5 Things That Helped Me Retire Early
When I tell people that I’m retired, they usually assume that I came from money, struck gold from a tech IPO, or that I got lucky throwing my life savings into Tesla or Bitcoin. But none of those are true. To achieve financial independence sooner than most, I think that I simply developed certain habits early in life that put me ahead of the curve.
After reflecting on what I did to retire at age 31, I came up with a list of 5 things that helped me accomplish my goal. Surprisingly, not everything on my list has to do with money, so read on to find out more!
Actions I’m Taking During These Uncertain Times
I can’t believe 6 months have flown by since my last blog post! Life has been absolutely crazy for my family and me, having just retired at the end of last year, moving from California to Texas, selling our California home, moving again from an apartment to our new home, and finally settling in and acclimating to the new area. It was exhausting for me to type out those life events just now! Suffice it to say, I’ve been busy as usual. Blogging takes a surprising amount of time to plan and write out content, and I didn’t want to post something just for the sake of posting.
Anyway, the dust has settled for the most part in my personal life for the time being. However, the world economy has really hit the breaks this year, taking most of us by surprise. With out-of-control inflation coupled with the Fed raising interest rates at break-neck speed, investors like myself have really taken a huge financial hit all of a sudden, scaring me into taking action. Read on to see if you could benefit from doing the same!
How I’ll Spend $2 Million Dollars
After selling my primary residence in California for almost $1 million over asking price, I received over $2 million in cash from the sale. I can’t let that amount of cash just sit around idly; it’s always best to put money to work so it continues to earn more on your behalf. In this blog post, I will share what my plans are for the $2 million. And no. I’m not going to gamble it all away in crypto!
What's A Better Investment: Primary Residence or Stocks?
Normally, a primary residence should not be considered an investment unless you house hack and rent out part of the home while you live in it or you end up selling the home. In the house hacking scenario, your primary residence acts like an investment because renting out a portion of your home could certainly reduce your housing costs. Better yet, if done right, it could even net you a profit!
If you end up selling your primary residence, the home acts like an investment because you will hopefully yield some capital gains after building equity for many years. Plus, selling your primary residence has a nice tax perk where you can exclude up to $250K (single) or $500K (married) of the capital gains from taxes! The latter scenario is what my partner and I recently did when we sold our home in California for nearly $1 million over asking. So how does our primary residence as an investment compare with, say, the stock market? Let’s dive into the numbers today and find out!
Doubling My $125K Investment to $250K in 1 Month
I thought that flipping one of my out-of-state properties for over $100,000 in profits in under 4 months was out of this world! While I wasn’t wrong about its success, I also never expected to beat that accomplishment in such a short period of time. The punch line? I doubled my $125K investment to $250K in just 1 month! In today’s post, I talk about my original plan for the investment, the numbers behind it, and why it was so profitable.
How I Flipped an Out-of-State Home for Over $100K Profit In Less Than 4 Months
Earning a lot of money doesn’t mean you have to have a high-paying 9-to-5 job; it can come from a side hustle like my out-of-state flipping business! In fact, because my flipping business can be so lucrative and take just a few hours a week, I often wonder why I should even keep my 9-to-5. Well, I’ll save the answer to that thought for another day. Today, I will share my experience buying an off-market property and how I ultimately sold it for a massive profit!
How I Turned My 2nd Flip Into My 1st Airbnb
At the start of 2021, I set out to start an out-of-state flipping business and flip an average of 1 home per quarter (4 for 2021). By May, I had already purchased all 4 of my flips for the year. The 2nd home I purchased, however, didn’t get remodeled on schedule, nor did it attract a sale price I was happy with. So instead of waiting around hoping for a magic sale to happen, I decided to convert my 2nd flip into an Airbnb! In this post, I’ll talk about what went wrong with my 2nd out-of-state flip and the steps I took to convert this property into an Airbnb.
Mid-Year Review of My 2021 Personal and Money Goals
At the start of 2021, I set out to accomplish some business and personal finance goals for the year. Since we’re right at the middle of the year (6/30/21), it’s a good time to review how I’m progressing towards each of my goals and think about whether or not I need to make any adjustments to them. Also, while I didn’t share any of my non-money-related goals at the beginning of the year, I’ll do that today!
Why Turning A Primary Residence Into A Rental Is A Bad Idea
If you’re thinking about or already have turned a primary residence into a rental, you might want to rethink that. Even if your property is allegedly in a “high appreciation” market, it still may not make financial sense to hold on to it. To understand why, it all comes down to a numbers game, especially taxes. In this post, I will share why I decided to sell my very 1st primary residence instead of turning it into a rental, how I determined that was the best financial decision, and the numbers to back up my decision.
Investing in My 3rd Triple-Net Leaseback Rental Property
Investing in triple-net leaseback rental properties is a very niche area of real estate investing. I’ve done it 3 times in my real estate investing career, and each experience has been different than the other. The 1st one was immensely profitable, the 2nd went terribly bad, and the 3rd you’ll soon find out!
How the Rich Create Generational Wealth Through Real Estate
Investing in My 2nd Triple-Net Leaseback Rental Property
For those of you who read about my 1st investment in a triple-net leaseback rental property, I talked about how amazing my returns were. In just 2 years, my total return on investment was a whopping 58%! But as the saying goes, past results don’t predict future results, as you will soon find out about my 2nd triple-net leaseback rental property. And, unfortunately for me, my returns turned out to be quite abysmal.
With $8,200,000 In Debt, When Will I Be Debt Free?
In my previous post where I shared my $10 million FIRE goal by age 40, I mentioned that my investment allocation will be 30% in real estate. That’s $3M of my own cash invested in rental properties, and I fully intend to leverage that $3M as much as possible, leaving me with a whopping $7M of debt! That doesn’t even include my current $1.2M jumbo mortgage for my primary residence, which would have a remaining balance of around $900K by then. That leaves me asking myself, “After voluntarily acquiring $8.2M in debt, how long will it take before I become debt-free?”
Predictions of 2021’s Economy and Investing Landscape
Between COVID-19, the March 2020 stock market crash to all-time highs for a basket of stay-at-home stocks, no one could’ve predicted what 2020 had in store for us. Let’s have a little fun today by looking into our crystal balls and predict what 2021 has in store for us! At the time of writing, it is December 30, 2020. By the time you’re reading this, some of my predictions may have already come true!
2021 Business and Personal SMART Goals
Happy New Year! To kick off every new year, I like to set goals for all aspects of my life, both personal and professional. To make sure that my goals are clear and reachable, I create Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T) goals. By publicizing my goals, it helps me stay accountable for the things I set out to accomplish for the year. In this post, I’ll talk about my personal finance and business goals. Now, let’s dive in!
Ways to Evaluate Rental Properties
There are many factors to consider when evaluating a prospective rental property. While it largely comes down to a numbers game, there are other factors that are important that math can’t highlight. In this article, we will learn about a few ways to quickly evaluate properties at scale, how I scrutinize a prospective property in greater detail, and list out other important factors that are crucial to building a successful buy-and-hold rental portfolio.
Investing In My 1st Triple-Net Leaseback Rental Property
Most investors have never heard of the terms “triple-net” or “leaseback.” For me, my 1st time investing in this niche area of real estate yielded a 58% return on investment (ROI) in just 2 years! So what are they, and why did I invest in such a deal?
9 Ways To Get Started With Real Estate Investing
Most investors I know park their money in the stock market. It’s arguably one of the best ways to build wealth, and it doesn’t require much cash to get started. Many of those same investors hear about the potential of real estate investing, but most of them don’t know how or where to get started. Luckily, there are many ways to dabble into the world of real estate investing nowadays, and they don’t all require large amounts of capital.
6 Reasons Why I Invest In Real Estate to Build Wealth
I know plenty of successful investors who invest entirely in the stock market and in no other asset classes, like real estate. On the other hand, I also know many successful investors (myself included) who have done even better putting their money to work in real estate. Consider the following 6 reasons why I include real estate in my portfolio and why you should consider it too.
Reaching Financial Independence in Silicon Valley With $10,000,000
Financial Independence, Retire Early, AKA the FIRE movement, has become a major theme among millennials this past decade, including myself. Shortly after you start reading about it, you’ll learn that FIRE means different things to different people. In this post, I’ll give my take on what FIRE means to me, why I think it’s important, and how I determined my FIRE number. That is, how much money one needs to reach financial independence and retire early.