60k was not the average that was more like the top end lol.
I retired in 2022. And until the last two years I didn’t make more than 60.
(Employer finally realized I was making more from investments than I was from work and tried to keep me)
I didn’t start until 40.
So, I didn’t have decades for compound interest to do its thing. And making less than 60k meant I didn’t have a lot to invest either.
Even living frugal.
I was 40. A single dad with three kids, found out about $89k in bad debt in my name I didn’t know existed until the divorce.
Started teaching at a CDL school after getting laid off from law enforcement because of the 2008 recession.
(Like a lot of LEOs were)
Here was my strategy. It didn’t happen overnight.
It took a decade.
1) split extra income into two piles.
Extra income came from overtime and playing world of Warcraft and selling in game items online.
One pile went to worse debt. (Bad debt with high interest rates or adjustable rates)
The other pile was saved for the first house hack.
I moved from my house into an apartment and rented the house out for two years.
This got me two things. One was two years in the new field of work and the other was rental income on my tax returns.
These made me “bankable”.
Two years in I purchased a duplex.
Moved into one side and rented out the other. This lowered my housing costs a lot.
1.5 years later I purchased another duplex.
A year later another.
At about the 5 year mark I was still teaching CDL drivers. I went from $17/hour to $21. So W2 income was still not great.
Rental income was ok but nothing amazing. The house and first duplex were making a difference because they had several years now for rent increases (my binder strategy helps.
Where the tenants ask for the rent to go up)
But the next few years went a lot faster. Since the “income snowball” started to kick in.
I paid off the house. Which I don’t regret but I know was financially a mistake that cost me a million or so looking back.
At year 8 I moved to my second house hack. A fourplex.
Now that I kinda had confidence in my ability I emptied my retirement accounts and purchased a triplex.
Here was the end result:
A decade of investing.
$320k of money from work and about $300k reinvested from rental income over the decade.
In 2022 when I retired I had 16 rental units. That cash flowed $204k in profit after all expenses, taxes and setting aside for future repairs and vacancy.
Since then I purchased a du lex on the water to house hack with all cash and live for free.
Spend most of my time scuba diving. Portugal last year. This winter I’m thinking Thailand.
Real estate isn’t for everyone. That isn’t the goal of sharing my strategy.
The goal is to show how focus and delayed gratification can have an impact. The decade of driving old cars.
No vacations and house hacking. May not be something people want to do. The outcome is something most people dream of.
The hardest part now is unlearning the frugal nature and investing focused financial view.
Learning to spend instead of invest is hard. Hard but fun.
