Mindy: Trevor and his wife crossed the $1 million net worth mark by age 32, and they’re on track to hit financial independence well before 40. Their journey wasn’t traditional. It involved strategic career moves, real estate investments, and leveraging corporate benefits that most people overlook. Today, we’ll be breaking down their entire story.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my staying in one place co-host Scott Trench.
Scott: Thanks, Mindy. Excited to be here and get to the root of Trevor’s journey to financial independence. We are so excited to be joined by Trevor today. He’s a few years away from reaching financial independence well before he turns 40. And we are very excited to hear about that journey. Trevor, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.
Guest: Thanks, Scott Mindy, pleasure to be here. Excited to chat today.
Scott: All right, well, could you tell us a little bit about your journey? Where does your journey to financial independence start?
Guest: I guess it really started in college. I was in a finance class and I picked up the millionaire next door, and that really opened my eyes to just like, you know, the possibilities, like you didn’t have to have a million dollar a year job or something like that to to grow your your wealth and and and become wealthy, you could do it as a normal person. So, I would say that’s probably the first major step in my journey was was reading the millionaire next door.
Mindy: And what was your financial position when you first discovered this concept?
Guest: Yeah, I made it through college and I think I graduated with a net worth of right around $1,000. I was grateful that I didn’t have any debt when I graduated, but my net worth was, yeah, about $1,000. I remember starting my job and just hoping that I could, you know, had enough money to make it from my first paycheck. I think I had a $5,000 signing bonus coming my way. but yeah, that’s that’s kind of where I started.
Mindy: A positive is better than negative when you’re getting out of college. So $1,000, woohoo, you won.
Scott: Your career started off with a bang though. What what happened next?
Guest: So that first year my wife was doing a masters program and I think that first year I didn’t really save hardly anything. I think I I maxed out my 401K contribution and I think I maxed out my Roth IRA as well, but everything else I was going into paying off my my wife’s schooling so that way we didn’t take on any debt to to get her graduated. After she graduated she had a period where she had to work for free in internships. Once she graduated, I mean, we really focused on keeping our living expenses low. We drove old cars. At this point, I mean, this is like 2017, 2018, this is right when the Bigger Pockets Money podcast was launched, right in that time frame. Really connected with you guys as uh, you know, hosts of the podcast. I appreciated, you know, Scott, your position on approaching your finances from a position of of financial strength and you know, real estate investing from a position of financial strength. That’s kind of where I I decided to put more of my effort.
Scott: What did that mean for you in terms of building a position of financial strength at that time?
Guest: The goal was to stay out of debt, and then once my wife finished schooling and everything like that, we kept our expenses low. You know, at that point in our lives, we prioritized travel. We spent money on travel, but everything else we didn’t spend a whole lot of money. And so I think we had a savings rate of, you know, close to 75, 80% for six to nine months and we managed to save right around, you know, 60k in that six to nine months in 2018, and then I was in a rotational program with my job and I guess it it really kicked off when we moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my work. So I can get into that side of things for you guys if if that makes sense.
Scott: Yeah, let’s hear it.
Guest: When I joined my company one of the things that I really tried to understand were the the corporate benefits. So like, you know, 401K matches medical benefits, and then my particular company, there were a lot of benefits around relocating doing international assignments, expat roles. And some of those, you know, as as somebody straight out of school were not good options for me. I I didn’t have the right experience, but I I tried to make myself available. I told leadership, hey, you know, I’m I’m interested in working overseas. I’m I’m interested in moving. I’m mobile, you know, give me a good challenge and I’m willing to, you know, move and and change my life to to accept it. So I ended up being presented with an opportunity to move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to work on a job. And I was I was really surprised, you know, all of the other grads, like they were they were young, they had good experience, but a lot of them would make up reasons or had reasons that kept them from moving, which I found interesting. You know, this that’s the most flexible time of life, but everybody wanted to stay in a specific position.
Scott: I love this observation here and I think it’s a core requirement for those who are not already on super high income trajectories, right? If you’re a lawyer and you get a a, you know, big law job, then okay, it doesn’t matter, right? You’re just gonna work your butt off, make big big income and and that’ll take care of your path to financial independence. But if you’re like me, and it sounds like you Trevor, and and you’re more in that median or maybe a little bit above it in you know, in that in terms of income coming out of college, then flexibility is the ingredient. The, it’s the primary way to to ramp up your income. And also, I think there’s a little bit of a frugality component and how that opens up options. And an example in my my past that seems to parallel yours a little bit, you know, that the employer that we’re at offers an employee stock purchase plan. It’s super straightforward. You buy the stock at a 15% discount and you sell it the next day for that entire gain if you want, or you can hold it. And all you got to do is just back out the contribution and, you know, it’ll sit there for about, you know, three months. Um, they don’t buy the stock until the end of that and then you purchase it at the 15% discount. You can sell it the next day, which is what I did. And I I immediately got like, like a seven or $8,000 a year raise on this. And nobody in the finance department that I worked with. This is really all finance financial analysts. Like this is the the the most obvious opportunity you’re ever going to get in your life to arbitrage money, they wouldn’t do it. And you know, they they wouldn’t they wouldn’t accept these these all these things. And I just I never understood that that that concept. It sounds like that’s what you’re going through here and you still don’t get it even all these years later why there was that unwillingness to be flexible at that time. And now where, you know, spoiler alert, that flexibility has created huge opportunities for you to ramp your income and really build wealth that would not have been possible if you had been not been flexible. So I don’t know if any of that resonates, but that was my observation from 10, 12 years ago starting out my career and it seems like it parallels yours in a lot of ways.
Mindy: Well, and it sounds like Trevor worked for a company where there was a lot of moving opportunities. So by being the person who says, Hey, I want to do this, you’re helping out your superiors because apparently they need to move people around all over the place, but you become known as the guy who’s willing to do stuff as opposed to the person who says no all the time and that has intangible benefits to your career in your trajectory as well.
Guest: Yeah, Scott just just to comment on what you said, when I first joined, you know, my company, I signed up for the employee stock purchase plan and HR called me and they had to confirm that I wanted to put 80% of my salary towards the employee stock purchase plan.
Scott: That’s perfect. That’s exactly what I did, right? I put 100% of my salary into it because I’m like, oh, well, there’s no way the stock moves 15% in a single day on that one day where I’m going to change my thing. If that happens, I’m the unluckiest guy on earth, right? And it you know, in in the hour or whatever it’s going to it’s going to sit in that in that stock. There’s no reason not to put everything into it into it. And and I I was just amazed that nobody else at this company with 10,000 employees seemed to be doing it and that seems to be that seems to be your observation as well. I think if you’re out there and you’re and you’re listening to this and you’re not doing that, that’s crazy to me that you wouldn’t take this free money. There should be a million more Americans who are who are taking advantage of that. I I believe if they’re serious about financial independence. I I Mindy’s going to disagree with me but I I I just feel like it’s such a no-brainer. It’s it’s free money. It’s like taking the 401K match.
Mindy: Yes, it’s a no-brainer. Yes, it’s free money, but there are people who are sitting there saying, but Scott, how am I gonna live off of? I I’m putting 100% of my salary in here. How am I going to live? So you don’t have to put 100% of the salary, you can put a little bit less, but also start saving up a buffer so that you can, you know, Scott, you said it was three months before you saw this money. You probably had a really great financial position coming out of college.
Scott: I had three grand like Trevor. I just I just say I I was just lived very frugally to take advantage of that. Now that that was my privilege as a single person, right? If you’re locked into a lifestyle and you can’t float that, that that’s a problem, right? And that that’s a real that that drives this flexibility concept, right? But on bigger pockets money, we are all about building that financial flexibility and if you’re building towards that financial flexibility and listening to this podcast, maybe you can’t take advantage of it today, but next year, there’s no excuse. You should be able to do that. That should be a primary driver motivator because that is holding you back. If you can’t take advantage of something like an employee stock purchase plan because you can’t float a few months of expenses to get free money, then you’re not going to be working towards financial independence and you’re going to be the victim of this lack of flexibility that Trevor is highlighting here. You need to be able to take advantage of these opportunities and it starts from a position of financial strength, which is what Trevor did. There’s no question that by doing that, that that’s going to lead to a chain reaction of other smart decisions that will propel you forward along your financial journey. If you’re capable of doing stuff like that because that’s that’s how people get ahead in this country is they build that flexibility and then they take advantage of the opportunities that that flexibility presents in chain reactions over time.
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Mindy: If you don’t know what opportunities your company has, go talk to HR. I think that’s such an important conversation to have, ask them, what are the benefits that you get just by being an employee? A lot of people don’t even know what their company is offering and they don’t take them up on it. I mean, something as easy as they’ll pay for your gym membership. Hey, that’s awesome. Money coming out of their pocket instead of yours is always a benefit. You know, everybody knows about health care and 401k, but they don’t really look at into anything else and your company might offer a lot of really awesome benefits. And if they don’t, maybe it’s time to start looking for a new company.
Scott: I I want to caveat this as well because I’ve talked about the employee stock purchase plan on the show in the past and I’ve gotten very thoughtful emails from folks who say, well, I have to hold it for two years or whatever. That’s different, right? Now you’re taking a different a really risk. But in many situations, these plans, especially with some of the largest publicly traded companies in the country, those rules allow for instant sale or allow you to set up a rule. Like I was in the finance team, so I couldn’t actually I had to set up a trigger well in advance. I could not trade the stock except for on on certain days with advanced notice because I could theoretically have, you know, inside information on the company. I had inside information on the company, but it didn’t change the fact that doesn’t matter what I thought about the stock price. I was gonna arbitrage it for a single day that 15% discount. So there’s no there’s no like insider knowledge needed to to to to make that investment in there. And I think if you have a parallel to that, then you should be taking advantage of it or it should be a top priority in your financial journey, certainly before like a house hack or something like that because it’s so it’s it’s right there. After a few months, you get that return, then you can deploy it in your house hack. Anyways, that that’s my my rant over for the employee stock purchase plan. Thank you for your patience, Trevor. Let’s get back to your your your story here. What else could you do besides take the employee stock purchase plan? What other moves were going on at this time to really set the stage for this explosion of accumulation?
Guest: At this time of my life the priority was getting a good pile of cash to take advantage of of an opportunity. I was still listening to the Bigger Pockets podcast, bigger pockets money. I was doing everything I could to educate on, you know, what kind of opportunities that I that I want to go and pursue. And so, moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and you know, during this time I was offered a relocation package. It was flagged as a short-term relocation and so I didn’t get like a lump sum amount, but I did get my housing paid for. I got per diems, I got a travel allowance to go back to Houston. I didn’t have any family in Houston or any connection to Houston. So there was a cash option that I could just, you know, take that in cash. And so, at this point in my life, like, you know, I was working, my my wife was working, so we had our base salaries, our housing expenses were covered. Like before we moved to Pittsburgh, I was, you know, 100% set on, hey, I’m going to do a house hack. And then this opportunity lands in my lap and I’m like, this is the ultimate house hack. My company’s paying for my housing, right? And so like at that point in time, I I just kind of, you know, decided there’s literally no risk right now. if I buy a house and everything goes, you know, poorly with it, I can cover the mortgage because my housing’s being paid for. And so I I thought about it in, you know, just like the the risk that was involved and you know, I decided if I’m going to invest in real estate, now’s the time. And so I you know, went about educating myself with the market, you know, I found a good realtor. We looked at 20 or 30 properties, started making offers. We made an offer on a triplex that was accepted and then, you know, I had my my very first house that I’d ever purchased, which was a rental, it wasn’t even, you know, I wasn’t even living in it.
Scott: Awesome. And what year are we are we in right now when you’re on your property search?
Guest: We moved to Pittsburgh in 2019. So this was, you know, between January and June of 2019. I probably looked at, you know, 20 to 30 properties and we closed on a triplex in June of 2019.
Scott: Let’s hear about the um, that the house hack purchase and uh the numbers behind it. Can you give us a quick overview of this deal?
Guest: So the purchase price for theplex was $220,000. Each unit was renting between $500 and 700 a month. And then I I mean, I can go into like the sale and and everything. I I didn’t sell it for a few years, but do you just want me to go through all the numbers right now?
Scott: Let’s hear about how you think about it how this fits into your story, right? Because I’m trying to get that chronology, right? Graduated in 2017, saved up some cash, bought this triplex that we’re not we’re not going talking about a very fancy place, it doesn’t sound like here, you know, but we’re talking about something that probably helps you continue to save. Yeah, I would love to hear just kind of like where where that then goes in 2020 and 2021 as it propels your journey forward.
Guest: Yeah, purchase price was $220,000, units rented between $500 and $700. When I bought the triplex like it was in pretty poor shape. The units were all stacked on top of each other, right? So it was an up down triplex. The top unit was borderline uninhabitable and then the two of the units still had tenants living in them. I’m kind of like a, you know, do it yourself kind of person. That’s that’s kind of my attitude. And so I like, you know, bought the unit. Uh, it it was built in 1900, so, you know, old house, plaster walls, a lot of character, but you know, just a lot of work to do on these triplex. And so I immediately started working and and renovating. You know, the the the top unit and I mean it was 15 months that I spent doing the top unit and then I did the middle unit as well where I’m doing probably 80-90% of the work and I put about $35,000 into the house in total, uh, and rented out both of the units and by that time, got another job offer in a different city with the same company, uh, in a sales role.
Scott: I want to call out some more things I just love about what you’re doing in a general sense here, right? When you are early in your career. So one of the challenges with real estate investing in a broad sense is that it is not appealing to a doctor or a very high incoming earning lawyer because the work that you were doing was probably valued in the 30 to $60 an hour range, right? That’s probably what you could have hired it out for. Maybe a little less for some of it, maybe a little more for other parts of it. But if you’re making 50,000 a year, right? Or 25, I don’t know what was your salary at the time? Was it around $50,000, $60,000?
Guest: So I was I was making about $85,000 a year.
Scott: And that job did not at that point in time did not offer opportunities for you to work additional hours, right? And and make more money. It was probably a salary job where you work 9 to 5-ish and go home, right?
Guest: No overtime, no commission, you know, it was nine to five. So I’d work, hop in my car, drive over to the triplex and start working again.
Scott: And real estate is so uniquely powerful for you for in that position, at that moment in time compared to other opportunities because that work you’re doing is as high paying or maybe even a little higher paying arguably than the work that you’re doing at your job for that moment in time. And that begins to change with your sales job, I’m sure at some point because now that extra effort at work begins to come in there. But for that moment in time, it’s so powerful. And I wish more people would do it at that point, but it’s really hard to get to that that mental space because it’s an all in bet, right? Um, it’s it’s you’re you’re taking a mortgage at least two to two and a half and today it will be even more times your annual income with a high payment and it requires a lot of free time. But for that moment in time, it’s such a powerful leverage because it reduces your housing cost and that work you’re doing is actually rewarding you at a higher relative hourly rate than than your day job for at least a year or so. So anyways, let’s hear about the uh the next step of the journey with your uh job change.
Guest: Maybe just a couple more things on the house. The after repair value of the the two units that I fixed up were, you know, 1,000 to 1,200. So the the after repair value on on the rents just shot up. So this is, you know, 2020, COVID hits, you know, I I’m still fixing up this house. The organization that I was working in, um, had some uncertainty. I was I was supposed to stay in Pittsburgh for a few more years, but with COVID, the organization that I was in was shrinking and so, you know, I started looking for other opportunities within the company. You know, I’m listening to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast and um, you know, one piece of advice Scott that you had shared is uh, you know, going to a sales role in order to increase your your overall income. So, at this point in my journey, I have a business degree. I’ve always been, you know, a commercial professional. And so my skill set, you know, really well aligned with the sales role. So I was able to move within my company into a sales role, keep my same base pay, but have a much higher opportunity for, you know, a bonus pay. And so I found a role in Chicago and moved to the western suburbs of Chicago in my new role. My salary at this time was, you know, 95k. I moved September of 2020. I moved into an apartment and we were kind of ready to move into a house and so we decided to explore a couple house hacks, a couple live-in-flips and, uh, so that that was kind of the next step of our journey.
Scott: I actually had the same thing happen to me where my job at bigger pockets when I joined had a sales component, and about the same, you know, a little actually less base than I would have made if I just stayed in my my old role. You think that’s common for folks that were starting out in the same position as you that there’s an opportunity to move into a sales role where you just make the same money that you are making previously and have that much higher of a a base compensation because that that word sales seems to to alienate or or put put turn off many people to that to that type of work? Is that how it was for you and is that you think it’s common for folks in your peer set?
Guest: I mean, I I can comment on the company that I was at because I think every company probably has their own HR policies culture, right? So at our company we have like job grades and I was moving parallel into the job grade that I already had. And so I was able to to maintain my same salary. One thing that I noticed is my peers that were hired externally from the company had a much lower base salary than I did.
Mindy: Oh, okay, so there’s another bonus.
Scott: Really interesting. Yeah, so what kind of salary were you making with the commissions?
Guest: I think my target was 25%. It was kind of weird just like with COVID, working part-time years, I had one bonus structure in in one role that was different than the other. So I think that first year, I only worked a few months in sales. and so largely my bonus was calculated by my my previous role, which had a a actually a much better bonus in the in the sales organization, we had supply issues, you know, a lot of stuff was happening in 2020, but they gave me the bonus for my old role, which was actually better than what most of the sales people got in 2020. And then in 2021, it flip-flopped and the sales people got much better bonuses. So I mean it was just being lucky, being, you know, like in the right place at the right time a piece of that. And you know, I think that’s something that you’ll see in my story is I feel like I got lucky in a lot of places and then I also had some places where I was very unlucky, you know, and it’s just kind of taking shots. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. You know, sometimes you’re lucky, but if you’re fundamentals are strong and you know, you’re keeping your your cost of living low and you’re saving and you’re you’re taking chances on investments, some things are going to hit, right? You know, Scott, you always say nine out of 10 businesses fail, so start 10 businesses and you’ll have a a success. So.
Mindy: Yeah, and you’re taking advantage of these opportunities. You weren’t the only person who could have moved over to that sales position. You just were the only person who did and then you stayed there the next year. Yes, you got lucky with the timing of the the move, but also you took initiative to do the move. I know that’s what’s setting you apart from so many other people who started near the same time you did, who are in similar roles. They don’t have the same financial picture that you do because they didn’t take advantage of all the things that you took advantage of even though they had similar opportunities. So don’t discount your role in taking advantage and taking initiative. I think a lot of people are like, yeah, I just got really lucky. You got really lucky because you worked for it.
Scott: And his position was compatible with luck, right? A position where Trevor had spent 95% of his salary, maybe just taking a 401K match, for example, um, but spending everything else would not have been compatible with this move. And and let’s also acknowledge that while his salary was lateral, right, 90 to 90,000 as a base salary from his Pittsburgh to Chicago move, Chicago is a much higher cost of living than Pittsburgh. So there was in fact a reduction in probably the net take home pay, for example. In some capacity that that went along with that move, but he could do that for that opportunity because of his low living expenses and and and what I imagine, you know, carried through to to the the Chicago that whatever you’re doing, you know, living in a in a in a triplex that rents for five hundred to seven hundred dollars a month that needs a lot of work. I mean, you are not living at large in Pittsburgh. So whatever you moved into in Chicago probably almost felt better, um, felt like a life upgrade, I would imagine at that point in time along with that move. Is that is that a correct guess?
Guest: In Pittsburgh we were in a corporate apartment. It was pretty nice, like no complaints on the living situation. Uh, when we moved to Chicago my own frugality got in the way. So we actually moved into an apartment.
Scott: the triplex wasn’t an investment property, not a not a house hack. Is that correct?
Guest: It was an investment property. Yeah.
Scott: Got it. Okay.
Guest: So when when we moved into Chicago, and maybe to back up a little bit, so I was able to take advantage of the relocation program again, right? So I wasn’t able to do like the short-term assignment in this circumstance. I had like a full permanent relocation package, which those packages were also very generous in my company. And so I had essentially all of the costs of the move paid for me. I had my deposit for my apartment was paid, like all of the transactional fees that you think about. basically my company tried to make it so that way if I was a renter, then like all the lease cancellations in my old place, everything was taken care of. and in the new place, I I I didn’t have to put any money down to get started in the new place. So, you know, very generous relocation program. Plus with all of the different cash stipends and you know, things to pay for, like utility ups and other things, they just gave us kind of a cash. So, I actually made around $40,000 just in the moving process moving from Pittsburgh to Chicago.
Mindy: Okay, so all the people who say, oh, I could never move, you could move. And and not every company is gonna have these relocation bonuses like this, but your company, if they want you to move to another location, you can ask them for these benefits and ask them, you know, oh, will you pay my moving expenses? Will you put down the deposit on my new apartment? Will you help me hook up my utilities? You know, it’s gonna cost me X to cancel my lease in my current location. Can you do that for me? Or, I mean, when you own a house, these relocation benefits can be quite lucrative as well.
Scott: Yeah, I think that the willingness to move, like it comes back to housing, right? Housing is such a core variable on the on the person in your personal financial journey. And if you’re willing to be flexible with housing, one it can greatly increase your ability to save if you’re for example willing to house hack. and two, if you’re willing to just move to where that next opportunity is, that can be enormously valuable in terms of pushing your career forward or your building your net worth and that’s what it sounds like happened here.
Guest: Yeah, absolutely.
Scott: Well, cool, let’s let’s hear about it. So how did it go? How did it go with the sales career and and the move after after this in terms of the next phase of your wealth building journey.
Guest: Yeah, so I think, you know, 2021, I had purchased uh a house that we intended to move into. And so I started doing all of the remodel. The house was built in the 60s and it basically hadn’t been touched since the 60s. And so I did like a full remodel, um, you know, knocked down walls, renovated bathrooms, kitchen, upgraded the electrical panel. You know, I I’m not a construction professional. I tried to do as much of the work that that I could as as possible. Maybe a couple things on like doing the work yourself um that I can comment on. A lot of the expensive things are like, you know, electrical, plumbing, if you hire an electrician to wire your whole house, you know, like for example, we put in can lights in our living room and the space that he would have had to crawl in was very uncomfortable. I was a young guy like
Scott: He’s 33. He’s like, I was a young guy back then. Yeah, exactly. Knees were were much more forgiving in those days. Sorry, keep going.
Guest: So I I hired an electrician, you know, I I kind of told him like, hey, this is my plan. I’m going to put lights here, here, here and here. Here’s how I’m going to wire it. Can you tell me like, will this meet code? I kind of gave him an overview of my plan. I said, will this meet code? Does this design make sense? Can you give me a quote for how much it would cost for you to do like the final, you know, bits and pieces, you know, because I had like an electrical panel upgrade and a couple things like that. and I told them like, this is my plan. Um can you run it under your insurance? He agreed to it. I did all the wire running and then he came and I paid him, you know, maybe $1,200 bucks to fix a low wire that was hanging in my backyard that connected to the uh the power lines and the utility panel and you know, he told me that I probably saved about three grand running all the wires myself, hooking them up to the outlets, hooking them up to the light switches. So it was it was a huge cost savings.
Scott: How do you factor in the insurance or liability risk attached with doing that kind of work yourself? That was one thing I I could never wrap my head around with electrical in particular when I was, you know, uh uh self doing that and that’s one of the things I always hired out.
Guest: So electrical and plumbing, I would say are are the two, you know, biggest risk items. I think anybody can run wire in a house, anybody can learn how to do PEX pipes. And so that, you know, that’s that’s what I would do is I would run PEX pipes, wire, if there’s a gas line or something like that, like that at that point I’d say, you know, I’m going to hire a plumber. on the electrical side, I mean, I I just explained how I would do it, but yeah, this this particular electrician, he said that he would run it under his insurance. So we had documented the entire wiring plan, you know, everything that we were doing with the house as part of that remodel and, you know, we just had copies of the work and I did all of the grunt work, he did all of the smart electrician work and it was all covered under his insurance in case, you know, I sold the house and and something happened later.
Scott: That’s a wonderful solution to work alongside a licensed professional on a lot of those things and have that that that be in there. I I I had not thought of that but I would have certainly been willing to do that if I had been creative or smart enough to to realize that was an option at the time when I was house hacking.
Mindy: Most municipalities will allow you to do work on your house if you’re going to live there for the next year. So you can’t come in and flip a house as an unlicensed contractor, but as a homeowner, you can do the work. So that’s how Carl and I have done most of our live-in flips is his dad was an electrician. He grew up doing electrical work. But with electric and plumbing and gas lines, you have instant feedback. If the electric doesn’t work, as soon as you turn the switch back on, you know that it doesn’t work. So then you go and like try and figure out what doesn’t work about it. With the plumbing, if you didn’t tighten the PEX correctly or you didn’t sweat the copper correctly, as soon as you turn the water back on, you know it. And same with gas pipes. You you fit the gas pipes together and then they have this, you can do it like with soap or they’ve got a gas tester thing, which is basically just soap and you put it around the gas pipe, you turn the gas on and it will bubble up if there is a leak. And I say this as somebody who just did this yesterday at the house that I’m building around the corner.
Scott: I admire your confidence Mindy and your and your self confidence in this area. This was not this is not something I I have today or had at the time to to feel like, oh yes, I’ll get instant feedback. I I was much more worried I would not get instant feedback and that there would be an event that happened several months or several years down the line that would become very problematic for me. So that was my fear and I think that’s a very legitimate fear for for many folks who are not relatives of electricians or plumbers, and dealing with with these these things.
Mindy: It is absolutely a very real fear, but I think people like make it up in their heads like it’s a big huge thing.
Scott: It just was beyond my my comfort zone as a YouTube first DIY for many of the things in my house for it. Anyway, we we digress. So this is our second property, correct, that we’re talking about here, Trevor? This is a property in Chicago. We have a first one in Pittsburgh, is that right?
Guest: Correct.
Scott: Okay, and so tell us about what the numbers were at a high level and then let’s hear about the next phase of the journey.
Guest: We moved from Chicago in 2022. So at this point we took a job in Europe and we sold both of the properties, so I can kind of go over that process. Look at this
Scott: timing. What a market timer.
Guest: I know, right? So at this time, I mean, things were just going up. Chicago and Pittsburgh, especially, I felt like did well during this this time period. And so for the Pittsburgh house, right, so we bought for 220k. I put about 35k into the property and then the final sale value was 365. We did pretty well on that deal. And then on the Chicago house, the purchase price was was 300,000. I put about 75k into that property and the sale price was was $440,000 for this property.
Scott: So these are huge wins. We’re doing, we’re thriving here. Tell us about the move to Europe and the opportunity that that was. I’m sure that this is a yet another example of the advantage of flexibility in your situation and and how that that paid off in the form of awesome opportunities.
Mindy: And an even starker example of people unwilling to do this, like, oh, I might move to a different state, but I’m not gonna move to a different country. Being open-minded again is just helping your net worth.
Guest: The company that I joined right out of school, they had locations, offices, operations going on all over the world, which is one of the reasons why I joined them because I wanted to move internationally. That was a goal that I had had, you know, coming out of school. And so, Scott, I’m sorry to say this, I didn’t 100% enjoy my sales role. I was I was looking for a change, you know, around the end of of 2021. I had a great year in 2021 in sales. I had that 25% target bonus for sales and I, you know, greatly exceeded and I I got a I think a $35,000 bonus that year. I’d played the playbook, right? You know, sales was not, at least what I was selling and and what I was doing was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. At this point like with COVID, you know, I I had been talking to leadership within my company for a long time about an opportunity to to work overseas. I had several opportunities that kind of like, you know, we would discuss them, they fell through and these these would have been like, you know, great expat or expat light packages that would have, I would have made, you know, tons of money, lived overseas, and really enjoyed the experience like it would have been fantastic, but unfortunately with COVID, a lot of those opportunities disappeared. And so, you know, I kind of made a conscious decision, you know, hey, I’m I’m not going to sit around and wait for an opportunity to fall in my lap, you know, sometime between now and and when I’m 45. I’m going to, you know, look external. This I mean this was a great company to work for, but I I made the, you know, conscious decision to look externally for an opportunity to to move to Europe at this time. And so I, you know, interviewed around, found a company that was crazy enough to hire me, someone from the states, move overseas and and and join the company. And so in April of of 2022, I found a job, I took a pay cut and I moved to Europe and moved to Stockholm, Sweden.
Mindy: What was your wife doing when you were doing all of this? You mentioned that she was doing, she had some unpaid internships at the beginning of her career. How is her career progressing while you’re moving all over the place?
Guest: She’s a speech therapist. In Pittsburgh, there it’s kind of weird. There’s like a three schools that have very very good speech pathology programs. The pay there was like 45k and it was super difficult to find a job. So Pittsburgh was a terrible market for her profession. And then in Chicago, she was making closer to like 75, 80k. and then in Chicago something else really exciting happened. We had our first kid.
Scott: You had your first kid in Chicago and then moved to Europe?
Guest: Yes, correct.
Scott: That’s awesome. Well, tell us about that transition to Europe and how things went, you know, both personally and professionally from there.
Guest: The company that I joined had a very strong mission statement. I was I was really excited to, you know, contribute to what they were doing, what they were building. I took a pay cut, so I at this point in time, my salary was right around 100k base and then I was getting bonuses, you know, anywhere from like 20 to $40,000 a year was kind of what I had calculated from from what my bonuses would be. So I I moved to Europe, I negotiated a 100k salary and this was right around the time when there was a lot of fluctuation between the US dollar and other currencies. And so by the time I had accepted the offer and I had started working, my salary in US dollars had dropped to 85k and it stayed there pretty much the entire time that I was in Sweden. And then the taxes were a lot higher. And so like the after tax was probably closer to, you know, 45-50k. Massive pay cut from from what I was making before.
Mindy: How long were you in Sweden?
Guest: So we were there for two and a half years.
Scott: One of the big costs that comes into your life when you have a kid, if you’re both working, is child care. Did your wife continue to work or did you have some sort of opportunity like free child care that we hear is so is so prevalent in many European countries.
Guest: For child care in Europe, they have, you know, great parental leave programs, especially in in the Nordic area. So each spouse gets nine months of leave. It’s it’s capped at a certain amount and there’s some nuances, but so we we didn’t qualify for that since our daughter was not born in Sweden, but we did qualify for reduced child care that was about $120 bucks a month for child care expenses in Sweden. And so with licensing and and, you know, other complications, my wife wasn’t able to work in Sweden, but she did have, you know, opportunities to make money. She did work and we did put our daughter part-time in child care while we were in Sweden and I mean, the expense was like next to nothing.
Scott: That would have been very different if you had been in Chicago, although there may have been more income opportunities as well to offset that to the cost of child care. But that seems like at least one advantage. What what else did you notice about your cost of living in Sweden compared to Chicago.
Mindy: Do you think the move to Sweden impacted your fi journey?
Guest: You know, we were able to make this decision from a position of financial strength. When we accepted the job, when we were looking at the opportunity, it wasn’t, hey, how how much closer are we going to get to fi at the end of this. It was really like, hey, this is a life experience that we really want to have. We’re in a financial position, like after we sold our houses and everything, we had a net worth of probably $500,000 Somewhere around there. And if you looked at our peers, who were like 28, 29, our peers were much further behind us, you know, compared to where we’re at in our journey and we were coast fi at this point. And we were comfortable delaying our actual fi date to have this experience.
Mindy: I love that answer because so many people are so set on getting to FI that they don’t enjoy the journey there. I love that you wanted the experience so you took it anyway. And you’re right, you are well ahead of your peers.
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Mindy: What does your the rest of your financial journey look like? When do you think you’re going to hit your FI number and once you hit your FI number, are you considering leaving your employment?
Guest: Yeah, so I think, you know, in in Sweden we had a great time there. Eventually, we kind of felt like, okay, it’s time to get back to the US, uh, make some money. Also, like, you know, one one quick thing that I want to comment on is, like I I had a a situation at work where I I didn’t really get along with one of my superiors. There were some issues within the company where, you know, leadership would would take advantage of people that that, you know, weren’t making much money, they were from countries where they didn’t want to be sent back to. Sweden was a great, a great country to live in. And, you know, just being able to have FU money, also being an American citizen and and having the right to work in in the US, you know, I was able to morally stand up to leadership at times where I didn’t feel comfortable with something happening within the company. And also I felt comfortable, you know, I was I was always professional, but like, you know, speaking my mind and you know, disagreeing with leadership in in certain situations in a in a professional context, right? I don’t know if we talk about this enough, like the strength that that gives us is incredible. So, leaving Sweden is a whole story. I got like RSU’s as part of my benefits package. So I I had a disagreement with my director while I was there and I ended up getting laid off from the company and got like a crazy severance package. And then we also had our second kid in Sweden and I had a a nine-month paternity leave.
Scott: Yeah, that’s a fantastic end result. It seems like here we’ll we’ll you move over. You get good comp, but it kind of hair cut by that that currency arbitrage based on that that challenge that that came up. But you get free child care or very low cost child care for the duration of this. You probably have a pretty good quality of life. And then when things blow up with your boss, you get a really nice severance package and nine months to kind of just relax and enjoy Europe before making your next move. Is that the right way to summarize what I just heard?
Guest: I think that’s a good way to put it. So as part of my overall compensation package, like the RSUs, it was really exciting. Spoiler, the the company did end up going bankrupt and those are now worth $0 and 0 cents. But I like I’m glad that I took the risk, right? I think it was the right play to make. And then as far as like, you know, the situation with my boss, I was in a position where we had a disagreement and then I went on parental leave through reorganizations of the company, my role disappeared and I was offered a six-month severance package. And then my right to live in Sweden was tied to my employment. And so I negotiated with the company and I said, hey, you guys have the obligation to move me back to the United States because my right to live in Sweden is tied to my employment. And so I was able to make a case for myself and then get relocated, you know, all expenses paid, airfare, goods, shipment, everything back to the US.
Scott: So what did you do back in the US?
Guest: I got another job, moved to the Midwest, and at this point in time my net worth coming back from Europe was around 800k. And mind you, while we were in Europe, the cost of living was very high. We traveled a ton. I lived paycheck to paycheck and just let my investments grow and then I had several big windfalls at the end of this with a six-month severance package and then some relocation benefits from my current employer moving back to the US. This is mid 2020. So I went back into, you know, a US company. I had a salary of right around 145k signing bonus of 25k, 16% bonus target, and then I get about between 20 and 30k in restricted stock units, 6% 401K match, HSA contributions, and then as part of that moving package, I also had like all closing costs and expenses paid when I closed on my house here in the Midwest.
Scott: So let me, let me see if I can just recap this story here from a timeline perspective because I’m a little a little confused at this point. We we graduate in 2017 from college. We rack up a bunch of savings over the next year and then plop down 60, 70,000 on a triplex investment in Pittsburgh and build that up, fix it up, all those kinds of things. In 2018 or 19, which year? do we move to Chicago?
Guest: So I moved to Pittsburgh in 2019.
Scott: And then you moved to Chicago when?
Guest: In 2020.
Scott: Okay, and then in 2020 we moved to Europe for how long?
Guest: In 2022, we moved to Europe for two and a half years. So I I moved there March, April 2022 and came back like July, August of 2024.
Scott: Okay, I thought you said you moved back in 2020 to the United States earlier and that was throwing me off. But I think I think if that make yeah, now I got the timeline here of 2024. So, we now have this really awesome job that puts you into the elite income earning category, right? Top 10%, top 5% maybe for your age category in there and and so that that’s got a, you know, almost $200,000 in all income compensation between the base bonus, RSUs and 401K match. What happens then? What are our living expenses and and and how does that set you up here, you know, heading into 2026?
Guest: We’ve got two kids now. So we’ve taken our foot off the gas. We’re focused on, you know, just having a comfortable lifestyle. I’m maxing out my 401K every year, my IRA, my Roth IRA, and trying to do something productive with my bonus, you know, either put it in investments and then I’m getting RSUs that I’m saving as well. By and large, I I feel like we’re spending, you know, quite a bit of money, right? So we moved at a time where housing was expensive and interest rates were not, you know, necessarily cheap. So our housing is pretty high compared to what we’ve had in the past. So yeah, I mean, we’re not aggressively pursuing FI, but then like, I mean, if you look at it, we have a million dollars in invested assets that are growing and and compounding. And so, you know, I I I think it’s it’s a lot less important for us to aggressively pursue FI than it was when when we were much younger.
Scott: You know, I I think that this is really telling because, you know, I’m I’m I’m here at 35 and I will tell you that aggressively pursuing FI with the two kids that we have at three and and 10 months, it’s just not worth it. It it would it wouldn’t be worth it the same way that it was when I was in my 20s and did not have kids because guess what? Like there’s there’s something more important now than my early financial freedom, which is a stable, positive environment for them. There’s trade-offs with that, right? If I was truly stuck on a treadmill in in not really able to get ahead, something would have to change because I would feel it’s imperative to accumulate, um because not not accumulating at least somewhat aggressively, you know, back the 401K or whatever would threaten the stability of that lifestyle for for my family. But I wouldn’t, I don’t think go all out or move into that next duplex or whatever it is unless you know, like I could find a really interesting or unique opportunity to do that at this point. And I think that’s a challenge for the fire community in a lot of cases is is you don’t hear a lot of families with young kids that are aggressively pursuing fight. We have found them here on Bigger Pockets Money they exist, but I think that it like your your story is much more common among the community of people who will get really far ahead, get well past this definition of coast fi and then chill out from a financial standpoint, maybe work in one with one spouse working or whatever in a really sustainable way. I I I love it. I think that that’s that’s a a really healthy evolution for a lot of folks in the fire community rather than death marching as to the end state, especially with young kids in the household.
Guest: You probably know as well as I do, I’m tired with the two kids. They they take it out of me. And so if if I had to pursue fight at the same, you know, pace and you know, sense of urgency as I did when I was younger, that would just be difficult and like, I I don’t feel like I’d be living my my best life. So like, you know, now I’m focused on delivering at work, very, you know, work focused right now, being there for my family, playing pickle ball as much as possible, things that I I personally enjoy and and also, you know, traveling and maximizing time with family. You know, in Sweden, we didn’t get to see our families as much as we would have liked to. so we’re trying to really maximize that time now that we’re back here in the US.
Mindy: Seems like you have learned the lessons of the FI community before you. When we first discovered it, you know, in 2013, it was, how fast can you get there? This is your only focus. Get there as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter how awful your life is. Frugality is the only way to get there and I love that it has evolved so much into, like, I think CoastFI is fantastic. I love the concept. There are people who say, oh, it’s not FI at all. You know what? You will be financially independent at retirement age. And then as you continue to work, if you continue to save, you just march back that date a little bit and I think that that gives hope, it gives a lot of opportunity, it gives you the ability to kind of like look around and like stop and smell the roses to use a super cliche phrase, but you know, life is worth living, so live it on the journey.
Scott: You did all of these crazy things in pursuit of FI though. you know, you didn’t go as hardcore as some folks we’ve talked about here and you certainly had some some some opportunities to to really get some cool experiences. But like how do you feel about your financial position at this point in time and the trade-offs you made to get to a million bucks by this point in your life with young kids in the household? What what does that do for you from an emotive standpoint or a quality of life perspective?
Guest: Definitely we had a few years we were grinding, working really hard, but we always tried to do, you know, one large international trip and a domestic trip per year where we would go somewhere like, you know, Icelan or Peru or you know, we would do fairly large trips and and we do credit card hacking and everything to try and make that as cheap as possible. So we try and maximize the things that were important to us, but like, you know, things that we didn’t care about like cars, we just didn’t spend money on them. So I mean, I I feel like we’ve had our our ups and downs with our journey, just like everybody else, but for the most part, we’ve lived very good lives. I’m really happy with the approach that we took where, you know, we had seasons where we were very focused and you know, moving very quickly and had a lot of urgency behind our goals. And then, you know, now like the season that we’re in, like we’re prioritizing other things. And I think, you know, especially if you can get the ball rolling early, and part of it is the market has been really good, right? That’s another really lucky thing is just the timing, right? The market has been really good.
Scott: You’ve been fantastic with your timing too, because you you rode the real estate leveraged wave up, then you pulled out at 2022 when the market has gone sideways for most real estate and put that presumably into stocks which have then been on a really enormous ride since then. That’s got to be a wonderful boost behind all of this that has propelled your net worth forward.
Guest: And that that was not planned. I mean, the only reason why we sold those houses is because I didn’t want the headache when we were living in Sweden of of trying to work with a property manager and getting calls in at 2:00 a.m. or something like that.
Scott: Well, thank you so much for for joining us and sharing your story, Trevor. Really appreciate it, and hope you have a wonderful 2026.
Guest: Yeah, I appreciate it, guys.
Mindy: Trevor, thank you for reaching out to share your story with us and then coming on the show to share it with all of our listeners. I think a story like this is really helpful. It highlights that those quote-unquote sacrifices that you’re making in the beginning of your journey can have really, really big benefits down the road. And I hope that our listeners take away as much as I did from this. I think this was an awesome story. Thank you again.
Guest: Thanks, Scott and Mindy. Really appreciate it.
Mindy: That was Trevor and that was quite the fun story Scott. I loved how he leveraged all of these opportunities that most people really would just say, I don’t want to do that. And he did it when he was young. They didn’t have kids yet, and they were able to really amass this big net worth by such an early age. What did you think of his story?
Scott: This is a story of someone who has spent less than they’ve earned and said yes to a variety of opportunities that they had the chance to say yes to because of the strong financial foundation he built. So I’m super proud to have been a part of his journey in some way alongside you, Mindy, uh, as a voice in his ear, perhaps here on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. And I’m just glad that he’s achieved such a wonderful outcome here, being a millionaire at age 33 and having flexibility and optionality and that maybe better feeling of peace with his personal finances than he otherwise might.
Mindy: Yeah, Scott, you hit it on the head. You said he said yes to opportunities. Everybody has opportunities. Everybody listening to the show has opportunities. And it’s when you say, oh, I couldn’t do that, that you shut the door on those opportunities. And I don’t think that he would be anywhere near where he is now if he lived like everybody else did. So I love that he was adventurous and took chances and they didn’t always pan out, but he still got things out of it like the trip to Sweden. He still got to live in Sweden, even though financially it wasn’t a boon, he doesn’t regret it because he still got to live in Sweden and travel all over Europe. So I just, I love that he said yes to so many opportunities. So I want to leave a final thought for all of our listeners, what opportunities have you not said yes to in the past and how can you position yourself so that you can say yes to opportunities in the future. A challenge, if you will.
Scott: If you’re looking for more resources, I’m having a blast building out biggerpocketsmoney.com. You should check out the new navbar. Um I’ve got it all organized. I’ve put our podcast feed, our YouTube channel, our newsletter. I’ve put our blog. We have a bunch of new features that will be rolling out that I’m building, some of which will break, of course, because I’m building them personally and just having fun with it. But go check them out. Um we’ve got a resource library with personal financial statements, spreadsheets, goal setting templates, all that kind of stuff. We have Mindy’s, well, both ours, but Mindy really did all the work on this one with the 31-day challenge at biggerpocketsmoney.com/31days. Go check it out. Tell me how you like the site and whether you think that something is missing, something that’s in the outline should be next up because you’re really excited for it. Or, hey, Scott, you didn’t you never added a spot for this. Where are you going to put this core thing that you obviously need to make. So I would love that. email me at scott@biggerpocketsmoney.com or check out the contact us page also new on the site. Go check it out. We’re having having a lot of fun building this out and would love your feedback on this still developing new website.
Mindy: And you can follow us on Instagram at biggerpocketsmoney. Join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/bpmoney, or watch us on YouTube at biggerpocketsmoney. All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen hoping that this episode finds you cooler than a penguin in a walk-in freezer.
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