From Making $28,000/Year to FI in 5 YEARS

23:05I needed to wait at least a year before I purchased another property. But then what happened is every year, I just house hacked again. I just found somewhere else to buy. I got to the point where I almost wasn't even unpacking. Like, why? Why unpack? We're going to move in a year. Just leave it right in that box. And I will see you again in 365 days. Because it does take that little time in order to save because I'm trying to keep my lifestyle low to invest for the future. We're now in 2015, right? And we have our$48 ,000 a year teaching job. Is that correct? That's right. And we've got our house hack.

23:36I bought the property in 2015. I was finishing my semester of classes. But then in 2016 is when I got the$48 ,000 a year job. What was the conversation with the loan officer like for the next house? Can you tell us about that one? The next one was, hey, you can't buy the house next door. You know, she was like, so that's not how this works. You can't. We're not going to approve you for another primary residence that's identical to what you have already. You have to give us something more. It has to be bigger or more units or something. And I was like, OK. And so that's when I started looking for.

24:07I never heard that before. What is that? And so I asked a few people and they were like, yeah, you're really I think I was honestly, I think what's happening, Scott, is I was applying too soon to the one year. So because I was nine months, they were like, well, approve it if there's a reason for you to move versus waiting the full one year to apply, because I want it to be closing. For those listening who are lost here on this, when you get a mortgage for a house hack or a primary residence, it typically comes with a requirement to live in the property or to have the intent to live in the property for a full year.

24:38and undra was doing what a lot of house hackers do and trying to move as quickly as possible on there without obviously committing mortgage fraud and violating the terms of that agreement here so if you do want to move there typically has to be a valid reason right your job has moved you or like hey i'm about to have babies i need more rooms or something and i when they would ask me i didn't know what they were asking and i had to and i was just saying like oh i just want more money. And they're like, so no, you can't do that. But I can look for larger properties, right? I can't get an identical townhouse next door to where I'm at, but you can look for larger properties.

25:13And so I started looking for a duplex. I got engaged that year and I wanted him to buy properties. So he was maybe going to buy the property next door and I was going to buy the duplex. And then we would have so many properties. And looking back, I was like, oh, was that a requirement for marriage? I guess it was. My little dowry that I helped get for myself. Please buy the house next door to mine so we can control this and have another one and we're going to be great. So that's what happened. So now we're in 2016. I am engaged. And it was like, well, I'm not going to rent. So I suggest you buy a house.

25:44And he was like, yeah, that works for me. So he bought the house next door to mine while I simultaneously as a single person based on taxes and Gage is still single, I was able to go and buy a duplex. We still live separately. And then when we married, we moved into his house and I was able to rent the other ones. Oh my gosh. Okay. That took me a minute to process of it. Okay. And that, that marital is a life event that is qualified under the rules for these owner occupant mortgages to allow you to vacate. Is that what you're saying? No, he bought it under his name. Okay. 2015, I bought my property, first property.

26:15In 2016, he started purchasing his own property. I was not on that property. I was waiting until I found the duplex I wanted in order to like step up because I could use the FHA loan. And I didn't find that property until 2017. So I was looking, I was on the hunt for it. I didn't find what I wanted until 2017. He wound up buying his own property under his own name, making sure IRS is listening, own property under his own name. And then in 2017, two years after I bought my first property, I bought my first duplex because I had finally found it. I had all the financing for it. I had my$48 ,000 or$50 ,000 I was a year.

26:49I had my taxes, my W-2s. I had my pay stubs and I was able to get my first in 2017. We got married late 2017, December. And then 2018, we moved in together. This is fantastic. And, you know, we talk about house hacking. People complain, you know, solutions always house hacking. Well, kind of. If you're not in this like entrepreneurial world, earning a ton of income or starting a business or have some side hustle, again, all comes back to income there. The house hack, I mean, is just such a cheat code. I mean, think about this. You were earning$28 ,000 a year, then you became a teacher. And that felt like a cheat code because you had this house hack.

27:27Now here's what else the house hack did. Because you were house hacking, this 85 ,000 half duplex, you had income, rental income from that tenant. When that gets added to your teacher salary, now you're making, you know,$55 ,000 a year. Still doesn't sound like much, But when you go to apply for the loan for the duplex, you can also count the$2 ,000 a month or$24 ,000 a year from the duplex income on top of that, all of which compounds. If you had bought the house without a roommate during that time period, you would have been excluded from this for years following that situation. And so it's really like it's it's sometimes it's hard for me to understand how peers in your situation could possibly get ahead, possibly get on the other side of this and escape this capitalistic trap, essentially, without doing that strategy unless they went into some kind of entrepreneurship or had some sort of higher, higher income job from the get go.

28:23If I could add another piece to that, that I think house hackers resist, which is very frustrating, is that it took me 18 months originally to save like three grand. Like Scott was saying, because of the rental income, I was able to save another$600 a month. Right. So that was another maybe 2000 now in six months. But one of the other big things was that the property appreciated. I went to pull a HELOC on that property three years later. I got a HELOC of 50 grand. All this time, I have not saved$50 ,000. But just because I purchased an asset and waited, held onto it, took care of it, right? If I had to replace the roof or if I had to get a new fridge or new A-Trek, whatever, I now have 50 grand that I could use on something else.

29:05Or if I would have sold it, I would have been able to access 50 grand untaxed because it was my primary residence, right? So if I would have sold that house too by the duplex, if I wanted to, I didn't. But that was also something I could not have saved my way into, especially as a lower earner, right? Making 50 grand. I'm saving my gross salary from a sale because I happened to buy it when I could. That's also what house hacking offers. I tell people sometimes to buy a house, you gotta buy a house. I know we all wanna get to the big one to begin with. Maybe that's not it for you right now. Yeah, what I'm hearing is that your story says, I took action.

29:39How many people were you working with that were making$28 ,000 a year as chemistry techs and they're living with their parents or they're living with nine roommates and they're spending every dollar that comes in. They're not saving anything. They're not doing anything. I'm gonna quote Uncle Dave here and say, live like no one else now so that you can live like no one else later. And Mindy, if I could add, I think where I get frustrated sometimes when I hear people lament the idea of house hacking or that work is if your lifestyle is good, then be cool with it. Like be happy about it. One of the reasons that hard work didn't scare me is because I was already miserable.

30:17Like it was already hard, but that hard didn't have a way out. That hard was like, this is going to be it. And hopefully you make enough to make it with Social Security. But that was it. This hard had one end and that end looked terrible where this other hard, it wasn't going to be easier, but this other hard had an out. And in my mind, it was like, OK, well, if I was going to do 50 years of this, I can definitely do five years of this over here and have the opportunity to not have to work for the rest of my life. Yeah, I love that reframe. If I can do 50 hard years, I could do five hard years.

30:52Yes. You said five years. Is that how long it took you to quit your job? It did. Yes. So what year are we in? We're in 2017. Oh, we're in 2017. Maybe we're 2018. We're 2017. I bought my duplex. We have four units between the two of us. I'm married and I want to keep house hacking. And my husband says, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I said, are you sure we can make some money. He said, leave it cleave, right? The word instructs. We cannot continue to, and I'm taking that wildly out of context, but we cannot continue to like have roommates. I want to be able to live on my own and I've been saving.

31:27I have my Helox. I use my duplex for Airbnbs and also have my roommates. So I probably had 60, 70, between 60 and like $80 ,000 in cash because this whole time I didn't increase my living. I didn't get a new car. I paid my debts and everything extra went straight to the bank. I said, okay, I can look into buying a property that is not primary residence. That's what I learned that those down payment is not the same. I didn't know. Again, ignorance, right? Because I'm just rocking with what I know. I'm used to three, three and a half percent, five percent down payments. That first 20%, I said, And my 20 percent, that's going to take all my funds.

32:10But luckily, I had gotten used to talking to people, asking questions. And I had asked enough that the person who sold me the previous duplex I bought or the duplex I bought was like, well, I got some of these condos I don't want. I can't sell them because I own too many of them in the complex. Let me explain. Sometimes people have issues buying condos because too many investors own in the complex. Housing will not approve the loan because they think it's a risk. For primary homeowners. So he couldn't sell them to primary homeowners because there were too many investors in the complex. But he said, I own them outright.

32:42I will sell or finance them to you. Give me cash. You can have ownership of them for a period of time and figure it out. I said, I've never heard that before, but okay. So I put down my money for a couple of condos. These were all Airbnbs in the wild, wild days when there were no laws regulating Airbnb anywhere. Made all this money. And even then, I probably, at that point, I probably could have left teaching. Could you give us some more details, like how much you put down, what was the terms and how much you said you're making all this money. So the condos were all one bedroom, one bathroom. They were very dated.

33:12They had been updated probably since like the 80s, but I got them for$100 ,000 and he wanted$20 ,000 down. With the HOA, that put my mortgage. You get three of these at this point? He offered three. I took two. Okay. Because I was like, is this real? I think I was still in this. Well, the title company hasn't told me no, you know, and I'm not going to write him a check. It's going to go through title, but okay. And I had to put down$20 ,000. And the mortgage was a 5 % amortized over 30 years for three years. So I had a three-year balloon and I had an HOA, but the HOA was like$250, very low. So my full payment for each property, each of those condos was like$550 a month.

33:47Water was included, internet and cable was included. Okay. So all I really needed was electric. So all in my bills for that unit, if I was going to furnish it and do all that was about$700 a month. No more than 700. The Airbnb was probably making$4 ,000 a month. So very quickly it became like, oh, and that's just at$125 a night, right? $150 a night. These are not overly expensive and they're really pretty. It has a fireplace and a balcony and a parking spot and they're near UVA, but I'm fully booked turning over the apartment. I'm waking up at like 5 a.m. to turn over one apartment, going to work as a teacher from nine to five, and then like rushing for a late checkout or late check-in to like finish the other apartment.

34:30I'm making a lot of money, but I don't have any time. I'm very stressed out, right? Trying to make sure. And then we get reviews every day. The reviews are stressful. And so this is 2018 and I'm making good money and I'm saying to myself, I just don't want to live like this either. Like this isn't it either. I don't want to scrupulous forever. And that is where I got introduced to larger multifamilies. I was like, well, I'm still saving. I'm still not increasing my lifestyle. A little bit. Let me say a little bit. We're not doing staycations anymore, right? We can get on a plane. Not international.

34:57Don't get crazy. But we can get on a plane and go somewhere domestic for an hour or two. But overall, lifestyle's still very low. And I started looking into larger multifamilies and thought, well, that could give me the best of both worlds. I can get a lot of money with less work, with less daily, like washing the towels every day and changing over the sheets and making sure I lift and flip over the mattresses. And that was the shift into the final stage before I could fully leave my job and say, I think I can do this. What does larger multifamily mean in the context of this story? I was looking for large in the four units, right?

35:30Because I wasn't house hacking. And so I figured if I have to put down 20 % anyway, I might as well go as big as I can. I'm not going to restrict myself to the FHA guidelines of up to four, up to a quad as a primary residence. So I had all my money before I went to look at a property. I tried to get pre-qualified. We talked about that earlier. And all the commercial lenders were like, what are you talking about? That's not a thing. And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, we qualify properties. We don't qualify you, right? Ignorance. Where you're just like, okay, I thought I would come here first and have my little letter like I was getting my primary residence.

36:02But no, I'm supposed to go find the property and have that qualify with them. So I started looking. I had, I think, again, the$60 ,000 to$80 ,000 because I had built up my reserves again. And I had some equity in my condos. And I started to look. And surprise, surprise, 10-unit properties are very expensive. They are not the same price of primary residences. they're five, six,$700 ,000. And when I have to put down 20%, I don't have it. So I'm still looking, I'm still thinking. I remember opening up Craigslist. People say, you know, these off-market things. And that's when I saw it. That's when I saw it, Mindy.

36:36It was my first ever look at a motel for sale. It was 10 units. It was listed for 190. And the inside were little studios. And I said, that looks like a tiny apartment to me, right? If we can flip that, those, you know, those two burner stovetop and we can make that a real stove. There's a sink. There's not gonna be a dishwasher in here, but one person could stay. It looks like a dorm room. It looks like a dorm room with a little kitchen. And I went to go see it and it was two hours away and it felt like the longest two hours ever. And I got there and I was like, I mean, looks like a building to me.

37:10And I saw the units and I saw the interior and I loved it. And when I ran the numbers, it was like, well, this makes about what my Airbnb makes without the daily work. It's not as high of a profit margin because this is a little more expensive, right? There's a lot more units to turn over. There's a lot more water heaters and the maintenance is going to be more expensive. But if I just came here once a week, I feel like that'd be enough versus the seven days a week I was at the Airbnb. So yeah, I think I could do something like this. And that was my first introduction into the larger multifamily space.

37:40And how much was this little motel with the 10 studio apartments? It was listed for$190 ,000. $190 ,000 for 10 studio units? Yes. Now, Mindy, that's a great soundbite. But when you walk into one of those 400 square foot units and they have four cats and you walk into this other one and they have roaches, you start to be like, OK, well, I see why. This ain't in the D.C. metro. No, no, this is heading towards southern Virginia. We're southern southwest Virginia. This is just a working class town in between smaller working class towns. But hey, it's 30 minutes of commute. People commute longer than that in Nova.

38:18I figured again, it's going to take me a little more. That's going to cut into my profits. But it was listed for one 90. I got it under contract. No, no, I didn't get under contract. I took it back to the lenders because they told me originally, right? Bring us the property. So I had five lenders ready to go. Four said no. And I thought there was going to be a situation like my primary where she said no, but gave me an explanation. They were like, we don't like it. So I learned then commercial don't really have standards that they have to apply to, right? Commercial lenders can say whatever they want.

38:48There's not a federal guideline that they have to approve it person to person. They were like, it doesn't really fit what we like. We don't like the location. The rents are too low. And the one who said yes, just said, yeah. And I said, why? He's like, feels good. Said, not going to question it. Not going to question it. He did say needed more reserves. So going back to Scott's question, I did sell one of those condos, right? He wanted high reserves. He wanted less debt on my name. So be it. I sold one of those condos because I wasn't going to have the time for it anyway. Not with 10 new units to have to figure out.

39:17So I had the down payment. I sold my condo. I reached out to an inspector. They said the roof is falling apart. And you had a lot of work with the sewage line. I went back to the seller. I said, hey, you're gonna have to lower the price because I need to fix this roof or you're gonna have to give me a concession because I need to like fix this roof because I'm not gonna have this property fall on people. That's, I won't do that. And so we wound up closing for$150 ,000 and he gave me$25 ,000 in concessions. And I was able to get my roof done and new gutters and gutter cars. So spending money on that roof, the roof is beautiful.

39:49It is a work of art. First roof with the fancier, because I was trying to spend all the concessions, right? Trying to run it up, whatever I can do and make some more money off that sale. And that mortgage, I think was like$900 a month, just principal and interest. And yeah, I know it's wild. It is, and I want like three more like that, just like, because they were available. And I will say for this, for everyone listening, going back to what Mandy said, because I like how she phrased it, right? If I can do 50 hard here, I can do five hard here. I saw that they had lost the management side of these properties.

40:22It wasn't inherently that the property was a goldmine. You got to manage them well. These properties have been neglected. And when you're in like the neglected backwoods, it comes with everything that's in the neglected backwoods, right? There's a lot of drugs. There's a lot of turnover. There's a lot of vagrants. And you have to figure out how to handle that. Either as a manager or the management company you hire. And it's gonna be a year. before things start to level out. It's going to take time in order to get everyone on board and get everyone picking up after their dogs and get everyone to pay the rent on time in the way you want them to pay the rent and to submit maintenance requests and to not paint their houses.

41:00It's going to take time. But that was my thought when I bought that property in 2019, that first one at least. Okay, this is our final ad break, but we'll be right back with more after this. If you've been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you'd pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don't. Here's what I believe. Most BP money listeners need term life, and the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies of different lengths stack together so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number.

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42:52Thanks for sticking with us. Okay. So how many properties do you own and how many units do you own? Somewhere between seven, probably seven and eight. And then units wise, somewhere between 50 and 55, somewhere in that general range, because we're also selling them as they go. You know, sometimes you're like, oh, those are on the market. Those are not on the market. We're adding something to the basement. That's why it's like, who knows what's happening at this exact moment? Okay. So between 50 and 55 units, starting way back when you made$28 ,000 a year, and now you don't have a job. You are unemployed.

43:29I'd like to say work optional, right? Work optional. Because I do, and I, because people have caught me out rightfully so. I do a lot on social media. I'm here, right? This is a good time. This is like kind of, kind of part of the vibe I've got going right now. But if I stopped this, I could still live the life I want to live. Yeah. You're not going to a 40 hour a week job. You're not working for somebody else or even working for yourself in 40 hours a week. Now these 50 to 55 units, how much of your time does that take every week or month? Right now, a little more than usual. I actually forgot that building.

44:03So probably eight or nine buildings in 60 units. I just bought a joint venture with my membership group. So I'm trying to get them to become more private lenders or do more private lending. So we bought a six unit building. I need to get that fully occupied. So I'm showing them that process. So right now, that probably takes me a day, a week. We go down Wednesdays or Fridays, whatever day is more free and do whatever we're doing at that point. But once that will be occupied, I should be occupied by the end of November a day. You work one day a month? One day a week. One day a week. Okay. Okay.

44:36But still, like one day a week. There's people who are working 40 hours a week who are working a little bit more than that. Just a little bit more, for sure. No, like one day a week. What do you want these days in terms of like wealth and money? Like what does that goal look like for you nowadays, given where you started? What a great question, Scott. My husband went back to school. He went to grad school. And for those first two years of grad school, it was actually the first two years of COVID. So it was 2020 to 2022. And I wanted nothing more than just to sit down. All I wanted. I just wanted to sit in my house and watch TV and work out maybe and cook and just sit and be with him.

45:14He was working, right? Because he was in grad school. And after two years of just kind of sitting, I said, well, that was fun. And what do you want now? Because similarly to what we talked about before, I don't think this is what I want to do for the next 40 years or 50 years. What I found brought me a lot of joy was pouring all this extra time that I now have control over into the people around me. So showing up to watch my friends' kids, being on the phone with people who are further away, my friends who we have like hour-long conversations, helping out with my church, teaching online to give people these same options that I've had, that I've had access to.

45:49Right now, I think a big focus for me is trying to help as many people as I can have even just like a taste of what I've gotten to experience because of real estate. What is like the financial portfolio that you want to build today? So for example, you know, I paralleled some of the things in your journey were the first probably three, four years in terms of the house hacking, those types of things. And today I'm much more conservative. And the reason for that as a defensive, like I'm like, oh, I kind of got to my my goal number and now I'm I'm going to just be much more conservative. Is that at all factoring into your portfolio or do you still invest to grow the portfolio using max leverage or the the the best financing available?

46:30That's a great question right now. No, I am not trying to max out everything that is available to me. I said when I left teaching, when I left full time, I said, hey, you can always count on$55 ,000 for me, right? That can always come into the household. And even then, and I know that might sound crazy to certain people, but even then I was like, our lifestyle can't go past this contribution, even though the portfolio has. And that's because we still have debt. That's because my husband wasn't retired the way I was retired quite yet, right? And I wanted to make sure, especially because he loved his job so much, I wanted to make sure that we were able to be debt free by the time we were 40.

47:08That was a that was a thing that kind of came to me of like, I want to have nothing at 40 years old. That way, if he walks away, we can still keep everything we want making$60 ,000 a year. So even if we did have to go back to where that's that conservative and me, right? Even if we did have to go back, we can figure out between the two of us how to make 60 grand. And the rest of that money has gone into investing now more into the stock market than I have before. Right. It's to paying off property. So now a couple free and clear, which is like, oh, now we learn about trusts and putting this here.

47:37And how do we protect these assets? I'm buying some joint ventures because I want my members to learn more like, hey, these are available. And I still flip because that pays down debt. But I have no interest right now in buying another like 30 unit. Right now, I just want to pay off debt and keep living. Now, when you say debt, you just mean the mortgage payments, right? You're done with the student loans and the credit cards and all of that. I have an educator for a husband, Mindy. So we're not done with his student moms. Ah, OK. But he's doing the 10 years. So he has the 10, the public service loan forgiveness.

48:11Yes, perfect. And that I think is perfectly acceptable. Exactly. So he has another two years and then those will be done. But yes, it's the mortgages not only on my own home, but on all of the properties I own as well. Is your goal then to be completely debt free, no mortgages at all? Correct. Even with the lower interest rate mortgages, like the first property that you bought, you had a two or three percent mortgage on that? How kind are you? No. No. In 2014? I had bad credit. So no. Oh, okay. I think it was like four. But yeah, I think there's something very freeing about full ownership. And I will say that will be the last one that's paid off, right?

48:47Like we're going to go, we're going to use the snow bomb that we're going to go for the higher or the avalanche method, right? We're going to go for the higher interest first. But I think there is something very powerful about going from a space where I was making$28 ,000 a year to saying I now own 50 units outright, right? And that like my My family owns this outright and then we could put it in trust so that the next generation can own it outright and be starting from there versus starting from$20 ,000 in student loan debt and not really knowing which direction to go with. Deandra, I love your whole story.

49:18It is so inspiring because you didn't come in here and say, oh, I was making$200 ,000 a year. Wow. How'd you do it, Deandra? So amazing. You're making$200 ,000. But when you're making$28 ,000, most people making$28 ,000 don't even think about investing. And you're like, I'm going to anyway. And you started with a house hack. That's still investing. And then you move to another house hack and to another house hack. And I just love, yes, you did it when we had lower interest rates, but you still did it. And all the people who are yelling at the radio right now, yeah, but they're never going to do it.

49:55DeAndra didn't have a yeah, but. She's like, I'm going to do this. And she did. I want to add one more, Mindy, for those people. I have been in house sack right now. So we just bought a house. It was a requirement for that house to be a duplex. And I told my husband, that's part of my dream. Because as my parents age, I don't want to put them anywhere but in my home. And I knew if we didn't have something stable, settled, right, that's in the house that I could walk to, that they could, we're next door neighbors or they're in the basement apartment. But having that allows me to live my dream, which is making sure my community, including my parents, are taken care of.

50:27And that was in 24. So house hacking is not just a situation where we're, oh, well, that was great in 2015. I did in 2025 with 2025 rates. And still when that apartment is rented fully, if I was gonna rent it fully, my mortgage is like$800. For my six bedroom brick colonial, it's$900. So house hacking also works now in 2025. Now, is there somebody gonna be living below me? Maybe, sure, whatever. But it's not a thing of the past. There are options available to us still today. I think people were having a really hard time finding house hacks one, two, three years ago as interest rates rose and prices hadn't changed and rents hadn't changed.

51:06But I think now in large parts of the country, we're seeing opportunities really blossom again in a lot of cases. I think if you've been ruling it out for the last two or three years because nothing seemed to work, can we take another look? Depending on where you're at, things could be changing. I'm seeing opportunities that look pretty good here in Denver, Colorado these days, for example. I just sold a house hack to a client. Steven, he listens to the show. Nice. Awesome. Deandra, where can people find out more about you? And where can people find this new book that you just wrote? Oh, my goodness.

51:39Yes. So if you look on Instagram, I'm Deandra McDonald. So it's just my name. If you look on TikTok, it's simple real estate. Same with YouTube, Deandra McDonald. and I just wrote, they'll probably put up a much prettier version. I'll send them the beautiful mock-ups because this is still the author proof. But it's called The Multifamily Advantage, breaking free from the single family trap to scale into early retirement. So you guys got about an hour-ish of my story, but this is not my story. And I want to make that very clear. That's what this is for. You can hear about me. This is how you do it.

52:12This is how you analyze the properties. This is how you think about about when a property is worth keeping or selling. This is how you decide if you're in a maintenance phase like I'm in right now, that Scott seems to be right now, or if you're in a scaling phase, when you wanna keep growing, when you wanna do more, this is the how to, this is the why, you know, why it worked for me. And this is how to get it to work for you. That is now available for pre-order on Amazon and on my website, deandramcdonald.com. And the book comes out officially December 1st. All right, Deandra, this was super fun.

52:46I'm super stoked to check out your book. I am super stoked. I just went and followed you on Instagram. I want to see all the good things that are coming your way. So thank you so much for sharing your story with us. And we will talk to you soon. Thank you so much, Mindy and Scott. I really appreciate you guys letting me be on today. Oh, I appreciate you coming. Thank you. Scott, that was Deandra McDonald. And that was such a great story. I had so much fun listening to her. What did you think of her show? That was great. And I think that, you know, the frustrating part, I think, for some folks will be the house hack, right?

53:15It comes down to the house hack in getting started. This getting on the other side of the capitalism snowball is so hard. If you don't have a very high income, for example, and keep the goalposts moving. And it's so easy if housing is eliminated as an expense and the other items are kept constant. And I think that's the theme we're going to hear so many times from folks. It's not a rule. Not everyone has to house hack to fire. But such a high percentage of people who get there quickly without starting a business are going to do this. Deandra looked around and said, I am not happy with my life.

53:52So she took action and made changes so that she could be happy. She asked questions and then took that information and put it into action. and if you're not willing to take action, I have no advice for you. Yeah, and I'll also call out, there's a lot of people push us. They're like, hey, where's the person who never earned a high income in their journey to financial independence? There it is, right? And I can see the challenges already coming from that where, hey, yeah, but then she invested in real estate. Well, look, we're gonna struggle here at BiggerPocketsMoney to find a person who ends the FIRE journey still making a below median income, right?

54:32But there's so many examples out there, people who start the journey making less than that and then find ways to solve that income challenge. In her case, her upgrade was to becoming a teacher. That was her path to getting ahead financially and getting into the median income was actually becoming a teacher. And for many people, there's a bias that that's a really difficult path to wealth. And she used real estate and the free time and the advantages that that came with to build this empire that she has today. But it took work. That's the bottom line here. There is no easy button. There is no, I would like to be financially independent.

55:09Poof, I am. That doesn't happen. You have to do the work. And she did the work and now she's reaping the rewards. And this is such a great story. I'm so happy she was able to come on and share it with us. This is the advantage that I think today's Gen A or Gen Z and then Gen A will have, is if you can really, really smart in high school and amass tens of thousands of dollars through summer jobs and those types of things, save your pennies, any Christmas card money, that kind of stuff over the years, if you can avoid making the mistake of accumulating a large amount of student loan debt without an associated high income, if you can avoid the trap of a vehicle and that first house purchase, I mean, good gosh, these kids can get ahead super fast and avoid and skip many of the hard lessons that we've had to discover or unpack here on BiggerPocketsMoney.

55:59So it doesn't have to be this hard for a lot of folks, but you do have to really map that journey out from the beginning pretty strategically and make those big choices correctly. Yep, absolutely. But those small wins just compound to huge, huge wins. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Indy Jensen saying, gotta go, UFO. I think that filing my taxes is among my least favorite activities on earth. That's why we've partnered with a new tax planning firm here at BiggerPocketsMoney. They're a tech-forward, AI-integrated CPA firm that works with high-income business owners and professionals year-round, helping you find tax savings and plan ahead instead of just showing up when it's time to file.

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57:24That's brought me a lot of value. Long Angle is a vetted community of 8 ,000 or more entrepreneurs, executives, and investors who came for the financial conversations and stayed for everything else. Membership is free for those who qualify. Apply at longangle.com slash money. That's longangle.com slash money.