How Kyle Built a $4M Real Estate Portfolio Making Less Than $40K

21:11And during that time where my mind went, I was like, hey, maybe we could just rent this out a couple of times and at least break even. Lo and behold, my wife hates this, but we've probably stayed in the cabin four times total in the last six years because I see what we can make on a weekend versus staying there. It's like, ah, we'll just do something different. But we bought that. I connected with another guy that at the time he and a partner owned, I think about 12 short-term rentals down there. Maybe not quite that many, but he and I now are best friends. I brought him in house. He still manages all of our Airbnbs.

21:39And we acquired two more off market in that same area. And then we actually did two new builds in 2024 down there. And then we also transitioned into doing some short-term rentals here in Columbus, Ohio as well. Can you give us a picture of the size of this portfolio in dollars? We have the units here, but what are the numbers looking like for this portfolio? Value, we're somewhere north of$4 million, maybe close to$5 million. And I'm now at a stage where it's like I used to just leverage to the hilt, as you guys heard. And we've slowly just kind of stopped doing that. We refinanced a lot in 21 with good interest rates.

22:11We're probably about 55 % levered right now. And then our total cash flow, in theory, would be about$140 ,000 a year. I say in theory because I just like to put the money back into the properties or buy more. We just closed on one on Friday and we're under contract on another one. And so it's the money flows out very quickly. But in theory, it's right about 140 ,000 a year. Awesome. And then do you still coach tennis? I still coach tennis. So, yeah, this is a whole crazy story. It was always on my wife's heart to just kind of help others. And we ended up moving overseas for about a year. We ended up getting kicked out because my, at the time, two-year-old could not get a visa for some reason.

22:51So we moved back to Columbus, Ohio. Where did you go? Where did you go for this year? It was Eastern Europe. It was actually Budapest, Hungary. The laws were changing a little bit. We went in on volunteer visas and they had gotten rid of family reunification visas at the time. And so he was 21 months old. He needed to get a student visa. And sadly, his ability to read was not very good when he was under two years old. And so we tried three times. We stayed there 10 months. We actually came back to the States in July of last year to reapply for visas at the consulate in Chicago. And during that time, we're very faith led people.

23:25We just felt like God had opened up some doors here in Columbus for both of us. And so we opted to stay. One of those things was there's a university position that opened up at a smaller D3 school here. And so I'm an assistant college coach and I still do private lessons as well. That's fantastic. So you spent your days, your entire adulthood, mostly playing tennis and built a four to $5 million portfolio that generates well into the six figures in cash flow across that time. And you continue to scale that through pretty tough environment in the last couple of years here. to the point where you do exactly what you want to do and your wife is a stay-at-home mom, and you guys are easily able to cover all your expenses and live the life that you want.

24:03Is that the right way to understand this? That's fairly accurate. I don't know. For better or for worse, it's like I've always been driven by purpose, and I just felt like I could make a connection with so many different people when I was on the tennis court. You have an hour at least of one-on-one time very often with these people. And just kind of being in their life, it just felt like I was making a difference in a way. and as well it's like I'm in the sun when it's in the summer and when it's nice out I'm getting exercise doing the things I like to do there's been a couple times in my life that I've picked up random part-time jobs they never stuck and I just come right back to tennis and so I've always taught tennis full-time or part-time since then but uh yeah still to this day I love the college job love the students that I get to work with and then still get to go out and mess with the rental portfolio as well so aside from the the freedom and flexibility that you have it sounds like at an early age, right out in your early 20s, that was mostly a function of just very low spending and your desires being basketball and tennis, which were very cheap.

25:03And that allowed you to do this along with willingness to live with Craigslist roommates. Yeah. I recommend it, guys. Get in there. Yeah. Your wealth has considerably increased now. Have you upped your spending in any meaningful way? Do you live a little bit nicer of a lifestyle now with the family and the portfolio? We do get appetizers every other time that we go out to eat. My wife and I are, we're just not big spinners. Like the things we like to do are be with people, be outside, go on bike rides, go hiking, play sports together. We're not actively pinching pennies. Like I'm sure our Amazon spin on getting stuff for our son and we've got another one on the way is higher than it should be.

25:38But it's to the point where it's like, it has not drastically increased because we're living the life that we enjoy living.

25:43Mindy Jensen:Yeah. So when you say it's higher than it should be, is it something that you can't afford? Yeah. Good question. That's definitely the wrong term. We can afford it. I've been struggling to figure out a way to articulate the difference between keeping up with the Joneses and spending the money that you have that enhances your life that isn't going to hurt. And if you're spending an extra couple of dollars on Amazon, but it's like a rounding error in your net worth, then it's not a big deal. It's the people who are having a real problem making ends meet that are like, oh, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon all the time that I have a harsher tone with that spending.

26:20Mindy Jensen:But this is like, yeah, you know what? Amazon is easy. It is so much easier to type it into Amazon and then it shows up at my front door as opposed to, oh, I got to figure out which store sells this or even if a store sells it. So don't beat yourself up over that. Let me ask you another question here. You know, a lot of there's a lot of ways to achieve financial independence and the outcome that you have here. I find it very hard to believe that somebody who started out making$40 ,000 a year,$25 an hour coaching tennis could have had anywhere remotely close to the same outcome investing in stocks.

26:53The stocks may have returned better on average than the Dayton and Columbus markets over the same time period. Do you agree with that? Have you ever thought about the counterfactual of if I had mostly and primarily focused on my retirement tax advantage retirement accounts, where would I be? And have you applied any thought? Actually, good question. I was actually traveling with our guys team this weekend. And what's nice is they all know what I do. And a lot of them are just very intrigued. They're trying to set themselves up well. And so I actually had that exact conversation. I told them, I was like, I have nothing against stocks and we still max out our Roth IRAs and I have a brokerage account.

27:26I'm not actively putting towards it, but the leverage piece and the sweat equity piece, I needed that with my income. There's no way that I could have achieved what we have just by putting that straight into the stock market. And so I've told them, I was like, if you guys have a higher income paying job, I was like, still do all these tax advantage accounts. If you guys want to accelerate it and do other things, like there's other options besides just going straight into stocks. The argument for stocks would be if you had decided, hey, I'm going to actually like pursue an income producing career.

27:55I'm going to start my own tennis coaching program or something like that. Then all of a sudden that switches, right? And the real estate becomes much less relatively attractive than that same energy focused on your business or some other career objective. But in this case, your situation was I want this flexibility the entire way through. And I'm willing to swing a hammer in the times that I'm not actually coaching tennis. That is really what drove millions of dollars in wealth for you. A hundred percent. And it's like, and I think I've heard you're doing the same as well, but it's like my, my, my goals have kind of shifted as I've gotten a little bit older to where it's like, I'm only buying in nicer areas.

28:28We're not leveraging as much. And as well, some of our active assets I have sold and we've gotten into passive investing. In fact, one of my, one of my really good buddies and mentors, he was one of the original guys that started left field investors that's now passive pockets. And so just kind of started going that route as well, just trying to diversify in a different way into different asset classes that I would never touch on my own. Now, if you're going to do the nicer assets and you're going to use less leverage and you're going to be more passive now, does that ever weigh on you? Hey, maybe I should start building my allocation in the stocks for diversification or in other alternatives.

29:00Or how is that thought process impacting you today? Yes. I just love the tangible assets as well. And so I think that's where a lot of my, my passive investing has gone into these multifamilies or industrial in any of these just ones, like I've got some, like I'm in one coffee one right now that's like, who knows if it hits, but it's like, it's such a negligible part of my portfolio that it's like, I'm willing to try it. That being said, one of my good buddies that we flipped a property with, and he still is my realtor. He's almost exclusively doing stocks now and he's doing a great job. He's not day trading, but he'll swing trade and he'll just find like a good asset.

29:34And he's like, I just feel like this has margin. And so, yeah, I still like my entire Roth IRA is exclusively either a VOO or VTI or any of those. But it's like that being said, I could put money there, but I just like to allocate it back into something that I can actually like feel and touch. How do you structure your business? And have you started thinking about now at this point, things like putting some, like some portions of this business into an S-Corp? I for any flips or any of the more active projects there and beginning to use some of the self employment benefits? See, I need to dive in more.

30:10That's something I had looked at because I was even looking at just some of those solo 401ks if I wanted to like have a higher threshold per year. I have not done as much due diligence as I should. We do have a handful of properties in trust now, but otherwise, as far as like structuring, I'm sure there's more efficient ways to do it. But I was having a conversation with another friend the other day to where it's like, I used to be that guy that I would spend hours and hours and hours to just find the most efficient way to do things. And I've gotten to the point to where I would rather spend my time in other ways than maximizing the efficiency of what I could be doing.

30:42Love it. That's clearly across your entire portfolio and you still got really, really awesome results here over the last 15 years doing exactly what you love all day. I think that's a much healthier way to go about it. So I think it's a fantastic journey here. And what was your tennis income at your peak year? I mean, $38 ,000 and then I would have to pay insurance off of that and taxes off of that. So has not been much. My assistant coaching job is a whopping$3 ,000 per year. So I'm not exactly making a lot off of that either. It's more volunteer and I like spending time with them. So it's always been pretty negligible.

31:15You never thought about like a hybrid lesson where you give financial advice while you serve? You know what? We might have to talk off mic here, but there are some options for sure.

31:23Mindy Jensen:Kyle, I'm hearing your story of an overnight success in just 14 short years by asking people questions, telling literally everybody what it is you're doing, making connections, even like not consciously making connections. You're talking with your tennis guys over the course of an hour, telling them what you're doing. And then all of a sudden you need a loan and they have money because they're the lawyers and the doctors, like you said, and they are willing to lend it to you because you have this personal relationship with them already. You're reaching out to lenders, reaching out to other real estate agents, forming more personal connections.

31:59Mindy Jensen:Hey, this is what I'm looking for. Finally, somebody answers. The first person that you call is never going to say, oh my goodness, I've got a 12 property portfolio for you to buy. They're always going to say no. And then all of a sudden some guy says yes. And you're like, oh, let me have some more information about that. $400 ,000 for 12 properties? In my market, you might get one property for$400 ,000. You're not going to get 12. But you did. What is that Dave Ramsey quote? Live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. I can hear people saying, well, of course he made money in real estate.

32:33Mindy Jensen:He started in 2012. He's still buying real estate today. He's buying it in a lower price market than you probably live in if you're yelling that there's no way to make money in real estate in 2026. But your properties are still cash flowing, right? The ones that you're buying now? Yeah. I mean, prime example, it's like we're always looking for just hidden value. My most recent one that we just did a burr on, it was actually on Zillow. And I got it. I found it myself. My realtor didn't send it to me in a very popular area. And I think people just overlooked it. It was a Cape Cod. If they don't have those like around the country, it's like we usually have a bedroom on the second floor and everything else is on the first floor.

33:10And it was listed as a 2-1 and they had not counted the Cape Cod because they never finished it out. And so there was unlisted bedroom space and unlisted square footage went in. It was a seller that he needed to sell. They asked for 250. I offered 200K cash. They didn't even counter. So we got it. We added a bedroom. We also added a bathroom. We made this one a short-term rental, furnished it and everything. With all furnishings, purchase everything, I was 277 ,000 all in and it appraised for 386. And so we were able to get 107 % of our capital out. So I basically, the bank gave me a short-term rental and they're like, Hey, just make sure you paid off over 30 years.

33:50And so we're cash flowing on it. Like we came live in March, April has already been good. We're recording this in April right now. And we will probably net at least$500 on that one just for the month of April. Going back a minute here to the 12 property one, this, now you're a professional real estate investor. That's the only way to describe you, right? You also coach tennis on the side as your passion. You have more and more free time to do that. But you're a professional real estate investor. When you bought the 12 properties, that was not true, but you bought a problem. This was nobody sells 12 properties for$33 ,000 each because they're in great shape and life is good.

34:24I can only imagine the trash, the debris, the overgrown, the skeletons or bones you found on those properties and the problems you fixed over some period of time, the skeletons and like the cracks of the foundation, not actual, hopefully. We didn't find them if they were there. Surely that reasonably reflects the reality of those properties. And there was a real project in your hands to fix those. Absolutely. And like to that point, like that's why we started liquidating some of them as well. It's like we put as much value into them as we could. And there were just areas that we knew we didn't want to hold long-term.

34:52I was that original real estate investor. I was like, I'm never going to sell anything. We're going to hold everything. You just come to a different conclusion, just at different phases of life, like focus on the ones that are cash flowing better, causing less headaches. and then on paper, certain ones pencil very well. And then you hold them for 12 or 24 months. You're like, that did not pan out the way I penciled it. And so just kind of start making that decision as you're going. And there's no wrong decision. It's like what each person wants to do. Yep.

35:16Mindy Jensen:Okay, so your 12 properties that you bought for 400 ,000 and sold six of for 500 ,000. So now you have six free properties. Do you have any money in any of your properties or is it just all free? Yeah. So, I mean, there was more acquisitions since then. We continued growing. At one point in time, we were up to 40-some units in Dayton specifically, not counting our Columbus properties. I have since. We actually refinanced my entire Dayton portfolio on one big portfolio loan last year. At the time, I was probably out of pocket about$900 ,000, and the entire portfolio appraised at 1.6. And so we cashed out.

35:57We had still some mortgages on the properties. We paid off all of those mortgages. And then I think we pocketed about$300 ,000 cash. And so we're sitting at, I mean, I don't know what that leverage is, maybe 60-ish percent leverage on that portfolio. And we were able to walk away with$300 ,000. We actually used that to purchase our new primary when we came back from Europe. And then we just put a line of credit on the primary instead. So we use that for our investing now.

36:20Mindy Jensen:Okay. So you borrow against your house and then do you pay it back frequently? Yeah. So we put it as a first lien. Side note. I mean, there's so many different stories here. I'm actually a lender now as well. And so I kind of got all that knowledge, decided to kind of use that as our bankroll. And so bought it. We were able to get it was a$500 ,000 purchase or something. We have a$420 ,000 line of credit. We will use that. We went out, purchased the property when we refied, immediately pay that off and then just kind of recycle it from there. Okay. So for all of you people who are listening and thinking, oh, that sounds like infinite banking.

36:54Mindy Jensen:No, this is better because this is doesn't take up any headspace. You're already doing real estate. I'm just doing it with a line of credit instead of like a 30-year mortgage on it. So I asked about the stocks versus real estate piece because stocks are arguably better than real estate on an unlevered basis, right? We've established that. The leverage is what drives the returns and the sweat equity in your situation. But the interesting thing is you now are wealthy and there's a case to be made for moving to stocks. But in your case, it doesn't apply because you've spent all this time building up this engine of experience and connections in the space that surely continuing to invest in these properties, branching out and lending, these types of things are going to provide better risk-adjusted returns basically for life.

37:36And unless something pretty interesting changes about the world economy or your situation. And I think that's what's so fascinating to me about real estate is I can appreciate now after all these years on BiggerPocketsMoney, the case against real estate investing, but you can't deny it when it stares you in the face right here. And it has produced the life outcome that you have here and the return profile that you have here and the options that you have here, there are clearly paths where it's just superior to the alternatives here. And yours is so wonderfully illustrating that. I'm having trouble moving past that because it's just a perfect counter argument to the stocks versus real estate argument that pops up in these circles all the time.

38:12I will fully admit I love stocks, but it's like leverage with real estate is so much more than just like the bank financing. It's like knowing your market, having the connections, getting off market deals. It's like, there's just so many more ways that you can force it. And if you want to put in the time and you have the ability to, it's like, you can definitely achieve that much faster. As we said here, it's like doing without any sort of high income at any point in time in your career. Tell me what a day in the life looks like right now. What are some of the highlights of the last six months or things you're looking forward to?

38:43And how do you spend your week? My wife and I both enjoy staying busy to an extent, but it's like this, I've been in the mainstay of Tennessee's. And so we actually have our conference tournament this weekend. I've been working with the guys and the girls. We'll be traveling out of town doing that. But then I have the flexibility, even as a mortgage lender. Now I can work from home. I'll spend a lot of time. Our son is now three, a little bit over three, and he's getting into biking and tennis and basketball and soccer. So hanging out with them. And at the same time, it's like, we, we like to serve and give back.

39:13So kind of just finding opportunities to spend our time. If that's in our church or a lot of my stuff, I like to be very focused on like a certain area. If you guys I haven't noticed with like real estate. And so now that I'm coaching at the university, trying to spend a lot of time with those university kids as well, the house we bought, the tennis courts to the university are actually our backyard. And so it is a 20 second walk from my back door to my office over there. And so we just will want the university kids to come over to hang out. We're putting in like a back patio space that we can just kind of have people around.

39:42I think there was a book, I think actually Brandon Turner had recommended it years and years ago, but it was life in there. And that was like a pivot point for me to where it's like, oh, it's like, this is more than just the accumulation. It's like, I don't, I don't want to have just to have. We have a passion for people that are serving others. And so a goal of ours is to hopefully be able to have a few just paid off houses that we can host transition people that are coming in off like a global field, like we were doing, or people that are coming out of different ways that they're serving, just have a spot that they can stay for whatever period of time until they can get back on their feet or find a spot of their own.

40:16So we continue to work so that we have like a purpose in mind. It's not just to accumulate. Love it. I think serving others is a theme that we can apply across many dimensions of your life here. Nice pun. You know how the change in seasons hits and suddenly you just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets and get everything all organized? That same feeling hits me with my finances every spring. I used to have accounts scattered everywhere, making it hard to stay on track with my money goals. Let Monarch do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized.

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42:22Mindy Jensen:You live in Ohio, which is not a super high cost of living area. If you decided that you were just tired of all of this, you could probably comfortably live off of$140 ,000 a year, which is the cash flow that you're estimating comes off of your portfolio, right? Do you think you could squeeze out a living on that? We could squeeze out a living on it. I'm still a numbers junkie, just live in the spreadsheets. And I've even looked, it's like, what if we liquidated, like there's certain properties that we just have tons of equity in. And it's like, what if we liquidated that and just put that into a debt fund paying 12 % or something along those lines?

42:56But the tax advantage of what we're doing, I do not handle anything with our day-to-day of our Airbnbs. My buddy is a mastermind at it. He has all of my information. Like if he wanted to steal anything from us, he has my social, he's got credit cards, But it's just, I don't know, we're very aligned and we're big on like a rising tide raises all ships. So I like to bring as many people along as we can. And yeah, if we wanted our goal when we went overseas was to be fully self-supported by our real estate, just because we were putting so much back into it. We weren't quite there, but we were able to self-support a good portion of what we were doing.

43:27And so it's always in the back of our minds. We feel it's like, OK, if God called us to go somewhere else, we want to have that ability without any hurdles, essentially. On that real estate debt fund versus paid off rentals, that's a really interesting problem that I've been grappling with for a while. And I think that the paid off rental is a way better alternative for many people than the debt fund if it's not in your retirement account. because you get the several points of appreciation, the inflation adjusted income stream across that time period. It's not all ordinary income, which even for you will be something to consider there.

43:59I imagine you are able to keep your ordinary income low with the depreciation for your rentals and the relatively light income from other sources there. But I still think that the debt fund is not quite as, it's also a little scary handing your money over to other people as your base cashflow. It is so true. We started dabbling in debt funds last year and the returns have been great, But it's like at the same time, I'm not controlling it. And I do have a little bit of a control issue. And over 30 years, it's just like the rent on the property should pace inflation and the income stream should be there.

44:26And I don't know how that's going to go in the debt fund over that very long stretches of time. It's so true. And we still we're still acquiring. And like any time we're doing heavy construction or rehabs, we're doing cost segregations every year. And so we try to keep our taxes as close to zero as possible. So that's a good call out.

44:42Mindy Jensen:Do you hire out your taxes? Yes. I used to be doing everything myself and now I'm trying to do, I want to spend my time the way that I want to spend it. And I know people are going to do these things better than I can do them. So I would rather find a reason to pay someone else to do things that I know that they're going to do better than me and just make up the difference elsewhere. If your tax preparer cannot save you more money than they are costing you, they aren't the right tax preparer for you. I have observed a problem in investors that fit your profile where I have a lot of equity and I've built up, bought a bunch of properties that accelerated depreciation.

45:17I've got 50, 50 debt equity somewhere in that ballpark, plus or minus 10 points in any direction. But if I were to sell the entire portfolio today, I would recapture depreciation at ordinary income tax gains. I would have a long-term capital gain that'd be pretty substantial. I'd have my state taxes, and then I have to sell them with a couple of points to the six, 7 % transaction costs, depending on whether I'm on the broker or not. Does that problem describe your situation to a degree and have you thought about it like that in your portfolio? To a degree, for sure. Like we're not actively looking to sell, but when we have sold or had any big taxable event, I'm usually trying to find a way to solve that prior to the end of the tax year.

45:55So last year we put a lot of money into like mobile home part funds and that they were, they were giving us about 92 cents on the dollar of tax write-offs at the end of the year. So it's like, I think, I think the other guys, term it like the lazy 1031 exchange, just other ways to deploy your cash to where I'm like not having that issue. So yeah, to that point, like if we sell, it's just because the problem's causing more headaches than it's worth for us. Otherwise we'll hang on to it. It sounds like a really wonderful outcome here and congratulations on what you've built and thank you for sharing it in such specificity here on the podcast.

46:25So congratulations and what a wonderful life and portfolio you've constructed for yourself, Kyle. That's fantastic. Well, thanks so much for having me and thanks for letting me share. Always happy to talk with anyone that wants any input or education or just to share a coffee or a phone call. So happy to help. Awesome. Where can people find you? Best would probably just, I'll give my email if that's fine. My personal email is KDCOLL4 at gmail.com. I'm also a lender. So Kyle at firstohiohome.com will get me. I'm not super active on social medias. I keep trying to be, and then I'll post and then nothing happens, but I'm on socials too.

47:00Just Kyle Collette. Well, please connect with Kyle if you're in the Ohio area or just interested in replicating pieces of that story. And last question I'll ask is, what is the one tidbit you have for your students or your players that you coach when they're talking about this stuff? I was like, get in and hold on. That's always my biggest thing. I will preach house hacking till the day I die. I think coming out of college, not being married, I don't care if it's a single family or a four unit. It's like, find a way that you guys can offset your rental income. I will say not to just like stroke your ego, but I've given away Set for Life so many times.

47:32And so, yeah, so it's like you guys probably actually owe me for coming on here just how much I'm paying Scott's lifestyle right now. But, yeah, I will preach that forever. I think it's the best thing to do starting out. And, I mean, I would still do it if my wife would let me, but she made the right decision. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for giving that book out and for coming on today. I will also shout out that my wife and I have been playing tennis every – maybe every other week or so. we get out there and hit some balls. We hired a coach maybe for two lessons, two or three lessons in the last year.

48:01It's so fun. And it's like, not this like expensive activity that I had built it up in my mind to be, unless you, of course you hire a coach for huge portions of the year. No, that is true. And I will say, it's like the other thing we talked about with tennis, it's like, if you want to go get exercise, you only need one other person where it's like most other sports. You can't do that. Obviously you can go running or biking, but just get your wife or another buddy and just, you can just go out and hit.

48:21Mindy Jensen:Awesome. Kyle, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for sharing numbers and sharing your experience. I think this was a really fun story to hear and we will talk to you soon. Sounds good. Thanks, guys. All right, Scott, that was Kyle. And that was a really awesome story of not having a huge income, wanting to maintain a really awesome lifestyle and starting to invest in real estate in order to make that happen. I do think he had a couple of unfair advantages growing up. He left college with no debt. That's a huge unfair advantage that is also available to everybody if they really work hard and either work through the summers to pay for college or work and get scholarships.

49:02Mindy Jensen:You have to work out through high school in order to be able to get those scholarships. But you can leave college with no debt. He grew up with parents who invested in real estate, so this wasn't foreign to him. And he reached out to people. People are so shy to reach out to people. Oh, I don't want to look stupid. I don't want them to think I don't know what I'm talking about. Eventually, you will know what you're talking about. So reach out to people. So those are his unfair advantages that got him to be an overnight success in just 14 short years. I think every story is unique. And I think that's what makes what we do so fun and interesting to me, right?

49:37I mean, if you want like a purity invest in index funds for long term growth, Bogleheads is correct, right? Go to Bogleheads and invest in stocks. However, what I find much more interesting and much more realistic is the unique and specific advantages that many people have in specific circumstances. And when real estate applies and when starting a business applies and when an alternative investment applies and when this job hop makes sense or company stock begins to have a big portion of your portfolio and it's all context dependent and it all changes the strategy, yet it all funnels towards the same outcome that we're all going for collectively, I think, here at BiggerPocketsMoney, which is the lifestyle that Kyle leads today, the ability to be flexible and do exactly what you want.

50:20And I think he won the game so thoroughly at every point along this journey in a relative sense to his counterfactual who goes and gets a very higher paying W-2 job, I believe, for him. And I think that's a fantastic and wonderful outcome.

50:34Mindy Jensen:Yes. The Bogleheads approach is great, but you're not going to reach financial independence in your 30s making under$40 ,000 a year following the Bogleheads method. That's right. There has to be an income. Vogelhut's method is better for a career that is going to ramp from an income perspective over those 10 to 15 years graduating from college. And for many people, it does. And I find this endlessly fascinating about when and where the rules of thumb break down and apply or don't apply. And this is what works for Kyle. If you found a lot of similarities or this is interesting to you, then maybe real estate is for you.

51:12Mindy Jensen:But if you listen to this and thought, oh, that just sounds like such a hassle, then And maybe real estate isn't the right choice for you. Maybe you should find a job that makes more money so you can invest in the completely passive Bogleheads method of index investing. And it doesn't have to be either or. You can do real estate and index fund investing. You can mix and match however you want. What do you think the odds are that Kyle's kids get a full ride to college for tennis? I think that's a very good possibility if his kids start playing tennis. I mean, I'm sure that three-year-old is already swinging a racket.

51:46I think that's just another interesting component of all this, right, is in that situation, do you save for college as aggressively? Another question for another time. I think there's a very real chance that that living next to the university campus and playing tennis from three years old with a dad who's been a tennis coach and devoted and done a significant amount of engineering to make sure that that continued throughout his adult life. That's an interesting additional nugget in there. And that's where personal finance gets so personal.

52:11Mindy Jensen:Yeah, that is an interesting question. I don't know. I would, from a position of I didn't save anything for my kids and now I have to pay for college out of cash, maybe save a little bit? Yeah, you don't do nothing, but you do. I don't know. I think that's, again, where I find all of this so fascinating when the rules break and when they apply. Yeah. You know what? It's always a rule of thumb, except for spend less than you earn. That's a hard and fast rule. 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.

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