehow and eat a little equity, I guess. But, yeah, I don't know that I have a good answer there necessarily, Josh. That's good enough. I mean, you know, I'm going to judge you no matter what your answer is. Go ahead.

Go ahead, Brennan. No, you take it. Ah, come on, come on. All right. I was going to ask, you said earlier you've always. always kind of been interested and thought you'd get into real estate. I want to know, like, what about real estate kind of made you want to get into it eventually and keep that in the back year? Like, why did that, why was that in the back of your mind to get into it? Right. So,

you know, my father was not, my family is not necessarily real estate owners. So I didn't necessarily get it there. But, you know, I've seen other people. And when I, you know what it was when I started blogging a lot, writing about personal finance. a lot of people talked about how rental properties would be a good addition to, you know, the income stream that they're trying to build for themselves. So typically in personal finance you talk about saving enough in your retirement accounts. That way you have an income stream in retirement to live off of. Well, people additionally add on to that real estate. And so for me, that was always, you know, an interesting part of it.

My wife's best friend's dad, if you can follow me there, does a little bit of real estate. dabbling and he just seemed so practical about it. Like it wasn't a mystery for him. It wasn't scary for him. And he had a lot of conversations with him about the process, some of the rental properties he had, some of the ways he was adding values to the pieces of land that he was purchasing. It just seemed so it sort of brought it out of behind the curtain, you know, and it wasn't necessarily a mystery anymore.

And he really made it just seems so practical. You know what? We also had a very good landlord when we were, renting a town home in that same neighborhood. So we rented a town home in the neighborhood that we eventually purchased a property that became our rental property. And we just enjoyed him as a landlord. And I really just felt like he was, it was, it was a beautiful investment for him. And so I could see it. And at the same time, I was sort of fixing my financial situation. I thought, you know what? We're putting a lot in our retirement accounts. We're really hammering those, maxing those out. Let's take some of this extra cash now that we have and think about doing a rental property. Let me ask you about the landlord. You said you had a really good landlord. I was going to say the exact same thing. That's really funny.

Yeah, we have a lot of landlords listening to this. So what do you believe, I mean, what made them a good landlord? What do you admire about them? What made them good to rent from them? You know what it was? We were pretty easy tenants, I think, on him. But he was very responsive. As soon as we had an issue or a question, he was there.

He fixed it, you know, problems immediately. But it was really more. impressive how he was handling because he lived in New York and here we are in Texas. And I don't even think he, I think he purchased the property without even seeing it. Okay. And was renting it out. And so it just seemed to be like just a wise guy, you know, to have pulled this off and to be doing it. And in a time when, you know, he could see some good tenants come through there,

we being one of them. But I just, I don't know, it just seemed like something, I just looked up to the guy because he was the one he was making money off the deal. I was paying him, but I wanted to be that guy one day. Yeah. And I'm just curious, I don't know if you remember, but how did he, I mean, were you working directly with him as the manager? Was he managing the property from 2,500 miles away, or was there someone else in between?

Yeah, it was just he and I. And he would give us deposit slips to take the check over to the bank and put it in, we'd deposit our check for him. Yeah. So it was just, and where we had a, problem, then he would call a local, you know, service person or something to fix the issue. But yeah. Gotcha. And you know what also led me into real estate, I think, was that when we did buy that, eventually to buy that property that became our rental, I made some improvements to the home

myself. I put down hardwood floors. We did some painting. You know, and I got comfortable with doing a lot of the maintenance at the house itself. And so that gave me some confidence going into when we decided eventually to make it a rental. Right on. Can I expand on that just a minute? I want to talk about doing your own work because a lot of people, I mean, like, me and and Ben Leavovich have this like battled back and forth the last year about I like to do my own work a lot of times.

I don't as much anymore, but I did a lot of my own work and he doesn't. So you obviously are one that's more hands-on. I guess do you have any advice for people listening who might be wondering that? Like they may say, hey, I don't know how to do anything right now. I'm not very handy. Should they just, you know, try to learn? Like, how should they? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, YouTube is your friend. I mean, so go there as much as possible. But, I mean, also don't get yourself into a situation where you're working on something that's, you know, over your head. I mean, electrical or some plumbing issues. I mean, to me, red flags, even though I know some electrical. I still try to stay away from some of those repairs. Yeah.

So just, you know, know your limits, I guess, and know when to call in a pro. Don't drag issues out for your tenant because that's just going to create a negative situation. Oh, yeah. If you're trying to always go over there and be the guy who, the toilet or whatever. If it's, it requires a probe, just be able to judge, you know, what's, what's something that, okay, I've spent as much time as I need to on this particular repair,

whatever, it's time to call in a probe and get somebody in. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so just find that balance for yourself. And don't feel like you need to take it all on immediately, you know, initially. For me, I looked at it as a learning experience. So whenever an issue came up, I thought, you know, I can learn something about this. I can maybe try to fix it. But there's a, there's a point into where, you know, point of no return, I guess, or what is it, the law of diminishing returns. You can just get to that point. It's like, okay, call someone. Yeah. So you manage your own properties and you do your own work. How do you manage your properties as somebody who, you know, has never done this before? You know, what do you do? What's your process? Do you or do you not have one and kind of play by the seat of your pants? I do a little bit by the seat of my pants. I stress that I have a good property. It's a new property. It's only seven years old. And it's also an area where there's high demand right now. And so I wouldn't feel as comfortable probably in a in the reverse situation. So I have that going for me. But in terms of managing it, you know, it's pretty simple. I connect with the guy over Chase Quick Pay to make the rent payment. So that's pretty simple. I check him with him periodically, not as much as I should, but periodically to, you know, to, you know, to. make sure everything's okay I make my all my mortgage payment my HOA insurance is all

automated so I've got that where it's not something I even have to think about in terms of the onboarding tenants that was probably the most hairy part and part of was most uncomfortable doing myself okay but I just did some research talk with a buddy who had a rental property agreement already in Texas and he's a lawyer and so I paid him for that rental agreement and then I started using that for my own tenants. The onboarding process was still difficult, though, because you need to screen people,

you need to make sure that you go through a background check, all those things. But what I decided was basically that I just needed to have a fixed process I put everyone through. So they make the application, they go do the screening process, they give me the other information they need to make. And I make sure I just put everyone through that same. That's what I've heard about onboarding tenants,

She's kind of makes you put everyone through the same process, right? And so that's what I stressed is that, you know, I made it identical process for everyone coming through. And I set a pretty high standards for myself. And I could. I mean, we were in a pretty in-demand market, like I said. And so that made it pretty easy to keep my standards pretty high. That's great. And so what does that mean in terms of high standards?

You know, is it your, you know, your income ratios? What exactly are you using as your high standard? Yeah, so people with, you know, perfect credit situations and no pets, no smoking, and no criminal history at all. So that's kind of what I'm looking for, is people coming in with, which I can tell are like corporate employee types who are coming into the area to just because of a job moving in there, essentially. Okay, right on, right on. And any mistakes that you made on the property as a landlord? I forget the part when you live there, but, you know, since you started. Yeah, the biggest mistake I made was when we bought it.

We bought it at the peak, right? Yeah, yeah. But you bought that as a property to live in. So, I mean, you know, was that a mistake? You needed a house. That was where you lived, right? Right. We were happy.

Yes, we were happy with it. We still are, yes. Yeah. And I like, well, I like the idea. I mean, like, you bought a house in a bad time. A lot of people do, like, they buy a house in a bad time. They bought it in 0-607. And then maybe they go underwater, maybe they're whatever.

And they blame the economy. They blame, you know, Bush or Obama or whatever. You know, they just get like, I don't know. And then they end up losing the house and foreclosure because it's not their fault. You know, the economy sucks. I love the idea that you like, you stuck through it, you know, like you made it work. You turned it into a rental. Maybe, you know, you could have sold it and had a loss or, you know, lost your down payment.

But I don't know. I just, I like the idea that you are somebody who took action and didn't let the world kind of push you around. you made it work rather than making somebody else make you work. Have you seen this guy? He pushes people. I know. He's good at this. This is good. Well, well, thanks for that. But I also have the advantage of being in Dallas, Texas, where real estate, the bubble wasn't nearly as bad as was for me as for some people. But yes, I appreciate that. Thank you. We did. And we did put 20% down on that property. And I would always encourage people when they're buying their homes to try to shoot for that.

That was actually a question I was going to ask. Yeah, it makes situations like this a lot easier to manage. Yeah. Nice. So what are your thoughts, you know, you're in Texas. Texas for people in California is a good place to buy and people from, you know, other places. What do you thoughts on paying cash for a property versus financing it? I'm a pretty conservative guy. So if I could pay cash for a property, I probably would. My next rental property, if we got that far, well, let's put it in this this perspective before we get another rental property or another investment property of any type, we're going to pay off one of our home loans. So we're going to get to that comfortable, or I say one of our loans. So either a home loan or the rental property of the loan. We would want

one of those to be zero before we tick on another debt. So I'm comfortable with a little debt. It certainly helps from a tax perspective. We'll see if we go through the numbers on my property, but, you know, I cash flowed $4,000 and then had a $5,000 loss on my taxes that I could, you know, net against my income. So there's benefits to using the leverage, I think, that makes sense. So I'm not necessarily opposed to buying all, you know, cash or or using some debt. But, you know, ideal for me is cash, keeping, you know, keeping debt out of my life. Well, so you mentioned you cash flowed, yet you had a, you took a loss on your taxes. For those people who don't know why that is or how that works, can you kind of shed some light on that?

Right. So I cash flowed because the rents I took in exceeded all my expenses for the year. So that makes sense, right? And we can follow that. On the flip side, for tax purposes, for taxes, you get to take advantage of depreciation. And so depreciation on the property, I think, was somewhere. around $12,000 so for the for the first or second year. And so netting that against that, if you take that against that $4,000 gain, I mean, it's somewhere around $5,000, $6,000. I got the math

wrong in there. But anyway, I got you. Yeah. I'm lost. The depreciation is the big factor. Usually are. So with tax with taxes, you get to take depreciation on the property, something that's not factored into a cash flow analysis. Yeah. And so from a tax perspective, it's, comes across as a loss, which reduces my taxable income by $5,000, which in effect, in a 25% tax bracket would save me $1,250 for the year taxes. That's great. I know I found before, before like my current W-2 that I have through bigger pockets, like when I was just doing real estate 100%, you were financially independent.

When I was, you know, relaxing on a beach because I'm, you know, rich. Yeah, you know, I'm loaded right now. I never paid taxes because, I mean, I didn't make a lot off my rent. It wasn't like I was breaking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but I made enough to survive. Yet the depreciation on like all my properties killed any taxes that I owed. So I didn't pay a dime for years in taxes. It was like the best thing ever. Now all of a sudden like last year, I had a tax bill for the first time because my depreciation didn't quite offset all of my, you know, income.

So anyway, that's just another benefit that people don't, we don't talk about that much, especially here on the podcast, but it's in general. But it's one of the one of the four, I guess, biggest reasons why people in. invest in real estate, you know, cash flow, appreciation, tax benefits, and what am I missing? What's the fourth one? I stop paying attention when you start. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, you usually do. All right.

So moving forward, one of the last questions I have before we kind of move to the end, where do you see yourself going forward? You kind of said this earlier about you want to pay off a loan, but how do you envision using real estate going forward to achieve your goals and where you want to get to? Yeah. So I'm actually starting to look at early retirement or financial independence. And so I see real estate for me right now as being a part of the cash flow, monthly cash flow that provides me the ability to be financially independent and retire early possibly.

So I like it for that reason. So for that reason, I think I'll always try to have it. And I think it's a counterbalance to, not a direct counterbalance, but it balances us out when it comes to our other savings, so our retirement savings essentially. And so I see us at some point starting to withdraw on that, and then also withdrawing, you know, the cash flow from our rental property as both income sources to sort of have, you know,

when one's bad, you can draw from the other. When one's good, you can draw from the other. And so it's just a balancing act, another iron in the fire, so to speak, to have. And so, you know, whether we go for more properties, I think eventually we will. I'd like to even get into, like, it's always been, I guess sort of an interest to me to do like a storage facility or an RV rental type of piece of land. Some place where you can add a lot more value because you have a lot more land.

And so instead of just like a fixed home. But I really like the property we have and if we could repeat it two or three times, I would do it. Cool. Oh, by the way, I remembered my fourth one, amortization. In other words, like the loan gets paid down. That's the fourth benefit. benefits. So cash flow appreciation, tax benefits, and the loan pay down. Anyway, I just want people to know I'm not completely stupid here. And again, I wasn't paying attention. Yeah, whatever. All right.

Start yapping and I do. So really quick, we did our show, our last show with Alan Glass on value ad investing. And if you haven't checked it out yet, Phil, I definitely recommend it. It's really interesting. His whole philosophy is look for properties where you can add some kind of value. And he does some really fascinating stuff. Definitely worth listening to. And that's biggerpockets.com slash show 98. My last question before our last section is, you know, you're a personal finance writer for those people who are unfamiliar with Philip.

He is probably one of the most famous personal finance writers. This guy is a big deal. And I know he's blushing and that's okay because I'm going to hype you up anyway. He's amazing. He's a big deal. He runs a monster conference for financial bloggers and has for years. And so, you know, the pressure's on. You ready? There's a question. All right. So besides real estate, what do you recommend to our listeners to do to prepare financially for their future? What's your best piece of advice for folks? And you know, I'm going to tweak it. Not necessarily to prepare for their future, but to prepare for their future and to prepare for their future and to prepare so that they can continue to, or if they haven't already, since this is a newbie podcast, start to get involved in real estate. Yep, yep. Good question.

And this works perfectly with my story because we were able to do what we do because we had implemented some personal finance practices before we got into real estate that made the whole thing, you know, work a lot smoother. So my biggest piece of advice I try to tell people is to pay yourself first. You've heard it before, but I'm going to tell you specifically, how I want you to implement that. I want you to take the first few dollars that you make every week, every month, every five monthly, or whatever your payment is, and automatically invest that in some type of savings account, whether that be a generic savings account or a retirement

investing account or multiple. So set yourself some goals and then make these automatic savings deposits into these accounts happen before you have money then to spend the rest of the month. So if you wait to the end of the month to do it, and I've tried myself, you'll fail. You'll have some months of success, but then ultimately over the long run, you'll fail. But if you're paying yourself first consistently, automatically in accounts that are separate, you know, I think in the long run, you'll have some success. And that's what set us up for success. And we continue to do that.

And, you know, it allows us to have that rainy day fund, that nice down payment, and allow you to do a lot more things in the future. So pay yourself first, get that money over into those accounts. Save, save, save before you do anything else. Make that a priority in your life. And then every other thing becomes easy after that point, in my opinion. That's great advice. That's our richest man in Babylon is where I learned that.

And we do that with our kids. We pay them before we pay, you know, we pay ourselves to savings. And we put money away for them doing doing the. the same thing because once it's automatic and it's gone, we don't count that as income. We have to make above and beyond that money or else we're in trouble because that money is coming out, period, no matter what. And if it's not, something's not right. So that's people, people who follow that method in retirement, they say the same thing over and over. It didn't miss the money. You know, you hit on it. You know, they didn't miss the money because it was going out

before they had to think about it. And you can start small, start with just $25 a month. But get into that habit and then you'll see the results and you'll start increasing that number over time. And it's a beautiful thing. Awesome. Great. Well, time to move on to the end of the show, end of the segment, which is. Famous Four. Oh, something happened.

This is our famous four. We ask these questions to everybody on the podcast and we will ask you the same question. So, Brandon, why don't you take it? Do you have a favorite real estate related book? The only one I've ever read is James Randalls, the skinny on real estate investing. Really? And it's a little Cliff Notes version of a book. I mean, it's great, action-packed with talks about the 10% rule on making your decision to buy a specific property,

talks about adding value, all those things that you need to kind of learn up front to evaluate properties. Cool. I've not read that one and I've never heard anybody recommend it. I don't know that either. Yeah, we got a lot of good recommendations this episode of the podcast. Yeah. All right, moving on. What about favorite business book? Definitely love the e-myth and also love Millionaire Fast Lane. Both of them are top-notch, in my opinion. Millionaire Fastlane's been on my like Amazon wish list forever and I've never bought it yet, but I will buy it now because you said that. So I'm buying it today. Nice. Well done. Well, then. What about hobbies? What do you do for

fun. You've got a beautiful family. I know you get to spend some good time with them. What do you guys do? Yeah, we do little kid things, I guess, with spend some time with them. Also, work on my businesses. That's fun for me. My hobby or my businesses. I also play basketball once a week with some guys pick up basketball. And also just got into Walking Dead. So I'm starting. Yeah. So I'm doing that. Good show. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. My last question. What do you believe sets apart successful? And I will say that like I did last time. What do you believe sets apart financially successful people from those who seem to fail or never really gain any traction with their finances? Yeah, I thought about this question for a while. And there's sort of two answers, I think, because of the way you end the question, you say, get started and never get started or fail. So I think it does take. someone who's willing to risk to get started.

I think you need to be a risky person to get started. But I think to avoid failing, you sort of need to have a conservative tilt as well. So you need to be prepared to take that risk. So in my opinion, for me, what's worked for me is that I was conservative enough in my finances to be able to take that risk. And so I guess it lessened that risk. But I still had to take it. I still had to go into that unknown area, you know, that place where people try to warn you

about going, you know, do it in all your life. self or getting tenants or whatever. So being willing to take that risk, but doing it in a conservative way, I guess. That's great. Yeah, that's awesome. All right. Where can people learn more about you or read you or whatever? Yeah, where they find you? How do we, how do we get in touch? I like Twitter. You can hit me up at at PTMoney on Twitter or just head to the website, ptmoney.com. Also, like you mentioned, run the conference as well. It's at FinCon or FinConExpo.com. So check it out. Pleasure being on with you guys. Thanks so much for having me. Hey, what's the best real estate investing site on Earth? Bigger pockets, baby. Yeah. No doubt. Oh, and you can go PT money and read some of Brandon's work.

He's written there a few times. That's true. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on, man. It's been a pleasure for sure. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. All right, everybody. That was our interview with PT, Philip Taylor, the man behind the FinCon

conference. Brandon and I really love attending that thing. Lots of great people. We've got lots of friends in that community. And we definitely encourage people to follow Philip at his blog at PTMoney.com. So, yeah, cool, cool. All right. Well, I need to go find a Kleenex.

a nice warm bath and I don't know. What else be able to do when you got a cold? So, Josh, take us out of here. You want some pamper's too? I don't. I just want the sympathy of the 40,000 people listening to this, all right? Yeah. You get none. I get none.

All right, guys, listen, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for putting up with us for 99 shows. We've got an extra special show for you next week. Extra special. Yeah. Emphasis on the special. Oh, geez. Listen.

We're excited. Thanks to our guests. Thanks to our sponsors, Realty shares for putting up with us and supporting us. And thanks to you guys for being a part of our world. If you aren't already a part of bigger pockets, please jump in, create an account today. Are you crying? No, I was inhaling, all right? Come on. Oh, you do live in Washington. So, you know. Not like that. I never inhaled. I did not inhale. That was my very, very bad bill. Terrible. And he used to be an actor, people.

Come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, guys. Well, thank you for being a part of our world. And if you're not a member of Bigger Pockets already, please jump on and create an account today at www. www.biggerpockets.com. The, I don't know, the greatest real estate investing site on the planet.

It's awesome. There's lots of great people. Yay. Join us. Hang out with us. Meet great people. Become successful. Hang out.

And anyway, we're thankful to all you guys this post Thanksgiving. And, you know, we'll look forward to, I can't talk. We look forward to talking to next week on the Bigger Pockets podcast. I can't talk. Brandon, take us out of here. All right. Show number 99 is in the books. In the books.

This is Brandon and Josh. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress?

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