Episode 88: One Decision Saved Me Thousands

Most people only see the finished renovation.

They don't see the hundreds of small decisions that determine whether a real estate deal actually works.

In this episode, I share an update on my Alabama mid-term rental project, how one conversation with my plumber may have saved around $2,000, the unexpected issue we uncovered once the floors came up, and why the smallest decisions often have the biggest impact.

If you're building wealth through real estate—or simply trying to make better financial decisions—I hope this episode gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what the journey really looks like.

Thanks for following along.

🎥 Watch the full video episode on YouTube:
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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

This week reminded me why real estate is never just one big decision. It's about hundreds of small ones. One conversation with my plumber may have just saved me around $2,000. And about 30 minutes later, we uncovered something that could have been a much bigger issue. Let me catch you guys up. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the show. Took a week off, my apologies. Had some things to attend to. I'm just a regular employee still, so I don't do this completely full time. Even though I would love to, uh maybe you guys could make it happen. Let's let's see what we can do. Help me out. On that note, subscribe, give a review, say hi, say something. Uh I'm on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify now. Uh the videos are up, so show some love and you know, let's get right into this. So I just got an update from the contractor. Uh this is for my midterm rental property in Alabama, and I'm trying to get this thing going. Let's let's hurry up and and make some money on this deal. Um, and what's happened is plumbing, or I should say, plumbing is going to start tomorrow. Hard plumbing, I should say. And originally we had two options. So the home only had one bathroom. So we're adding a second bathroom, we're converting a bedroom into a second bathroom. With that, we had two options of how we were gonna set this bathroom up. One was with the private toilet, and then the other one was just with the toilet off to the side of the bathtub. Um, both now are I guess kind of standard. Um, I've been in homes that have both of them, and there's pros and cons to it. There's more openness, open floor plan, which is having the toilet in there, and then there is the lesser plan that had a separate uh toilet room with its own door. What happened there was it was it was kind of forced to choose the one with the private toilet in its room. And the reason is is because there was already a sewer line right next to it. So even if I wanted to do the second option and move the toilet about 15 feet away, then we were gonna have to pay, or I was gonna have to pay about $2,000 to hard plumb that over. When the plumber found the existing drain right next to where the original thought would be, that's the best way to go. You're still gonna get a toilet, and that's the biggest thing in this, right? But it's gonna have privacy to it. It's it's gonna be nice, it's gonna turn out really good. Uh still gonna have to buy a toilet, uh, a bathtub, um, flooring, a vanity, and all those things. But the hard part of it, you know, is about to be done. They're starting plumbing tomorrow, uh, and and hopefully it's done within the week, but I'll get updates. We'll know more uh here real soon. What also happened is they pulled the floor out, they found a joist that was rotten. There's an old leak. They've identified it. And these are some of the things that we don't know until you start peeling back walls and picking up the floors. Uh, it wasn't anything major. Um, it was identified, it was about a hundred and fifty dollar fix to fix the joist, but things add up, right? And is that the only issue that's in that home or in that bathroom? And so far, they said that's all it was. So 150 bucks all day, take it. Uh, if that is the price to, you know, to fix that issue. And with the renovation, everybody sees the before and after pictures. It's gonna happen. You guys will see it at some point, but that's all everyone likes to show. Uh, nobody talks about the hundreds of little decisions that determine whether project's actually going to work, whether it actually is gonna make sense money-wise, and if it's going to make it profitable for myself. And this comes down to asking questions, comes down to slowing down, uh stepping back, and having those hard conversations with the boots on the ground, especially if you're not in the area. Uh, I'm not in Alabama, I'm all the way over here in California. It's far away. Uh, so there's a lot of trust you have to put into the team there. There's things that I've learned that you want to verify before actually spending. And now the cool thing in this is again, I'm not the one spending this money. This is the loan product that I have that's paying for this. So as long as I don't go outside of my scope of work, um, which I've done a couple small items, like the $150 joist uh repair, as long as it stays in those little amounts, I'm completely okay with paying those out of pocket, outside of the scope of work. Uh, it's just when it comes to the big major things that I'd rather not do. So, not to keep talking about my flip disaster or horror story that I dealt with, which I could have made a lot more money. Ended up being a success story, uh, but it could have been a much scarier issue had more things gone bad. So that's what's happening tomorrow. Uh, let's get this thing going, let's hurry up and get some money. I do need to uh book a trip out there. I always tell you guys I need to go visit the property. Uh the team I have in place is really good. Like I said, they they took me out uh and took care of my flip, so there's a lot of trust there, but it doesn't stop me from wanting or needing to go check on it and just seeing it for myself. So that should be coming up pretty soon. I should be uh booking a trip out there. Uh so the project's finally moving. It feels like it's been taking forever. It feels slow because I'm not in multiple projects. I'm not looking at a huge payday. You know, the monies are going to be supposedly good from the monthly cash flow incomes, but you know, I'm not looking at uh getting a huge amount of money on this, which is okay because in the long run it should give me decent cash flow. And how I got this property technically is I sold one of my properties, underperforming properties in Indiana, and I just moved those monies into this in hopes that I can get a much higher cash flow. Um, based off the numbers and everything, that's what it will do. That's what it should do, and that's what I'm hoping actually gets done. But at the end of the day, like I said earlier, I saved almost $2,000. Um, I will get the final plumber bill and I'll let you guys know exactly what that is. Um but one thing I've realized over the last few weeks is that I enjoy these kind of updates. I enjoy the kind of updates to say, hey, guess what? Something just took place. This renovation is almost done, and the project is almost concluded. Like it's almost complete. To finish a project, I want to see some money. So once we get the first contract, the first midterm rental in there, you know, I will consider that a success, see some of that cash flow in the month, and then you know, we can celebrate high five, and you guys can give me a bunch of kudos and say, great job. That's that's what I'm hoping for, at least. But the update, not because it's about a house, um, because it's about solving problems in real time. This is the the cool thing. This is what keeps the conversation going, this is what keeps the education going, the learning, all of these things compounded over time, you're gonna become an expert. As long as you keep stepping one foot in front of the other, you're gonna learn so many things that you can apply into the next deal, into the next project, into the next adventure that you're gonna jump into, right? This is repetition and certain things that make you better. Um, that's what this journey really is about. Uh, it's not just financial freedom, it's continuous growth, uh, and it's learning to make better decisions one step at a time. Subscribe, hit the follow button, leave a review uh if you can, and reach out to me. I'd love to talk to you guys. Uh, enjoy your Monday, enjoy the rest of your week, and I will talk to you on the next episode. Bye bye.