Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. Today’s episode is from the FIRE series, which originally aired on our YouTube channel. Dion McNeely had such a great story that we wanted to share it with our audio listeners too. This episode is brought to you by Connect Invest, real estate investing simplified and within your reach. Without further ado, let’s chat with Dion.
I am so excited to talk to Dion McNeely today. Does retiring in 10 years feel unattainable to you? Today, Dion is here to prove that it isn’t off the table even if you’re saddled with debt. Now, Dion is fully retired and has the flexibility to do whatever he wants to do. Sounds pretty great, right? I can’t wait for you to learn how he did it and to take his lessons and apply them to your own life. Dion, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dion McNeely: Oh, thank you so much for having me here. I I anybody who is familiar with me knows that I am a not-so-secret Mindy Jensen fan.
Mindy Jensen: Well, thank you. I am a not-so-secret Dion McNeely fan. Let’s go back to the beginning. How did you discover the concept of financial independence and the idea that you could retire early?
Dion McNeely: I tried for a pension a couple of times. I tried the Marine Corps and they downsized after Desert Storm. I tried law enforcement and they downsized after 2008. And I think when I started working towards investing, my goal wasn’t even financial freedom. It it definitely wasn’t and ironically still isn’t generational wealth. Um I I I’m I’m not trying to create generational wealth. I think my kids inheriting something would take away their own personal drive. They will inherit millions, it’s just not my goal. I was trying to do the most important thing that I think we can do for our kids. Right? I I didn’t start investing till I was 40. I was a single parent with three kids. I had just gotten laid off from law enforcement. I found out about $89,000 in bad debt in my name that I didn’t know existed until the divorce. And I thought the most important thing we can do for our kids is to take care of our finances so that we don’t become a financial burden to them when we’re too old to work. And so that was what got me started with the idea of buying rentals and at least a 10-year journey. Real estate is a get rich quick scheme. The really hard thing is convincing people that 10 years is quick.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah, you can absolutely get rich. You can get very wealthy through real estate. And Dion, I have a feeling you’re gonna tell us how, but before we do that, I want to go back to this $89,000 in bad debt. You said the word bad. What does that mean to you?
Dion McNeely: So, I have three categories when it comes to debt. And most people are familiar with two. A lot of people don’t believe in good debt, right? But there’s three. So you have bad debt, which to me is consumer debt, credit cards, personal loans, and when I went through my divorce, I actually found out about $313,000 in bad debt. But I I found out that creditors will negotiate with you if you’re thinking, you don’t even have to be committed to it, but just thinking about bankruptcy, many of them would take 20 or 30% of whatever was owed. And since I didn’t even know what these debts were, I was contacting the creditors to find out how to make the payments. And I ended up with out of 313, 89,000 was what I was responsible for ultimately. And so to me, bad debt is that consumer debt. And there’s also worse debt. In order to reach financial freedom and have the confidence to retire, I wanted to make sure all of my worse debt was gone. And to me that was anything with an adjustable rate, anything with a loan re-evaluation period, anything with a balloon payment, or with a high interest rate. At the time, interest rates were around 5 to 6% for mortgages, so I figured anything above 6% was my worst debt. And so I split my disposable income into two categories. The first one was I wanted to save for a house hack. The second was I wanted to get rid of the worse debt. So I was making minimum payments on everything and then half of my discretionary income went towards my worse debt. And it did take several years to get rid of it. But that happened while I was acquiring rental properties and that first one, had a really bad debt to income ratio. I was only making $17 an hour. I had the bad debt. And luckily a lender told me, there’s no way that you could buy a house unless you had something like rental income on your tax returns. So what I did is I took my kids, I was a single parent with three kids, and we moved from my house, which I kept through the divorce. I was good about keeping custody of kids and my house, never been good about keeping a girl around. So I moved from the house into an apartment. And we rented the house out for two years. So this did a couple of things. I got laid off from law enforcement, I started teaching at a CDL school, only making a little bit, $17 an hour job. But two years in the new industry to become lendable, two years to work out my credit score, two years to save the little down payment that I needed, and two years to get rental income on my tax returns. So that when I bought that first duplex, I was actually bankable. I still had bad debt. I was working on acquiring good debt. And when I talk about financial freedom being possible in a decade, these 10 years, I usually get the response of, it’s really hard to do. There’s no way you can do it now. And yes, when you talk about financial freedom being 30 minutes or 30 days, you talked about, you know, the get rich quick scheme. If you start today with a 10-year journey, that means you’re in the graduating class of 2034. And a lot can happen between now and then. So for me it was starting with a 10-year plan, and if you’re starting today, it needs to be a 10-year plan. Now it might go faster, maybe you have less debt, maybe you make more money, maybe you make smarter decisions. But if you plan for 10 years, you will be happy if it happens sooner. If you plan for two years, you’re going to be too enticed into taking risks that outweigh the returns and it could blow up in your face.
Mindy Jensen: To the people who are listening saying, oh, it’s gonna it’s hard, it’s gonna yeah, you know what, financial independence at any income level, any debt level, is hard. It’s not impossible, it’s not this like overwhelming burden, it’s this overwhelming freedom. But you’re gonna have to work for it. It doesn’t just pop into your lap. And I think 10 years is a really good time frame. Of course, if you’re making $12 an hour and you’ve got $400,000 in student loan debts, you’re probably not gonna make it in 10 years. I’m sorry to break that to you. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about $89,000 in bad debt and $17 an hour. And instead of saying, well, I guess this is just my life, you decided, I do want to be able to buy a house and do this house hacking thing. So I am going to move out of my house into a rental which is considered a downgrade and shouldn’t be necessarily because it’s just a move. Uh but you you moved out of your house and started renting it so you would be lendable. If you’re going to pursue financial independence, you are going to have to do things that other people aren’t willing to do. Uh Dave Ramsey says it best and most succinctly, I can’t even say that word. He says, live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. And Dion is living like no one else now because his now is his later.
Dion McNeely: And so people don’t feel depressed by by the story, we’ve talked about the beginning. The ending is I retired in 2022 with 16 rental properties. I’ve purchased a duplex since then. They made about $204,000 in profit in 2022 to retire on. I spend about 50. So I have four times the amount of money coming in that I need. And and so the fun thing in retirement is figuring out how to spend that. And for anybody saying that it’s really hard to start now, I want you to understand that what’s about to be said is my opinion, not BiggerPockets, not Mindy. So if you get angry, come at me in the comments. My name is Dion. 2024 is the Golden Age of buying real estate, and I know that’s gonna upset a lot of people. I’m gonna go back to the last decade as as succinctly as possible, um thank you for the 64 cent word there. I started saving around 2010 after getting laid off from law enforcement. In 2010 everybody was saying it’s a double dip recession. Don’t buy real estate, it’s going to crash again. Right? 2011 was the ba- the bottom. So I started saving then. In 2013, I go to buy that first duplex and everybody was screaming at the top of their lungs, prices are starting to pass where they were in 2008. It has to crash. It’s unsustainable. Don’t buy. So I bought a duplex. In 2015 when I bought the next one, everybody in the world was screaming silver tsunami because this was the first year baby boomers were hitting possible retirement age. It’s going to be a flood of inventory, prices were gonna drop. Don’t buy. In 2018, when I bought another duplex and made a huge mistake and paid off a house, I lost a million dollars doing that. Uh everyone was saying interest rates are above 6% and you know that prices haven’t come down. Nobody can buy a house if interest rates are above 6% and prices haven’t adjusted. Don’t buy. So I bought another one. In 2020, everybody was screaming, there’s a pandemic, there’s an eviction moratorium, nobody has to pay rent, you can’t evict them. People can go on forbearance, the market has to crash. So I bought a fourplex and a triplex. 2022 and 2021 when every when forbearance was ending, and everybody said this is gonna flood the market. Don’t buy real estate. I bought a a duplex. Every single year when everybody was saying it’s impossible to do, I did it. In 2024, here’s what they’re gonna be saying in 2028. Here’s two and a half reasons why this is the Golden Age of real estate. First, remote work is a game changer. When I grew up, I think I knew one person who had a remote job. In 2010 I probably knew five. Right now, if you take out truck drivers because I’m on a CDL school and it’s hard to do that remotely, but half the people I know work a remote job. The the, uh, Census did a study, 56% of people are required to work in their office for their companies, which sounds like a big number until you realize that means 44% of employees aren’t required to work in the office. So what’s happened is, pick the major metropolis near you, for me it was Seattle and Tacoma. Remote workers, not the ones who can work completely remote and geo-arbitrage and live in Thailand and and and make a lot of money for living there, but the ones who have to go to the office once or twice a week. This is a significant amount of people who can now take their Seattle or Tacoma rent money of $4,000 a month for a little apartment, move out to the suburbs and pay $2,500 a month for my house. Rents pushed up, but prices haven’t because they can’t buy. The remote workers don’t want to buy because they may get pulled called back to the office next year. So rents are pushing up. For me it was I pushed out to Mason County and Kitsap County and found a ton of deals. Found my most recent duplex that I’m actually house hacking now by using that method. The second reason why this is the Golden Age of real estate is November 18th, 2023, the regulation changed on conventional lending to be able to get a duplex, triplex, or fourplex with a 5% down conventional loan. In the past, for a triplex or a fourplex, you had to use FHA to get that low of a down payment. In 2028 people are gonna say, can you remember 2024 when you could buy a small multi-house for 5% down? How insane was that? Every one of those years that I bought that somebody said you couldn’t, we look back now and think, I’m so glad I did. And people say you can only retire because you did. In five to 10 years, people are only going to be saying that you can retire, the person starting this journey today, because you took action in 2024.
Mindy Jensen: Wow. Okay, you said two and a half reasons, what’s a half reason?
Dion McNeely: The other half reason is if you’re paying attention to fair market rents, this is a bit of a math thing, so this is why I try not to talk too much math because I’m the Marine in me says, I don’t know math. But the housing authority bases their their data on setting fair market rents on the last seven years. They don’t consider the most recent two. So those previous five years set rents. So if you check go to to the HUD website and check fair fair market rents in your area, look at how much rents went up from 2023 to 2024. It was a massive jump. One of my tenants went from $2,200 a month to $3,000 a month. That’s a significant increase. So what’s happening now in 2024 is that massive jump that happened after 2020 because there was a rent freeze for a year. 2021 and 2022 are starting to be factored into Section 8. And the way Section 8 impacts rents is every October, they have to come out with what they’re going to pay for rents next year. So in October, we have next year’s data. That doesn’t mean that when my rents went up from 2200 to 3,000 in January that all of the rents did, because most leases end in the summer. So as we cycle through this summer, you’re going to see a lot of rents jump up mid-2024 because of that increase. In 2028, people are gonna say, if you were aware of this and in the middle of 2024, you were anticipating what Section 8 rents were doing to the area average rent in your area, you could find deals that would cash flow at the end of summer that didn’t make sense at the beginning of summer. So it’s two and a half reasons because that’s projecting forward based on known data.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, you just blew my mind. I and and that’s specific to Section 8, correct?
Dion McNeely: So that’s the thing is Section 8 impacts all rents. Because why would a landlord rent to somebody who’s not Section 8 when the government will pay you guaranteed amount of it of that increase. So two things impact rents area area average that aren’t the rentals, right? Supply and demand is always a factor but Basic Allowance for Housing around a military installation or a college is impacted by what the military will pay for basic allowance for housing. In 2023 we saw a 12% increase, in 2024 it was only a 3% but it was 3% on top of the 12%. So BAH is impacting area average rents. And then housing authorities what they’ll pay for rents impacts rents but about six months behind because, and this is something I do backwards. Most people say they want their leases to end in the summer because it’s really hard to find a tenant in winter because nobody wants to move. All but one of my leases ends in January and February. That helps me have very limited tenant turnover because nobody wants to move in the winter. So I do that backwards. But most landlords want their stuff in the in the summer. So that’s when Section 8 starts to roll over mid-summer. And again, why would a landlord rent to non-section 8 for less than what the state would pay?
Mindy Jensen: Exactly.
Speaker: When spring hits, some people suddenly just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized. Whether or not that hits you, Monarch will do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property, and more, all in one place. One of my favorite parts is the Sankey diagram. Every month I open it up and literally watch the flow of money. It shows exactly where every dollar is going from income to all of my spending categories. It makes it so much easier to spot what’s working and what needs tweaking. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just $50 with the promo code POCKETS. Use the code POCKETS at monarch.com to get your first year half-off at just 50 bucks. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code p o c k e t s.
Speaker: I’m skeptical of a lot of financial products. But life insurance isn’t one of them. At least not term life. For the vast majority of you listening, term life is simply the right answer. And the smartest way to buy it isn’t one big policy, it’s a ladder. Your need for coverage isn’t flat, it declines over time. You’ve got a 30-year mortgage, a couple of young kids, maybe a spouse, mid-career, in 15 years the mortgage is going to be smaller and the kids are almost launched. So instead of buying one giant 30-year policy you’ll overpay for, you stack a few, say a 10 year, a 20 year, and a 30-year layer. So your total coverage steps down as your actual obligations step down. You only pay for what you actually need when you need it. Ethos is a platform that helps you find life insurance 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds and apply in minutes. There’s no medical exam, you just answer a few health questions online. You can get up to 3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month. That makes building a ladder genuinely fast. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That’s E. T. H. O. S. .com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
Speaker: When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, now, don’t think I didn’t catch this, but you said you paid off a house and lost a million dollars. Tell me about that.
Dion McNeely: So not a hypothetical, it’s actually my story. In 2018, you were only allowed to have four mortgages in your name and I had just found BiggerPockets and was educating myself on things like DSCR lending, asset-based, seller financing, all these other options that I didn’t know was there. So I had four mortgages at that point and decided to pay off my smallest amount, highest interest rate. And I paid off my single family house. I owed about $121,000. Just after that I purchased a fourplex where my out of pocket was $109,000. That fourplex since 2020 has appreciated over a million dollars. Had I purchased another fourplex, which I had the funds to do, had the deal, instead of paying off a house, I would have had a million dollars in appreciation, two or three times the cash flow of the paid-off property. So I look at that paying off that house is not a mistake, and I don’t regret it. At the time, based on the information I had, best decision. Part of a Swan account, sleep well at night. But mathematically, I can say, considering all of the options, I lost out on a million dollars.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, I can see how that is working. I can hear people saying, oh, well, he didn’t have a million dollars in his in his hand. No, but he could have. So, I agree with you, you lost a million dollars, but you said something very important. You said, and I typed this out as you were saying it, you said, at the time, based on the information I had, I made this decision. It is completely the seller’s fault for not listing that until after you had paid off your house. Um, but I also am not a fan of paying off, you know, those old mortgages, the 3% mortgages, the 2% mortgages. I have one right now, I’m not paying an extra dime towards that because instead of putting money into that account, I put it into the stock market where it grows more than the 3% return that I’m getting by paying off my mortgage. So, uh, I completely understand why you would in hindsight not want to do this. It is what it is. What is it, $200,000 a year coming in and you only spend 50, so this would have just been more problems. You saved yourself some problems.
Dion McNeely: When I retired, it was 204,000 in profit and I spent about 50. Um because of the binder strategy and thank you inflation, it’s closer to 250 a year coming in and I still don’t spend more than 50.
Mindy Jensen: Do you want my address to send me a check for 200,000 every every year?
Dion McNeely: You would think of something better to do with it than I do. All I do is blow it on scuba diving in other countries.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, I can’t spend the money that I have. I’m not gonna take yours. We’ll just take your money and uh throw it into more real estate. Are you currently buying more real estate or are you sitting pretty?
Dion McNeely: So my goal is not to acquire more real estate uh actively to grow the portfolio, but the money piles up. This is the problem I’m trying to get everybody watching this video to have, so that I will acquire more rentals. Again, I’m not trying to create generational wealth, but it’s the best use of capital. Right? There’s and and this is let me see if I can articulate this. Warren Buffett often talks about diversifying. Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful, says, you know, no more than 20% in one asset class, no more than 5% in any asset. I’m 100% in real estate. And because I’m one I don’t own if I owned a stock or had a penny in a retirement account, I’d probably still be working. So since I’m in one asset class, I diversify in two very specific ways. And doing that, adding properties as I go that meet this criteria, one is that it’s at least 10 miles away from my other properties, pulling tenants from different sources, close to several economic drivers like a port, a base, a college, a hospital, Boeing, or Amazon. And uh the second criteria is that I have three different types of tenants. I want about one-third military, one-third Section 8, one-third working or retired. So my portfolio is ready for a pandemic, stock market crash or prolonged government shutdown. And so adding properties as the money piles up, for me is still the best use of capital because I have mastered one asset class. When you reach probably 10 or 20 million dollars in net worth, maybe diversifying to protect your wealth makes sense for those people that say those things. But as you’re growing your wealth, focusing on if it’s stocks, focus on stocks. If it’s growing a business, focus on the business. Uh Jaspreet Singh from Minority Mindset gets a better return growing his business than he does buying his rentals. He buys rentals but he doesn’t focus on it. For me, since I’ve mastered real estate and rentals and I actually have my tenants ask me to increase the rent with the binder strategy, it’s the best use of my money other than, the hardest thing in retirement has been learning how to spend money. And and I’m slowly figure I’ve come up with these things called reverse budgets.
Mindy Jensen: Oh, okay. You are throwing so much stuff at me. This is going to be a nine-hour conversation. Um, reverse budgets, since you just talked about that because I’ve got notes for these other things. What is a reverse budget?
Dion McNeely: A reverse budget is if you had to be frugal in financial freedom, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have stayed at work until I was in my 70s or 80s. But since I don’t want to be frugal, but it took a decade of living frugally, like took that that dedication and learning the systems of how to make as much as you can, spend less than you make, and save and invest the difference, you develop these habits over that decade to reach financial freedom that are really hard to break. So, I actually have a reverse budget. So if I don’t spend this much, I’ve failed for the month. I must spend $2,000 a month eating out at different restaurants. Now, whether it’s me or with friends doesn’t matter. That’s a reverse budget. I have a an asset for every expense, right? I’ve got the healthcare duplex, I’ve got the travel duplex, I’ve got the uh vehicle duplex, and I’ve got the vodka fourplex. But with my vehicle duplex, it profits a little over $2,000 a month. I want to make sure that the next vehicle that I get costs at least, now this is registration, insurance, upkeep and everything, at least a minimum of what that property profits to where, yeah, I drove a 15 and a 17-year-old Jeep and Jeep Cherokee for that decade to reach financial freedom. But going forward, I’m always going to have the goofiest, silliest vehicle I feel like having because I have an asset paying for it. So reverse budgets is making sure I don’t live too frugally because that was not the point of financial freedom.
Speaker: When the change in season hits, some people suddenly just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closet and get everything all organized and that’s great. If that’s you, or if it’s not you, either way, let Monarch do the financial spring cleaning this year for you. One dashboard gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property and more, all in one place. Another feature I love about Monarch is the weekly AI recap. It catches spending spikes before they become problems and flags big net worth shifts or upcoming expenses. It’s like having a quick personal check in every week so nothing sneaks up on me. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just 50 bucks with the promo code POCKETS. Use the code POCKETS at monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code POCKETS, P O C K E T S.
Speaker: If you’ve been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you’d pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don’t. Here’s what I believe. Most BP Money listeners need term life and the right move is to build a ladder, a few term policies of different lengths stacked together, so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number. The thing that makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online. Same day coverage, no medical exam, you just answer a few health questions online. Up to $3 million in coverage, some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three-layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That is E-T-H-O-S.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
Speaker: When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree.
Speaker: You guys heard our recent episode with David Jackson and I’ll be honest, even as somebody who lives and breathes this stuff, having a pro like David pressure test my plan was a game changer. Domain money is different because they don’t try to take over your accounts. They provide a flat fee service where a dedicated CFP analyzes your entire financial life with no stone left unturned. No hidden fees, no commissions, just clear actionable strategy. Go to biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp and book a free strategy session to see how they can help you reach FIRE faster. This is a promotion for Domain Money, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. BiggerPockets Money may receive compensation if you choose to work with Domain Money as a client. I, Scott Trench, am a current client of Domain Money and receive non-cash compensation related to this promotional activity. This is not personalized investment advice. For the full disclosures, visit biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, that is interesting. I like these different properties that fund your lifestyle and your spending and question, what sort of reserve fund do you have for either each individual property or just collectively for all of them?
Dion McNeely: I’m a crayon eater. I’ve got my crayons ready to eat. It has to be simple. So it’s not per property and my my reserves scaled with the size of my portfolio. When I had seven units or less, I kept $10,000 as a reserve thinking I can handle an eviction, a garage door, a water heater. When I got above seven units, I thought Murphy’s fourth corollary could kick in, that’s if any sequence of events can go wrong, they probably will and in the worst possible order. So $10,000 was no longer enough. I raised it to $30,000. And that was pretty much where it stayed while I worked. When I stopped having that drug that kills our dreams, the paycheck, I raised my reserves to $50,000. That’s not per property, that’s $50,000 total. Any amount above the 10, 30, or 50 needed to be put to work to help me get to financial freedom. So I still maintain a $50,000 reserve. That’s scorched earth, emergency, never touched. Everything above that is, you know, cash flow for my lifestyle and going to the next investment. And so as your cash flow grows, your investment strategies can change, right? I’m the lazy investor. For 10 years, I bought rent-ready or already occupied. I didn’t I’ve never done a rehab, I’ve never done a BRRR, a flip, a wholesale or anything to reach financial freedom and retire. Once I retired and had my time freedom, I did my first BRRR, which I call my last BRRR because I don’t like it. It created about $300,000 in cash in a year and I don’t want to do it again. It was not worth it. because I could have spent the winter in Thailand scuba diving and no, I was here managing a BRRRR. So it’s not why I retired. So that’s how I do my reserves, kindergarten simple. I picked an amount, I stayed there and it scaled with the size of my portfolio and grew when my job went away.
Mindy Jensen: And remind me how many units you have total?
Dion McNeely: So in 2022 when I retired, I had 16. I’ve purchased one duplex since then because I’m on the slow path. The problem was the the cash piles up, so I did a BRRRR that was self-funded. I just purchased it cash, funded the repairs. And so, I’m not even sure it’s gonna be a complete BRRRR because I might not pull any money out at the end. I might just leave it in there and enjoy the cash flow.
Mindy Jensen: You could do that. When you have 200,000 more than you need every year, you can, you can choose, you can make different decisions. How much time does your real estate take up either weekly or monthly?
Dion McNeely: It’s a great question, it has two short answers. When you’re growing your portfolio, all of the time. It is not passive. Real estate investing is not passive. Real estate ownership is close to passive. 18 rental units now, I house hack one of them, takes about two hours a month to completely self-manage. It would take me about two hours a month to manage a property manager, so I’ll do that myself. And I use things like Hemlane, so if I’m in another country and I have a tenant turnover, I can step up the process for that one month and have a leasing agent go out. I have handy men in place. Now I do this because I invest locally. I’m in Washington state, everything is between Tacoma and Olympia. I’m now in Port Orchard, so I’m a little bit further out. But um since I invested where I live, I did it myself. If I was going to invest at a distance, I would have started with property management, like my friend Millennial Mike. He’s a law enforcement officer near Seattle, but he invests in Gary, Indiana. Five years investing, he’s got 27 properties, but he does it with property management. He’s he’s smart though, he’s still house hacking a duplex in a high cost of living area. I self-manage because I put the systems in place and those systems are what gives me the freedom. The the idea that it’s probably been about seven years now that I’ve had to go to a property, like I’ll go and record a video or one of my tenants is a nephew, I’ll go and I get to see my nephew, but I don’t have to go to my properties. And it’s kind of it’s kind of like when people say I want to buy a rental property, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a property and then made an offer. I’ve always gone to look at a property once I’m under contract. Everything I’ve needed to know I can find out online.
Mindy Jensen: Dion, what would be your piece of advice to anybody who is just discovering financial independence, maybe has debt, bad or worse, and is thinking, oh, I’d like to try that, but I’m not sure that I could ever get there.
Dion McNeely: Understanding that it’s going to take a decade is the first step. Right? If people think, it’s Michael Zuber from One Rental At a Time has over 180 rental units and if he said, well, to reach financial freedom, you need to have 180 of these rental units, nobody would start. So he’s smart enough to say, get to four. If you can get four properties, your entire life will be changed. Your generation will have millions to inherit by the time you get there. If you pay these off anywhere close to around your retirement age, your retirement will be completely different. Once you get to four, now you can decide, okay, I don’t like this. Stocks is my way. And I didn’t start investing until I was 40, so I only had a short runway of 10 years. There there’s people like uh Joe Kuhn on YouTube, K U H N, he retired at 54 using stocks in the buckets method, completely different method than me. He made more money than I did and he invested for over 30 years to retire at 54. So if you have a longer timeline for compound interest to do its thing and you make more, there’s other methods that might be better for you. For me, it had to be done in a short period of time. And since I have to live somewhere, I was willing to house hack. And I think the biggest mistake that people make uh about house hacking, we can talk about in this video if we end up having time for it, is one of the things that helped me retire. If I didn’t house hack, I’d probably still be working. Right? That that reducing or eliminating my biggest expense added $1,200 a month to me being able to save when I was only making $17 or $18 an hour. That’s huge. And so that’s what got me started. And so if somebody’s going to start today, I think it’s really important that you pick an asset class that excites you. If it’s entrepreneurial and you want to start a business, or if it’s stocks, if it’s crypto, if it’s real estate, we’re more likely to stick to a plan we’re emotionally invested in. I do want to say this that it’s so bad you don’t start. The first five years suck. It’s slow. Take Take me as an example. I start saving, two years later I buy a duplex, and then two years later I buy another duplex. In the first four years, I did two things. How boring is that? When you reach 10 years of doing really boring, let me tell you, boring is sexy because boring gave me freedom. And I can now using the mouth of time, I I never have to work again. I can choose to. But because of finding BiggerPockets and educating myself and improving the way that I invest, whether it was stocks or crypto or real estate, choosing that asset class, life is completely different than if I was stuck in a rat race with another two decades to work.
Mindy Jensen: I like what you said right there. I could choose to work if I want to. I think some people hear about financial independence, retire early and they’re like, ooh, I don’t want to retire early. I like my job. Great. Get financially independent anyway because you might not always like your job. Maybe your boss leaves and you get the worst boss on the planet. I’m sure that’s never happened to anybody in the whole history of the world, but it’s happened to me a bunch of times. It’s happened to a lot of people I know. And just being able to choose to walk away is huge. You don’t have to. I still work, I’m financially independent, and I’m totally fine still working because I love what I do. But if you get to a point where you are financially independent, now you have all this freedom to choose how you want to spend your day instead of having to spend your day at jobs that you may or may not love. Uh, and I mean even if you love your job, there’s still times that you’re like, ooh, it’s really nice outside. I want to go swimming or snowboarding or whatever it is that you like to do. And when you have a job that you are tethered to your desk 9 to 5, that’s not going to happen. Dion, this has been so much fun. I could literally talk to you for a hundred more hours, so we will of course have you back. But where can people find you?
Dion McNeely: You can find me on YouTube, Dion Talk Financial Freedom, or if you go to diontalk.com, there’s actually a free binder course there. I don’t charge because it helps the tenants and the landlords. And uh that’s just diontalk.com. And uh in that I give away my spreadsheet that was made by me and my CPA for managing my rentals. And I give away my seller finance letter that I submit with my offers when I’m uh pursuing a seller finance purchase.
Mindy Jensen: As a real estate agent, I’m going to have to go grab that seller finance letter because you never know when somebody wants to write that up. I love that. All right, Dion, thank you so much for your time today. It is always so much fun talking to you. If you liked this video, please click the thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to this channel for more inspiring FIRE stories just like Dion’s. This is Mindy Jensen signing off.
Speaker: You know how the change in seasons hits and suddenly you just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized. That same feeling hits me with my finances every spring. I used to have accounts scattered everywhere, making it hard to stay on track with my money goals. Let Monarch do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property, and more, all in one place. One thing that really surprised me was pulling up the cash flow view and seeing what percentage of my income was quietly going to lifestyle creep, dining out and subscriptions I barely noticed. It motivated me to make some quick adjustments. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just 50 bucks with the promo code POCKETS. Use the code POCKETS at monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That’s 50% off of your first year at monarch.com with the code p o c k e t s.
Speaker: When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one. A business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email, and phone number stay private. Don’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree.