How to Buy Time and Freedom with a Simple Rental Portfolio (2-Hour Workweek)

Rentals can give you much more than just bigger pockets. They can buy you time, flexibility, and the freedom to design an adventurous and fulfilling life. Just ask today’s guest, who built a simple real estate portfolio that runs itself—creating space for midday hikes, living abroad, and passion projects. In this episode, he’ll show YOU how to slow down and do the same! Today, Chad Carson, investor and author of The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor returns to the show to share how real estate investing gave him much more than money. Chad has been investing for decades, but now, he’s making a major shift. Rather than accumulating more rental properties, he’s paying off the ones he already owns. Instead of putting in 80-hour workweeks, he’s traveling, taking mini-retirements, and prioritizing his life goals. And the best part? Some weeks, he spends as little as two hours on his portfolio! Want to copy Chad’s success? In this episode, he’ll show you how to trade the rat race—whether that means long hours at your nine-to-five or the relentless grind of scaling your investments—for time freedom, a flexible portfolio, and a real estate business that works for you. In This Episode We Cover How Chad optimized his real estate portfolio for a two-hour workweek Why real estate’s real return isn’t money—but time, freedom, and flexibility How to use real estate investing to build a fulfilling life (not just a big portfolio!) Swapping traditional retirement for mini-retirements that help you savor life while you’re young The power of paying down mortgages versus buying more rental properties How to ditch the rat race for a real estate business that works for YOU And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1127 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.

• 0:00Dave Meyer?

  Investing in real estate can give you so much more than just money. Today's guest only works two hours per week sometimes. I got to move to Amsterdam for five years. So today, we're going to explore the often hidden benefits of a life on the road to financial freedom.

• 0:20Dave Meyer?

  Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer. I'm the head of real estate investing here at BiggerPockets. I've been buying rental properties for more than 15 years. Today, we have one of our all time most popular guests, someone I really look up to. It's Chad Carson. You may know Chad from his book, The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor, or his YouTube channel, Coach Chad Carson. Chad is just a great example of the investing philosophies I talk about on almost every episode. These are things like finding a strategy that fits your lifestyle, keeping your portfolio manageable, and focusing on properties that fit your specific goals. Today, with Chad, we're going to talk a little bit about the behind the scenes of real estate investing.

• 1:03Dave Meyer?

  There's so much focus on the financial side, and that is, of course, super important. But I want to talk about how real estate can change your life in other ways. Chad and I have both been able to live in Europe because of real estate. We've both made close friends through investing. Chad has had time to spearhead a park project in his local community that he's seriously passionate about. You may not have the time to do these things if you invest in stocks or other assets, but real estate investing sort of uniquely makes them possible. So that's what Chad and I are talking about today. Let's bring him on. Chad, welcome back to the show. Thanks for being here.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Great to be here. Thanks, Dave.

• 1:42Dave Meyer?

  You are, I think, probably maybe the best person in the entire industry. It's sort of zooming out and putting real estate and why we do this thing in the first place in perspective. And so I'm really excited to dive into that with you today. Maybe we could start by just having you share with us how you first realized that real estate investing could have this outsized impact, not just on your finance, but sort of on your total life.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  A real short version. The story is I started in 2003 and so I was 23 years old and fast forward to 2007. My business partner and I were on the go big path. We were like, you know, all in on, you know, let's flip a bunch of properties. Let's own a bunch of properties and we scaled up big time right before the great recession. You know, that was brilliant, right? All right. Before everything crashed. The other thing I realized though was how busy we got with that kind of go big style of real estate investing. We were just going, going 80 hours a week flipping, making good money. But I first realized the intangible side of real estate when I we made a list of things, my business partner and I did. We were like, why are we doing real estate? Or why do we start real estate investing? Why do we start business in the first place? And for me, it was things like, I want to go hiking in the middle of the day because I live

• 2:51Speaker 01

  in part of South Carolina that's near the beautiful water, waterfalls and lots, lots of good outdoor spaces. I wanted to travel abroad, which you and I both had that connection. My wife is a Spanish teacher, so I wanted to actually live abroad. Once we had kids and do that some. So I had this list of things like that, some of which involve money, but most of them were like lifestyle, like I wanted to like use time. They needed time. For me, that was like the most important. And so a certain style of real estate, which for me has been like small and mighty investing of having a lifestyle real estate business was really, really important. And real estate can give that to you, but it's not, not every form of real estate. Like if you're always growing, if you're always going big, if you're always leveraging more, I think at some point it's hard to have those intangible benefits because

• 3:34Speaker 01

  you're making the most money, but you don't necessarily have these other currencies of time and flexibility and things that you actually need to live your life and do some of those other things.

• 3:42Dave Meyer?

  I completely agree. People sometimes say, oh, real estate's passive or it's not passive, or it takes so much time, or it buys you this, or it buys you that. But there is just no one size fits all approach. Like you said, it can give you flexibility, but it has to be a deliberate and intentional choice to build your portfolio in that way. And you deserve a lot of credit for figuring out a way to do that because I see this a lot in the industry is a lot of people start out seeking exactly what you're talking about, seeking time freedom and flexibility, but it is tempting.

• 4:20Dave Meyer?

  At least for me, you know, and it's tempting to sort of wanna go for everything and you see people succeeding and you wanna do the same thing. So how mentally did you sort of figure out a way to step back and resist that temptation to go, go, go? And sort of just accept a portfolio and start building that portfolio that really is in line with what you actually want?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  If you want it all fast, those are two different things, the amount of money you have and the amount of time. And so I guess one way I've reconciled is like, if I'm just patient, if I just play the long game, I will make more than enough money. It's gonna be just fine. But what I had to reconcile with myself was like, I specifically started choosing to intersperse these, we call mini retirements. We got that from the four hour work week back in the day where we said, you know what? I'm gonna press pause on my real estate business and I'm actually, instead of waiting till I'm 65 or 70 or 80 years old to like, try to enjoy my life. I'm gonna intersperse enjoyment in these intangible benefits. I'm gonna actually taste test that. I wanna make sure I actually like it, you know? Instead of just waiting for this one big moment when you get to the peak of the mountain, why not have a bunch of little plateaus throughout your career?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Which means you have to press pause, which means you have to, uh, this is where the small and mighty investing comes in. Like if you're buying one property per year, two or three properties per year and you, they're residential, they're stable, they're small, they're easy to, to manage. You know, it's not as difficult to like press pause on that. You can buy a bunch of properties, press pause, they're managed, they're good. Whereas I've also done things like you do a big development project or you do a big syndication. Like that's a three, four, five year cycle, maybe longer. And if, and if you get caught in the middle of that cycle, there's a lot of risk, but there's also just a lot of time, even if you're successful. So it's just a different business model. So I think the answer to your question is one business model, you know, being very deliberate about one property at a time.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  You know, keep, keep it simple, but then also having a long horizon, you can be super wealthy. You don't have to, you don't have to throw away your ambition just to enjoy your life now. You can, you can do both. You just have to have a longer timetable.

• 6:18Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it's almost like, how much do you wanna give up upfront? Cause you can speed it up. You can, oh, you can get financial freedom through real estate and I don't know, probably seven years, 10 years, if you're, you know, really. Aggressive about it. I think I've taken a much longer approach because it's more aligned with my own just lifestyle preferences and risk tolerance. But there, there's no wrong thing, but I think the idea here is that intention is what really matters. Honestly, I love the idea of mini retirements. I've never done that, actually, just taking time off work. I've worked at BiggerPockets for 10 years straight now, but it is amazing how in time you do get to

• 6:58Dave Meyer?

  build your portfolio to be flexible. Like sometimes maybe those mini retirements are really positive. But I actually sort of had the other experience earlier this year. I just went through a difficult time personally and just was drawn into some family stuff. And I, I thought about it and I, I think I spent one hour on real estate for like two months. And that's not going on a vacation for three months or a retirement in the traditional sense, but I have this really high performing portfolio and I didn't have to touch it for a while. And if I were flipping houses constantly, or like you said, development, I couldn't just sort of step away from my real estate for a month or two.

• 7:35Dave Meyer?

  It's just, it wouldn't be possible. So I love this. I think it's a real gift to give yourself is that level of flexibility, even if it means going a little slower. But that's just me.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Life doesn't happen in these, you know, straight up lines. Like you make a graph and you put a spreadsheet for all the math people out there. And I love spreadsheets, but our life does not happen in a spreadsheet. Like it doesn't, it doesn't work. I've got a friend, Ari and Sheihai, who always says like, you need to start measuring return on your life, not just return on your investment. Because life is why we do this, right? So it's like, the numbers matter. The numbers are a tool. They're great. We love them. You're, you're the numbers guy. You wrote the book on numbers and real estate, but why are we doing this? We're doing, it's like, the real estate is like the dog that we're walking. And we are the person walking the dog. Like, don't let the, don't let the dog like drag you all over the place. Like that, that, that's what a big business that like runs out of control is like, it's like pulling you around, dragging you on the sidewalk instead of you calmly walking towards your, your destination.

• 8:28Dave Meyer?

  I love that. I, I actually think, you know, being good at math and focused on data is a gift, it's a curse. Because at first, at least for me, it helped a lot earlier in my career. Once I just understood the power of. Compounding and reinvesting and you know, the longer you do this, it just makes sense, right? You put as much principal as you can, highest rate of return for as long as possible. That's the way to maximize wealth and you can get kind of obsessed with that to the point where it really has not just diminishing returns. I think it has negative returns on your life. When you start thinking about it, because it isn't as easy as I think people think to sort of take your foot off the pedal.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  I think especially for people listening to this podcast, if you're anything like me or Dave, you're probably ambitious, you're probably good at math, you're probably an entrepreneur, you have the entrepreneur itch. So what everybody thinks is hard when you start is the math and finding the deals and the financing, which those are definitely hard. But I have found and other people that I know have found the more difficult thing is figuring out what you actually want so that you can know when you have enough to go do that thing or take that many retirement. Like, that's not easy. Like I've gone through some, like the first time I took a many retirement was in 2009, right after the recession, my wife and I kind of figured some things out. We survived the recession and we went for four months where we went to Spain and we backpacked around and it was six weeks into the trip in Spain. We were sitting on this little bench in Cadequay, Spain,

• 9:50Speaker 01

  looking over the Mediterranean ocean. And I finally, after six weeks, like let, let relaxed, like I was so uptight and so tightly wound that I felt like my chest, you know, like kind of release. And it's that, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. It's like, I finally like could kind of clear the fog of go, go, go, go. And like, this is everything that matters is go next to actually figure out, oh, there's actually some other things in my life. Like, yeah, the enjoying a nice meal with my wife or, you know, spending some time with building relationships and relationships aren't measurable and fast. And like, you can't put people into like a spreadsheet. You gotta like, you gotta respond to them. You gotta be there. If your family's sick, you can't like put that in a spreadsheet. You gotta, you gotta open up these spaces in your life. And that's the only way I can think about it. It's like, I'm investing in real estate. I'm

• 10:33Speaker 01

  making money to become a time billionaire, to be flexible enough to be able to do all these other things that aren't measurable, but that are all actually the good stuff. The good stuff of life that make your life meaningful, purposeful, enjoyable. Like that's, that's why we're doing this.

• 10:47Dave Meyer?

  I couldn't agree more that this is this kind Stuff that people skip over and I guess I I get it because at first most of us I think get into real estate investing because if you have this like sort of acute need like for me I started I was waiting tables I just needed like 200 bucks a month you know I was like I if I could generate some cash flow that would be great for me and you sort of get into this mindset of just like oh wow I could I have a thousand bucks a month could I have 3000 ducks a month and so sort of like growing for the sake of growing but I gotta say like I I don't think anyone gets happy that way just growing your bank account for the sake of doing it if you have an ambitious goal and you're say I need 50 grand a month and you know why you're doing that

• 11:32Dave Meyer?

  go for it but I think the idea of just like saying oh I need 50 grand a month because it sounds like a cool number and it's bigger than my neighbor that's not a good reason you're gonna just get to 50k a month and then you're gonna be like I need 100k a month and you're just gonna keep sort of just like chasing this ambiguous goal that's not actually gonna get you anything you want

• 11:52Speaker 01

  It's okay go ahead and try it because just like just like me you're probably gonna have to touch the fire it's like you're brand new and you're like hey make the money like that's cool like make the 3000 a month make the 5000 go do it but just remember this conversation later like oh yeah Dave and Chad were talking about while I'm making the money I actually need to figure out why I'm doing this in the first place so that I can like build this thing around the real thing the real picture

• 12:12Dave Meyer?

  All right, we gotta take a quick break from our conversation with Chad but we'll be right back. Summer bookings sound great until someone slips by the pool gets hurt on your dock or damages your property during a long holiday weekend. A lot of short-term rental investors don't realize their standard policy may leave gaps when it comes to short-term rental activity. That's why investors use Steadily. They offer landlord insurance built for real estate investors including short-term rentals. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, you'll also get 5% off your landlord insurance premiums. Visit biggerpockets.com/landlordinsurance to learn more. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle?

• 12:55Dave Meyer?

  Active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress. Here's a better question. What if you could Buy brand new construction homes 10% below market value in the best markets across the country without making real estate your second job. That's exactly what rent to retirement does. They're a full-service turnkey investment company handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit biggerpockets.com/retirement to learn more.

• 13:31Henry Washington?

  Quick word about a new pro perk you'll want to know about. Aven. If you're a homeowner, there's a good chance you're sitting on equity that you're not using. The problem is tapping into that usually means a cash out refi, a traditional second mortgage, or weeks of paperwork just to get approved. Aven built something different. It's a credit card, but it's backed by your home equity. So you get a lot of the rate benefits of a HELOC with the flexibility of a card you can use anywhere. Rates are typically well below a standard credit card, approval is fast, and mostly online, and you can use it for anything. A renovation, paying down high interest debt, or just have more breathing room in your budget. And if you're a BiggerPockets Pro member, there's an extra reason to check it out. Get approved for the Aven card and you'll get a $400 statement credit after spending

• 14:16Henry Washington?

  $400 on your Aven card. Enough to cover your entire annual Pro membership. Head over to aven.com/biggerpockets to see if you qualify. Aven Financial, MLS #2042345. Cards issued per 2020 license from Visa USA, Inc. by Coastal Community Bank, MLS #462289. Member FDIC, equal housing lender, subject to approval, terms apply. Visit aven.com for details.

• 14:34Dave Meyer?

  Buying real estate has a funny way of making the future feel very real. You start thinking about mortgages, cash flow, tenants, and suddenly you realize, if something happened to me, would the people I love be okay? That's why life insurance is one of those things that's easy to put off, but is super important to actually deal with. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy, 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and potentially get same-day coverage. There's no medical exam, you just answer a few simple health questions online. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. And some policies are as low as $30 a month. Ethos helps provide financial security and helps protect the people who depend on you.

• 15:17Dave Meyer?

  Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/realestate. That's E T H O S dot com slash real estate. Application times may vary, rates may vary.

• 15:36Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm here talking about the lifestyle benefits of real estate investing with Chad Carson. But I'm curious, Chad, so what does it look like for you? You know, you are sort of the, the expert on this. Like, how have you crafted your portfolio and your lifestyle now that you've achieved a level of success? That gives you some flexibility. What have you built?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I have a 50 50 business partner. So that's one kind of context that kind of gives you, you know, the overall profile. So the two of us built this together. We have a variety of different types. We have single family houses. We have small multifamily. The biggest property we have is a 14 unit property on one, so two buildings with 14 units total. Right in kind of, and we're in Clemson, South Carolina. So it's more of a, the apartments are more student, kind of student rentals. And they're more of the affordable student rentals. Like we're on the bus line, close to downtown. And so we deliberately picked these long-term properties that were easy to rent to students, but not, not competing with the top price. They were like, the location was the, was the amenity that we're looking for. So that's the kind of profile of the type of properties we've built. And, but one of the things that we, I really believe in, I think we've talked about this on a prior conversation,

• 16:42Speaker 01

  is that you have different strategies for different times of your career. And when you're a starter, you're just getting your first deal or two, do the house hacking. You know, you don't have much money, just leverage whatever you can, like just get your foot in the door, get in the game, learn a bunch. That's the starter. You get into builder phase, which is the long grind. And, you know, that's when you're just trying to use the burst strategy, grow, you know, leverage as much as you can, but do it safely. But you're trying to reinvest money, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. The hard part though, is in where we are now, is going, transitioning from this builder phase to the harvester phase. And it's hard because of the psychological reasons we talked about here, like taking your foot off the gas, saying you have enough, or taking a break, or taking Many retirements is psychologically not easy for me at least for the type A kind of person.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  It requires you to play a different game from a tactical standpoint, from your actual strategy. So we actually started reinvesting money in the existing portfolio that we have, sometimes paying off debt. For example, we've kind of upgraded our types of properties. So we had a property that was sort of high maintenance. Didn't attract as good of a tenants. We'd sell that one, trade it for another one that was better, higher quality. We're focusing on maintenance a lot, capital expenses, trying to optimize that. Again, it's a different game. It's a different game from a capital allocation standpoint. It's a different game from a maintenance and focus standpoint. You're not focused as focused on acquisitions at this point. You're focused on optimizing the equity that you already have so that you can have more cash flow, so you have less risk. And then a ton of time, like a ton of flexibility. That's, that's really what we're trying to optimize at this point.

• 18:08Dave Meyer?

  And this might sound sort of contrarian to real estate investors, but I, I agree with you. And I think it's also important to note that this sort of mimics the advice you are likely to get from a financial planner, even if you don't invest in real estate, like over the course of your career, as you build wealth, as you get a little bit older, any financial planner is going to tell you to reduce risk, right? That might mean slower growth, but if you're an equities investor, you know, you start your career, 80, 20 stocks to bonds, stocks are more risky than bonds. But as you get closer to your retirement, a financial planner is going to tell you, you should shift more to bonds because that's a safer investment and you have less volatility. It's kind of the same idea here, right? Like the same thing happens with debt in real estate is that

• 18:51Dave Meyer?

  it does allow you to grow, just like stocks allow you to grow, but you're inviting risk, you're inviting volatility into it. And there is an appropriate time for that, depending on your lifestyle and who you are. But protecting what you have is priority number one. Growth almost becomes like sort of a secondary priority.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  I had a hard time with this. So here's a little, maybe a mental trick that you can all think about is you have your whole portfolio. I'm not saying you have to do that with all of your portfolio. But what I am saying is like you build a fortress around part of your portfolio so that you'd never go back. Cause that's, think about the worst case scenario, like the worst case scenario is you screwing up something or the economy screwing up and you had nothing to do with it. And you losing everything, all this that you built for the last 10, 15, 20 years, like gone away. Like that's, that's just like what Warren Buffett says. He says like it's ludicrous or it's crazy to risk what you already have, this wealth you've already built for something you don't even need, like to get extra two, two points of return. It's insane. So like what, what that might look like is take five properties, pay those five properties off and have another

• 19:52Speaker 01

  five or 10 that still have long-term 3%, 4% debt. A guy I respect in California named Mike Cantu, he's an investor out there. He says he, he has each property has a job description. And so there's five free and clear properties. Maybe one, one of them pays for your health insurance. One of them pays for your travel. One of them pays for your housing. So you're building this, I call it like an income floor where you have this floor that your, your whole like financial independence rests upon and that's has low debt or no debt. It produces income. There's your best properties. Those are the ones you never want to sell. Single families, small multifamily, something that's in a really good location. And then if you want to be aggressive, you want to keep flipping, you want to have some leverage over here, do that over here, but do it separately. And either mentally separate those or maybe LLC is separate those. You're not trading like

• 20:35Speaker 01

  always growing or always being aggressive. You're just acknowledging that, all right, look, I don't want to slide all the way back. I don't want to lose the game after having our, I've already won. I've won the game. So let's not, let's not lose.

• 20:44Dave Meyer?

  I love the idea of just putting it into plain English. Like this property pays for my health insurance, or it pays for my kid's college tuition, or whatever it is. That's, that's a super cool idea. You told us a lot about how you had, you know, deleveraged. You have lower LTVs. You've built this really strong, stable, safe portfolio. Tell us about the lifestyle element of that. What has that given you in terms of your day to day?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Well, part of it's just flexibility to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. It sounds kind of funny, but like, you know, when, when most of us are in our teens, like I have a 14 year old and a 12 year old kid right now. And part of the growing up process is like, what am I going to do? Who am I going to be when I grow up? And I found for myself that when you get, you kind of ground down in the twenties and the thirties, like I think we kind of lose that curiosity about what we want to be. And so I think one of the coolest things about what real estate freedom has bought me is this opportunity to be whatever I want to be. Like I have no box, like nobody, nobody has To tell me what to do. And so this is this is sort of like a little bit philosophical. It's taken years to reflect on this, but as I've journaled and thought about it, like, what if I enjoy it? What activities do I really like to do? Or one cool journaling exercise is ask yourself,

• 21:54Speaker 01

  what would you do if you would pay to do it? Like the kind of activity, if you find yourself on the weekend, just doing it for three hours on the Saturday, because that's just what you want to do. For some people, that's like building stuff with their hands, carpentry. Some people, that's gardening. Some people, that's caring for other people, like, you know, like volunteering and donating. For me, it was teaching. Like, I really, really liked teaching. And so I've just kind of leaned into that and said, like, where can I do this on my own, still fit flexible in my life? And so, you know, having a podcast and teaching has been something I've leaned into a lot. And Bigger Pockets is really awesome enough to let me write two books.

• 22:27Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, you did a great job.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Thank you. So that's been, that's kind of one part of my life that I've been able to explore that a little bit. It wasn't a, it wasn't a money choice. It's turned into a little bit of a business now too. So that's kind of fun, but it's for many, many years, it was just like, this is just a hobby. I'm writing a hundred thousand words a year just because I like to do it and I want to, I just like ideas and exploring. So from a personal standpoint, it's been kind of cool to not have the constraints of a job, a boss, a career that's saying, you have to go this way of just saying, what do you want to do? And I think even more importantly for me is my wife, when we have that conversation, she admits it. She's like the, she's a teacher. She always worked in the classroom as a professor of Spanish. And so for her, like, the box is actually kind of nice showing up at a place and going there. And she, she appreciated that side of the work, but she also didn't like the meetings and the,

• 23:14Speaker 01

  all these hassles you have to do in a university system. So she's sort of explored her own career of, how can I teach privately? How can I learn? She's, she's a Spanish teacher, but she also teaches English now. And so she's practicing, like, how do I teach that privately in the community? Even if I don't make any money, like that's what something we've, we've talked about her, like her model of being a private teacher. She's like, well, all the people who need me can't afford to pay me any money. I'm like, well, you can charge whatever you want. You can say, hey, bring me a meal, pay me 10 bucks, you know, whatever. We don't need the money. Like it's, it's, and so that's been really cool to lean in on like, what would you do professionally as a calling? Whether you made money or not.

• 23:50Dave Meyer?

  Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm so glad for you and your wife that you figured it out. I'm, I happen to be one of those lucky people who likes their full-time job. So I have not left that. But honestly, one of the things I'm most proud of in my life, and especially in real estate, is like, my wife used to work in tech. She had a very successful career, but just sort of never really liked it. And over the last couple of years has been able to, she goes back to school and she wants to be in landscape design and she's become one. But you know, she spends a lot of her time now volunteering in community food gardens that grow food for underprivileged people. She donates a lot of her time to different organizations around town.

• 24:32Dave Meyer?

  And I just love, sort of similar with what your wife, I just love that our real estate like supports that, that we are good. She doesn't need to maximize every single hour of her day for making money. She could do some part of it for making money because she wants to, but other parts she just does because she's super passionate about. And I think that's, it's one of the greatest gifts that real estate has given us as a family. And I'm just super proud that like I've, you know, real estate and being in this for so long has allowed us to give back to the community and do what we both love.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  If you're doing, I don't know, bookkeeping for the last 20 years because that's what pays the bills, or you're a doctor because that's what makes a lot of money, but you should have been a high school football coach. And that's, you know, you should have done that because that's what your passion is. That doesn't go away, by the way, that if you push that down, you're just, you're gonna regret. You're gonna have like, I should have done that. I wish I would have done that. Like, we talk about this as like, hey, this is kind of cool, but like, no, I think this is like, this is like the imperative of why financial independence and freedom can be so, you know, life-changing is because you as a person, we as a person, need to be able to evolve and find the thing that's really important to us. If we want to be like really fulfilled and have a, have a life that's really enjoyable and purposeful

• 25:44Speaker 01

  over a long period of time. So that's, that's my little soapbox there about, this is, this is beyond just real estate numbers. This is really important.

• 25:51Dave Meyer?

  It is. And I know that, of course, being in real estate and being professional investors, there is of course a financial element, but it has To be so what it can't be money for money's sake, as you said, and like, look at just these couple of examples that Chad and I are talking about of the avenues that financial independence opens up for you. It doesn't mean, you know, I'm not proudest of the number of my bank account. I'm proudest that my wife gets to go serve our community, you know, and that's super cool. And I, I hear that consistently, not just from you, Chad, but from a lot of people who I respect in this industry. That's what they're proudest of. And for me, that's what motivates me, you know, it keeps me going and, you know, makes me, when you do get those inevitable things about your

• 26:35Dave Meyer?

  real estate portfolio that annoy you or frustrating or don't go well, it's not, oh, I wish I had three grand more in my bank account. It's if, you know, you think about these actual tangible things in your life, at least for me, I find that super motivating.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  I've got one more example, if you don't mind me sharing it's that I think will kind of bring, bring this idea home. There's this, my wife and I are, we're into walking, like we just, when we're in Europe and we visited you in the Netherlands, we were walking all over the place. We liked to bike. So it's just, it's just a thing for us. We like active lifestyle. And when we had kids, and they're now 14 and 12, when they were like one and two, we would push them in the stroller in our local town of Clemson, and we got so frustrated that the sidewalks were bad and they ended and we had to cross this road with a bad no crosswalk. And so this is a very particular problem. Not everybody was worried about this problem, but we were very passionate about this, like this has got to be fixed. And so we got involved and like helped start a nonprofit called the Friends of the Green Crescent Trail to build this network of walking and biking trails

• 27:29Speaker 01

  in a small college town in the South that was all auto centric. It was not very walkable at all. This project is something we've been working on for 10 years now, like when our kids were two, now they're 12 and 14. And it's coming along, but this is like, this is one of those examples of, we had to use all the skills that we've used in real estate. So like, so those of us who are entrepreneurs, we learned how to market and, you know, sell things. We learned how to raise money. We learned how to, you know, go talk to local city officials and figure out how things work there with the laws. All these skills that I used in real estate, I've had to use the same skills to solve this local social problem, which is really important to us. So it's been very, very satisfying and that I've used my professional Skills. I've made zero money. In fact, we've donated a ton of money to this. I don't ever want

• 28:14Speaker 01

  to make any money, but like the little, those asphalt and cement paths that are now like three or four miles in our town. And then we have another three or four miles that are about to come on are some of the most satisfying things that I've ever built, like better than any rental property I've built. Like I walk on those things and I'm just this pride. All this this is to say is that you can use these assets, these mental skills, these knowledge you built, the money you have to solve some problem, whether it's building trails, whether it's affordable housing, whatever it is for you, there's this huge opportunity, like as many problems and needs as there are in our community, there are needs for entrepreneurs and problem solvers like us who have resources, who have time, who have energy to go out and solve those

• 28:55Speaker 01

  problems. If it's anything like my experience, it'll be like 10 or 100 times more satisfying because nobody else is doing this stuff. Like there's just nobody, nobody trying to solve these problems from our kind of entrepreneurial standpoint. And so it's super rewarding and I encourage everybody to like, use your time for that. Like figure out something that has to be solved and use the same energy you use to go build your wealth to go solve that problem. And it'll be very rewarded in the places where you live.

• 29:24Dave Meyer?

  That's truly, truly inspirational. I think it's, it's really commendable that you did that. So congratulations. We do have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from chat.

• 29:35Dave 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 pricing through December 14.

• 30:20Dave Meyer?

  So snag HostingGur services at their lowest prices before the sale ends. Create your website today for just $1.99. Go to hostinggur.com/realestate and use code REALESTATE for an additional 10% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday pricing. 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

• 31:04Dave Meyer?

  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. You can partner with a vetted local co-host who can create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and even handle the styling. So I get to fully focus on my trip and my place is still working for me the whole time. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com/host. Investing in real estate has always been smart, but it hasn't always been simple. Now it's both, thanks to the Fundrise Flagship Fund. The Fundrise Flagship Fund launched more than five years ago with a mission of delivering

• 31:47Dave Meyer?

  low-fee access to blue-chip private market real estate. Today, the Fundrise Flagship Fund has grown to manage more than $1 billion of real estate on behalf of hundreds of thousands of investors, making it one of the largest funds of its kind. For those who believe real estate has an important role to play in their portfolio strategy, the Fundrise Flagship Fund has positioned itself as both a simple and a smart option. Whether you're starting with $10 or $10,000, the Fundrise Flagship Fund makes adding real estate's unique potential for both passive income and consistent growth. Just visit fundrise.com/pockets to make your first investment today. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise

• 32:32Dave Meyer?

  Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com/flagship. This is a paid advertisement.

• 32:42Henry Washington?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value built on a reputation for quality and reliability.

• 33:26Henry 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. BiggerPockets Real Estate is brought to you by MOD. MOD prescribes a once-or-twice-daily modophonal drink that can keep you energized, focused, and alert throughout the day. Here's the mechanism. Energy drinks with caffeine temporarily block eudinecine, the chemical that makes you tired. It builds up, and when the caffeine wears off, it all crashes down on you at once. Modafinil works differently. It engages multiple pathways in your brain, dopamine, norepinephrine, histamine, and orexin

• 34:09Henry Washington?

  to achieve steady energy and alertness for 10 to 12 hours. Modafinil was invented in the 1970s, and since it's been used in the highest performers on the planet, soldiers, pilots, and astronauts aboard the space station use modafinil in high-stakes situations where full concentration and alertness are paramount. It's now available at mod.com to qualifying patients. Visit mod.com, that's M-O-D dot com, for free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code BPRE. That's promo code BPRE at mod.com. See their website for important safety information, and we thank MOD for sponsoring the pod.

• 34:54Dave Meyer?

  Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. You know, we got to hang out in Amsterdam. I lived there for five years, which is part of my own real estate journey. I didn't stop working, but I guess you'd call it a mini-retirement. Is that a break from my normal life to go try something new? Well, you know, I know you, you took your kids there, right? For a year, like, can you tell us about that experience?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  I kind of finished my mini-retirement story from earlier that we, we've done that periodically every three, four years. So we did it before we had kids. We went for four months to South America and Spain. When we had kids and they were three and five, we went to Ecuador for 17 months. And our specific goal was, hey, this would be cool. We want to live abroad and it would be cool for our kids to speak a foreign language. So they went to local schools, local preschool, local elementary school. And it was so, it was the moment that about five months in where my, we were sitting around the dinner table, I was ahead of my kids in Spanish before they had like five words, but we started speaking Spanish five months in and they were correcting me saying, Papa, no se dice eso. And they, they were embarrassed about my accent, how bad my accent was. I was like, yes, this is great. Yeah.

• 35:54Dave Meyer?

  You'd be proud to be that embarrassed.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Proud Papa, you know? And so it was really, it was really cool, not only to have it, us have that experience, but our, you know, give that gift of our kids when they were three and five. And then we did it again in 2022 and 23, we lived for 12 months in Granada, Spain, in southern Spain and just had an amazing experience. The kids went to school, this, in this case, a little bit older in elementary school. I don't know what those experiences will be like for them long run, but I feel like from a family standpoint, we really grew closer. Anyone who has kids, you know how fast things go. For us, it was like pressing pause for a year at a time and just, and just really slowing things down. And that, that to me has been one of the biggest gifts that real estate investing and this time that has been given for me as a family member, it's just been amazing. Like just to be able to walk to school every day with them, to see their evolution and

• 36:41Speaker 01

  growth, just to, you know, kind of experience these things with them. Not everybody's into travel and going abroad, but if you're able, if you're able to do that, whether you have kids or whether you don't have kids, just the experience of living abroad, whether it's a month, two months, a year, five years, like you did, to me is just a game changer. It's, it's one of those really life-changing experiences that not only you have enjoy it, but it changes. Is how you think and how you experience people and the relationships you built. And so that was definitely the case for us.

• 37:06Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, it was probably one of the best, if not the best experience of my life. I'm glad it was the same for you. I didn't do it with with children. But the thing I love about is you don't need to go abroad. If you don't like traveling, that's fine. But I just like sort of taking a break to challenge myself was kind of the the goal. And just to get out of the comfort zone. I had a great life in Denver. I loved it. I had a lot of friends and a great job, you know? And it was kind of like, let's just, you know, shake things up a little bit. And I think I'm so much better for it. You have to sacrifice. You give up some things. You gain some things. But it was an absolutely invaluable experience for me. So tell me a little bit just about the real estate side of this, right? Because you've obviously created this. Like, how much time are you spending on real estate? And how easy is it for you to sort of unplug for a month?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  It goes in cycles. Like when I was in Spain, I I measured this when I was in Spain and Ecuador, I would typically spend two, three hours a week on my kind of just every day, pay the bills, that kind of stuff. And the reason it this is, I used to work 80 hours a week in real estate. So let's like, put this in perspective. It took me years to build up a team and systems to get to the point where I could have be passive enough, you know, where I had two or three hours a week and I could do it remotely. That's the goal. There are seasons of your career, though, where like, if we're going to sell a property, if we're going to buy a new property, then yeah, it's not going to be two, three hours a week. I'm going to put more time into it. But the baseline properties that produce the income is two or three hours a week. It's to do the tax return at the end of the year. And I have a really awesome team, though. Like I have two, two different property managers

• 38:33Speaker 01

  who manage most of our college student rentals because those are a little bit more intensive for the leasing and the maintenance kind of side of things. And I I work really closely with them. But but the thing is, like, when problems happen, like every week, there's something. But it's typically like, hey, this hot water heater went out. I know we have a $500 limit on what we spend. This is going to cost more than 500. Are you okay with us replacing the hot water heater? Yes, replace it. It takes me like half a second. So very rarely is it like me having to do some hard thinking. Sometimes I'm having like, I went to a property recently, or I have some pictures of a property that I decided to go look at it, where it needed beyond the normal landscaping. I'm like, oh, man, this this tree needs to come down. This these bushes need to be. It's more like. Use your creative energy, your real estate knowledge to sort of help this property out. So every once in a while you do a little more involvement.

• 39:18Dave Meyer?

  You know, you're talking about like putting your head to work occasionally. When you don't do it that often, it is kind of fun, you know, when you have to do it and you're just like in it all the time. It's just, it's work. Since moving back to the US, I've like really like fallen in love with real estate investing again. Like I was just investing passively. I did buy a couple of properties, you know, but just like being there and, you know, being onsite, looking at deals, going to acquisitions, talking to contractors, like now that I do it and have more of a system where I'm not just frantically just like responding to things and panicking and freaking out all the time, which was probably the first 10 years of my investing career. It's fun again, you know, and I think that's the really cool part of this is being able to do it when you choose, as you choose,

• 40:03Dave Meyer?

  and having it fit into your lifestyle makes it fun. And you just can't let it run your life or it sort of defeats the entire purpose of you getting into this industry in the first place.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  I agree. There's, there's this other benefit that is non-monetary that I wanted to say is that I didn't think this of it originally, but now that I've been in the business for 22 years, the craft of real estate is super satisfying. I like the details, like I, I think that's, I think that's something different about real estate. A lot of people like, there is a negative word to say, real estate is not passive. I'm going to go buy stocks. I'm like, okay, that's cool. Like if you want to be completely hands off, but like the people get into real estate, they actually, there's some part of the business that is satisfying to them. Like the actual craft of it, there's the people who want to turn a property around and have it look beautiful after it used to look ugly. That's satisfying. There's a legacy you're leaving with that property. Some people love the spreadsheet. Hey, I, you know, I got to run the numbers and I'm, I'm involved and I'm having to figure that out. You know, some people like the, the team and the maintenance.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  And to me, the bottom line is like, it's a never-ending process of mastery. Like it's a craft. It's like, it's like the person who's a carpenter has to like, for the rest of their life, they get a little bit better and a little bit better. It's never over. Like we're never, I'm 22 years into this business and I'm still learning things that I didn't know, you know, yesterday. And that's awesome. That's, that's a good thing, right? We need these things, like we need something to use our skills and our time and our brains. Like it's okay to have some passive investments, but the benefit of real estate. Is that you get to contribute your time and you get to have a little control over it. It's not a totally passive thing that you can step into it when you need to and you get to because you have real people as your tenants, you have real people as your property manager. I'm close to those people, I have relationships with them and that's so satisfying and I

• 41:37Speaker 01

  undervalued that in the beginning, but it's one of the most satisfying parts about it is the reality of it, the fact that it is tangible, it's not passive, it's something I'm connected to.

• 41:46Dave Meyer?

  Yeah, I think that the malleable part of real estate is so nice, like you can craft it and shape it and form it to whatever you want it to be. And I agree that saying that it's not passive, I agree, it's a benefit. If you want to be passive, just go invest in the stock market. Like that is a perfectly fine way to build wealth and plan for retirement. If you want to be a little bit more hands-on and a little bit more creative and involved, which is fun. I think that's why, like you said, that's why people become entrepreneurs is because you want that degree of control. And like you said, it's needed and I think it's needed in the community. Like I love the fact, you know, I get a lot of pride when someone moves out after five or six years and says, this is the best place I ever

• 42:31Dave Meyer?

  lived, or I love living here, I'm sad to leave. Like I love that, you know, being able to provide a positive experience and mutual benefit between me and my tenant, like that's what business should be. And I like being able to create my own business that sort of lives up to the expectations that I would have if I were a renter, you know, and sort of just creating these positive experiences. And if you are so in it and you're just focused on that number in your bank account going up, I think you missed that because, you know, you see every, you know, hot water heater breaking as some, you know, money out of your pocket instead of sort of just this inevitable ebb and flow of building a long-term, stable, profitable, mutually beneficial business.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Well said.

• 43:15Dave Meyer?

  Well, Chad, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. Anything else before we get out of here? Again, this has been so fun. I think you're such an inspiration to the community. I think you really embody everything that BiggerPockets was founded on and I just truly respect your perspective and approach to real estate. State. So thanks again for being here.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  No, thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun. And if people hear this and they think, you know, whether if you're a brand new investor and you're on your journey, like wherever you are, you can, you can figure this out. It's not something you're going to figure out overnight. So I just encourage people to keep, keep like looking at the long run of the business, why you got into it. And you're on the right track, like even if it's hard right now, especially if it's hard, this thing goes up and down, but over the long run, you're making a really good decision to do what you're doing. And Dave and I are fans, obviously, and I'm even more a fan now 22 years later than I was when I started. I love this business.

• 44:04Dave Meyer?

  Well, if you want to learn more from Chad, like I definitely do, you could check out his YouTube channel, which is Coach Chad Carson. He's also written two great books for BiggerPockets, which you can find on biggerpockets.com/store. Thanks again, Chad, and thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We'll see you next time.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended blinds.com.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space and budget, customers who shop at blinds.com experienced overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night sleep and a sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Shop Black Friday all month long at blinds.com.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  Don't miss huge deals dropping every week.

• 44:54Speaker 05

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.