Retire Early with Less Than 10 Rentals? She Did It, Starting in 2022

You don’t need a big, expensive, stressful rental property portfolio to retire on your terms. Today’s guest was able to leave her W-2 job in her late 30s, all thanks to a small, smart rental property portfolio. Most people think they need a dozen (or more) doors to reach a level of “freedom” that lets them walk away from their job. Lucy Hinds did it with half that amount. Did we mention she only started investing in 2022? After deciding that jumping out of airplanes for the Army was where Lucy wanted her excitement from, she decided to tackle her debt ASAP. But this former Dave Ramsey disciple quickly became a real estate debt enthusiast, buying three rental properties in three months, all using equity from her personal residence. From there, Lucy continued to scale until one day she decided she could step away from her job. The best part? She had only a handful of rentals at the time, but they’d cover her living expenses, giving her the freedom to do what she wanted with her days. Discovering her “enough” led to her early retirement, with far fewer rentals than most people think is possible. Think you’re still decades away from retirement? Lucy proves that even in this market, a few rentals can go a long way. In This Episode We Cover How to retire (early) with fewer rental properties than you think Using your home equity to fund your first (or your first three!) rental properties Scared of taking on debt for real estate? How Lucy switched from the zero-debt mindset to scaling with rentals Cash flow even at 7% interest rates? It’s still possible, and Lucy is proof! Pay off a rental property vs. your primary residence: why one can “free” you far faster And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠h⁠⁠t⁠t⁠ps://www⁠.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1288⁠. Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Henry Washington?

  You do not need a big, expensive, stressful rental portfolio to retire early. Today's guest retired in her late 30s, all with a small, manageable rental portfolio that she built after 2022. That's right, high rates, high home prices, she dealt with it all and was still able to retire completely on her own terms just a few years later. She used an often overlooked source for her down payment that many Americans have access to, and quickly bought her first three rentals in just three months as a complete beginner. But she never wanted to scale to a dozen doors. In fact, it took her only half that many to retire from her W2. She's sharing exactly how she bought the rentals, how much they make in monthly cash flow,

• 0:45Henry Washington?

  her yearly income with real estate, and why knowing you're enough can get you to early retirement decades faster.

• 0:58Henry Washington?

  What's going on, everybody? I am Henry Washington. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Today, we are bringing you an inspiring investor story featuring Lucy Hinds from Cincinnati, Ohio. Let's bring her on. Lucy Hinds, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Henry.

• 1:14Henry Washington?

  So glad to have you. And as always, as we get started, I want to know what your background was like before you got into real estate investing, especially since you have a little bit of a history with personal finance.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you so much. So I am actually a veteran of the United States Army.

• 1:30Henry Washington?

  Thank you for your service.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. A fun fact about me is I used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes and helicopters. So that's always my good icebreaker question.

• 1:40Henry Washington?

  Yeah, I have a hard and fast rule about that.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  To not do it?

• 1:43Henry Washington?

  Yeah, if the plane's gonna land, then I'm gonna not jump out of it. That's my, that's my pretty hard and fast rule, but that's awesome.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  I do live by that.

• 1:51Henry Washington?

  Paratrooper, is that what they call it?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Paratrooper, yes. I was a big Dave Ramsey girl, so I read The Total Money Makeover and drank the Kool-Aid big time about staying out of debt and eliminating debt. So I lived that life for years and years, I'd say, until I happened upon Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and that really changed my mindset about debt.

• 2:17Henry Washington?

  Yeah, it absolutely does open your mind to how money works. I think people, I mean, everyone can accredit their start in real estate to reading that book, but it's not a real estate book. It really just teaches you about how money works and how to think about money differently. That's what I remember most about me reading that book.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38Henry Washington?

  All right, so what made you become interested in real estate? Because that's a big shift.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  So I think just kind of analyzing my portfolio, giving me an idea that I wanted to build some passive income and how could I do that. So I realized that after the COVID spike in real estate, that I had quite a bit of equity in my home. And after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I thought to myself, well, how can I leverage this as debt potentially to make myself more money? And, you know, I went down different rabbit holes of buying a business or starting vending machines. And then real estate was one of the options as well. And then I dove deep into that rabbit hole and that was, that was it for me of like, okay, we're, we're doing real estate. I had a home equity line of credit for up

• 3:26Speaker 01

  to $176,000 that I could use to get started. And you know what I did with that $176,000?

• 3:35Henry Washington?

  I'm guessing you used it to buy some property.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  I bought three in 90 days. So.

• 3:40Henry Washington?

  Wait, wait, hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. Okay, okay. So hardcore Dave Ramsey, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, start to change your mindset, and then you take out a home equity line of credit. So for those who don't know, you can tap into the equity in a property. It doesn't have to be a personal residence, but that's what's most commonly used. And typically, when you do that, they'll give you access to about 75% of the equity. So it sounds like you had a good bit of equity in your property. You applied for a home equity line of credit, and then you didn't just go buy one house. You bought three in 90 days?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yes, so they were back to back. So I was busy working on getting any updates that I needed, getting tenants in immediately and filling those houses. And I had all three houses with tenants and signed leases all before I even had a single mortgage payment. And that was a win for me.

• 4:41Henry Washington?

  Well, that's impressive first and foremost, but but let's back up a second because it's hard enough to find one deal that you feel like it's worth buying, but you found three consecutively. So how did you locate these properties?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yes, so I found everything on the MLS, no wholesaling or insider deals. I found my first baby. I call my houses my babies because they're

• 5:04Henry Washington?

  Nothing wrong with that.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  They're near and dear to my heart. And nobody messes with my babies, you know what I mean?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  I bought my first house or baby in a nearby neighborhood. I'm in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. So actually, all of my properties are within a 30 minute radius. So all the greater Cincinnati area. Found my first one on the MLS. I purchased it for $215,000. It's a three bedroom, two bath, slab house, no basement. We like that for, you know, less things to go wrong. It's around probably 1,400 square feet, just a great little starter home. We did a little bit of work to it, my husband and I. So my husband does help with some of this, too. We did a little bit of work to it to get it ready on the market, maybe a week or so. We just did some little

• 5:54Speaker 01

  painting and upgrades, nothing crazy.

• 5:58Henry Washington?

  So super cosmetic?

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, just small things. And got that on the market. Like I said, got a tenant in right away before we even had a mortgage payment. The jumping off point was once I had the lease signed, I was like, hey, I can do it. I did it. Let's look for the next one. And the next one is actually in that same neighborhood. It's you could literally throw a stone to the second house that I bought. So I'm like, I'm playing Monopoly here. I'm buying up all the rooms, right? So I was like, okay, I'm playing Monopoly here. This is, I'm having a good time. Um, and the second one was completely turnkey, absolutely gorgeous. Um, this house was a little bit higher on purchase price. It was $240,000.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  But similar layout, just nicer appliances and finishings and things like that. So that was 240,000.

• 6:48Henry Washington?

  So you got access to this line of credit. You started buying properties like crazy. What were you doing for work at that time?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  I had left the Army active duty in 2017 and I didn't start buying properties until 2022. So I was working a regular W two job in a few years in between, kind of where we left off. Uh, my career, I'll say was in HR. We can talk about this more later, but I'm retired now. I retired early from my rental income. I worked in human resources for my whole civilian career, if you will. Um, I was doing well for myself in like a mid-tier manager, making six figures, nothing crazy though. So that would go toward the down payments or it would go toward the HELOC, toward paying off the HELOC.

• 7:39Henry Washington?

  So let's chat about that for a second. So the first property said you paid 215. Um, assuming you used conventional mortgage, so 20% down. And I'm guessing that's what you leveraged the HELOC for. Am I right?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I actually always had to put 25% down. Just that was the agreement that I had with my current lender. So it was around $54,000 of the cash down that I had to put down on that 215 at that 25%. And I started with some cash that I had and some of the HELOC funds.

• 8:12Henry Washington?

  Okay. So you rented it out fairly quickly. And so tell us what your rent is and then what your mortgage is, if you don't mind.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Sure. So the purchase price was 215,000. The rent is 2,150. Um, I know in the real estate world, we love to talk about the 1% rule. So that's usually what I'm going for on these.

• 8:33Henry Washington?

  Yep.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  The mortgage was 1,227.

• 8:37Henry Washington?

  Oh, wow. 1,227. Two hundred twenty seven, bringing in twenty one fifty. That's awesome. That's a great cash flowing deal.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Cash flow nine twenty three.

• 8:45Henry Washington?

  Yeah, that's a pretty awesome deal. And then you were like, all right, proof of concept. I did the thing. I rented it out. They're paying the rent. I didn't have to do much work to it. Let's go do another one. And then you found another one in the same neighborhood on the MLS again. And so this one purchase price was a little higher. It was.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Two hundred forty thousand dollars.

• 9:05Henry Washington?

  Two forty, but it was a little bigger, a little nicer, nicer finishes, totally turnkey. So you did nothing. You put twenty five percent down off the HELOC. So what was your mortgage payment on that one?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  The mortgage payment on that is one thousand four hundred and eighty.

• 9:22Henry Washington?

  And it rents for?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Two thousand two hundred twenty five.

• 9:25Henry Washington?

  So you're just knocking them out of the park now. You're just like base hits, single doubles, no big deal.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  It's good. It's not exactly the one percent rule, but it was good enough, you know, cash flow is about seven hundred fifty bucks. I'm good with it. And at the time too, I mean, the interest rates on these are high fives and into the sevens. So I wasn't even buying during the two, three, four period. So to make that kind of money, even with that type of um interest rate, I'm good with it, you know?

• 9:57Henry Washington?

  So here's what I like so far is that you are buying these and you're essentially putting up a decent sized down payment down. What that's doing is it's reducing your principal and interest. That's allowing you the room to cash flow. So yeah, second deal, not quite one percent, but it doesn't really matter. Because you put a good chunk down, which allows you to still cash flow, even though uh it doesn't quite hit the one percent rule. The one percent rule, guys, is just a rule, a rule of thumb. It's not the law, right? And every deal is a little different. The more money you put down, the lower you can be. You don't have to quite be at one percent and still cash flow.

• 10:35Henry Washington?

  And what I like about your strategy is that you are buying good quality assets. You're not buying the cheapest house that you can find and having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing it up. You're buying good quality assets in good quality areas. And the reason I want to highlight that is because you leveraged your personal home on a home equity line of credit. Where I think people get in trouble with this strategy is they have equity in their personal home. They tap into it, which is great, but then they don't do enough research to buy a good enough asset at a low enough price point for that deal to be a good deal. And you never want to leverage your personal home and then go buy a bad deal.

• 11:17Henry Washington?

  Cause now you put your, your personal home at risk. Cause if your deal is bad, you end up having to pay to feed that deal and you still got to pay back that line of credit. And so you can get yourself into financial trouble pretty quickly by doing this strategy and not purchasing a good deal or not putting enough down when you purchase a good deal. So I like the fundamentals that you use and I want to make sure that we call that out for people. I don't think home equity lines of credit are bad. I don't think they're good. I think they are a tool in the toolbox. And the way tools work on any job is you have to use the right tool in the right situation. And you have to use it in the right way for that tool to be effective. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did.

• 12:03Henry Washington?

  So amazing, but you've only told me about two of these and you said you bought three in 90 days. So I want to hear all about this third deal and we'll do that right after the break.

• 12:16Dave Meyer?

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• 12:48Henry Washington?

  Here's a strategy that most W2 employees have never heard of. Normally, if you want to write off a rental property against your regular income, you need real estate professional status. That means tracking hundreds of hours a year. Rent to Retirement just launched a program that skips all of that. It's called the STR loophole tenant placement program. Here's how it works. You buy one of Rent to Retirement's Class A new construction investment properties. You set up an Airbnb listing and self-manage it for the remainder of the year. Rent to Retirement then rents the home as a short-term rental to establish it as an STR for the year. No furnishing required, making this the easy button to save five or six figures in taxes this year.

• 13:30Henry Washington?

  And because you're the sole manager, there's no hourly minimum to meet. That lets you use a cost segregation study to accelerate the depreciation and potentially write off over $100,000 against your income, even on your first rental. Add in cash back up to 13% of the home price, which exceeds $60,000 on some properties. With this massive cash back incentive, investors are seeing total returns up to 126%. New construction, A-class properties, and inventory is limited. Learn more at biggerpockets.com/retirement or text REI to 33777. Again, text REI to 33777. Quick word about a new pro perk you'll want to know about.

• 14:14Henry Washington?

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• 14:58Henry Washington?

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• 15:15Speaker 03

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• 15:47Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am speaking with investor Lucy Hines, who has leveraged her personal home to get a home equity line of credit and use that to start building a rental portfolio that has eventually, it sounds like, led to your financial freedom. But you only told me about two of the first deals that you did, and you said you bought three in 90 days when you first got started. So what'd that third deal look like? First two were single family homes, a stone's throw from each other. Was the third one the same?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  The third one is in a different neighborhood, but still within that 30 mile radius of the Cincinnati area. This one is actually a town home. So it's a little bit different, the first time dealing with HOA, so that's a little bit different. This one is a three bedroom, one and a half bath. So when I was kind of looking, I really wanted a three bedroom, two bath, but came across this great deal for these townhouse, three bedroom, one and a half bath. But the price was so good, I just couldn't pass. The purchase price was $157,000. Yep, and it's a three bedroom, two and a half bath. The mortgage and HOA together is $1,288 and the rent is $2,050.

• 17:08Henry Washington?

  Boom. Did you have to do any work to this one? That sounds like a really good deal.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yes, we did put in a little bit of work. So we, we updated one of the bathrooms upstairs and we did a little bit of demo. There was some funky extra shelving going on in the kitchen, uh, but not much. It was about $10,000 that we put into it.

• 17:27Henry Washington?

  That's pretty good. So MLS deal, bought it, put a little cash in it. I'm assuming you used, uh, the same type of loan. So that cash you put into it had to come out of your pocket. Yes?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yes. And like I said, I always live below my means. It would, you know, it would just regularly be there.

• 17:42Henry Washington?

  Awesome. So another decent deal. Are these deals that you've left all your money in? Or have you refinanced these deals to pull any cash out?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  I have not refinanced and all of the money that I've ever made on this business has gone back into the business until I retired.

• 18:02Henry Washington?

  Say that again for the people in the back.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  All of the money that I ever made from all of the deals that I had went back into the business so that I could continue to grow it, so that I could continue to buy, so that I could continue to pay down the HELOC while I had it, while I was working a W two job. It's not until I decided to, that I hit financial freedom and was no, you know, and then wanted to retire, that I would then begin using the money from the business to live off of.

• 18:34Henry Washington?

  There you go. That is how you get to financial freedom. Because the whole point people want to get into it is they want to generate cash flow from their rents. But if you do that on your first couple of properties and you're taking your cash flow and you're putting it in your pocket, what people tend to find out is you gotta pull it back out of your pocket sometimes to fix things, to solve problems, to be able to purchase more. And so when you're growing and scaling, the best way to do that is to take the cash flow and reinvest it into your business so that you can get to your retirement number faster. But it sounds like you've got a history of fiscal responsibility, having gone through Dave Ramsey.

• 19:18Henry Washington?

  Ramsey and just having being a saver, it sounds like. So that definitely seems like it's helped you. So as someone who, you know, you were a Dave Ramsey acolyte, you followed, followed the Dave Ramsey plan, drink the Kool-Aid. Was it difficult for you to make the mental transition to taking on debt? Because I've seen, I've seen people really struggle with it who are hardcore Dave Ramsey folks.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  A hundred percent terrifying. You think jumping out of planes is scary? Taking on some debt after you've been obsessed with Dave Ramsey and his teaching principles for years. Jumping out of a plane is less scary than that. Okay?

• 20:02Henry Washington?

  But what I want people to see is you can leverage responsibly. And Lucy is a great example of how she's leveraged the assets that she has, but she's done it in a very responsible way. She has found very good quality assets that she can afford. She has made sure that the rent is going to more than cover what she is spending. She's putting a little more money down so that, that ensures that cash flow and gives her a way out if she needs out. Leverage is good if it is used properly. Leverage is very bad if it is used improperly. And I want to make sure that we're like harping on that for people.

• 20:43Henry Washington?

  So what you told me previously was that you now don't work anymore. So because you've leveraged this responsibly, how long did it take you? Kind of from start to the day you decided you were going to be full time? How long did that take you to get there?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  So I bought my first property in July of 2022. And I officially retired in September of 2025. So just about eight months ago.

• 21:15Henry Washington?

  Awesome. Congrats.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. And I actually, you know, I hit the number, I'd say earlier than that. That's just how the timing worked out. I figured I would stay till the end of the year and then. Just things happened at work and I was like, you know, it's time to go.

• 21:31Henry Washington?

  Yeah. It's funny how when you start having some cash flow coming in, things that weren't as annoying to you at work, all of a sudden just are a little more annoying than you than you used to be able to deal with. But three years is pretty quick to reach financial freedom. But I think, again, I think your journey to financial freedom was accelerated because you weren't spending that cash flow when you got started. You were reinvesting, you were putting money down and you were in a strong financial position prior to investing. So I know a lot of people may not be in that strong of a financial position and that's okay. There are ways to invest without that. But again, this is just highlighting that you can accelerate your journey. A, if you're putting your money back in, B, if you're investing responsibly. So great, great work.

• 22:17Henry Washington?

  So when did you buy your fourth deal? Was it immediately because you just rapid fired three in 90 days? Did you do your next one shortly after or did it take you some time?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  So I bought the next one almost a year later. So it took a break.

• 22:33Henry Washington?

  So you sat down for a minute.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  It hit hard for 90 days, okay? And then I was like, woo, I'm tired. Let's take a break. Also, this HELOC is looking a little big. Let's take some time to pay it down so we can kind of reset, relaunch, right? And just let, let the dust settle for a little bit. Cause it was quite a feat. I don't think, you know, for most people to buy three houses in 90 days.

• 22:59Henry Washington?

  Huge feat, yes.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Let's let that settle for a bit. So I had bought the third house. And so it went July, August, September of 22. Those are the three. And then I didn't buy my next one until the end of July of 2023. So almost a year later. That house we purchased for 235,000. And this house, uh, the mortgage payment is 1,492 and the rent is 2205. And you'll notice as my purchases go over time, my interest rates certainly climb.

• 23:37Henry Washington?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  So we started at about 5.75 where we're buying and we ended around seven and a half percent.

• 23:45Henry Washington?

  Okay.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  So the market changed quite a bit. So the cash flow gets smaller as time goes, but it didn't keep me from, from buying. I was very hopeful that, you know, it was still cash flowing and hopeful that maybe we could refinance over time.

• 24:00Henry Washington?

  Yeah. Interest rates are what they are, right? It's not necessarily the interest rate that makes a deal good or bad. It's the total numbers on the deal. If a deal can cash flow at 9% interest rate, it just depends on what you're buying it for. And a deal can cash, a deal cannot cash flow at 3% interest rate if you're overpaying for it, right? So it sounds like to you, even though it was a higher interest rate in the seven and a half range, you were still able to make that work. Again, I'm assuming everything was the same. You put 25% down. Did this one need work or was it more of a turnkey?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  No, this one was turnkey, completely turnkey. And that, and it was again, you know, the more nicer fixtures and that's where the purchase price comes into play with that being at that 235.

• 24:41Henry Washington?

  That's awesome. So you did that for property number four. The numbers sound good. Sounds like great turnkey property. It's bringing in about five, 550 in cash flow a month, even though the interest rates a little higher. All right. That's really cool. It seems like you have this formula of buying good quality assets and good quality neighborhoods where the rents are well and you're putting a substantial amount of cash down so that these deals all make a lot of sense. I want to pivot and talk to you a little bit about where you are now in your investing journey and what you're continuing to grow and invest in, but I want to do that right after the break. If you would like to connect with investors like Lucy, a great place to do it at is BPCon.

• 25:26Henry Washington?

  This is BiggerPockets annual conference and this year it's in Orlando, Florida from October 2nd to October 4th. I'm going to be there. So will Dave and so will all the other BiggerPockets hosts and authors. Early bird tickets are on sale now and that's always the best deal. So head on over to biggerpockets.com/conference for more information.

• 25:47Dave Meyer?

  For my wife's birthday, I wanted to make her a new website for her landscape design business. So I researched a lot of different options. I tried out a couple, but honestly, it was really overwhelming. It was pretty time consuming and still, the site wasn't coming out the way I wanted it to. Then I tried Hostinger and everything was super simple. I asked Hostinger's AI to build a clean site for her business and it had a working version up in minutes. No coding or designer needed. Plus, its AI agent helps with SEO, website copy, and email marketing after launch. You get domain, website, email, all in one account. And right now, you can get Black Friday and Cyber Monday

• 26:30Dave Meyer?

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• 26:48Henry Washington?

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• 27:32Henry Washington?

  So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more from a great deal today to a great value tomorrow. A Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 27:48Dave Meyer?

  I just booked a ski trip to Park City and I've already got the whole thing planned out. Five days, first tracks every morning before the crowds show up, my knees reminding me I'm not 25 anymore by the second run, and an embarrassing number of overpriced burritos at the lodge. I don't even care. This is the trip I look forward to all year. But here's the part I actually appreciate. The practical side of my brain kicking in is that my place doesn't have to just sit there empty the whole time I'm away. I can list my space on Airbnb and bring in a little extra income while I'm out getting humbled on a mountain. And with the co-host network, I'm not the one handling all of it.

• 28:30Dave Meyer?

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• 29:15Dave Meyer?

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• 29:55Speaker 03

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• 30:28Henry Washington?

  All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am chatting with investor Lucy Hines, who has shifted her mindset from a Dave Ramsey saver to a real estate investor borrowing on her personal home, using leverage to build and grow her portfolio, but has done it in a very fiscally responsible way, which makes a lot of sense, given your fiscally responsible background. Where are you now? Because now we're in 2026. Are you still buying, using the same formula? Things are more expensive now. What's been your goal? Or have you hit that goal, considering you've hit the financial freedom? So what are you doing now?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I did have a goal at one point to buy 10 rental homes, but after hitting about that five to six mark, I realized that would be enough for me to claim that financial freedom. So then if I wanted to live off of the profits of the business, then I could. So that really changed my mindset of, you know what? I don't need to grow more. I don't need to take on more liabilities at this point. I'm in a comfortable spot. Part of living below your means is being okay and comfortable with what you have, with not wanting more. And I really just kind of had to have a check with myself at some point of, you know what? That's enough. I don't need to be greedy. I don't need to take it to the next level.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  I have what I need and that's enough and that's okay. So at the end of 2025, we always do kind of an ROI assessment of like, how did the properties go this year in terms of how much money we put into it? How much rent? Is it a good ROI? Why or not? In one of our properties, we actually paid it off completely. We took a look at that sixth rental property and said, hmm, do we want to keep it or not? If we do sell it, it's almost the exact amount of money that would pay off our primary mortgage. And for us, a personal decision or a level of comfort that we wanted to have was we'd rather sell that

• 32:31Speaker 01

  property and pay off our primary mortgage, which is really just a nice stepping stone going into retirement to cut down on personal expenses and say, you know, all I owe now is taxes and insurance on my primary home.

• 32:44Henry Washington?

  That's wonderful.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we paid off our primary home and now we still have those five rental properties and I don't plan on buying anymore at this time.

• 32:55Henry Washington?

  Look, you learned a lesson that a lot of seasoned investors don't learn for several years. And that is when to realize enough is enough. So here's some, here's some wise lessons that I heard in what you said. First, you had a goal of getting 10 properties. And instead of getting all the way to 10, you evaluate your portfolio each year and you see how the properties are performing. And then you make decisions based on that. That is a seasoned investor thing. Not a lot of investors do that. And I, Dave and I talk about this all the time. You should be looking at your portfolio at least on a, on a quarterly

• 33:37Henry Washington?

  or biannual basis and see if they're performing like you want them to perform. Great. Super smart thing to do. Second, a lot of people get caught up in the growth phase and they're growing for growing sake and not necessarily because it's truly what they need or want. Ask me how I know, right? It's just me waving my hand saying, I have been that person, right? I am actively shrinking my portfolio right now. I bought a lot. I got up to 150 rental units at one point.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:10Henry Washington?

  We're now down to under a hundred and my goal is to get to about Sixty of my favorite properties, the ones that are in the best locations that perform the best. And then I'm focusing on paying off those properties, right?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 34:24Henry Washington?

  It's okay not to chase what everybody else is chasing. The beauty of real estate investing is that you can have a business or a portfolio that supports the lifestyle that you want. You don't have to just go chasing doors. You can buy enough and I commend you for stopping prior to your, because you had a goal and it would have been, and if you would have said, hey, I'm going to power towards my goal. I'm going to get to my 10 doors. Everybody would have applauded you and it would have been awesome. But I think people need to applaud you more for saying, hey, I don't need to get to 10. I have enough. I want to focus on what I have and making sure that I'm maximizing what I have. So great, great points. I think that that's going to help a lot of people who are looking to build and grow a real estate business.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I appreciate you saying that and it means a lot to me and how I live my life in general and it is just being comfortable with enough. It's not about keeping up with anybody else and it's not about not doing what I said I was going to do. Things change and that's okay. I'm responsible for myself and I'm not worried about what other people think or want to do. I'm building this for myself.

• 35:32Henry Washington?

  Now Lucy, I've been talking to you for a little bit now and something tells me that you're not buying real estate. But somebody with your finance background and savings background isn't just not investing money. You gotta be putting money somewhere. Am I right or am I right?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Of course I am, of course I am.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  I couldn't possibly do that. Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  No, that's so funny. Yes, of course I am. Now I have an interesting story and some people won't believe me or say, what the heck? Or another expletive, but I'm living off of $40,000 a year by choice right now because that is all that I need personally to live a fulfilling life. And yes, I still get my hair done and my nails done and I travel and I do all the things. That I want to do on my little forty thousand dollars a year. But guess what? With the money that I make on top of that, I can invest that. And I still feel good about the fact that I have enough money to do the things that I want to do in life.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  And I am still investing for my future goals, which for us is to buy a future primary residence in Florida. So it will serve as a vacation home for us. We're probably going to be buying in the next like five to eight years. So for a few years, it'll serve as a vacation home. And then once my kids are grown, we plan to move into that. What is a vacation home to make it a future primary residence for us in the Florida area?

• 37:10Henry Washington?

  Awesome. This has been amazing. What a fantastic story. What a way to build and grow a real estate business and do it in a responsible way. A couple of last things before we get out of here, just some, some more housekeeping style questions. It sounds like you manage all your properties yourself. Are you still doing that to this day?

• 37:28Speaker 01

  I do, yes. Um, not to say that we don't ever have a handyman or a plumber come in as needed, but uh, I'm a great painter. Uh, my husband's a great man of small things. So we do what we can when we're willing and able. And then, yes, we do hire out things that are a little bit more skilled. But I completely manage the property. So I'm taking the rents every month. I'm making sure all those get paid. I'm calling and texting with the tenants to make sure everything's taken care of, leases are signed, et cetera. I do all that.

• 37:58Henry Washington?

  Okay, wonderful. And last question before we get out of here. You left your W two. Is your husband a W two still, or are you both retired from the real estate?

• 38:07Speaker 01

  He is. He is still a W two. He has a date set of two nine twenty nine for his retirement. So we've got less than three years. He'll tell you down to the day. I don't know it. He knows it. But he's got less than three years for his plan to retire as well.

• 38:25Henry Washington?

  All right. And last but not least, can you give everybody just a quick update? What's your portfolio look like now? What are you doing in terms of cash flow?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Uh, overall, we have five units that are cash flowing for an annualized amount of $45,352.

• 38:42Henry Washington?

  Oh yeah. Congratulations. That's amazing. Those are great numbers and you're living below your means on $40,000 a year. That's impressive. Hey, listen, um, if I were to have my wife call you, could you talk to her about the $40,000?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. Anybody can do it.

• 38:57Henry Washington?

  A little bit. Yeah. Just, uh, you know, between you and I, between, between us friends.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Got it. I'd be willing to do that for a friend. Yes.

• 39:06Henry Washington?

  Thank you so much. Congratulations on all your success. Thank you for coming on the podcast, being so transparent and sharing all of this information as well as these numbers. I hope this was helpful to all of you listening and we're very excited to share more with you on the next episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast.