From Money Wounds to Wealth: My Real Estate Awakening

In this episode, your host, Ann Reed, gets vulnerable and shares her personal story about money wounds, and how they've played a role in her journey as a real estate investor. Top takeaways from this episode are:

1. Your Money Story Shapes Your Investment Path

Ann opens up about the generational money patterns she inherited—and how recognizing those patterns helped her rewrite her financial future through real estate investing.

2. Real Estate Wasn’t Just the Plan—It Was the Breakthrough

When family needs collided with money fears, Ann and her husband used home equity to build an ADU—and unknowingly launched their real estate investing journey.

3. Equity Is Energy—Use It Wisely

Ann demystifies equity, showing how it can be a powerful, tax-free way to scale your portfolio when used strategically and responsibly.

4. Get In the Game—and Stay In It

Real wealth is built over time. The key isn’t a perfect market or background—it’s consistency and commitment to staying in the game.

5. Don’t Trade Your Life for Money—Design Both

For Ann, real estate is about more than income—it’s about freedom. Freedom to choose time with family, pursue joy, and live fully.

Want to learn more about real estate investing? Follow me on IG @annreedandco where I share daily musings on real estate, mindfulness, being an almost empty nester, and more. 

Looking for additional support, community, and accountability to help you build your real estate portfolio? Hop on the waitlist for the Soulful Investor Society, a community membership for real estate investors and those who'd like to get in the game. Once on the waitlist, you'll be the first to know when the doors open AND you'll get lots of amazing freebies, including a FREE 1:1 coaching session with me, where we'll map out your plan from start to finish, so you can finally buy that investment property and scale your portfolio. 

Helpful books mentioned on this episode.

Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza

https://drjoedispenza.com/product-details/Becoming%20Supernatural

 Abundant Ever After by Cathy Heller 

https://www.cathyheller.com/abundant-ever-after-book-1

 The Mystic Jesus by Marianne Williamson
https://marianne.com/books/

Transcript

I am recording this first solo episode, something that I've been thinking about for quite a while actually, and pretty seriously about for the last couple of months, I've been meaning to record this and today the universe just gave me the nudge that I needed.

I was actually recording another episode with some amazing women and we got done, and for whatever reason, it did not record.

I've never had that happen. That episode was supposed to be dropping Next week. I'm a little bit behind on back logging episodes. So now I need an episode.

Here we go. The story that I've been wanting to share, is really, I guess this is, a good segue. Sometimes what you see is you have a story about it and what you think that person is like, the reality for that person.

I don't know if I have anyone thinking that I have it all together. I certainly don't as witnessed by or as evidenced by making a mistake and not, recording an episode. So now I have to rerecord it. But I also think sometimes that there is a perception that because we have investment properties, that we come from money, that we have a lot of money.

There's all these stories that people tell themselves about the type of people that are able to invest in real estate. I want to set the record straight. I'm almost 53 years, or I am 53 years old. I just don't have time for, in authenticity. I am all about authenticity, and I want you to know that i've said it before, and I'll say it again and again and again, that if we can invest in real estate, anybody can really, so I won't speak to my husband's story because we do do this as, in a partnership with each other, but I can tell you from my perspective that I 100% do not come from money. I do not come from a family that necessarily was taught or taught me how to invest in real estate. And in fact, my parents lost a lot.

I mean, almost everything in the 2008 real estate crash and the ensuing, recession.

 A little background on my parents, and part of the reason that I have been hesitant to share this is because I don't want any sort of shame or blame or anything to my parents because they are amazing people.

I, I feel very blessed to have them as my parents. That said, I think all parents do the, the best that they can, including myself, I'm sure I'm passing along things to my kids. Unintentionally, or, just a byproduct of doing the best I can, but I'm not perfect. None of us are.

I want you to know that I feel like very, very blessed that I had my parents as my parents.

And it's also true that the way that I was raised, I inherited a lot of issues with money. My parents were very typical entrepreneurs in that, they had a craft. My dad was a sign maker and he did amazing work and decided that because he was so good at that, that he should have his own business after having spent years working for somebody else. My mom ended up joining him, and they had this business literally from the time I was in grade school.

For most of my life, we lived a life of two parents in the same business. And to be really honest, you know, they didn't have the experience of college degrees. They didn't have the experience of parents who were teaching them how to be entrepreneurs, so it's actually really impressive that they figured things out as well as they did.

They also prioritized having us live in an area that was not an easy place to make a living, especially if you didn't come there with money. I grew up in Bend, Oregon, and at the time, they wanted us to have good schools, which we did, and they prioritized, having this sort of outdoor lifestyle, which we also did.

That was amazing. Also what happened as a result of them living where they did doing what they did for a living money was,  kind of not, kind of money was unsteady. It was not a reliable thing in our life. And if you have studied anything about money and or energy, you know that money is energy.

When you have huge fluctuations in your income, that is actually  an energetic fluctuation as well, and that can be very difficult for children to be really honest. I didn't realize until, till very late in my life, very recently actually, how much that impacted me and my own story with money. I think it's interesting that long before I had this realization, like I did on a surface level, obviously know, like,  money, it caused a lot of arguments with my parents, which obviously that trickles down to kids.

There were conversations where we,  couldn't do certain things because we didn't have the money to do it, and our parents were open with us about that. Those were like the obvious things, but there's also some kind of deeper rooted things that, that I've carried for a long time.

A couple of years ago I was at a retreat for real estate people, and I remember this was sort of my first, awakening to the, the issues that I had with money. And there were blocks, honestly.

I remember being out in the desert. I was in Arizona and having a conversation about what I wanted to do in the future, like how I envisioned myself and the leader of the retreat was really kind of in my face because I was like, I just want to, you know, sit on a beach and enjoy life and stuff like that. And she was like, no, you don't. And I was like, yes, I do. And I don't know why, but because of that conversation, I, I was really upset about it, honestly.

I was like, what is wrong with me? You know, why, what, what, what do I want? I came to the realization that I had a belief that having a kind of good life or being loved and having an amazing family was, you had to choose between that and having money. I did not even have any clue that that was something that I was carrying.

And of course that's not true. Like you everything is possible, like you don't have to choose one or the other. So that was the first step for me in understanding that I had some deep seated,  beliefs about money and that I needed to get to work on processing those and choosing the story that I wanted to have about money.

And so I got to work, but it hasn't been super easy because not only did those money stories kind of follow me into, my marriage, into my parenting, into,  my business. But my parents also had not resolved their own money story. So now in addition to having the effects of growing up with  sort of this idea around money that that wasn't super healthy. Now I'm an adult and I've got my own family and I have kids to take care of, college to pay for, and I have adult parents who, because they didn't resolve their own money issues, now they were coming to me asking for help solving some of their money problems, which is a really difficult position to be in as an adult kid.

And it, it carries on to this day. They've never wanted to burden me or my brother with their money  issues. But it's sort of inevitable because you get into a place of having to choose, helping out financially or not.

Then if you choose not to, how are you able to do that if you know that they need some help  and you choose not to for whatever reason. Then there's guilt, there's worry, there's all sorts of things that can happen.

I will say that some of these money issues were exactly what we needed to put us on the path of our own real estate investment journey.

 I think on some level, I knew that there was a money story from my upbringing that existed. Because the way I was raised, I don't know that I knew this was different than other people, but in my household there were parents that were working as entrepreneurs together in a business.

Oftentimes those business issues, which often involved money, would be brought home with, sometimes joy and elation, like, oh wow, this was really great. And sometimes more often than the joy was,  stress or even arguments about money or, how are we going to, there was just, there was a lot, money felt like a tension in my family oftentimes, and it, I don't know how to explain that from the perspective of, it wasn't like we were in poverty.

It wasn't like I ever felt like I wasn't gonna have a roof over my head or, food or any, it wasn't that. It was just a constant source of tension and being very aware of when, like, when business was up and being very aware when money was tight and in fact kind of learning later. That,  there was a time where we had to, we moved and it turns out it was because we needed to sell our house and, get that money for other purposes.

So there were those kinds of awarenesses, but my awareness of how much that had affected me was only a couple of years ago where I was at a retreat and was working through some things and I realized that  I a belief that, having a loving family and good relationships, like that was our sort of big win in our family is despite the fact that we had these issues.

There, it was always like, we have each other. And I think I had separated those two. Like it's either or, you either, focus on your family or have a lot of money, but those two things don't coexist. And I don't know why, but I just had this aha moment of like, that's ridiculous.

When I was a kid, there was a story about somebody that was quote unquote rich in my school,  had asked me and this, I was a kid, so she was, her dad was a big like car dealership owner. And they had a lot of money. And they did a lot of things that showed that they had a lot of money.

She asked me if I was rich and I was like, I was a little bit of a toughie when I was a kid. Not in a like bully way, but I didn't back down. And I was like, yeah, we're rich. Just not in money. But that's interesting 'cause that was a belief, like I did feel rich, but not necessarily in money.

 That's a long lead up to having this aha of like, wait a minute, you can have, you can have it all. And why are you believing subconsciously? It was a very subconscious belief that came to the surface at this retreat of you can focus on your family and, be rich not in money and in money at the same time.

Once you realize that, I think people on some level know, like if you  avoid looking at your bank account or you feel tight or stressed in your body, thinking about money, spending money, even receiving money, I think those are some signs.

Another sign that you probably have some issue with money is if you don't feel like you have enough money. So then what do you do with that?

I think you have to understand ' cause it does, it's not just a one and done thing. I think you just have to start to recognize. first recognize that it exists and then start recognizing when it comes up in your daily life. And rather than try to change it, I think you have to sit with it and try to understand where those feelings are coming from and not judge it.

Just kind of sit with it. And I think then you start to get more of the story of why you have the issue with money. And then there are some things that you can do that regulate your nervous system really around money, where you can make a daily practice of forcing yourself to look at your bank account and do that daily, no matter what the number is.

You can look around in your life and look for the positive of what is happening and start associating the positive with whatever that number in your bank account. Sometimes it might be up, sometimes it might be down, but really getting comfortable with what is. I think another huge thing that I've done is understanding just how energy works. That we, everything starts from energy.

Energy creates matter and money is just an, an exchange of energy.

Just like some people have  stories that from their childhood, from their past that impact their relationships or their health, or, there's a lot of different energetic possibilities, and ways that energy manifests in our lives. That money is just one of those things.

Recognizing where you are and regulating your nervous system. We had a great conversation with Erin Wallen about regulating your nervous system. That's why I think it's such an important part of investing is   you have to regulate your nervous system in order to be a better receiver. And I mean that both energetically and having a bigger capacity to receive in all areas, but money being one of them.

 Personally, a big part of that journey for me, and when you say how did I resolve them, the money issues, I haven't, you know, it's a constant work in progress for me.  And I'm really, really curious about all. Of the energetics, in my life. I have a lot of practices in my life that  help me one tune into what is my most authentic self so that I can recognize when I'm veering away from that alignment.

That's what we're talking about with being in alignment is like, you know, when you feel really, really good and really, really you and so much of our time, because of so many different reasons we are, we get off course. So constantly checking in and,  just recognizing and doing your best to,  get back on course.

So interestingly, my, , some people do a word of the year. My word of the year this year is radio. And it's because it's a reminder to constantly be tuning that dial back to the station, which is my authentic self. And recognizing when things are getting a little staticky or a little fuzzy and going, oh, okay, is this where I wanna be going?

Nope, I'm gonna go do this.

I think it depends on what kind of a learner you are, to be really honest. For some people, they're,  they can absorb a lot of things from reading books or things like that.

For me, I like the energetics of being in community with other people that value and prioritize that kind of constant  improvement of awareness of where you are with your own energy.

I have, Several different groups that I belong to, but probably the biggest one right now. Which is the,  person who taught, I took a course from her, her name's Kathy Heller., She is really great about, teaching.

 I found her because of learning. I wanted to learn how to podcast. And she popped up in Instagram, which by the way, I don't think was by accident at all. And I very spur of the moment was like, oh, yeah, I wanna learn how to podcast so that I can do all these different things with the podcast.

 And it turns out she is, has been a great teacher for me. I think being in community, being committed to,  being a learner. I can suggest some of the books that I've read. If you're really wanting to dive into energy,  there's a book called Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza.  Another one that I feel like is a really good, gauge of where your energy is, is the Mystic Jesus by Maryanne Williamson.  And then Kathy Huller actually has a, she's got two books, but the one, her most recent one is called, abundant Ever After.

 Those books are great. There's a lot of different communities that you can be a part of to work on this.

 I think it would be really rare for somebody just knowing what I know about energy and nervous systems, and I feel like I've just barely the surface. 

I think that it would be really rare for somebody to identify this and have an instant fix.

And to be really honest, I don't think that's the point anyway, because it's all of like, it's there. It's meant for you to be learning from this, and it's really is the journey of the learning that matters the most. 

 One of the ways that that transpired is that at one point my parents were talking about maybe coming and living with us.

We did a bunch of the A DU tours, we talked about it. They would get really close to doing it, and then they would back off and decide not to do it.

After becoming a realtor, shortly after becoming a realtor, I had taken a class, you've probably heard this before, called Get Rich Slow, and it was with a lender named Vince Kingston.

And he opened my eyes so much to the possibility that real estate investing held that I took it and ran with it. I was super excited about it. So my husband and I, you know I talked to him about it. We got on the same page and following Vince's, his advice of leveraging the equity in your home to invest in real estate rather than investing in real estate in another property, we built our A DU and the idea, the whole really the, I would say the nudge there was we decided after going back and forth with my parents for a very long time, that we would just go ahead and take the equity out, bill the a DU. Then we could rent it out on Airbnb and then if my parents ever decided that they needed or wanted to live with us, that that a DA was already built.

So from that perspective, I'm grateful because I don't know, I mean, I see this a lot in my business where people talk about investing in real estate and they get kind of right up to the edge and then they pull back and decide not to do it. So maybe these same kind of money issues that my parents had and handed down to me and my brother.

Maybe that's the, the blessing, right? Like to help us take the next step. I don't know. I kind of think it is because so many people don't do it, and we did it out of wanting to make a better life for ourself.

But also I will say that they're, they're thinking about possibly living with us, was really what pushed, pushed us over the edge into doing it.

That was the beginning for us, was building that a DU. I'm grateful to my parents for helping us in that way. And I will say that I, maybe I wouldn't have been as interested or in tune to learning from Vince if I didn't have this, this need.

Part of the need for me was, wanting to make, quite frankly, like I wanted to end up in a better place than where my parents had been in retirement.

And so far that has worked out really, really well.

For many years I stayed home with my kids and wasn't working. When they got to a point in grade school, I think our youngest was in like fourth grade, I decided to get my real estate license and figured that that would be a way for me to make up for lost time for those years of not earning or not earning that much, while I was staying home with my kids.

I feel like the real estate investing is really, it's working out for us. Since we we built that a DU, we have done the same thing again. We've taken money out of that property. When we built the A DU, obviously the value of that property goes up. So we have more equity there. And we've taken that out and we've been able to kind of rinse and repeat this two more times.

We have a total of four units that are doing well. And we've learned a lot along the way. Some of the other things that I can say about the money issues is I know a lot of people know that they're going to get money from their parents. When their parents pass away. Both my husband and I do not have that option.

We know that it is completely up to us, like what our retirement looks like, what our future looks like. It is completely up to us.

So far real estate investing has been good. Both in the short term for us, but also we really, really look at it like planting seeds for the future. Because we know from Vince's classes and also just from our own experience, that all of these different factors like home values in Portland tend to double every 10 to 12 years.

So if we purchased a home for $500,000 in 10 to 12 years, that home should be worth closer to a million dollars. That's money that we can then take equity out.

Equity is not a, a taxable event. It you're actually creating debt so you can take that out and there's ways to do that, and have other people be paying down that new loan or mortgage.

Accessing equity, so taking equity out of your home is what I'm talking about. That's either through a home equity line of credit or, a cash out refi. You'll hear people talk either about equity or even in the stock market and say like, well my stock portfolio just plummeted 20% or whatever.

And it's like, well, that's just on paper. And that's, that's true, right? The same as sort of the, it's the same thing with equity. Like in your home you have, equity, which is money. It's like the difference between what you owe on the home and what the value of the home is, which by the way, is sort of, up to interpretation to a certain extent. The only true way to know the value of a home or anything else is what you actually sell it for.

The same, same thing with the stock market, right? It's like you can say the is what the stock is, but that's all based on what it sold, what it lasts, sold for, and then two seconds later it sells for.

So, you know, like that's the only true way to know what the value is. And that's very much a moving target. What I mean when I say equity is not a taxable event, it is money. What you can do with a home equity line of credit is again, you have an appraisal which determines the amount, that is the value of your home.

Then what typically happens is there's different ratios. So you can get sometimes up to 90% loan to value. Let's take, I'm gonna use a million dollars because that's a little easier number for, for me to work with. But let's say you have a home that's worth a million dollars and the bank or whoever you're working with says that you can have a 90% loan to value.

That means that of that million dollar value, you could borrow up to $900,000. But what you have to do is subtract what you owe on the home from that $900,000. So let's say you owed $500,000 on the home,  you take the million dollars times, point nine, to get the 90%, 900,000 minus 500,000 gives you $400,000.

What happens with a home equity line of credit is you go through a process that's actually quite simple and you can essentially have that $400,000 at your disposal within days. And it is a line of credit, so it, it sort of functions like a credit card, but, the interest rates are way better than a credit card.

But you essentially then have access to $400,000 worth of cash.  So when I say that's not a taxable event, if you earned $400,000, you would be taxed on that. If you had gains in certain types of, in investments gains of $400,000, you would be taxed on gains with this type of accessing equity, you give that $400,000 to use however you would like.

I feel like there's good responsible ways to use that because it is creating debt. You do have to pay it back. And when I say you, it doesn't have to be you personally. Ideally it's like your tenants or renters or you know, somebody else is paying that back for you. But you get the benefit of that $400,000 and you pay zero tax on it, and you can do that over and over and over again.

So when I talk about buying homes and planting seeds for the future. I'll back it up even more. So you can buy a home for very little down if you buy it as a primary residence, you can go as low as for most people, like three and a half percent with an FHA if you don't, there's, you know, tighter restrictions on an FHA home or loan.

So 5% is a feasible conventional loan down payment. You can also do 0% if you're a veteran and you wanna take that, benefit.

 So for $50,000 down, you can have control of a million dollar asset if you're buying that as an investment property. The idea is that you would crunch your numbers and your, your whatever kind of renter, that you choose to have, whether it's short-term, long-term, midterm, co-living, whatever it is, you have determined that those renters will be able to pay enough to at least cover the mortgage.

In my interview with Vince Kingston, he's even makes an argument for even if you're just a little bit short every month, it can still be beneficial.

So even if your renters aren't covering everything, the way he puts it is we blindly put money into 4 0 1 Ks without thinking about it with an expectation of return.

So if you think about that, if it's a couple hundred dollars a month that you're short, think of it as like the same way you would putting money into 401k, but let's just say that your renters are paying that down for you.

Historically speaking. We have evidence dating back to the 1960s that in Portland, Oregon, and actually in most of the, the country, decade, for decade homes tend to double in value.

So 10 to 12 years on average, they double in value. 10 years from now, in 2035,  your $50,000 down payment, you now have a $2 million asset that you only paid $50,000 to control plus closing costs .

Okay, here's the example. So, if you had a million dollar home. And you owed $500,000 on that home, you essentially then have $400,000 of equity that you can access if you were doing a 90% loan to value home equity line of credit. What I would do with that $400,000 is, depending on where you are in wanting to build your real estate portfolio, if you are in, really wanting to acquire properties, this isn't gonna be for everybody.

But what I would suggest doing with that $400,000 is buying a new primary residence using that home equity line of credit. This is if you wanna maximize your equity, buy a new primary residence. That's what you can get into for as low, zero if you're a veteran, 3.5%. If you're doing an FHA loan, most likely if you're buying a million dollar or have a million dollar home, you're gonna do like five or maybe 10% down.

So if you wanted to buy another property to live in, maybe you're buying a move up property. I'm at a phase of life where a lot of people are buying kind of a right sizing property. Their kids are out of the house. Maybe they want something that is,  has less stairs. So then what you can do is take that $400,000.

I would put the, personally, I would put the bare minimum down on the, the home that you're buying. And then the vacating, the property that you're vacating becomes your rental property. Let's say you wanted to buy another million dollar property. If you were gonna do 20% down on that property, you would put $200,000 down.

So you still have $200,000 left that you can work with. If we're talking just about working with lenders and mortgage companies, what you could do then is take that additional $200,000 and buy another investment property or two, depending on what you were looking at. So if you were looking at a $500,000 property, let's say, that would most likely be a single family residence.

So you could buy two more, $500,000 properties with 20% down on each. So you're essentially taking, now you have the million dollar property that you took, the $400,000 of tax free money, you access that equity. That's a rental property. You bought yourself another million dollar home with a $200,000 of the 400,000, you'll be paying for that, and then you could buy two more $500,000 properties with a hundred thousand dollars down on each of those.

Where I wanted to go with that is, one now you have three rental properties, assuming you didn't have any prior to that.  So now you have 1 million from the home. You're vacating. This is your, your value, 1 million from the one that you just bought for yourself and another million in the two, $500,000 rental properties.

Historically speaking in Portland and most of the, the rest of the country as well. But I would double check that if you're in another area outside of Portland, Oregon. In 10 to 12 years, historically speaking, and this has happened decade, for decade, it doesn't happen. You know, the market still goes up and down as markets do, but decade for decade,  homes tend to double in value every 10 to 12 years.  By doing that, I. One act of accessing that tax free $400,000 in equity and acquiring three additional properties that are now worth  3 million in 10 to 12 years, those properties are worth $6 million.  So let's say you're retired by that time. You have $3 million of equity that you can then rinse and repeat, and you probably have more than that because as over those 10 years you've been paying down your mortgage and the renters on your rental properties have been paying down that mortgage and the home equity line of credit.

So imagine you now have $3 million to access in your retirement. Tax free. You don't pay taxes on that $3 million that you just, you get with another home equity line of credit on each of those properties or a cash out refi. I don't know why people aren't more excited about that. To me, that's incredible.

I don't know any other way of getting that type of money and not paying taxes on it. And I'm not opposed, don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to paying taxes. I'm just like think that if there's a way that you can avoid it legally, that's exciting. 

I want to be an encouragement to you. I want you to understand that if you're at all hesitant about investing in real estate, but you feel like you need to make up for lost time, it is a possibility for you. It's a possibility for just about anybody.

Here's what I wanted to say. If I didn't mention it earlier, it's a little bit ironic that my, my path forward to financial freedom and building wealth over time; that my chosen, way of doing that is through real estate.

And I say that because, sort of as a last minute retirement plan, my parents also used real estate too. That was the, the plan that they also had.

I have since learned that the reason that that didn't work out for them was one, it was really, really, really terrible timing. They sold a commercial property that they had run their sign business in for many, many years, they took that money and did a 10 31 exchange and ended up buying three  residential properties that they had planned to rent out and basically do the same thing that is our plan.

It's a great idea. It would've worked if the market hadn't crashed. They did it right before the massive housing market crashed that we had, which then we had the Great recession and the key factor, I think for them, a couple of key factors were they didn't have enough reserves.

Had they had enough reserves, they may have been able to carry those properties as people were unable to make rents and stuff like that. And then the other thing is they didn't really diversify in investments. To be really honest, I don't know if any of that would've saved them anyway, because the fact of the matter is, these were not properties that they had had for 30 years.

These were new properties and, they were retired, you know, they already retired. They would've been basically supplementing their social security with rental income if there was any cash flow, which could have worked for them for a little bit. And then as those appreciated over time, they could have done the same thing. Unfortunately, that just isn't the way that it worked out for them.

You talk about reserves. Would it be smarter to have house A, which is the first house, house B, which is the million dollar house that you've now moved into, and then purchase a third house. So you've got 2 $1 million homes, you've got another house that $500,000, would it be safer to hold onto that a hundred thousand as reserve in case something happens to houses A, B, and C rather than buying that fourth house?

Yes, would be the short answer, but that's if you have no other reserves at all.

Like if you don't have any savings, you don't have any 401k, you don't have, because there's other ways that you can have reserves.

 I don't personally think it's a great idea to just have that a hundred thousand dollars sitting there if you can have it be working for you and have easy access to it, if that makes sense.

There's some of the nuance with this is, if you're 30, you probably don't have as much in your 401k or your stock portfolio or, you know, things like that. You probably also don't have $400,000 of equity on a million dollar home right away.

Although a lot of younger people are getting a lot of help from their parents to buy homes, so they might have more equity in it than I did. When you get to be, of a certain age, and I'd have to look it up, I think it's 55. You can always borrow money against your 401k, but you usually have to pay that back with interest, which isn't a bad thing.

It's usually, like if you don't have any other option, and I'm, I'm probably getting down a rabbit trail that we don't necessarily need to go down. The point being that yes, if you don't have any other easily accessible reserves, then yes, it would probably be good to hold onto that a hundred thousand dollars in the event that something 'cause stuff will happen. It's not if it's when, but if you do have access to other reserves, then I wouldn't just sit on that. 

 That takes us to the question of how much do you need in reserve? 

I would say that you should have a minimum of six months of all of your kind of bills for your expenses, for your rental properties.

And I say it that way because there's the, those are different depending on what type of rental you have. So if you have a furnished rental of any type, most frequently with that type of rental, the owner or landlord is typically paying utilities and maintenance and you know, all of that kind of stuff.

That can be different. So whatever you have in your contract with whoever is renting from you, your expenses, you should have a minimum of six months, if not 12 months. I would prefer 12 months of reserves.

And that includes, by the way, your primary residence. Like if something heaven forbid happened to you, you would wanna make sure that you could pay your own mortgage as well, and expenses.

It's a little bit ironic that my husband and I have chosen this, but I feel like those little bits of knowledge are what  are going to make the difference. And hopefully, we're passing along to our kids how to invest and how to manage the properties and how to run the numbers and how much you have to have in reserves in the event that there's vacancies. Or heaven forbid, you know, some kind of a catastrophe, there's also a lot more options that we have explored and are pursuing for different types of rental properties. So, when my parents were doing this  short-term rental with Airbnb didn't exist. It just wasn't an option.

That is a higher, typically cash flowing option. That's what we did with our A DU.

There's also midterm rentals that didn't really exist, at least as far as I know, when they were doing this. And then there's all of the stuff that we're, we're looking into as well, which is stuff like co-living spaces. Where you rent by the room.

There's so much more possibility and, you know, ways to make money in real estate than there were when my parents had their properties. That was pretty much just long-term rental. And if that market fell apart, then, that was that. You know the lack of diversification that they had with their investments, you know, that was just a byproduct of them being self-employed in a tough business in a tough area.

Something else that I think is super important is, yes, they, they, they would've been better off financially if they had prioritized a little bit more, their income and what they were doing with it. That said, I think the pendulum can swing the other way too, and that's not great either.

And I think we're seeing a lot of that in our society today. We have this hustle culture where, people work all the time and they're pursuing, wealth without remembering to pursue a life. And I don't think that's healthy either. So I'm super grateful to my parents.

My dad, you know, bless his heart. He was not good with money. He was really, really good with having fun and prioritizing having a life. And thank goodness because, you know, a few years he pa ago he passed away and, he pursued his passions almost up until the very, very end. We should all learn from that too. I guess this is like my, my little mini TED talk.

I hope it resonates with somebody, out there. We all have things that we bring from our childhood into our adulthood, and it's what we do with those things that matters. You know, learning from lessons of the past.

And above all, I just really want you to know a few things. One, anybody can build wealth over time, but the key, the key,  element there is to build wealth over time with real estate, you have to be in the game over time.

So if you're hesitant to get in, I would love to talk to you about how you can create a plan to get in. And literally there's zero reason. I cannot think of any reason other than somebody not being of sound mind that you couldn't invest in real estate. And I'm continuing to pursue education so that I can help even more people, with stuff like seller financing, which will enable people that don't necessarily fit into the lenders and banks and mortgage companies box of who is a qual, who would be a good person to lend to. There's ways around that, and I am actively pursuing that because I want to help people understand that as well.

Let's break down barriers for people that want to invest in real estate, but just don't see a path forward. So that's one.

The other thing I would just really encourage you to do, especially the realtors out there, is I know firsthand what a tough business that can be. I think there's a lot of careers that are similar right now, and I just beg of you to really pause and take a look at your life. 

It's great to make a lot of money, but please, please, please don't be doing things to make money while you forget about living your life 'cause you just don't know when your time is up. And I know that sounds a little bit morbid, but I'm so grateful that I learned the value of pursuing fun and joy and prioritizing my family.

None of that is worth any of the wealth that we're building. I refuse actually to sacrifice that. And that's another big reason why I am so passionate about investing more in real estate. I don't want to work all the time. I don't want to miss out on things with my family.

My dad passed away a few years ago, and  now I prioritize. It, it changes you when you lose somebody, and I am not interested in sacrificing time. I see the writing on the wall.

You know, my mom is in great shape, but she's 80 years old and she lives three hours away, so any time I have to spend with her. I don't want to have to say, no, I can't do that because I have to work.

I just can't drive that home enough. Like how important it is if your family is important to you like to create, set up your life in a way that you don't have to make that choice.

The same with my kids. They, our youngest just graduated from high school and. I can see, with the other two that have previously graduated, the times that we're all  together and under one roof, those are further and farther between, and there's no way that I want to miss out on those opportunities because I have to work.

Again, I hope that this resonates with you. Yes, there's a lot of other things that I would like to do in my life, and the building wealth through real estate is helping us get there.

 I have people that talk about investing with me quite frequently.

There's first of all different degrees of seriousness. Some people just like the idea, especially, when we were super into short-term rentals, that was a very sort of romanticized like, oh, that would be so cool to have an Airbnb. And people like the idea of that.  Sometimes it's just that people like the idea that, but they don't necessarily wanna do it for whatever reason. And I have some thoughts on that as well.

I have a friend who lives in another state, who had talked to me about. She'd lived in her home for a long time, raised her kids there for many years, and she was gonna make an interstate move and was talking about selling, you know, the process of selling her home and buying another one. And I brought up the idea of you could hold onto this home because you've owned it for a long time.

You probably have a lot of equity in the home and you could essentially get most of that equity out to purchase the new home to live in. And then you'd have this rental property that. Renters would be paying down, the mortgage and the home equity line of credit or however they took that cash out to buy the new home.

And then, now you have this home and whatever it was worth and the new home and whatever that's worth. And now those are both appreciating over time instead of getting rid of the one asset that you've had for a long time to buy the, the new home and now you just have the one home, you know, appreciating over time again, historically speaking.

And that was a case of, being really intrigued by the idea and then, maybe talking to a spouse about it. And ultimately, I don't know if it's actually lack of information, lack of confidence, you know, fear takes over. And to be really honest, again, at my age when you start having, an empty nest, people really just want ease.

And so I, it could have also been that, that they didn't want, the idea of having a rental property in another state seemed not like ease, which I get.

But I would just say that's cool if that's what's, you know, most in alignment for you and your life. If you feel like it would be a good idea and that's the only thing that's keeping you from doing it, I feel like for me at least, you get a really good property manager and you can find those for whatever type of rental property you have, whether it's short term, midterm, long term, and that will get rid of, 95% of your headaches if you have a good one.

To me, the cost benefit ratio of like, and I've talked about this before, on the rare occasion where I've been very inconvenienced by a rental property, I always go back and either for myself or for my husband who might be grumbling about the fact that we had to go, get a locksmith because a kid messed with a lock on one of our properties and we had to go over there at 10 o'clock at night.

It's like on that particular property for the amount of time that we spend, including that very infrequent inconvenience of being called in the middle of the night kind of thing. Our hourly rate for the time that we spend is about $2,000 an hour. And it's like when you start putting things in that perspective, it's like, okay, for,  for that kind of payoff, I'm okay having to be inconvenienced occasionally to deal with something like that.

 My very limited experience with property managers is, one; I think you should do a, a lot of research to make sure they're a good fit and that their way of doing business aligns with yours. And two, you can arrange, everything is negotiable so you can, whatever the two parties agree to you can make happen. My personal experience is even with a really good property manager, sometimes you still have to be inconvenienced because they have a question that they need to have answered, or they want approval for,  spending money on a cer, like a situation that just, you can kind of, try to imagine all the scenarios that will come up and how to deal with those. But there will still be, again, very infrequently like things that come up and you still have to be bothered by it. But, they are not making that much. And just since we're talking about it, usually property managers except for short-term rental and midterm rental is probably a little bit more 'cause it's more hands-on.

But those are, they usually cost about eight to 10% for a long-term rental property manager. So whatever your monthly, your renters are paying monthly, eight to 10% of that would go to property management.    

I have stories of people that have jumped in. Two, come to mind with, actually, I'll be really honest with the different results. I have Jane to. We'll call her Jane Doe and John Doe. They had a situation where they wanted to collaborate with the mother-in-law who had money from selling her house and her life and she had moved in with them. And the mother slash mother-in-law was, wanting, like, getting nervous about what was happening with her money, let's just say. And I think because of their experience, and knowing, what we were doing with rental properties decided that parking that money in a tangible asset was gonna be the best way to have the money working for them.

And still accessible, but not so accessible that the mom could just take it and do something silly with it. And they, they bought a great property in Portland that has been successful.

I love that property because it's got multiple ways to monetize. It's a, a house with an a DU and a basement unit.

I love that kind of property because you can do all long-term rental. You can do a mix of midterm long-term. If you have a resident, which they actually do with a adult son, , you can have a resident and do short term rental. So there's a lot of possibility with that. That was a success story.

And then, I have another client who wanted to jump in and on this one, I'll be really honest, it wasn't as successful. Largely I think because the client, sort of switched gears midstream, and what they said they were looking for kind of evolved and changed. When you identify what we call your buy box, which is like what type of property, like what is your goal and what type of property will help you meet that goal?

 I like it when there are multiple ways to use a property. Because like in the, the previous example, it's like if short-term rental went away completely for whatever reason, which can happen, local jurisdictions can change their mind on rules and regulations,  zoning, like whatever it is.

 I like having other ways that you can use the property. And the long story short is that the, the buy box that this client had identified, and bought, then their goals changed and the property was no longer a fit for what they had previously identified as what they wanted. And they're not quite as satisfied, but they did jump in and do it.

That the property that they bought was not super versatile. It didn't have as many options.

Like any relationship, relationship with a realtor and a client is a two-way street. I can only do what I can do to help somebody identify their buy box and get clear about it. And then if they change course, I can try to, guide them back to like, wait a minute, this is what you said you wanted.

 But after, I mean, after the sale is final, if they then change course, there's nothing I can do   about that. So yes, you definitely can and should identify,  very clearly what your goals are. And that was a big one, is on this particular one, the client initially said that they wanted to use the property for personal use and as a rental.

And so that, that impacted the location a lot . And the price of the property, which then impacts profitability. And so it's getting really clear about what you want. It's hard, I think, and I I can say this from personal experience too, like it's hard to have a property that you have personal attachment to and you have to kind of separate the personal from the business.

It's hard for people sometimes ' cause those goals can be very different. 

It's a blessing and a curse I think for me that I also see a lot of possibilities. And so, when some somebody starts to shift, I can always bring them back to what they said initially.

Sometimes a buyer will say,  I want a, four bedroom, three bath house with a fireplace. And they have all of these things. And then they obviously have a price range and stuff like that. And then you start looking and you realize that all the four bedroom, three bath homes in the area that they want are out of their price range.

And so you have to shift that buy box a little bit and that, happens less frequently with investors, but it can happen, especially when you have that personal element tied to it. But yes, we try to identify the, the buy box and the needs of the, the investor first and try to stick to that 'cause it makes it better and easier for everybody.

 I just hope that this resonates with some people that anyone can do it. Don't sacrifice your life for money. And if you'd like to figure out ways that you can make money with real estate, and hopefully create a better life for yourself, where you can prioritize fun and joy and freedom, I would love to talk to you about that.

And if you have any other hangups with money. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has inherited some money stories that aren't super healthy. I'd be happy to talk to you about those too, because working through those can really be a game changer in unlocking more possibility.

If you're looking, we'll leave in the show notes. The books that I talked about, becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza. Abundant Ever After by Kathy Heller and The Mystic Jesus by Maryanne Williamson.

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. If any of this resonated with you at all, and you're curious to know if, this is a possibility for you to become a real estate investor, by the way, I think it probably is. But if you'd like to talk to me about that, you can, we'll leave in the show notes, a Calendly link.

You can schedule a one-to-one consultation with me where we'll go over your goals, your situation and map out a plan, to a certain extent or at least get you started.

So thanks for tuning in. I hope this was helpful. And if you liked having this solo episode, I'm happy to do more.

Please leave your reviews and your comments and follow along on the podcast wherever you listen. Thank you so much.