BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - The Financial Freedom Formula Has Changed (2025 Update)

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Can you still achieve financial freedom with real estate investing? Around a decade ago, it was common knowledge that with a few rental properties, you could easily replace your income, retire early, and be fast-tracked to financial independence within just three to five years of investing. Is that possible anymore? How long will financial independence actually take if you start investing in real estate in 2025? And if you feel like you’re almost there, should you quit your job and dive head first into real estate? We’ve got two financially free investors on the show, each taking different paths to get there. Dave kept his full-time W2 to pay for his more passive real estate investments, while Henry quit his job to buy rentals and flip houses full-time. Would they both be okay if they lost their “active” income today? Yes! But they STILL choose to work to build the dream life that goes far beyond basic financial freedom. Today, they’re sharing how the financial freedom formula has changed, what you need to do to get on the path to financial independence/early retirement in 2025, and whether you should stay at your W2 while you build your rental portfolio or quit your job to pursue real estate full-time. The good news: financial freedom through real estate is still a significantly quicker route to retirement, but which path will you choose to get there? In This Episode We Cover: What “financial independence” really means and how long it will take for you to get there The cash flow myth that most new real estate investors believe (this could hurt you later!) Full-time real estate investing vs. keeping a nine-to-five and why you NEED “active” income to scale fast What to know about full-time real estate investing BEFORE you quit your job  And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Let Us Know What You Thought of the Show! Ask Your Question on the BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets YouTube Grab Dave’s New Book, “Start with Strategy” Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area How to Retire Early with Fewer Rental Properties Than You Think w/Chad Carson Connect with Henry Connect with Dave Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1069 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can achieve financial freedom through real estate. You just need to be realistic with your expectations of what financial freedom even means to you and about how we're going to get there. I'm Dave Meyer from Bigger Pockets and I'm here with my friend Henry Washington. We are both real estate investors who are on that financial freedom path right now. But as it turns out, we've taken sort of different approaches to achieve financial independence. Henry quit his corporate job to buy rentals and fly, The Pals is full time. I haven't done that, and I probably never will. Today, we're having a real

honest conversation about what financial freedom even means, the pros and cons of different approaches to achieving it, and which could be right for each of you. So, Henry, I have what I think is sort of a hot take about financial independence and retire early that I want to share with you. But first, let me just ask you, what do you consider financial independence? What does that actually even mean to you? Well, when I first got started, I thought I was going to buy some properties and they would pay me every month and then I would not have to work. It didn't work out that way. It didn't quite work out that way. But financial independence, what it means to me now and what I'm working towards is to not have to have active income. In other words, like, if I don't want to work

anymore than I don't have to, but my income needs are met through, air quotes, some sort of passive income. And real estate's not truly passive. But the idea is that I could work less than 10 hours a week if I needed to and survive. That's what financial freedom really means to me now that I've started doing this business for a little bit. Yeah. So it's not like fully retiring and actually just not working at all.

on owning some rental properties. I think people have gotten a lot of these buzzwordy real estate goals intertwined because financial freedom is one thing. And then making enough income through real estate to quit your W2 is something completely different than financial freedom. And sometimes I think people kind of take those two goals and say or use them interchangeably. Like I vividly remember somebody telling me, hey, I just hit financial freedom. left my day job. But that doesn't mean you hit financial freedom. It just means you made

enough active income in whatever else you're doing in real estate that replaced your W-2 income. Right. You're still working. You're just now working in real estate, which is amazing. That's a great point. So financial independence, financial freedom, interchangeable terms in my mind, but retiring is kind of a different thing like you were saying. But I'm curious because you could say that. You quit your job, right? You quit your corporate job, what was it, five, six years ago now? That's right, 2020. Yeah.

So a couple years ago. But would you say you're retired? No. No, no, I am not retired. I have to do something to make active income to survive. But I think that's kind of the hot take. But it sounds like you sort of agree. It's like I guess I just feel like these things have become conflated to the point

where it's really detrimental. And people start looking at real estate and say, you know, there's not enough cash for me to retire from my job in three to five years. There wasn't five years ago either. Yeah, unless you're starting with like $5 million. I could just like buy rental properties, all cash. It's, you've always needed that active income. And then you can choose whether you want that active income to come through real estate like

Henry has, or you can choose for that active income to be through a 1099 or a W2 job. like I've done. And that's sort of the reality of the situation. And you know what? It's still great. You can still use real estate investing to become more financially independent and probably move your retirement date up by like 30 years. But the idea that you can retire and do nothing in five years is not very realistic. No, that's absolutely not realistic. Okay, I'm glad you agree. Could someone do it? I'm sure there's a way someone could pull it off. Sure. But that's like the teeny minority of people.

Like most of us are going to have to generate some sort of active income in order to supplement our lifestyle. And I think we just have to be more clear about what it means because I think you absolutely can invest in real estate and in a course of a five year period, pick up some rental properties and then figure out how to make enough active income within the real estate niche to leave your W2. And that, I believe, is absolutely possible. But that doesn't make you financially free. It makes you financially dependent on another income stream that you like more. And then you can leverage a lifestyle that simulates more freedom. Like you said, I am not, air quotes, fully retired from any active income. If I don't flip houses or help out on bigger pockets or do some of these other things,

that I do to make active income, then my family would be in a tough position. We cannot and do not want to live off of our cash flow from our rental properties, not the lifestyle that we enjoy. And so I have to have the active income. But because I've built this muscle and learned this skill set within the real estate industry, I now have a tool or multiple tools that I know I can use to go generate cash. And I can do that on my own time and on my own schedule.

And because I can do that, I can simulate freedom. You know, if I wanted to go to Europe next week, I mean, I could probably figure out a way to make that work, Dave. Like, I've done enough deals where I'm sure, I could go buy a ticket and my family and I could go and we could be gone for a week or two. And my properties would continue to get renovated and worked on and get listed on the market. And I could enjoy my life and I could come back. Could I do that forever? No, I couldn't. Right?

But the lifestyle and the skill set that I have obtained in real estate allows me to have this kind of semblance of freedom within the active income stream that I have in the real estate industry. I could not do that with the W2. So I get to experience what seems to be a whole lot more freedom than I had before. But yeah, you have to have some level of active income. I think what you said is just so important. And you're saying like it's simulating. freedom, but it is real freedom. I think that the problem is that we treat financial independence as binary. It's like either you're financially free or you're not. When reality, like, it is a

path. And the goal, at least for me, has always been to just become more financially independent, right? Every deal you do, every financial decision you make will hopefully put you in a better financial position so you have more flexibility. For some people like Henry, like, Like, that flexibility might be going to, you know, going to Europe and just not working for a couple weeks. For me, I rest easy knowing that if bigger pockets decided to fire me tomorrow, you know, I could not work for a couple of years and be very comfortable. And to me, wouldn't consider myself fully financially independent because if I left my job today, I would need to figure out active income just like you, Henry. but I am more financially independent than I was 15 years ago before I started investing. And I am more financially independent this year that I was last year and the year before that and the year before that.

And I feel like that really needs to be the goal. It's just to keep moving in that direction because honestly, your definition of what financial independence is going to change. Like the amount of money I thought that I would have needed to feel comfortable when I started 15 years ago. I passed that number a while. like it was. Yes. Yes. And my,

my expectations, I try not to have lifestyle, creep, but like, when you get older and you just have a more sophisticated life, like,

your expenses just go up. And so, like, that's why I feel like setting this goal and saying, like, I am financial independent or not, it's just not realistic.

The goal is just to keep making progress. Yeah, that's absolutely true. You know, I was one of those people when I got started that I thought

I would buy enough rental properties to produce enough cash flow in current days that I would be able to take the cash flow from the rental properties. And then when that number of cash flow hit the number of money I made per month in my day job that I could leave my day job and live off of my cash flow. But as I started to buy properties, I started to realize that that wasn't necessarily going to be a thing. I was absolutely buying properties that cash flow. But your business and your properties,

they don't function linearly. Like, it's not like you buy it and then it cash flows and nothing ever happens or goes wrong. It just makes you just prints that money every month and it's perfect and the world is great. But that's not the case. Like, the more properties you buy, things break at different times, things break all at the same time, people move in, people move out. Like, there's this constant flow of money that it's hard for you to be able to say,

okay, well, I bought 10 properties and each property cash flows $500 a month. And so now I have $5,000 every month that I just will take out of this account and spend on my bills. And it's like the money is flowing too fluidly for that to be a reality. And so I realized that like if I truly want these properties to pay me cash flow that I could live off of passively, then it's going to happen far into the future when these assets are paid off. And so I had to pivot my strategy to think, okay, well, how can I use real estate to still buy rentals? but also make cash now so that I can, A, continue to grow my portfolio, but also stabilize more portfolio and then start to aggressively pay off those properties so I can hit that goal sooner. That wasn't what I thought starting out.

Totally. Yeah. And I want to ask you about how you pivoted your business, but I'm just curious first. Was that disappointing to you? You know, that's an interesting question. I don't remember feeling disappointed about it. just because I was actively in the business at that point and knew, I knew that I had the foundational skill, which is I know how to go buy a good deal. All I had to change was the way

I was monetizing that deal, which was, you know, flipping it and getting, you know, more cash up front versus holding onto it and taking a couple hundred dollars here or there. So no, it wasn't disappointing because I just love the business of real estate. All right. We've got to take a break. But on the other side, more of my conversation with Henry Washington about what financial freedom means to us. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios, but it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy,

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Feels like people are avoiding getting into real estate because we, people who are real estate educators, Bigger Pockets, is part of this, have been saying, hey, you know, you can get real estate financial freedom in a couple of years. And like I said, you know, during the 2010s, it was always difficult, but it was easier than it was today. He was easier. For sure. But I guess I still feel like the prospect and the value of real estate investing is still so

strong that it frustrates me when people are like, I'm not going to get in because now it's going to take 10 years to be financial freedom or 15 years to financial freedom. That's incredible. That's amazing. The average career in the United States is like 45 years. So you're saying you can cut it into a third. Like if that doesn't get you excited, I don't really know like what would. But I do feel like, I don't know if you hear this too, but I hear.

people saying, like, oh, I can't find cash flow. Like, I'm not going to get into it. But, like, the fundamentals haven't really changed. This is kind of always how it's worked. The fundamentals haven't changed. They're more important now than they've ever been, right? Like, it's the fundamentals you have to stick to now in order to be successful. But, yeah, this is the best way to accelerate that path in any manner that a normal person could.

Can you do it in other pathways? Can you do it in the stock market? Yeah, but you've got to get really good at trading stocks. But the average person in real estate can do this without being a professional real estate investor. And that's incredible. Given this, given the reality, it sounds like we agree that it's going to take you 12 to 15 years to do it. In my mind, that's fantastic. And you can sort of be agnostic, at least to me, about how you pursue that active income.

I think there's a good argument to be made that you should just pursue whatever active income makes you the most money. and like for me, that's continuing in a regular job. But it sounds like for you, why did you make that choice, knowing that you needed active income, to do it through real estate rather than you had a good job, right? Like, you had a good corporate job and you chose to leave that. Yes, I did have a great corporate job. And I enjoyed my job. That's why I kept it as long as humanly possible.

I was going to do both until I could not do both anymore, right? Like until I just someone was going to stop me from doing both. Right. And I did. That's what happened. is I quit when it cost me money to have the job, when they wanted me to work more hours and I just couldn't give them more hours because it would take away from what I was doing in real estate.

But the answer to your question is I had to choose the real estate because, I mean, I'm just, I'm throwing it all out here. I was making $110,000 a year, which isn't a ton of money, but it's good money, right? Like, it's good money. It's hard not to choose real estate as your full-time income path when I'd have to trade 40 hours a week for 12 months to make $110,000. If you count my bonus, I was probably making closer to $140,000 when I could flip two houses and make that. And I could flip two houses in the same month. Yeah, when you put it out. Right. We just sold a deal and made 70K like last week.

So like it and yeah, it took us five months to make 70K, but that wasn't the only house I was flipping. Like, I had to choose the real estate. It made more financial sense. And also, I love it so much more than I loved my day job. I just, I liked my day job. I love doing this. Obviously, I've chosen the other path, right? I continue to work full time at bigger pockets.

And I think there are pros and cons. But for me, just I like having a steady paycheck. I like knowing that my bills are covered. I like having benefits. That's the thing no one thinks of. about when they leave that W-2, that insurance is stupid. As you know, I just moved back to the United States, and I'm like, holy crap. Yeah, it's no joke.

The insurance costs are insane. But that's just like my psychology. I like having that because what I feel like is it allows me to feel comfortable taking risk in real estate because I know that if, you know, I invest in a syndication and it doesn't do well, I'll be fine. You know, like my, I live within my W-2 income. And real estate is just like gravy for me. So said differently, if bigger pockets went away tomorrow,

would you go find another W-2 because you like the consistent income? Or would you figure out a way to use real estate full-time? I guess probably the latter, I think. You know, like, it's pretty hard for me to think about working at another corporation right now. I don't think me or James Dainard would let you go get another job. We would just feed you deals until you got good enough to do this on your own. Well, the funny thing is I got into my job at bigger pockets because I really liked real estate. I got into real estate in 2010, sort of on a whim.

Like, it was a friend of mine was doing it, and I was like, that seems fun. I'm going to do that. And I could really use $250 a month. So I started doing that. And then I went back to grad school, and I was like, I really just like the real estate thing. And so I googled real estate tech jobs and found bigger pockets. It was like down the road from where I was living. It was just kind of coincidence.

But I've always like really liked the real estate side of it. It was, you know, so I think I would find a way to either do private lending or flip houses or just be even more involved in my rental properties because I do think I probably give up three, four percent cash on cash return a year, more than that, because I pay eight percent to the property manager. But even on top of that, there's just an inefficiency of it. Like, I can't spend enough time on it. And I'm okay with that because it allows me to make my income. But I would probably do something like that. Yeah. Because I don't know. It'd be hard to think about just like starting a new corporate business. Yes. Yes. Yes. That was the

position I found myself in. Yeah. I get that. Are there any, I mean, benefits you just brought that up as one of the tradeoffs, but are there tradeoffs? Yeah. Well, first and foremost, it's just scary. So what helped me jump off the cliff, actually, was we were selling a flip. So this was 2021. That was when things were going crazy. And what had happened was we're selling two properties.

And we ended up getting over asking on both properties. And the amount over what we had underwritten them to sell at ended up being like a year's salary. Oh my God. From the W2. and I was like, look, we've got this extra money we weren't planning on. Let's just squirrel that away into an account. And that gives us 12 months. We're used to this income. We'll just pay ourselves out of that account for 12 months. And if this real estate full-time thing doesn't work, then I'll go get another job. And so that's, that was what gave us the confidence

to really pull the trigger. Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that it's harder for people now to do that. But I think it's also important to remember that was the anomaly, not now. Yeah. And people think think, you know, I can't quit my job in real estate immediately. So, you know, because it was easier back then. But like, that was unusual. The types of returns and the types of deals that you see today are actually closer to historical norms. And real estate was still a good investment in the 90s when you were, you know, when it was like still these kinds of returns. Or during the early, you know, 2010s when the returns were solid, but not spectacular. Still better than in the other asset class, at least in my opinion. So I just think it's important to remember, even though you hear these stories about, like, fantastic returns.

You don't need that. It's great. I hope it happens to everyone. But like, you don't need that to become financially independent or to pursue financial independence through real estate. We've got to take a break, but on the other side, more of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Funrise flagship fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10.

The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought. after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes.

Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. 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. Rent to retirement flips that model.

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It can be quicker if you do assignments, but I don't do assignments. So if I'm making money, I have to find something. I have to buy the something and then I have to get it to a point to where somebody else wants to buy that something from me. And I also rely on somebody else needing to want to sell to me. It's not like I can just go to this open marketplace and buy properties that are going to make me a bunch of money. Yes, the MLS exists. Yes, there are deals on it, but it takes a lot of effort to do that in volume and use it sustainably. Right. And so because I'm buying off market and because I have to flip a house, I'm doing work today that I won't get paid for for at least 60 to 90 days.

And that's fast, but it's probably closer between four to six months. And so if you slack today, that doesn't hurt you now. It hurts you down the road. And if you find yourself in a lull where like you couldn't find a deal over 30 to 60 days or something, you're going to be in this position down the road where you're like, I don't know. where money is going to come from. Right. Yeah, that's scary.

That's a scary tradeoff, right? Yeah. So you've got to be really good about your money and budgeting your money so that you can have income throughout the year because it's not a sustainable source. So like that's what I envy about what you have. You got money every two weeks, right? And it's not like that here. Yes, I make them in bigger chunks, but then you have to be more financially responsible with

it so that it's not all gone at the same time. See, that's why I can't do what you're doing. I'm not my initiative responsible. No, I actually, I always joke with my wife because, like, I've become a financial educator, and I've

never had a budget in my entire life. Even when I was broke, I never had one. I'd either. I would just spend money until I didn't have any, and then I'd eat ramen for a few days, and you'd wait, and you'd figure it out. Like, I just, I've never done that. And, like, that's probably one of the reasons

I like having this steady income, because it's like, I can't mess up that badly in two weeks. I am just kidding. I'm obviously figured out a way to be financially responsible. But there is like a psychology element of that that, like, would worry me. Like every, you know, if there was a lull for a month, even though it's not realistic, like, I would be fine. It would like sort of weigh on me a little bit. And it's also, when you were talking about that, it made me realize or think about how you almost have,

do to be responsible, do both at the same time if you're going to transition into it. Because you have gotten to a point where you do enough flips and you have such a good pipeline that even if you're, you know, you miss on one month and you don't get an acquisition, you're like, I'm going to get one next month. You have like a pretty good idea of that. But if you just quit your job and you're like, I'm going to go flip houses, then you better have that deal flow work out really quick. Just assuming you're an average person who doesn't have like months and months of months of emergency reserves.

Yeah. Like that could get bad quickly. So you sort of have to develop the pipeline of deal flow while you're still working full time. You have to build some level of consistency into your business before you quit because someone has to want to sell me a house. Now, I know how to go look for those people. I know how to help those people. Like I've positioned myself in a way where that I can build a business around that. But it's not like I am relying on somebody else to decide that they want me to buy their home for me to make money.

Right. That's tough. Yeah, for sure. And you're very good at it. And you've practiced a lot to be able to have that confidence. And it just doesn't come that quickly. And I'm enjoying this conversation because I really just want people to realize two things that Henry and I are talking about here. First and foremost, the idea that you're going to just do nothing in the next few years, very unlikely, unless you're starting from a very,

advantaged place with a lot of cash. And if you're going to do what, I don't know, it's probably 95% or more of real estate investors still work for active income. I think it might even be higher than that. I think it's higher than that. I think it's everyone. And like, you know, if you're going to do these things at the same time, earn active income and invest long term so that eventually you can really do nothing, you can choose either the path that I've gone down, which is to work a more traditional career and invest on the side. Or you could do what Henry's done. And there are sort of just tradeoffs and pros and cons between both of them. But both are pretty common. You know, like you do need active income and you don't need to quit your job. The more common way to

do this is to find a way to earn income right now and invest that into passive assets for the long term. When we talk about kind of our approaches to real estate, they sound different. But the framework is ideally the same of what you and I are doing. doing, which is we're buying assets, so we're growing our portfolio to whatever comfortability level we are with that. Right. And then we're stabilizing those assets, right? And then we are focusing on getting those assets paid off.

And across all three of those buckets, we, you and I both have active income coming in to help us fulfill what's happening in those buckets so that we can finally finish off that third bucket of paying off the assets so that we can be financially free. Like our framework is exactly the same. same. Yeah. How we're generating the income and where within our process we are is different, but the frame is the same. That's a really good point. Yeah, I hope that is encouraging to people because I'm sure you hear this all the time. This expectation that you need to quit your job or to be in real estate or feel the pressure, honestly, to retire and do nothing just isn't necessary. And like,

I think, you know, you were saying you think it's higher than 95 percent, but like, do you actually even know anyone who is truly retired from real estate? Maybe one investor, maybe of all the people I've ever met. Yeah, right? Because everyone keeps doing stuff. That dream of going and sitting on the beach and retiring and living, like, I know plenty of investors who move to the beach, but they work in what they're there. Totally. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So hopefully this conversation helps normalize this for people. I just realize that like real estate is fantastic. It's incredible what it does for you. Just go into it with realistic expectations. And not only will that like help you get in and get over some of the fear, I actually think it makes real estate investing easier. Let me just give an

example. Like, I will buy a deal right now that makes three or four percent cash on cash return because it's a great asset in a great neighborhood. And I don't need more than that. I don't need eight percent cash flow because I don't need the money right now. And it allows you to sort of take this sort of long-term view. Yeah. Like deal selection and portfolio strategy becomes so much easier when you're not hyper-focused on like, how do I replace my income by tomorrow? Yes.

That, man, the pressure that you don't have to feel in order to do that is amazing. Yeah, it's just buy a good asset in a good appreciating neighborhood that pays for itself and just don't think about it for the next 15 to 20 years. That's pretty cool. I just want people as we, especially entering a new year, to go into things with realistic expectations because real estate just as good at the asset just as good as a business as it's ever been if you just have realistic expectations about what is feasible with this asset class and recognize that a lot of the marketing that was going on in bigger pockets as part

of this over the last couple of years is not the most common way the more common way to use real estate is to take 10 or 12 or 15 years to build out a portfolio and give yourself maximum financial freedom just over a longer period of time. Couldn't agree more. Well, thank you. This was a very fun episode. I appreciate you being here. Hey, man.

Thanks for having me. I love putting a realistic spin on things. This is still the greatest financial decision that I've ever made, even though I still work on a day-to-day basis in a real estate business. So it's changed my life in more ways than I could have ever imagined. And I think that there should be less fear around getting started. There should absolutely be education and preparedness, but there is a strategy that will work for literally almost anyone.

And you do not have to be a professional, air quotes, real estate investor to hit that level of financial freedom within 10, 12, 15 years. You can just be a regular Joe Schmo with a job and get there. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We'd love to hear your opinion about financial independence and what it means to you. So either hit Henry or I up on Bigger Pockets or on Instagram or in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. Thank you all so much for listening or watching to this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast.

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