Episode 84: I Think I Misunderstood Freedom

After selling my first rental property and completing my first flip, I had a realization that caught me off guard.

For years, I thought I was chasing real estate. I thought I was chasing cash flow. I thought I was chasing financial freedom.

But what if freedom isn't what I thought it was?

In this episode, I share what selling my first rental taught me, why getting my money back gave me clarity instead of excitement, and how my definition of success is starting to change.

We talk about the realities of investing while working a W-2 job, the expectations we place on rental properties, and why I don't think I'm chasing properties anymore—I think I'm chasing freedom.

This is one of the most honest and personal episodes I've recorded, and it may change the direction of The Ricky Ricardo Show moving forward.

🎥 Watch the full video episode on YouTube:
 youtube.com/@therickyricardoshow

📲 Instagram:
 @rickyricardoshow

About the show:
The Ricky Ricardo Show documents the real journey of building financial freedom through leverage, better decision-making, and real-world lessons — in real time.
Real estate is the current vehicle, but the principles apply far beyond it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Ricky Ricardo show. I had a crazy realization this week. After selling my first property, selling my first flip, chasing cash flow, and also chasing financial freedom. I think I may have misunderstood freedom altogether. And that's what I want to talk about today. When I started this podcast, it was all about real estate. I think I told you guys, some of you guys have been listening from the beginning. I use this as accountability for myself to actually take action. It worked. I went public, I let everybody know what I was doing, and I got in the driver's seat and I actually turned out some properties and made some money. Bought rentals, uh, I got some cash flow, whether exciting or not. You know, we can argue that, but I was trying to build financial freedom. I was trying to escape the W-2, my job, and I still believe in all of that. That's why I'm continuing with this. And I want you guys to see the journey in real time if this is actually possible. I think it is, and so we're gonna continue with it. But just having clarity and a realization that what is this? Asking questions, the good questions, the hard questions. But somewhere along the way, I started realizing that the properties themselves were never the point. And the reason they were never the point is because how real is that? There's a lot of things that have to fall in place, a lot of chips that have to fall in place for you to actually be successful in the rental property game, especially if you are an employee, you have a job, you have so much time, you're committed to giving your full-time job majority of the hours. It makes you think like, if if I can do this, what is it gonna take? What is realistic? Many times have I listened to others and I've listened to other investors that actually haven't escaped the rat race. It's actually pretty common. I'm still in it. Let's be honest. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon unless something magical happens. It's almost like we're out of that era. There's a lot of people with a lot of success, or there are some people, I should say, that have had success with previous markets. We're not in markets like that anymore. You know, there was a huge increase in home pricing during the COVID stage. There was a lot of cash flow. Rents were down, there wasn't wars. There was, I mean, there was all kinds of stuff that was making people excited to go spend money. And then investors on the back end of all that made a lot. This may be a completely different story or journey had I started back then when I really started listening and learning all about this. But we get scared. I got scared and I didn't move forward. I just put my head down and continued in the job and worked a bunch of overtime hours. Now that was a little bit of a rant there, but I want to talk about my first property again. Let's go back to that. It's my first rental. I made it, I became an investor. I told you guys there was a lot of people that talked to me about wanting to buy homes, friends, family members, even. That doesn't make you an investor. Like buy a property. I bought a property, actually became an investor, wasn't excited about the cash flow. For some reason, even though I bought that, I felt like, oh, that's easy. I'll just get another one and another one and another one. We'll keep going. Well, money runs short, and you have to clock in and back at work. So I sold it. I got all my money back. I tried it, it didn't work out in terms of changing my future or giving me the success to actually put a threat on leaving the job. It didn't do any of that. Actually, it told me and reminded me how far away I was from that if I stayed in this uh method. But I realized that's not what I was chasing. That wasn't going to help me get out of leaving my job. It wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go. And that's a big thing. You have to ask yourself, where do you want to go with this? Everyone's freedoms are different. That's where I said before selling the first property did not give me money, did not give me a bunch of money to move forward and buy, you know, 5x, 10x properties. You know, I had it for two years in a market that doesn't have much appreciation. You know, it's a low-cost market to begin with. I got my money back though. And I was able to say, this made it clear. I got clarity from it. And that's when I realized not every investment is designed to create the same life. I don't know how more real it gets. You know what I want to say is I started the show with wanting to be completely real. I gathered some listeners. Some of you guys are still here. There are new listeners. I appreciate everyone of you guys tuning in. I just want to say, I told myself, if I can't be real, if I can't share valuable information, uh, if I'm done learning, then I want to stop. I don't I don't want to keep talking to you guys for the sake of talking to you guys. I want to provide some kind of value, and maybe the value is not teaching real estate methods to become rich and threaten your job to gain some financial freedoms. There are going to be some deals out there that you can get, and there are going to be some you know strategies that might help you with some of your freedoms with cash flows and all that. But if you have a decent job, it's probably not going to help you get out of that unless you go full-time. And that's a whole nother animal, a whole nother beast to say, hey, if you have a family, if you have kids, if you have any responsibilities, you're supposed to just get up, jump out, and say, Let me give this a try. People that did that did that in old markets. Again, read the news, read everything. It is really tough now. There's people selling their properties for cash flow because it's just not what it was. Not to say it's bad. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think we have to evaluate our expectations of what can rental property cash flows do for us. Because my freedoms are becoming more clear. And it's evident I share with you guys I want more time with my kid. He's getting older. Time is not slowing down. It feels like it's getting faster or it's going by faster. I want to be less dependent on overtime because when I don't work overtime and I work an eight-hour day, it feels like I have a day off. It's crazy. I want options, I want flexibility. Those are the freedoms I wanted and I thought I could get going this route, but we'll see. I want more experiences, I want more control of my life, I want more control to do the things I enjoy, realizing not a lot of time out there. Let's be honest. I don't think I'm chasing properties anymore. I'm just chasing freedom. And maybe that's why I've been struggling with some of these renovation updates. Because if I'm being honest, I don't know if I want to spend the next 10 years talking about paint colors, talking about flooring, updating the HVAC system and quotes and contractor dramas. Like that's cool. You know, that's that's crazy stories. And, you know, if people are being nosy, we like that kind of drama. But, you know, I can only share so many stories about what's going on inside of a home. Those things matter. They're part of the journey, but they're not the journey. I mean, the renovations matter, the HVAC matters, the properties matter, obviously, but they aren't the journey. Maybe this show isn't really about real estate. Maybe it's about what happens when a regular guy decides he wants more out of life. Let's think about that. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it, right? That's what we always hear. I have a job, I have a good job. I have a stable job. It's afforded me things I never thought I would have in my life. I'm very fortunate. I'm excited, you know, what I'm able to provide for my family and help. It's allowed me to invest. Let's be honest. Without this, I'm not investing. It helps to have that kind of, you know, I'm on my fitness. I'm doing my best to say health is wealth. I'm a father. Like I said, I've shared with you guys. I want to be present for my son. There's relationships, there's risks, there's mistakes, there's growth, there's so many things on the journey to share how a regular guy can actually make it. Real estate just happens to be one of those vehicles. And just to end this, guys, I don't have all of the answers. I still want rentals. I'll be completely honest. I still want flips. I need those. I still want financial freedom. But I think I'm finally asking better questions. And maybe that's the real progress in all of this. The journey doesn't get more real than this. I'm your boy Ricky Ricardo. I hope this was a fun episode. It's a different episode, but just want to share in real time exactly what I'm thinking, and I won't ever shoot it different for you guys. So thanks for listening. Subscribe if you haven't. Share this with somebody, a friend or family member, if you think this episode could help them. It's Monday. It was a holiday. Happy Memorial Day. Thank you, veterans and everyone, for your service. Salute to you guys. Appreciate you. Take care, and we'll talk in the next one.