The Broke Millionaires
Building Wealth, Raising a Family, and Keeping It Real.
We share the unfiltered journey of growing wealth through mid-term rentals, creative finance, and home renovations - all while raising a young family. From sacrifices and struggles to wins worth celebrating, we bring you real stories, smart strategies, and the behind-the-scenes chaos of chasing big dreams.
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The Broke Millionaires
E40: How We Built Millions in Equity While Raising Four Kids
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CLICK HERE for a FREE download of the ALLLL Method™ blueprint.
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In Episode 40, Joshua and Lauryn record for the first time in their new studio, celebrating a major milestone after nearly a year of filming at kitchen tables, bedrooms, and anywhere they could squeeze in an episode. With daytime energy (and no kids in the background!), they kick off a fresh chapter for the show.
They share updates on hiring editors, launching their YouTube channel, and finally gearing up for more consistent weekly releases. The long nights of editing until 3 AM are officially coming to an end—freeing them to focus on growth, content, and new in-person interviews.
The episode quickly turns to the big housing news of the week: a proposed 50-year mortgage. Joshua breaks down why he believes it could temporarily open doors for priced-out buyers, how it may drive demand, and why any window of opportunity will be short before prices rise again. They also unpack a potential bill that could remove the tax cap on primary-home capital-gains exclusions, which could dramatically impact inventory and long-term strategy.
But the heart of the episode is the long-awaited reveal of their signature wealth-building framework:
🔥 The ALLLL Method™ Blueprint
A strategy they’ve quietly used since 2020 to nearly 10X their equity—without high incomes, without inheritance, and while raising four kids. The method:
A — Acquire
Buy undervalued primary residences with favorable loan terms (low down payment, better rates, first-time buyer advantages).
L — Live
Move into each property as a true primary residence, allowing better financing and access to HELOCs and second-position loans.
L — Lift
Force appreciation through strategic renovations: kitchens, bathrooms, curb appeal, ADU potential, layout improvements. This creates instant value far beyond market appreciation.
L — Leverage
Pull out equity via HELOCs, cross-collateralization, or construction loans—tax-free.
L — Loop
Take that newly unlocked equity and roll that into the next property to repeat the cycle.
They share real numbers: starting with ~$270K in equity and growing to $2.3M+ in under five years, all while living in the homes during renovations, working weekends, and navigating pregnancies, babies, and financial pressures. Nothing about it was “luck”—only mindset, sacrifice, and consistency.
The episode closes with a powerful discussion on silent income, inflation, why holding cash is dangerous, and how long-term real-estate strategy paired with the IRS step-up basis allows families to build generational wealth without triggering massive taxes.
Finally, Joshua and Lauryn announce their upcoming Broke Millionaires Community, a mastermind designed to help families implement the ALL Method and build wealth together—something they wish they’d had during their hardest seasons.
We are looking for guests that have something helpful to share. If you or someone you know could make a good guest on the show, drop us a line to see if it would be a good fit info@thebrokemillionaires.com
Instagram: @thebrokemillionaires_
Want to learn more about our mastermind community? Send us a DM or visit BMLegacyWealthBuilder.com.
And a lot of people will say, like, put your money in cash, sell your assets, put it in cash and just wait it out. And that way you've got the cash. What that does is so detrimental because cash doesn't keep up with inflation. The dollar has lost 20% in the last five years. Your bank account still says 100,000 today. The value of that is only 80,000. You literally just lost $20,000 in value by sitting on the sidelines.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very true.
SPEAKER_00So by putting it into real estate, I mean even putting it into gold, because gold is going to keep up with inflation. So it's not going to like gain, but it at least keeps up with inflation and you're not going backwards. Whereas cash, you're just going backwards.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the broke billionaires, where we document our daily struggles and building wealth while raising a young family. Join us as we talk creative wealth building for everyday people and couples that are struggling in a down economy. I'm Lauren.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Joshua Massari, and we'll be your host.
SPEAKER_03Welcome back to The Broke Millionaires.
SPEAKER_00It's not really a welcome back because this is our first time here.
SPEAKER_03That's true. Welcome back to the show.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, welcome.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to our new space.
SPEAKER_00So we are no longer at the kitchen table or the living room or Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_03You're not at our kitchen table.
SPEAKER_00We officially have uh a studio. We'll call it a studio. It's the back part of our office, but it is a little more official than we've been. And so we've got an actual studio.
SPEAKER_03And it is daytime.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we're recording the daytime. It's not 10 o'clock at night, it's 10 o'clock in the morning.
SPEAKER_03We're more energized. We don't have kids in bed that we just had to deal with. They are at school. I think this is going to be a good. It's still going to be hard to do this. Let's be real, because we still use child care during the day.
SPEAKER_00And trying to shift around everything, but but we are doing it and making this way more official. And we are like making an effort to make this intentional, not just a like when the kids go to bed when we when we can when we have time. You know, we are our you know, we have an in-person studio now, so we can now start doing in-person interviews, which we are very excited for. We have so many lined up. We've been wanting to do, but we didn't have a good setup. And these are people that are are local enough to be able to do in-person. So we've can been putting off our interviews waiting to to get this studio set up. So we're super excited. So this is our test run. So hopefully this video and everything turns out. And then uh this works out, then we will roll out and start getting people in here for interviews. So fingers crossed. That'll be exciting.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I'm really excited for that. Be it'll be a good start to the new year with this new space and a little a little fresh take. We had our first year, which I can't believe.
SPEAKER_00We're almost at one year. Almost wait, what date was a little bit more than a little bit of a little bit of a little bit. I think it was right before Thanksgiving. I think we're like a week or two shy. Okay. So we we we don't quite have 52 episodes or won't by then. We we didn't mind. Yeah, we this these last few months have been a real struggle just trying to to find time to to get everything put together and and recorded. And you know, I'm in the process of of looking at editors now and testing out different editors because I usually do the editing staying up till two, three in the morning, and it's just it's a lot. It's just case anymore. And and now with adding video into the mix, it's just way more. So I'm I'm testing out with with these editors now. So that way it'll make it a lot easier to stay more consistent, you know, record these, get them put out each week, and hopefully we'll get back into a weekly rhythm and stay on top of that. But we kind of had to take a step back uh to take a take two steps forward. So this studio was was a big part of that. We're we're getting there.
SPEAKER_03Almost one year, three different studio setups. I'll say studio lightly, but it's three different setups.
SPEAKER_00Three locations, but each one is like living room, kitchen table, back bedroom, everyone.
SPEAKER_03Also, four actually.
SPEAKER_00Well, I would say even more than that. We have three or four locations at each at each property.
SPEAKER_03That's true.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, we are it's exciting.
SPEAKER_03I feel good about it. More official now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03We have lighting. That's what I'm excited about. We're not sitting in the world.
SPEAKER_00We actually dress up, you're not wearing it. You don't have a blanket.
SPEAKER_03I know, I don't have a blanket over me. I'm not pregnant. Things are good. We're everything's good. We're moving forward.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_00So what's uh what kind of updates we got here? Let's see. Uh oh, big news this week is that uh Trump announced that he's pushing for a 50-year mortgage, and everybody is going crazy and they've all got their opinions on good, bad. What do you think? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Indifferent?
SPEAKER_00You know, I I I think that it's it's not I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it depends on who's getting a 50-year mortgage because you know, if you look at it and you run it out over the course of 50 years, you're gonna pay a lot more for that property, which is you know the con of it and the downside, and everybody, all the people that are against it are are are pushing that narrative. But the reality is nobody holds a mortgage for 50 years.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say, this is not when our parents were buying homes and you buy a forever home and stay in it, and you can't do that anymore.
SPEAKER_00Like it's just not that's just not how how the world works these days. And so I believe the average uh loan is about 13 years. And that doesn't mean that somebody's better than I thought. That doesn't mean that somebody doesn't stay there. I mean, somebody could be there for 50 years, but they don't keep that loan in place. They refinance at some point or pay it off and then pull out on it or something of that nature. So for them to keep that loan in place, it doesn't actually get run out. And you can always make additional payments on a loan. So you can still make a higher payment and pay it down in 30 years or even even sooner.
SPEAKER_03So just because it has to be longer doesn't mean that it has to take you that long to pay it off.
SPEAKER_00Right. It's just it gives you the flexibility, one, to be able to it makes it more affordable for people to be able to get in a home that that may be priced out of the market right now. It makes it uh a more available to those people because the the payment is slower, you can actually qualify for it.
SPEAKER_03So will that be the case for like refines too? They'll get refinanced over that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I would think that it would, it may not be initially, but I would think that it would probably filter its way into refinances as well. And you know, I'm for an and and I don't know if it's gonna be only for primary residence uh buyers or if it's gonna be something that's open to investors as well. I don't, I don't know. You know, we have a loan that's uh uh a commercial loan on a on an apartment building that's amortized over like 40 years and it makes it, you know, the cat it cash flow is a lot better that way. And it's you know it's a five-year loan, it's a five-year balloon, so it's not like we're running it out 40 years. It just makes the deal cash flow a little better while you're you know renovating it and getting it up to where you need it to be. So there's definitely some investor advantages to that, but you know, from the a primary standpoint, it will make things a lot more affordable for people with the current interest rates. So everybody's waiting for interest rates to lower. This is kind of like the antidote to that or the alternative to lower interest rates. Is you just when is that supposed to go into effect? I don't know. I don't think it's actually like official. It's just like this is something that that Trump is pushing and floating out there, but it sounds like there's quite a bit of uh support behind it. Uh, you know, this is this happened, I think it was, I don't know, this was back in the I don't remember. There was another president, and I don't remember off the top of my head, Eisenhower maybe, I don't know, that uh rolled out the 30-year mortgage. And before that, the 30-year mortgage was like it was the same thing. It was like, oh, you're gonna run it for 30 years. Pre-Eve. I I don't know, maybe 15 or I think it's probably a 15. And so 30 years back then, 30 years was like, well, now it's just like that's just the I didn't even know it was actually less than 30 years ago. So I mean, because of of prices, because of current interest rates, it just prices a lot of people out of the market. So this will help more people be able to get into a home and then you know they can refinance into a different loan at some point, or uh, you know, again, you can always pay more down. It's just it doesn't really mean that you're gonna run it out 50 years. So I think it's a good thing. I also think that we're gonna see because of this, um, you're gonna see more buyers get into the market. So you're gonna, it's gonna increase demand. And then what's gonna happen is that's gonna push up pricing again because you're gonna have more demand all of a sudden in the market because of all these extra buyers coming in. Uh, so that's gonna increase prices and then it's gonna end up increasing prices to where it doesn't really do anything. I mean, that's kind of what I see like happening. That'd be a short window. Yeah, everybody's gonna jump in. Um, but if prices, you know, if we see another appreciation boom because of this triggering that movement, uh, you know, prices end up being more. And so now you got your 50-year mortgage and the pricing or the monthly payments the same as it was today on a 30-year because you're paying more for the property. So I think for people that are, you know, have been waiting and this is an opportunity, they need to not wait long because with more demand, you're just it's gonna push pricing up and then you're gonna end up pricing yourself out again. So I think it's gonna be a short window of opportunity. And and maybe rates will come down, you know, as we move along, rates will come down to kind of combat that. So, you know, lower rates obviously make a big difference too. So if rates come down another uh point or two in the next year or two, like that could like kind of gradually as pricing comes up and the rates come down, it could kind of keep momentum going. But I don't know, it's definitely going to to shift demand and and affect the market. So yeah, we'll see if it actually comes to fruition. We'll see how that plays out. But I think that uh if you're holding properties right now, I think you're it, I think regardless of it of whether this happens or you know, Trump's also pushing for lower rates, you know, if rates start to lower, either way, there's a lot of pent-up demand in the market right now. We hear all the time people just waiting for the right time, waiting for rates to come down, waiting for this, waiting for that. And those people that are waiting are gonna be kicking themselves in the pants when everybody jumps in, prices shoot up.
SPEAKER_03And then, you know, right now, it's like another round of yeah.
SPEAKER_00So if you're holding properties right now, I mean, right now is the time to be holding because you know, if you can buy more or just keep whatever you have, whatever you're like with us, we've got we're struggling to kind of keep all of all of our stuff afloat. Understatement of the such. But it's like we are holding on, and if we can if we get another appreciation boom, like we are going to capitalize on that immensely. So and then uh there's also another bill floating around um that's trying to eliminate the tax liability on your equity gains for your primary residence. So right now, if you live in a home for two years, so it's actually two of the last five years, but if you have at least two years of residency in a home, you can sell that home and whatever profit or appreciation you've gotten, so all of your equity, instead of that going against your income for that year, you have an exclusion of 250,000 per person, or if you're married, it's 500,000. And some markets like ours, because of the appreciation that we've seen, a lot of people have outrun that exclusion. So it's it's you're way beyond that. So even though you got that exclusion, you still have all this other equity that you end up having to pay taxes on. So this will actually uh eliminate that. And you know, you will have no limit on what that exclusion is. So you could, you know, have three million dollars in equity and and be able to sell that property if it's your primary and and keep that money tax-free, which is huge. Huge, huge, huge, huge. I mean, that that could change our strategy. I mean, it really could make a difference in the way we strategize. Um, so I don't know if that's going to happen or not, but if that does, that definitely changes the the game. And I think what what's going to happen is that's actually going to, I mean, it could, there's all these things going on that are going to affect the market, but this I think would actually bring pricing down. And the reason is because there are a lot of people, especially in these high appreciation markets, or they've held properties for a long time and have all this equity that's beyond that exclusion. Uh people aren't selling because of that. So, like in our situation, we have multiple properties that we won't sell because it'll trigger such a huge tax bill that it doesn't make sense. So I think this open up opens up a door for more properties to be able to hit the market that wouldn't otherwise be sold because of the tax level. So there could be a point. Yeah, and I don't know, but maybe that'll balance out. So maybe like with this other stuff with a 50-year mortgage or rates coming down, maybe some extra supply, maybe it'll balance it out so it doesn't like shoot up prices like crazy to where people are paying stupid, you know, 20% over asking. So like it might just kind of like stabilize the market a little bit. But there's a lot of things in play now that are going to be making a difference over the next year or two. So we'll see how it plays out. But in the meantime, we're just hanging in there.
SPEAKER_03We are hanging in there. Okay, before we move on to our last update, I just need to address the elephant in the room. You still have your black eye.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, you she wanted to cover it up with makeup, and I said, no, we just need to let people know what's going on. I did get a little out of line, and um, she put me back in line, and you know, but it's okay. I deserved it, I'm okay with it, and you know, it is what it is.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. I was waiting for that.
SPEAKER_00No, I was playing basketball on Thursday night with uh the local police department, and clearly got a little out of line there, it's like a little out of line, yeah. I wasn't I wasn't uh yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um came home with a massive black eye. Yeah, took a finger to the eye, and if you're wondering, it's actually looking a lot better now, but last week was a little rough. And then our last update, we I don't know if we said this on our last episode, but we started a YouTube channel.
SPEAKER_00Um, which were yeah, so we started so that's kind of part of this whole studio and all the cameras and everything we're doing now. So we are um putting the episodes on YouTube, um, which is a lot more work, and we kind of waited because I was doing all the editing and that was just too much for me to take on. So now we're getting getting help uh on the editing and gonna be putting out YouTube uh videos. I did we did do one that I edited, so it's not the greatest, but uh we'll be we'll be putting all the episodes out on on YouTube and then we'll probably go back because we do have a lot of video coverage from previous episodes, so we'll we'll be releasing those at some point too, once those are are put together and and ready to go.
SPEAKER_03So with that being said, please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and like our videos on there if you like like the put like an episode, just all that that really helps uh you know get awareness of the show and kind of helps us with just everybody, you know, all the encouragement and and just kind of helps helps keep like this is a lot of work. It is a lot of work, just setting up and everything, finding the time to do this. It's it's not easy, but we want to keep going with this. And and that that feedback from everybody really helps and the followers, the subscribers, uh, you know, ratings. If you can go on Apple uh and give us a rating, it's like you don't even have to leave a full review, just just hit the five star and super quick. It takes two seconds.
SPEAKER_03Make sure not to hit the one star. It can accidentally happen, but please just click the five star. Yeah, we do have a few of those, which is so either someone really hated the show or someone like didn't realize how to rate it correctly. I'm hoping it's the latter.
SPEAKER_00It's funny because we only have one stars and five stars, there's nobody in between. But even with the one stars, it still like helps us like that feedback of like how can we get the show, you know, how can we make it better?
SPEAKER_03How can we if you have feedback like that? Send us a DM, please. Like send us an email if there is things like we'd love to know we are completely open to it, but we want to Can't you can't keep everybody happy. No, definitely not. Oh well.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah. So if you do have a one star, like yeah, just maybe keep that one to yourself. Keep it off the platform.
SPEAKER_03Send us a DM if you need to.
SPEAKER_00Let us know we're doing a terrible job and we'll see what we can do to fix it. Yeah. So just a quick disclaimer the information shared on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial, tax, or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Your individual circumstances may differ and require specific strategies not discussed here. Now let's get back to the show. Okay, what are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_03We are talking about the all method of blueprint.
SPEAKER_00The all method. So the all method is something that we have put together. Uh, and this is something that we have lived through and the strategy that we have, or I should say a strategy, one of the strategies that we've used over the last five years to exponentially build build wealth. And it's worked out for us very well. And so we're you know putting together the frameworks, and we want to go through this and share this with everyone on not just what we've been doing, because everybody kind of knows what we do with these houses, but really like the the method behind the madness. Um, so so that we call this the all method, and this was something that we we set out to do. Um right let's say when we first got married, we were talking about this.
SPEAKER_03And it was before we got married, we were talking about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and but I think once we got married, it's like, okay, we need to we need to to start start this. And and and I had kind of started it before that, but not really like where I mean it was just me, I was a single dude, and it was a lot easier to do this stuff. So first of all, I had to get you on board and get you like I liked the idea of the end goal.
SPEAKER_03I didn't like what had to happen in between, and I still still can't stand it. Still can't stand fully on board with that, but we're doing it.
SPEAKER_00So it is it is building building wealth and I can now, yeah, that I can now see.
SPEAKER_03So it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00And the thing is we're building wealth without making like we're not high income earners. No, you're not earning anything right now, but I'm not an income earner at all currently. And I'm not making that much money right now, anyway. So um, but basically what this stands, so it's the all. It's it's A L L L L. So there's four L's. So lots of L's. Lots of L's. So the A stands for acquire. So you start by acquiring a property. And we do this, the all method is acquiring properties as your primary residence. So the reason that we we do that versus buying as an investment property is you can get way, way better terms on the loan. You can get less money down or almost no money down, you can get um uh better term lengths, uh better interest rate, and it's just a better, a much better loan to get into a lot easier uh carrying costs. And you can only do that when it's your primary. Now, if it's your first time buying, if you're you're buying a home and it's your first time buy, you're a first-time buyer, you can get into a first-time buyer program and you can get it with literally like no down, or some of them are like 3% down, or there's there's banks and and and uh programs that will give you up to $50,000 sometimes in some states, um, just cash towards your down payment. And so there's a lot of assistance on these first-time programs. And the funny thing is you don't have to be actually be a first-time buyer. I've I've used this strategy multiple times. Um, I think I've bought three houses, three or four houses as a first-time buyer. It's just that you can't be holding one of these first-time buyer loans at the time you get the next one. So as long as you, you know, you get a first-time buyer program, you buy a home, and then you refinance that so you're not in that loan anymore. And I think you have to wait two years, at least that's what it used to be, it was a two-year waiting period. But then you could go buy another, another home as a first-time buyer. You couldn't be living in a home. You have to have, I don't think you can live in a primary at that at that point in time. We didn't do because we lived in a in a condo, we were renting. So we had the the home that I had, we were renting that. So now it was an investment property because it was being rented, and we were renting elsewhere. And so we didn't have a home that we lived in as a primary. And so I qualified as a as a first-time home buyer in that case. Now we put this only in my name, and the reason that we did that is so that we could flip-flop back and forth, and so that you mean you don't have an income right now, so it's a little hard to do it with banks. But if we can get back to where we have enough income in your name, while we're living in that one, we would be able to, you would be able to buy a home because our credit is not combined. There's nothing that we have as no number of bank accounts.
SPEAKER_03We get a lot of flack for that.
SPEAKER_00None of our credit lines, nothing is is connected. Yeah, we don't own anything together. So you could actually get a first-time home. You could get a first-time buyer program and buy a buy your first primary residence while we're living in the one that I own.
SPEAKER_03Right. So that was kind of the initial reasoning behind not combining anything and being able to keep it separate and being able to do that.
SPEAKER_00Now, the income part is a little trickier because you haven't been working, so it makes it impossible.
SPEAKER_03Well, I wouldn't say I haven't been working. I haven't been getting paid. You haven't been getting paid.
SPEAKER_00You have to get paid. Banks don't like they frown upon uh they frown upon stay-at-home moms.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It's entrepreneurs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So um, but you there's also even if it's not a first-time buyer, you there's still a lot of primary residence loans with like 5% down. You know, some of them are 10% if you're buying a second home. Yeah, you can actually buy a second home while you're living in your primary and you don't have to move into it. You can buy it as a second home. And then your down payment is is lower. It's not quite as low as a first as a as a primary or a first-time buyer, but I think it's usually around 10%. So it's a lot better than 20 or 25% if you were just buying as a as an investment property straight away. So uh acquire. So the the first L is is live, which we move into all of our properties and they are truly our primary residence, and we live in these properties. And when we're acquiring properties, we're not getting something that's turnkey or a brand new home or some some beautiful home that's that's ready to go. We are buying properties that that have value add. We're looking for stuff that's got you know deferred maintenance, it's got a lot of deferred maintenance.
SPEAKER_03The ugliest house on the block is the ugliest house on the block, yeah. The kids know that now. We were driving through a neighborhood yesterday, kind of looking at some ideas, and they're like, at first they were pointing to the really nice ones. And I was like, no, you guys, we don't buy the ones that are done like that. We do that. So which ones are not nice looking ones? And then they started pointing them to the other.
SPEAKER_00Well, they know they always say, like, yeah, when are we gonna make this house nice? Like they understand that.
SPEAKER_03So they're like, they said we can make that one really nice. Yeah. They understand it also doesn't want it one story next time. I should add that. Definitely needs a two story.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, so they understand, and that's another thing is we we like we're passing this on to our kids. They understand that we take a house and we make it nice and Then we rent it out to somebody and they pay us money to live in that house. And then we go live in another one. And they understand that. Um, so yeah, so we we're looking for these properties that have value add, whether it's you know, the ability to uh to add on to it, uh just do renovations to to bring everything current and up to date, um, you know, ADUs, uh, ways that we can block out different sections of the house to to get more rental income. Uh so we're we're looking for those value ads for sure.
SPEAKER_03Every time we walk into a house, that's where our mind goes. It's not just how can we renovate the the the structure of the or I don't want to say the structure, but how can we just renovate the interior? It's like how else are we gonna be able to make this work for us, right? And where can we know we're gonna rent it out? Where can we block off walls and make separate units? How can we do this? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because we go into a house, we don't buy an emotion and like, oh, this is our forever home. We don't believe in forever homes, at least I don't.
SPEAKER_03I no, at this point I don't either. I think long term longer term I'll say, but I don't think we'll ever have a forever home.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you can't go into this type of strategy thinking this is gonna be your I mean, I guess you you could. So the other option is that you can you can do this and buy them as second homes or you can buy them as investment properties and use the same strategy, but it takes a lot more money. You need a lot more money down. You gotta leave a lot more money in in the home. So you can't.
SPEAKER_03And I will say we renovate them with our family in mind. So we renovate them to where if we ever needed or wanted to come back to any of these properties, we have that option. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So if we ever got stuck or yeah, so we like we make it doing when we do do the bathrooms, we put the shower heads real tall. Like me, you know, we're tall people.
SPEAKER_03So it's not something that we're just you know doing a quick flip and just doing whatever we want to do. Yeah, no, we we're doing it the way our standards are and what we would want to live in.
SPEAKER_00And and we also spend extra money. So, like, for example, when somebody does a flip, they're just trying to do it as cost effectively as possible, like the HVAC system. They'll just put the cheapest HVAC and it's got a brand new HVAC, but it's it's got it, it's got it. And they're gonna charge, you know, it pushes the value by that much. We actually do specific systems that are higher-end systems. They cost probably twice as much, a lot more. Um, but they've got like multiple zones and they're really, really efficient. And the reason we do that is because our properties we are renting as midterm rentals as furnished rentals. And so we're covering those utility bills. So we we want to make sure that we are able to run it and operate as efficiently as possible. And spending that extra $10,000 or $15,000 on the front end over the next 10 years, we're gonna be way ahead by having a more efficient system versus just putting something in there that's brand new and and not as efficient. So, you know, it's a little bit different uh strategy in mind when you're doing this and you're keeping it as a longer term rental, whether you're doing long-term rental or midterm or short-term, whatever. But when you have the property you're gonna be keeping, you kind of take this step like putting a new roof on. You know, we'll always do the we'll opt for the you know, spinning another 10, 15% and getting the the 40-year roof versus the the 30-year roof or whatever. Um just because we're gonna have this for a long time and that in the long run, we're gonna come out ahead on that. So we we do quality is important. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so that's that's kind of what we did. We move into them and we renovate them while we're living there. We try to get as much done before we actually move in, but it never always has.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, we'll have to throw some pictures up of what we live what we've lived through.
SPEAKER_00It's getting easier. So the more we do this, the more we build up, the more money we have to put in the next one and get stuff done quicker and don't have to get into it right away. Because here's the other thing when you're doing the strategy versus doing it as an investment property, if you're doing it as an investment property, you're paying the mortgage and then you're paying your construction costs and everything while it's not generating any income. And on top of that, you're paying to live in your home. So in a place like where we live, it's very expensive to live here. So for us, this this is kind of the only way. It doesn't make sense to to just not be living in it because then we're paying.
SPEAKER_03We need to get out of the the previous or the current house into the new one as fast as possible.
SPEAKER_00So you can, you know, we're you're paying, you gotta pay to live somewhere regardless. So we're kind of combining the investment with the primary and only paying, we're only having having to crack, you know, one that a month and rather than two of them. So it makes it a lot easier and more manageable when you don't have a lot of extra funds to to be able to do that. So if you're a high income earner, um, you know, it may be a different story and you're able to to float multiple mortgages without the income. But you know, for us, this is what made a way that we were able to do this without having a lot of of extra income.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That kind of takes us into our next one lift, forcing the appreciation through renovation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's obviously the renovations are are there's multiple reasons we do that. But one of the bigger reasons is part of this strategy is we're trying to push appreciation. So yes, you know, houses go up and down over over long run, they're gonna go up, but they're gonna go up with the market. So, you know, we we just went through a uh an inflationary period and we saw a lot of appreciation. It may not actually have increased in value, but on the dollar side it did because the dollar lost so much value. So we there was a lot of appreciation uh with the market, but we are pushing appreciation above and beyond what the market is doing. So we're getting that instantly. So as soon as we're done, you know, as soon as we're done with renovations, we just pushed it, you know, in in inside of a year, we can we're renting it for a top dollar in the neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_03We're I mean, the if we were going to sell, it would be selling at top dollar for the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00It's yeah, so we're not having to wait on that appreciation. So yeah, we do get a little bit of both. And we just went through uh, you know, where we did get a lot of appreciation. So it kind of helped out, helped us out a little and made things go a little quicker. But even without that, we're we're pushing out appreciation. So that's the other thing, too, is that in a down market, if the market were to go backwards on us, you always hear of like flippers that like get stuck. They'll buy, and this recently happened the last couple of years. They buy a house, the market turns before they're able to list it, they go backwards, end up losing money. But with us, we're holding the property, so we don't really care so much about what the market does, whether it goes up or down, because that's not our goal. And you know, because we're pushing this appreciation, it prevents us from getting over-leveraged because we have all this extra equity that's now in the homes that wasn't there or wouldn't be there if we were just relying on the market. So we're kind of controlling our position in this asset with where the market is. Now, obviously, when there's an appreciation boom, it just it makes us even better. But it this works even without that happening.
SPEAKER_03So the lift stage is where value is really created, right? Where are some of the we really like to focus on a couple things. So kitchen and bathroom remodels are number one, I would say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so kitchen and bath are are are the two biggest things you can do outside of additions. So redoing a kitchen, we'd always do beetle kitchen.
SPEAKER_03No, not moved walls interior, but we've not done any.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So yeah, so doing a full a full kitchen and and bathroom. And here's the funny thing, which I learned from an appraiser a few years ago when we were doing one of these. Um, you don't even have to do all your bathrooms. If you have three bathrooms, as long as you have one bathroom. Now, this may not be the same for all our appraisals or appraisers, I don't know, but he gave us a tier one kitchen and a tier one bathroom because one bathroom, one out of our five bathrooms.
SPEAKER_03And it wasn't even like the primary bathroom or anything. No, it was the site, it was a guest bathroom hallway.
SPEAKER_00And and the master was like an ugly bathroom and we hadn't touched it. And we were able like we got that appraised as a tier one uh renovation for the area for kitchen and for bathrooms. So they don't have they don't have a like on their their sheet, they don't have each bathroom. So how many bathrooms were remodeled, how many weren't. It's just one. So he said, as long as you have one fully renovated bathroom, you get that that uh addition there. So so that was pretty cool. Um we also look for, you know, so another way is additions. It's a little more, it's a little more difficult because additions are expensive. So I think unless you're doing like an ADU and or you're creating a second unit out of it, I think additions are really hard to build the value and get it back out. You know, you you might put a couple hundred thousand dollars in the city. Great if you're just moving in and renovating for yourself, but yeah, but in terms of like building value as an investment, I think it's hard because I think you end up putting like with building costs, I think it ends up costing about what you get out of it. Maybe not so much, or you know, if you hold on to it, then obviously down the road that's gonna pay back. But if you're trying to do it quick, I don't know that additions are a great way to quickly push appreciation. Um, I think if it's an ADU or if it's you know above a garage and you have a junior ADU and you're able to make a separate unit out of it, that is going to add more value uh versus just doing an addition. Um, also like bathrooms um can so if you're doing addition with a bathroom, making an ensuite, that's gonna be more valuable too. Uh, but definitely like just doing the the kitchen and bathroom is gonna be your primary and curb appeal.
SPEAKER_03Curb appeal.
SPEAKER_00Curb appeal. So you're doing the the outside siding and landscaping and and making this look good from the front.
SPEAKER_03That's that goes a long way in your modernizing the interior a little bit, opening some walls. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And these and the curb appeal too is good for renting. So if you're gonna be renting, that's gonna help you get top dollar on your your renting side. Um, but what we do is once we we lift the value of these, we're we're leveraging them. So we we have this equity now and we we tap into that. And there's there's different ways that we do that. Uh we like HELOCs. We do a lot of HELOCs. Um there, you know, you can do a second mortgage, you can do a cross-collateralization. There's a lot of ways of of doing that. But um, you know, being able to pull that money back out of that home that we just put into it. Now we've got one, we've done it to where you know we're living in it. And when we were starting out, we didn't have a whole lot of money. So we put all of our money into buying the home and and starting the renovations, and we weren't able to finish it because it was a big house. So we actually pulled the HELOC out to finish the project. Actually, did it twice. So we did it once uh like in the first year, we were able to pull out an extra hundred thousand dollars um based on the kitchen and bathroom and a few other things that we had done. And then we got a much larger HELOC to finish the project and completely renovate the entire property. And so, and then also had an had enough extra to loop, basically start the process over. So we were able to take that money and roll that equity through the HELOC into the next property. And so that was our down payment, and that was the initial renovations on the the next property. And and so that just started the the process all over again for us.
SPEAKER_03Keep doing it round and round and round.
SPEAKER_00And that was our next, that was our next uh our next primary. And then we started the whole process. That one, that one took a little longer because we did a really extensive renovation and we wanted to get it all done before we moved in. Didn't quite work, but we got closer.
SPEAKER_03That didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00Did we? Yeah, it was a lot, it was way more done than than the first one.
SPEAKER_03Well, the first one we did in phases also, so it it kind of just felt like we were constantly under construction in that one because we were. Um, but yeah, this one we did all at once, so we did get it to a point where it was livable, and then I wouldn't say comfortable, definitely not comfortable. Nothing is comfortable about this method, but it was livable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00By leveraging that that property into the next one, we're able to start this whole process over. And and it's just we just keep repeating the process, repeating the process. This next one, we what we actually did was we took, we got into the property and using the HELOC that we had on our second property to buy or to use as the down payment and then also start the renovations, but it wasn't enough. This was a much bigger project, and so we needed a lot more money to get it done. And we we didn't have, we weren't able to pull money out on this other one because we didn't have enough money to push depreciation up to where we could do that. So, what we did is we pulled on the first property and we did what's called a cross-collateralization. So we actually found a lender that would put a lien on the first one, and this was in third position because all of our properties have a first and a second. So we got a lender that would do a third position lien on the first property because we had a ton of equity in it. Um, and then basically use that and also put a third position lien on this on this new third property that we bought. And so it was cross-collaterized. So they're getting a lien on this property and a lien on this property, and so they have a lot more security. And so it's because it is a riskier loan, they're in third position, and it's something that's needs a lot of work. So it's a it's a high-risk loan. Um, but they were able to do this because they're getting liens on on both properties, and so it made it a little sweeter for them. Um, but basically we cross-collateralized for the construction loan, and we were able to get that property finished up. Um it's an expensive loan. We're paying 14% on that. Um, but it's you know, no other bank would loan on it because uh a house that's half demoed. And this house, by the way, was half demoed when we bought it. It had been in a flood, or it was like a pipe that broke upstairs and flooded upstairs, flooded downstairs. So half the house was demoed when we bought it. Uh, but we were able to figure out how to get creative with the financing. And and by the way, we actually had seller financing on the the primary, on the on the first position on that one. So we uh we got it wasn't a first-time buyer, but we were buying it as a primary, and we got it with a 10% down, and it was a five-year, five-year loan at a re very reasonable interest rate, uh, lower than what was out there. So it ended up being, you know, we had no points, no origination fee, no nothing, nothing like that on the loan itself. So it ended up being a really cost-effective way to get into that loan. And then, you know, we got this all finished up, got it signed off, and then moved out and started renting it. And here we are getting ready to start the next one. Yeah. So right now we're actually back in the first home because this one was never fully rented.
SPEAKER_03Not even the one we were talking about renovating, but this one. This was the one that you owned before when we were in the rental house when we were just renting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So this one actually um I never renovated. I did like cosmetic renovations. I did like flooring and paint and and and just kind of I did do a kitchen on that one. Yeah. Um I bathrooms were like kind of half done, but it was never like fully renovated and it needs a lot of work. It's a small home, 1300 square feet. Uh so what we're looking at doing, that one's got a lot of equity in it. And and with that and the equity we have in these homes, what we're looking to do with this one is redevelop it. So we're gonna be completely almost tearing it down and and rebuilding it. But we're looking to double the size of the home, uh, add two ADUs and a granny flat that we can actually block off and use as a fourth rental. So we will double the square footage and and probably triple what we can get for rent on it by by doing this. So that's kind of our next step. And then we'll buy another one. And and then while we're doing that, like once we move out and we're working on that, we'll probably start looking for our next primary because we'll be renting somewhere and then we're just gonna rent this one out. Um, so we'll be looking for our next move, which will be our next primary, probably, and start the process over again. And hopefully by then we'll have enough of these going to where we can just get it completely done before we move in.
SPEAKER_03So we say that every time. And I know, I know. I don't know, we'll see.
SPEAKER_00So, I mean, so here's the thing with this this all method. We started this in 2020, uh, right after we had our first kid. It was Braxton was a few months old.
SPEAKER_03I think he was he was so like six months.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we bought it. I guess it was it was during COVID. We bought it. I think we closed at the end of August. He was born in February, so he was like six months. Um, but at the time, we you know, we were just kind of starting out, we didn't have a whole lot. We had we had saved up some money, we had saved up some cash for down payment, and we had a HELOC available in the first home. But we had about in the first home, we had about 270,000 in equity at that time. And after going through this process, um today, uh, after finishing up this other one in uh June when we got that one signed off, uh, we're sitting at about 2.3 uh million in equity. So even though we have all these loans and everything, we've pushed appreciation plus gotten the market appreciation. And our total equity in these is 2.3 million, which is almost 10 times what we started with less than five years ago. So, you know, it's I think it's right around nine or nine point two or something like that. But you know, we've almost 10xed uh our equity in five years. And this is not, this is not our job. This is not what we do. This is not, you know, our main investing strategy. This is just a side side hustle, a side gig. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03This is just our primary very time-consuming side hustle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh I will say it's not easy. It's not, you know, the last five years, every weekend has been filled with working on the house and and doing things that are going towards us. So we've definitely made sacrifices. You know, a lot of people say, Oh, you guys are you guys you got lucky. You got lucky. You know, you had these houses, you know, during the appreciation, when appreciate when pricing was going crazy, you just got lucky. And luck has nothing. We'll both tell you luck has nothing to do with it.
SPEAKER_03That's like if you want to set me off real quick, tell me we're lucky. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The the luck has nothing to do with it. We we worked our butts off. We took risks when people weren't buying homes and didn't, you know, during COVID, nobody wanted to buy a home. It was a very uncertain time, and we bought when it was it was a crazy time to buy. Like, what are you doing? Like, we put ourselves in in luck's way. We we we got lucky because we put ourselves in the right uh place at the right time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we took a risk for sure. And we also put a ton, like you said, like sacrifices we've made. Like there, I mean, we could go on, we could do a whole episode about that. We will at some point. But yeah, this is not easy or lucky.
SPEAKER_00And even though we did get like you know, lucky with the market appreciation during that. It worked in our favor. It worked in our favor, but we pushed a lot of appreciation. So even without that, we you know, there's a lot of sweat equity that went in these homes. There's a lot of risks that we took to to put ourselves in that position. Um, so so we, you know, that was our reward was we got the extra equity that we weren't anticipating. We didn't, we did not expect that kind of appreciation at all. So it kind of accelerated the the process for us. But you know, we we did we took the risk on the front end and and put ourselves in the position to be able to to benefit from that. And and now if this happens again, you know, with these these new programs coming out, if there is an increase in appreciation due to market demand, like we are now sitting on three properties. And so we are going to take advantage of that times three. So, you know, again, it's just positioning yourself to be able to take advantage of those lucky situations, right? So um, yeah. So don't don't ever tell us that we're lucky. We just we just happen to be in the right place at the right time and didn't didn't work for it or didn't position ourselves because that's that's not true.
SPEAKER_03Or that we had anything to start with because everything has been self-funded.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that's another thing.
SPEAKER_03We had no like leg up on our first property.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, our first down payment or anything. We had to like scrape and not inherited anything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like well, that's not true.
SPEAKER_00I didn't my grandma passed away and I did get a little bit of money, but I mean it was like very little. Very like 10% of the amount that we needed for the to to close on that house. So yeah. But but yeah, I mean, so we were able to 10x the almost I'll say 9x the the equity in these homes in less than five years, um, you know, without having to to make this a full-time gig. It's just a side thing that we were using our primaries for. So the funny thing is that most people have already taken the first step in this process. They've already bought their first home. People already have a home, but people buy a home with the intent that this is their forever home, or maybe they're going to live in it until they outgrow it with their kids and then they're going to sell it and buy a bigger home. Like we're not doing anything so different from what everybody else is doing. We just have a different mindset. So the mindset that we go into that is we're not buying this as a as this is our home to raise our kids until we are busting at the scenes and need to sell it and get a bigger home. You know, we go into it like we are going to keep this property, we're going to use it for our family for the time being, and then we're going to go buy another one and we're going to keep it.
SPEAKER_03And then sometimes we downsize in the middle of it and cut our property size and happy.
SPEAKER_00I will say it's not the most comfortable like situation. Like we put ourselves in in in places that, you know, are not comfortable because, you know, we're we're doing construction every weekend and we're it's not, you know, it's not fun. It's not easy.
SPEAKER_03That's part of like goes back to the luck conversation of a lot of people are not willing to do that, right? They're they're willing to stay either in that house, they're they're not willing to get uncomfortable and take a few steps backwards to then propel themselves.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, a lot of people say, like, how do you how are you guys still married after going through multiple renovations on multiple properties?
SPEAKER_03Like school renovations.
SPEAKER_00Just we're just resilient, I guess. But you can do it. Like we we started with with one child, and then less than five years later, we got four kids. So we did this at the most difficult time in our life. Like while we have babies and you're pregnant almost the entire time through this five year period. Yeah. You were either pregnant or had a had a had a had a baby.
SPEAKER_03So this is like we did this in a very mindset and you have to you have to be able to stay. See the end goal or the long-term goal. I won't say end because I don't think we have an end goal in sight. Like we will continue doing this. I don't think you especially will never stop. But um so there it's not an end goal, but just a long term. And I think a big part of that is we have that together. This is not your dream or my dream. This is like our dream that we're working towards.
SPEAKER_00These are, you know, we're gonna keep doing this. And, you know, our goal is to have 10 properties. And if, you know, maybe we keep going and we go to 20 or 30, just um our local properties. We've got properties out of state and other other portfolios. We've got other investments, we've got other businesses, but this is just one of our strategies that we're able to do by buying as a primary. It's kind of a just a it's a side hustle type thing because everybody's got a home. You gotta, you gotta live. So you might as well make an investment out of it and make it work for you, make that equity, equity, you know, work for you and build. You know, we're gonna pass these on to our kids. Our kids are gonna have, they're each gonna get a house or two or three or four or five. Who knows? Um, but they'll, you know, maybe we'll have 20 homes and then we'll they each get five and we'll have the divide them up. You're your first, you know, the oldest is pick one, and then the next person you can pick, you know, like just go down the line on what you want. But here's the thing that like, so when you do this, we are not triggering any tax liability because we're not selling these properties. If you sell your property and then take that money rolling into the next one, you could have tax liability. Now, there is a tax exclusion, which we talked about earlier. So you do have if you've lived in it for two years, but you have to live in it for two years to be able to get that, and then that is $250,000 for a single person or $500,000 for a married couple. If you're in a high appreciation market and you got more equity in that, whether it was market appreciation or you forced that appreciation, you're gonna end up paying taxes on the difference. And so you're not gonna be able to escape that, at least with the current, like the current laws that we have right now. When you pull money out on a HELOC or loan or some sort of way that you're unlocking that equity, you are not selling the home. You only trigger that tax liability when you sell the home. You still own the home, even though the banks technically own it, but it's in your name. You pull that money out. There's no taxes on it. That is tax-free money. So everything that we've done over the last five years has been done with tax-free money. Except for the first one. I guess the first one was that we saved up our initial down payment. That was our money that we had paid taxes on. But well, actually, half of that down payment was actually from the HELOC from the first property. Oh, that's so technically only half of that. Only maybe like half of the down payment was post-tax dollars, but everything else that we use for that was actually coming out of it well for the renovations and the rest of the down payment that came from the first property that was pulled out and that was tax-free. Yeah. So we and then every each subsequent one that we've done, we've pulled money out and we've just rolled that equity forward. So we're not, you know, even though we may have all these loans on this property here, we're not losing out on any equity or anything because that equity is just rolling into the next property. So the equity is still there, it's just moving properties on where that actual equity is at. Um, so we we definitely play the game, I would say. Play play the game. But um the the the end game to this is that when you pass, so down the road, we've got 30 properties in the area, whatever, they're going to our kids. We have them all in a trust and they get to go to our kids. When we pass, all that tax liability, if we if we were to sell all those homes before we before we die, we would generate millions and millions of of tax liability that we'd have to pay. If we wait, or if the kids wait until we pass, that tax liability dies with us. They always say there's two things that you can't outrun death and taxes. But I always say you can actually outrun taxes by dying. You can't outrun death, but you can outrun taxes by dying because your tax liability goes to the grave with you. So what happens on properties is there's what's called a step-up basis. And the government says, or the IRS says, whatever that property is worth at the time of your death is what we're gonna start at zero. We're gonna reset the clock to zero. So if a property, if you bought a property for $100,000 and when you pass away, it's worth a million. You got $900,000. Let's say you didn't spend any money on on renovations and it's all market appreciation. You got $900,000. If you were to sell that property, you'd have to pay that goes to your income for the year. You're gonna pay half of that in in taxes. When you die, the IRS says, okay, we're gonna reset the clock to $1 million, because this is the value when you passed away. Your kids can sell that house that next day, and there's zero tax liability. It's gone, it's in the grave with you. So that does not.
SPEAKER_03But there's a window on that, right?
SPEAKER_00No, no, isn't there?
SPEAKER_03I thought there was a window.
SPEAKER_00There's no window, but it's the time at the time of death. So if the kids held on to it for another 10 years, okay. Say they held on to it for another 10 years, and then the property's worth two million and then they want to sell. Now that step up basis is at the time you're dead. Right, okay. And so it would be a million, so they still have a million of additional equity that they'd have to pay on. But if they do it right when you pass, there's there's zero tax liability. So that's how you can do this whole process and never have to pay these capital gains taxes. So another, yeah, it's pretty crazy that you can do that. So I mean, for a long-term strategy, like that's that's the way you're it's the longest term strategy you can get. Till the end. Till the end of the show. Yeah. So I mean, you can literally wipe out decks decades of deferred tax. So we just keep deferring, deferring, deferring, deferring, and then you just wipe that out when you pass and and and pass that on to your heirs. So that is that is kind of our strategy that we have uh long term on this. But uh, you know, again, this is not our full-time job. This is just this is our family wealth planning. So our kids are involved in this too. And as they get older, they're they're becoming more and more involved. I think um, you know, as they become older, we'll they'll probably take on projects themselves and we'll, you know, they can manage their own own project and and kind of be more involved in the the family, the family all method or the family strategy of uh of how we're doing this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I like that. Okay, so one more time, the all method, acquire, live, lift, leverage, loop. Because we didn't say that altogether at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00That is the whole the whole loop process, and you just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Now, again, this may not be for everybody. You have to be willing to move. You you can't just, this is our forever home, and that's how we're gonna do it. You know, then you gotta buy these other ones as secondaries, and it gets a lot harder to pull the money out. It's harder to get second position loans. That's the other thing when it's a primary while you're living in it. So we we get these loans approved, like these HELOCs in second position, third position. We get these while we live in them because loan products are much, much better and more attractive when you live in the property and it's your primary versus an investment property. So a lot of these, you know, you can't it right right now, it's nearly impossible to get a HELOC on investment property. You know, five, six years ago, they were doing that, but now you you can't even get an like the banks just don't do it. So it's very, very difficult to do this with an investment property unless you have a lot of cash and you're just putting the cash into it, not having to pull out the equity, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of rolling your equity and using the equity in these homes to grow your portfolio. So it really works really well when you're doing this as a primary and and locking these loans in as a primary. Now, again, you've got to move, you've got to be willing to move a lot. You gotta not get emotionally attached to these homes and you gotta be willing to move. That's the downside to this. But you can go from 270,000 in equity to 2.3 million in less than five years without a high income. So it's doable.
SPEAKER_03Worth it.
SPEAKER_00I think it is.
SPEAKER_03I think so too.
SPEAKER_00All right. So I think that pretty much kind of covers basically how we've done this over the last few years. And this is not all of our wealth, but it's a very good portion of it. You know, we also have the 401k, which we talked about, which is almost another million dollars in out-of-state properties. Um, and that's that's growing, you know, that doubles about every three and a half years. And so with these different portfolios, we also have other LLCs that own other properties and other projects. We've got other businesses. So we have a lot going on, but as these are all building and each start to snowball, it's we just start seeing like the exponential overall growth of everything. And it just starts, you know, it's a very steep incline as as that builds up.
SPEAKER_03Don't worry, we're still broke though. Just uh just to clarify, even though these things are snowballing.
SPEAKER_00We put all of our money into these properties. So the the worst thing that you can do is have cash in your bank. And the reason I say that, I don't think most people realize this. They don't really think about it. But during uncertain times, or like what we've just seen the last, you know, during a down economy, and we saw all this inflation the last four or five years. And a lot of people will say, like, put your money in cash, sell your assets, put it in cash, and just wait it out, and and that way you've got the cash. What that does is so detrimental because cash doesn't keep up with inflation. The dollar has lost 20% in the last five years. So if you look at the value of the dollar in 2020 versus the value of now in 2025, it is worth 20% less. So your one dollar from 2020 is now worth 80 cents. So if you had $100,000 cash in the bank in 2020 and you just kept it in there and you thought it'd be safe to wait all this out and wait till the market comes back and wait till you know interest rates get low, whatever, and you just had $100,000 sitting in your bank, even though your bank account still says $100,000 today, the value so far. Yeah, the value of that is only $80,000. You literally just lost $20,000 in value by sitting on the sidelines.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very true.
SPEAKER_00So by putting it into real estate, I mean, even putting it into gold, because gold is gonna keep up with inflation. So it's not gonna like gain, but it at least keeps up with inflation and you're not going backwards. Whereas cash, you're just going backwards. It is the worst thing that you can do, just having now there are some advantages of having cash, like you've got money to do things. Cash flow is king. Like you've got you, you know, if you lose your job or if you lose income in one project or whatever, obviously there's an advantage to having cash.
SPEAKER_03And things aren't tied up, things aren't, you have quick access.
SPEAKER_00But just putting cash away and just storing it in an account and just sitting on it, it loses value every single day. Because I can guarantee you, the dollar is not going to start deflating. Inflation is gonna continue on, it's not gonna go backwards. So, you know, cash is not something that you want to just sit on because it's not working for you. Um, with putting it into properties, you're keeping up with inflation. And then you've got these other two, well, three things. You're keeping up with inflation, you're um getting market appreciation when there is market appreciation, you have the ability to like what we do force appreciation. So you can take that asset and force appreciation, you have leverage so you can buy this property, you can you know take 10% down, buy a hundred thousand dollar property. So instead of having a hundred thousand, instead of having 10, well, let's just let's say that stick with $100,000. If you have that $100,000 in cash sitting in the bank versus taking that $100,000 as a 10% down payment on a million dollar home. And then over that five years, that million dollar home is worth $1.5. Your $100,000 is now worth $500,000 more of extra equity that you created. So you have now take your $100,000 out. You still you owe $900,000 on that loan plus $500,000 in equity. So you have turned that $100,000 into $600,000 versus somebody that just had $100,000 in the bank over the last five years and now they have $80,000 because now if they go to buy a home or whatever they go to buy, they're only able to buy $80,000 in buying power versus what they could have in 2020. So like if you look at what your money does, and then on top of that, the uh real estate has so many tax advantages, you know, like how we we defer the taxes and we just defer it and defer it and defer it. So even though we're getting income, we're not paying taxes on it. It's not in I call this silent income because you don't pay taxes on it. So the equity, you're not paying taxes on equity unless you sell. So if you don't sell and you just keep tapping into it and pulling it out with loans and rolling it into the next property, silent income. You're yeah, yeah, you're able to not pay taxes on it because it doesn't ever go against your income. And so it's it's silent income. It's silent income from the government because it's not considered taxable income. It's not as accessible, but you're still able to tap into it with loans and get access to it to roll that into other investments. So this whole strategy, like there's a lot that you can do with it, but don't sit on the sidelines. Just get out there and make it happen and start start doing something. But anyway, the all method is what we've done, and we are going to be sharing this with our we, well, we can talk about our community that we're launching. Tell us about the community.
SPEAKER_03All right. We have a community mastermind that we are going to be launching here shortly that is going to really dive into this all method much more thoroughly. Um we're super excited about it. It's kind of something we've been working on behind the scenes. And I don't know, what do you what else do you want to add?
SPEAKER_00Well, so this is gonna be one of the one of the main frameworks that that we're gonna be teaching people and showing them how to do. And people that want to do this actually like take action on it. You know, we're gonna be be sharing the frameworks that we've used and how we were able to leverage the type of loans, how you structure it, what kind of renovations to do, uh, how to rent the homes and and get the maximum amount of cash flow. And so this is gonna be one of the frameworks that we we kind of build the community on. But it's also gonna have all the other strategies that we that we employ. We've got the the full solo 401k and self-directed IRAs that we do, um, you know, the business that we have. There's a lot of different things that we have that we're gonna be, you know, putting out, and there's gonna be a lot of resources and we're gonna be bringing like-minded people together that are doing this together and and walking through this process together.
SPEAKER_03Probably my biggest, not complaint, but the thing that was hardest for me personally going through this was not having anyone to talk to about it and really no one else that was going through the same situation that really understood what we were going through. Cause you can talk to your friends, but if your family, you know, but if they're not doing this, then it's really hard to fully understand the sacrifices and just everything that goes into it. So we really wanted to bring together like-minded people that are willing, that are either already doing this or that are wanting to do this, that we can kind of just build this community to all work together and support each other and just kind of help each other through it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, absolutely. It'll just be a be a great support system for other families that are gonna be going, you know. The the idea is that we've got these frameworks and and and ways that we build wealth, but we're doing this while we're raising a family. And a lot of people put this off. So we're like, hey, you can do this now. You can get started now.
SPEAKER_03Or they think you have to start, they think you either have to start before kids, or like you said, like, or stop and and then you've lost so much time. And you know, you can you can do it.
SPEAKER_00You can do it whether it's starting a business, whether it's doing the all method and and moving, you know, a few times while these kids are young. Um, you know, you can you can do this and you can make this. And we're gonna show you how to do that and help walk you through that. So we're very excited. That'll be launching at the the start of the year. Um, if you are interested, uh reach out to us on Instagram. You can uh DM us uh about just asking about the community. Uh, we will also be setting up um a website very soon. Um it's gonna be B all actually got the the URL. So it's gonna be BM and the name of the community is Legacy Wealth Builder. So BM legacywealthbuilder.com. Uh and we will be definitely pushing out more information on that for people that are are interested. But we're we're very excited about that. It's our next big project, I would say. The podcast wasn't enough, it's a lot of work getting this together. But yeah, we've been putting a lot of time and effort and into to pulling this together behind the scenes.
SPEAKER_03So very excited about it.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, this is our first studio experience. It's not 10 o'clock at night, you're not falling asleep, but you've got kids to go pick up at school. So we get sure do.
SPEAKER_03Just a new challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just a new challenge. So any last words?
SPEAKER_03No, I think that was good. I'm excited for what's to come, and this space feels like fresh. I don't know. I'm excited about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's great. All right, guys, get out there and make it happen.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for listening. This has been a production of Rebuilding the Dream Studios.
