Mindy: Hello, darling listeners, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. Today is about two exceptional young men who made choices in their late teens that set them up for financial success. Your jaw will drop, as mine did, when you hear the numbers that these guys are putting up.
Scott: One of these stories is about smart, scrappy hustle and entrepreneurship. And the other is about the mind-blowing ease of achieving financial freedom by thirty if you just make three to four big decisions right, or a certain way at least, early in life, around housing, education, transportation, and of course, the cash flow positive spouse.
Mindy: And we want to share these stories with you because we know that there is a young person in your life who will hear them and be inspired. Right now in the beginning of 2024 is the time to make big changes to your finances. So please, as you’re listening, think of who you can share this episode with in your life.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my house hacking co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott: And with me as always is my flipping co-host, Mindy Jensen.
Mindy: Thank you, Scott. All right, first up, let’s bring in Adrian.
Mindy: At just twenty-two years old, Adrian runs a successful Christmas light installation company in San Antonio, Texas. When it’s not holiday season, Adrian is running a year round lawn mowing service, and he has his long-term eyes set on real estate investment. Adrian, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: Mindy, Scott, thank y’all. Um, it’s it’s a pleasure to be here for sure.
Mindy: So Adrian, we are talking to you in mid-December, which is the height of the holiday season and a busy time in your life. Can you tell us a little bit more about your business, both the lawn care side and the hanging light side?
Guest: Absolutely. Yeah. So the Christmas lights installation, uh, we’re an all-inclusive Christmas lights installation company located here in San Antonio, Texas. Um, we provide absolutely everything, uh, all commercial grade lights. Um, custom cut extension cords. That way it has a nice, uh, professional look and fit to the home. Um, the timers, anything and everything the customer needs, we provide it. Uh, from there we have a twenty-four hour call back guarantee, so let’s say a bulb goes out or we’ve had it to where a big windy, windy rainstorm comes in and it knocks a whole side of lights down. Um, in that case, it’s a quick call to me, it’s a, it’s a text message to me, and then we’ll have a crew back out there to get that fixed. Uh, ideally within that twenty-four-hour time period. Um, so that’s that. From there, the lights still stay on till typically about that second week of January. Uh, from there we go ahead and start scheduling everybody, putting them on the list, and then we come back, take everything down. Um, we label everything, so far right side, label it, middle, label, and then put it nice and neat into our containers. And then we have storage units that we’ve been paying for for the past few years. So we’ll go and we’ll store everything. Um, as far as the customers go, they’re not buying the lights. Um, what they’re paying for is pretty much the the 100% guarantee of big, bright, beautiful lights and really their peace of mind not having to touch anything. But each year we’ll come back. We have a plethora of different color options from all white to two red, two white to a five-color multi-color to a pink Barbie Dream house. Um, and we sure we did do one of those this year. So that’s how that goes with the Christmas lights installations, and then lawn care and a whole lot of tree trimming. Um, here in Texas typically it really picks up around spring. Uh, so we’ll cut grass all through. Um, and again a lot of tree trimming. Typically we try to hit like four days of of long care. Uh, and then usually a Friday, a Saturday for tree trimmings. Um, that’s pretty much how the week goes. And ideally it’s like eight to eight to thirteen yards a day. Um, and then on the tree trimming days, we just try to, try to stack as many as I can. I’ll try to close as many as we can throughout the week, and then just set them up for that week. Once we have enough tree trimmings filled up for that week, then I’ll start scheduling the next week’s after. So, that’s that’s both of them.
Mindy: Okay, you used the word crew. How many people work for you?
Guest: Uh, it depends on the time of year. For Christmas lights, definitely grab more people. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Uh, we got up to like six, seven people for Christmas lights in total. Um, that’s including everybody from my girlfriend’s mom. She helps me do all the estimate stuff. She bulbs and clips lights, uh, gets a lot of stuff ready like that. Then I have my installers. I have ground people that uh, you know, just do ground stuff, handing up lights. I have some people that hand up lights. I have uh one of my, one of our uh, guys that works for us, he brought in his sister and she does all of our TikToks and then she does a lot of, really wrapping trees, stuff like that. So and then we have our people that are, you know, good with getting on the roofs. Typically skinnier guys like me, somebody that can move it around. Um, if you climb trees whenever you were younger and ran around on houses, typically you’re usually the person installing Christmas lights.
Scott: That’s awesome. So what what so this this business is obviously highly seasonal. How how like what’s what’s the magnitude of the business in a holiday season? You know, what are you expecting to do this year in terms of revenue for this thing?
Guest: It’s funny to say it, but in the two weeks of Christmas or the two months of Christmas lights installations, um, we make over, we make double what we make in lawn care and tree trimming. Um, numbers wise this year and just lawn care and trees, uh, we did like 45,000, I believe. Um, and then in Christmas lights installations from October 16th is when we started, and I just did the last one, uh, December 8th. Um, and we closed in two months, 100 and just shy of 115,000.
Scott: That’s unbelievable. And this is revenue, right? So so there’s expenses associated with this, but this is really profitable. I mean, you’re not, you have one month of payroll, or two months of payroll for this business uh, that generates 115,000 in revenue.
Guest: Yes, sir. We yeah, and then also, um, we come back January to take down all the lights. But yeah, that’s everything. Um, and then also, yeah, each year I I at least spend 20 plus thousand on on more Christmas lights every year.
Scott: Okay, so there’s an investment in inventory, yeah, uh, that you got to you got to have here for this business. So, how long you’ve been doing this and how’d it get started?
Guest: This has now been three years uh, that I’ve been running it by myself. I’d actually started in college, um, with one of my buddies. Uh, my friend Tommy, he came up to me one day and he was like, “Hey Adrian, I have a friend back home. He’s making some good money doing Christmas lights installations. Next year we’re going to do it.” And I said, “Hey, Tommy, I’m broke right now, like right now we need to do it.” So we both brought in 25 bucks. We uh, we made cards and we walked around the neighborhood, or we walked around San Marcos, Texas. Uh, I think we got two customers, probably like 1,500 bucks, uh, paid a little bit of our rent, bought some beer, bought some food. It was a good time. That’s how that started. Um, and then I ended up moving back to my parents’s place. I dropped out of college, uh, about a year and a half in, moved to my parents’s place after our lease ended, and then pretty much long cared the rest of that year, saved up enough money, went to a a course in North Carolina, and then was the youngest one there, took all my notes, did all the stuff, came back home and got it started. So now it’s been three years running it by myself here in San Antonio.
Mindy: What was this course?
Guest: It is uh, it’s a Christmas lights installation course. I mean it goes over everything from the sales, the business, everything you need to the installation stuff. I mean, um, the safety equipment, the how do you cut, custom cut an extension cord, how do we run wire from here to there and then, you know, there’s a random tree 50 feet that way. How do we light up that tree? Stuff like that. Um, was taught in that course.
Mindy: Oh my goodness. I don’t even know there was a thing. I am so delighted for you and this is crazy because I would think that you would be hanging up the customer’s lights that they own. I love that you’re hanging up lights that you own because maybe the customer is like, hey, that worked, but I’m moving. So the customer is essentially lost because they don’t live there anymore, but then you can come in, you still have the lights. Do you stock up after Christmas sales?
Guest: Uh, I stock up honestly in October, really August, September is when I start stocking up. Um, I for sure bought like 20 grand worth of lights at that point. Uh, August, September. And then because it’s a little bit cheaper, if you buy it sooner, uh, it’s a lot cheaper. If I was to get it right now, and like it’s still, it’s still hits where a a light customer will come in and they’re like, hey, we need a whole lot of mini lights and San Antonio this year, again, ran out of mini lights. So I had to take a detour trip up to Lake Travis and Austin, bought another five grand worth of mini lights and then came down just so I had enough. Um, so at the end of the season, you want to make sure you have enough. You want to just make sure you have more than enough, really just in case you get a a big one to pop up out of nowhere. Um, but no, the only reason that I would buy extra lights at the end of the year is just for tax purposes, trying to, trying to make it show that I didn’t have or make enough money, make a whole lot of money. And that’s the only reason I’d buy lights at the end of the season, but typically it’s all before. I stack up before.
Scott: What’s the uh, what’s what’s the typical job? How much are you paying, how much are you getting paid? Um, how much do you have to put in for new new equipment or lights, Um, anything like that and in labor like how what not a big one, not a small one, average job.
Guest: Okay, average. Uh, typical average price is like 800 to 1,800. Um, really just depending on the size of the home and the different options. Um, an average, like, let’s say just a house, just a house, you’re probably looking at like 800 to maybe on the bigger end 1,400. Um, but we have big old sixty-inch lit wreats, we have uh ground stake lighting, we can wrap up trees up to twenty feet tall, so I mean, um, it can definitely go up higher, but the typical average is at 800 to 1,800-ish range. And then we try to do about three of them a day.
Scott: Who’s the client? Is this someone who just wants to beat their neighbors and have the best Christmas Christmas lights? Like what who who is who’s paying you 1,800 dollars to to hang the Christmas lights?
Guest: There’s definitely a competitive aspect to it. Uh, at a certain point, I mean, I have customers that are neighbors too. So, and they’re like, yeah, let me just get a little bit more cuz, you know, you know. And I’m like, yeah, I got you. Okay, we’ll we’ll do something, we’ll do something a little bit cooler. But typically, um, they’re either younger families, so I mean I’ve met a lot of like thirty, thirty-five year old multi-millionaires in a three million dollar house. And I’m like, I’d get this house. This is insane. But a lot of them, um, typically younger parents, uh, if there’s they have a kid or grandkids around, you know, and they’re in that seven to like, I think the cutoff is typically around like that eighteen number. Once they get past eighteen, a lot of the parents don’t really care that much. It’s mainly grandparents at that point. So uh, either younger professionals that have younger children or older grandparents. Uh, typically business owners um, or people higher up in higher up in their company.
Mindy: O, you said you do three in a day? I live next door to the house that people drive past. I live by the Grizzwalds and it takes him, he starts the day after Thanksgiving and no, the day after Halloween and he’s putting them up until the day after Thanksgiving. That’s when he first turns them on. And it’s just this massive and I mean he’s probably putting up way more than you are, but you do three in a day. How many people are working to do the house? Is it like a whole team just converges on the on the house? I mean, but for 800 bucks and you already own the lights probably, that that just seems like such a no brainer to continue this. I’m so I just I love this idea. I mean my frugal self is like, there’s no way I would pay $800 to put lights on a on a house, but also there’s no way I can compete with my neighbor. So why would I even try? Um, I just I love that you have come up with this and decided to to pursue it. Um what was it like leaving college? Because you’re supposed to go to college. Everybody’s got to go to college. How are you going to get a job if you don’t go to college? Like how did you make that decision to separate from college?
Guest: Uh, it was one, I guess it was it was semi-calculated. At a certain point in time, you’re kind of just tired of school, but at another point, I had other friends who had already graduated with that same business management degree that I was going after. Uh, and I asked them, I said, “Hey, man, like now that you’re you moved back to Houston, how much are you making?” And he goes, “This year I should make around like 60,000, and then next year kind of just depending on how everything goes, how I grow, um, hopefully I can hit about 70,000.” So at that point I kind of broke it down and I’m like, okay, 70,000 in four years, if I was to leave here right now, because I I I was going to start my own business afterwards anyways. Like I’ve always had the entrepreneurial spirit in me. I always knew that I was going to leave college, go start my own business. So at a certain point I was like, if I was to leave right now, move back to my parents’s house, in four years from now, could I make 70,000 and then in year five, could I possibly make a little bit more than than that last year? I gu have more room to grow each year rather than working at an actual somebody else’s company. Um, so I was very happy whenever I left college. Uh, I didn’t have to go to my classes anymore. Now the education doesn’t stop. That’s that’s one thing that doesn’t stop. It’s really just being able to pick your teachers. Um, so I went from, you know, my professors that they told me I was going to to now I got to go find uh Alex Herzi, Jason Geman, my Christmas lights uh teacher. I mean, there’s a whole, there’s a whole bunch of places that I’ve been able to go, but now it’s really education stays finding new teachers.
Mindy: I love that mentality.
Mindy: Can you tell us a little bit about, um, your involvement in Sheeks Freaks? How you got involved in that group and um, if that’s contributed to your success?
Guest: Y’all are the reason I got into Sheeks Freaks actually. I was uh, I was watching one of y’all’s or I was listening to one of y’all’s podcasts, um, and there’s this guy, he was just doing some crazy stuff. I was like, what’s this dude’s name? His name was Jabar. Now I was like, hey, okay, well let me go look this guy up on Instagram. So I looked up Jabar on Instagram and I’m like, then he was talking about the Sheeks Freaks and I’m like, how the heck? Like I need to, I need to join this group, I need to join this group. Because at a certain point, I mean I have, I have friends here, but my friends here we work out and we throw the football. Like we don’t talk about money. I mean there’s a small little bit. So whenever I I found this group or I I heard about him from um, y’all’s podcast, I immediately went and I sent Jabar a long, long message on on Instagram and then I sent another message to Dan and a couple days later, I guess, well probably later that day, Dan reched out to me and um, I ended up joining a call and I loved it. But yeah, that community is freaking awesome. Everything from, you know, being able to have both Mindy and Scott have been uh, speakers, have been guests. We have a whole plethora of other guests and then we also have stuff like, um, our weekly calls. We have go getter group. So I know y’all had Ben on here the other day, but uh, Ben, Sarah, another girl named Mia and then me, we were all in our little go getter group. So every Wednesday, or every Thursday, I’m sorry, we always call in the morning. And it kind of goes over what did we do this week? Did we get what we needed to get done last week? And if yes, cool. If not, why not? Um, there’s also issues with like one of our girls, she had to fire two people. So that was one, we got to talk about it, kind of figure out why, um, little stuff like that. Uh, so I like the goal getter groups, and then also just being able to to see other people our age, um, doing some high level stuff and and knowing that it’s for sure possible.
Mindy: Community is so important and you hit the nail right on the head. You said, my friends locally, we work out and we throw the football, but we don’t talk about money. If you want to get ahead, you need to surround yourself with people who also want to get ahead because you have questions. How do I fire an employee? Well, your friends who don’t have employees aren’t going to be able to tell you how to fire your employee. You need other people. I mean, that’s a really big task for anybody at any level. Frankly, I’ve never had to fire somebody because I don’t have employees and I’m totally fine with that because I don’t want to do that. But that seems like like that kind of thing, running a business. Hey, I’m having this problem in my business. Somebody who has never run a business is not going to be able to solve that for you. And having this community of same age people, cuz I can see you at age 22 joining another community with people who are maybe much older and they don’t take you seriously because you’re so young. And they just automatically discount you instead of listening. So finding a community of your peers who are go-getters just like you is going to just lift you up and you’re going to go and make 200,000 next December. I can’t believe you make so much money hanging Christmas lights. I’m so excited for you. That’s awesome.
Guest: I have it. I have 200,000 written down. I think about it every night.
Mindy: Well, call me next December and tell me I hit my 200,000. Actually, you’re going to call me in October and be like, I got bookings for 200,000 Mindy, so I bumped it up to four.
Scott: One of our last questions here around what what is next? What’s the plan going forward? We have 200,000, but are we going to expand the both businesses? Or are we going to branch out into adjacent categories? Where where are you going?
Guest: Yeah, so right now, I mean, Christmas lights just got done. Uh, we’re pretty much good. I I hit all my goals as far as I should be able to get my house hack this year. So ideally I’d rather go duplex um and do the house hack that way, but if I do something like Mindy where it’s a live in flip, definitely down for that as well, but I have all the money set aside. Everything from down payment to closing costs to to save my butt money. I I got it. So I got that. I got taxes money set aside, so that’s taken care of as well. Um, the next thing now is making sure all the Christmas lights customers are taken care of, kind of getting everything in order as far as takedown schedule. Uh, and then getting back into the flow of things with the long care customers telling everybody that I’m back in in the cutting grass, the Christmas lights just ended. Um, so getting other people’s yards cut right now. And then once we hit the spring, um, I am still, a piece of me thought maybe let’s, let’s leave out of lawn care and tree trimming and go do something higher leverage right now. Um, but since I do want to get that house hack, uh, I want to be able to live in the house hack and know that I’m gonna be able to make money, be, I guess like secure for for this house hack. So I’m gonna go back, cut grass, trim trees this year. Uh, keep it running. And then next year for Christmas lights, pretty much the same thing, start getting everybody on the schedule. Um, at least August, September. Um, get all that going. And then next year, pretty much around the same time is when I’m going to make, I guess my big jump. Uh, instead of doing, instead of going and buying another property next year, uh, instead I’m just pretty much going to keep that cash, sit on it, and then kind of allow myself to go and as y’all like to say, play to win. Um, so from there I’ll probably get rid of the lawn care and tree trimming company. Um, and maybe go use my sales and real estate stuff and and probably go be a agent or or maybe getting into a bigger business like gutter’s, bigger tree trimming, stuff like that. Something that also goes with the with the Christmas light side of things since I already have so much equipment and different vehicles and stuff like that.
Scott: You you’ve probably thought about all this, but one one thing that comes to mind is is the uh, events business, like setting up, you know, tables, chairs for people when they have like family gatherings or birthday parties or those types of things. Like same type of work, it’s, you know, and decorating. Same type of work as Christmas lights.
Guest: For sure. Uh, we went to a wedding earlier this year in California and I actually I got there earlier during setup and I went to go talk to the people that did the Christmas lights and they have this little like I guess this metal plate that goes in the ground with the pipe that goes up and that’s how they run their stringers of lights. And they’re different lights than the C9 that I have for Christmas, but I mean it’s all the same thing. It’s it’s cut the wire, put the male, put the female, run the extension cord and go. So definitely something to think about. I I have a a list of stuff. I’m kind of just going to write it all down, do a pros and cons list and and I have a year to figure it out.
Mindy: Okay, Adrian, what is one piece of advice you would tell someone like yourself who is young and wanting to start out on their own financial freedom journey?
Guest: A couple things. One thing is education. Um, go find the education and a topic that you’re actually chasing. Uh, whether that’s sales, whether that’s, you know, just personal stuff, trying to get yourself better. But that’s one thing. Stay educated. Um, get around good people. Uh, get around good not only good people but good environments, habits. Uh, a lot of things is focusing on your habits. If you don’t have good habits in the first place, then you really can’t move forward. Um, so at a certain point in time, you have to work on yourself before you can really start growing. Uh, so kind of just find what you’re going after, go educate yourself on it, go fix your habits and you got to risk it to get the biscuit.
Scott: By the way, I just want to point out something, you know, if you just did the Christmas light business, you’d probably bring in 100 grand a year starting next year in net profit, right, easily, 150, something like that.
Guest: Yes, sir.
Scott: And it’s a month and a half of work. I mean, like if you wanted, you could just live the most crazy lifestyle, work that one month with that business, you know, staff it up, staff it down, and like you’re golden on that front. So, I mean, what a what a fun situation for you to be in. That de-risks everything else you try for the rest of the year with that one business, giving you nine months to go take over the world and build an empire or just chill, travel the world. I mean, awesome, awesome stuff here. It’s so exciting.
Guest: That’s the thought. I’ve put myself in a good place so far and I’m definitely, definitely excited to see what the future has in store.
Scott: That’s right. You’ve put yourself in a good spot. I love that. I love that that that uh, that confidence and the the accuracy of that. That’s awesome.
Mindy: You’ve put yourself in a great spot, not a good spot, a great spot and you’re twenty-two. I mean if this whole thing crumbles, you’re still twenty-two. You can pick yourself up, you’re not married, you don’t have kids, you live with your parents. Like there’s so much safety net underneath you. This is just fantastic. I love your story. Adrian, this is fabulous. Okay, so where can people find you? Where can they find you, your lu care business, your lights business, hit me.
Guest: Y’all can find me on Instagram at zapata z a p a t a underscore b one four. Um that’s to find me and then uh to find the sheeks freaks, you can either go to sheeks freaks on Instagram or Dan sheeks uh send them a message, shoot em a just a quick little DM and he’ll get back to you for sure. That way you can come and hang out with us. Um we have meetings typically every every other Sunday. Um and then if you get lucky, you’ll get put in my goal getter group uh on our Thursday calls. Um yeah, so that’s how to get a get a hold of me, get a get a hold of of Dan.
Mindy: Awesome. And if you need any of those links, they will be in our show notes or you can always email me mindy@biggerpockets.com and I will connect you up. All right. Adrian, this was so much fun. I really appreciate your time and I cannot wait to hear from you in August when you have blown through the goal that we have set today.
Guest: Mandy Scott, it was an honor. I appreciate it and y’all have a great rest of y’all’s day. Thank y’all.
Mindy: Thank you. We’ll talk to you soon.
Mindy: I am so excited for Adrian’s success. I know that he is going to do huge things with his business. And you know, the the two things that really stand out about him is that he didn’t have an idea and then hem and haw about it. He s- he started, he took action, he created this lawn care business and then his friend came up to him and said, hey, we could make a lot of money hanging Christmas lights, and he said, okay, let’s do that. He took action again. And then on top of that, he paid for a course to jump start the side side business of uh hanging Christmas lights. I think that takes a lot of maturity and a lot of uh courage to fork over money to learn how to hang Christmas lights. That’s maturity I don’t have at uh, what is Adrian 22? I’m a little bit older than that and I would not have paid to how hard is hanging Christmas lights. Well, it turns out that there’s a lot of things that you need to know and he took a course and now he’s way better at it. And that just jump started his his business and he’s making huge numbers and next year, I know he’s going to blow our predictions out of the water.
Scott: Yeah, it makes your mind turn about these like seasonal businesses. I mean, he makes so much money in such a short period of time. That is going to be so freeing and so powerful for him. I I’d hope he doesn’t sell the business in the next couple years because, I mean, think about the optionality that that gives you. Come back to San Antonio for a three month, two to three month period at during the holidays, make 100 grand, and then you could be, yeah, traveling the world doing whatever you want.
Mindy: All right, now let’s talk to Javier. Now 26, Javier catapulted his career by making a strategic decision early on. At age 18, he ran a cost benefit and time analysis and decided he’d forgo a bachelor’s degree and opt in for a straight path to fire instead. Javier is now a successful real estate investor who has reached financial independence. Javier, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I cannot wait to jump into your story.
Guest: That’s awesome. I cannot wait to talk to both of you guys. I’m honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
Scott: We got to start this with this analysis that you did at 18. Walk us through what that was, what that looked like, and what was going through your mind at the time?
Guest: Sure, yeah. Um, so at 18, I I had just gotten my first job as a janitor, actually, because my uh, my parents didn’t save money for college for me and um, the goal was for me to go uh play football actually and I got some half scholarships, but it was, even with the half scholarship it was going to end up being like 1,6000 for tuition. Um, and I decided to opt for community college instead. Did a couple years of that just because it was going to be $3,000 instead of 16k a year. And then it was actually when I was um 20 years old and I got my first internship at an engineering firm and I was looking around and seeing all the other engineers that were I was noticing extremely grumpy and pretty overstressed and overly worked and severely underpaid in my opinion. Um and when I kind of, you know, looked at my path and saw that I had the opportunity to kind of make a decent amount with just my associate’s degree at where I was. Um, I had a job opportunity to go work for another engineering firm, still as just a engineering assistant, nothing that required a bachelor’s degree and making $42,000 a year. Um, and the engineers in my firm that I was currently working at were making $45,000 a year, uh, with within three years they are going to be bumping them up to like $60,000 a year. So that’s what I had to look forward to. I can go to school, get my mechanical engineering degree, continue on with that, and pay another $20,000 in tuition cost for another two years, so 40k in tuition plus forgoing the opportunity cost of earning 42,000 for the next two years. So, two years later, I might come out with my bachelor’s degree and I’ll be $124,000 in the hole compared to me without it and I’d be my reward for that would be a stressful job, making $3,000 more. Maybe, maybe I’d get another $18,000 more. And after kind of putting it in an Excel spreadsheet and like looking at the difference of where that would put my net worth if I just kept my 70% savings rate, I found out that it would take thirteen years for the bachelor version of myself to catch up to the net worth of myself without a bachelor’s degree. But the interesting part was that I could be financially independent within eight years without a bachelor’s degree. So there was no point in I guess getting the bachelor’s degree if I could do it sooner with less risk and less time and energy effort up front by doing it without.
Scott: What kind of what kind of engineering was this?
Guest: Mechanical engineering. I was at an MEP firm. I was just an AutoCAD drafter at the time. Um, writing blueprints in the computer for smart people.
Scott: So we we we interviewed uh Preston Cooper from Freopp who did an an analysis on the ROI of a college degree.
Guest: Yes.
Scott: Fantastic data. So you so you’ve you’ve seen that one?
Guest: That’s absolutely. And I am, I try to like push people towards that resource as much as possible. I was actually like looking through it in like preparation for this interview. And for example, the college that I was looking at, I I won’t say the name, but out of the 48 degrees that they have on freeop.org for that ROI of College website, twenty-four of the college degrees were uh had an ROI of under $100,000. And a part that that was awesome about Preston’s or the part that’s not explained in in that interview is that it’s not emphasized enough is that that’s over the course of a working career of forty-two years. And so $100,000 over the course of forty-two years is like you’re really not seeing that until like the last, the back end, the last ten years maybe of of that. Like it takes a while for you to dig out of your hole that you dug yourself into by getting all the debt to go to college in the first place. So, but if like people that are pursuing the financially independent, um, you know, and trying to retire at an earlier age, it al it doesn’t make sense to do that if you uh, kind of find these strategies early on just cuz all the sacrifice is front loaded and you don’t get to see the benefits till the end, but you’ll end up being retired by then anyway.
Scott: Just a couple a couple of points here on that, right? That analysis is fantastic. Great work from Preston Cooper and for out. Absolutely the assumption is are you’re going to work a full career. There’s a 5% cost of capital assumption in there, and if you’ve put the stock market 10% assumption in there, that changes the ROI of many of those degrees, um uh in there. If you’re a house hacker, a real estate investor, and you can get much more than 10% on that, that further diminishes the value of those degrees. That’s a key assumption in the model. He doesn’t hide it, but it’s one you can’t change when you’re looking at those ROIs uh in there, to really nerd out about the modeling here which it sounds like you started doing at a young age of 20. But the one of the things that surprised me about what you’re saying here is, you know, overwhelmingly the engineering degrees, like one of the takeaways was a degree matters more than the school, right? And engineering is almost always a positive ROI uh career choice. And anthropology is almost always a negative ROI uh career choice uh for example, right? And there are many other many other degrees I could use or pick on or or or or or talk about as as high or low ROI. So no, no problem with any of those, but just the fact that you did it on a mechanical engineering degree at a state school for $16,000 a year and still came to this conclusion is pretty concerning for the ROI of college for a lot of people that that are contemplating going there.
Guest: Yeah, absolutely. I agree and that’s it kind of makes it blows my mind just the fact that there’s so many people that are still like touting college as being like the most efficient way to become successful when there’s so many other options and you know, I I did part of college, but I mean I still did it as cheaply as I could getting my associate’s degree and I think I used that, you know, efficiently. I learned how to do AutoCAD and my associate’s degree and that got me my internship and then eventually like I skilled up from there and like branched out and got raises in other ways, um, primarily using FU money and all the tactics that I learned from the FIRE community and uh, I I feel like the financial literacy portion has been more beneficial than, you know, most education that you can get from college and that stuff is all self-taught or you learn from, you know, people that are willing to teach you.
Mindy: I love that. And to anybody listening who is like, hey, what Javier is saying makes some sense, but I’d like more information, we interviewed Preston Cooper back on episode 251 to talk about his enormous study over 30,000 different uh, undergrad degrees, um, episode 251. He came back again on episode 293 to talk about master’s degrees. There were fewer master’s degrees, but again, the ROI uh, conversation is the same. And Preston is an absolute master at taking this very complex information and distilling it down and being able to explain it really easily. So there’s lots of links in the show notes. There’s a link to the actual article and the the documentation that he used and it’s fascinating if you’re on the fence about uh, college, those are two great episodes to listen to. So Javier, uh, since you didn’t go to college, or you only went for two years and you need a four-year degree in America to be successful, how on earth did you become FI in just uh, in just not even 10 years after graduating high school.
Guest: Me and my wife got to cash flow for what I like to call it by house hacking, uh, moving into a camper and saving and investing 70% of our income.
Scott: What did you do to earn that income in the meantime? Uh, and then I’d love to go through those those three choices.
Guest: Sure. Um mainly so other than doing that engineering internship, skilled up and went to another internship for a while, but the awesome part around there was like following the financial independent community, you you pick up on skills and just the concepts of having FU money and there was a point where I was able to do kind of like an office space moment where I told my boss that, hey, um, we didn’t have a lot of work at the time and the other engineers were like kind of stressing out. So I told him, “Hey, the engineers can have my hours. I’ll take a step back. Maybe later on you can hire me on full time or as a permanent employee because I was temporary at the time. And um, like they’ll be happy. I’ll get some time to go spend with my family and stuff.” And a couple days later he came back and like gave me a promotion and a like a 12k raise. Like I don’t know if he thought that I was leaving or if he just like the initiative, whatever it was. I was like, whoa, this is more than I expected to make for the rest of my life. I was I was content with 42k for forever, the math still worked, but I’ll take the I’ll take the raise. Um, that happened for a while and then eventually later on in my career, uh, during COVID, I was laid off and thanks to FU money again and also paying attention to FIRE podcasts. Um, I came across, um, the Salesforce careers that were like talked about a lot on, I I heard it first on the ChooseFI podcast and I took like a three-month course, um, took 100 uh certification exam and got the skills needed to go and eventually acquire, um, a job paying 100k salary.
Mindy: For people who are not quite familiar with Salesforce, what is that? Cuz this is a comment that I have heard from multiple people. Yeah, I took a three-month course and now I make $100,000 a year. That just seems like, honestly, that seems like a scam and I know it’s not, but that sounds like a scam. What is salesforce?
Guest: Yeah, honestly, I I would have agreed with you and I was, if if I if the podcast that I was listening to had not built my trust over the course of four years, I would have absolutely thought the same thing. But I felt like there was enough people saying it and enough people were talking about it that I was like, well, what the heck? I have now seven years worth of financial runway and I’m laid off right now. Um, I I can take this time to kind of take a step back and figure out what would be best for me. I I kind of had a couple options and um I know this isn’t what you asked, but was able to kind of choose that the the thing that worked most and had all these um, you know, perks of being able to do remote work. And um, to answer your question, what Salesforce, I guess, is, it’s it’s basically a software that businesses use to optimize their business processes, whether it’s selling to people or getting, um, customer data into places, um, or you know, just making sure that all their back end processes are working correctly and they have customers have nice websites to view. Um, and essentially what happens is Salesforce is a software that is sold to companies and these companies now have this Salesforce software, but they have no use, no no way, they don’t know how to implement it into their into their business model. So they hire people that have Salesforce certifications that know what they’re doing in order to implement it for them, and they hire them as typically W-2 workers, um and they become their Salesforce administrators or there’s you can do like a bunch of other stuff. You can hire contractors and the contractors handle the stuff for you.
Mindy: Yeah, and to be clear, I’m not calling Salesforce a scam. It is a legit company. It’s just it sounds like such a scam until somebody like explains it. And even when somebody explains it, you’re like, yeah, but three months in and I can make $100,000. I know so many people who work for Salesforce and do this exact same thing and they’re all making six figures.
Scott: For how much the salesforce program cost?
Guest: So Salesforce actually gives away all their training for free. Uh, you just go on to their site in trailhead.com and they just, they want everyone to know how to do this stuff. They want people to go out and learn how to use their platform. And then it’s not that Salesforce is hiring me directly, it’s other companies that are using Salesforce software and they hire me because they want someone that knows how to use the software.
Scott: So to me Salesforce does not sound like a scam, right? We we use a different CRM here at bigger pockets business processes called Hubspot which is very similar competitor to Salesforce. Salesforce is also very reputable. Um lots of lots of different, you know, so but this this makes perfect sense. There’s a free training you can get and within a year or two of taking that free training, you can get a six-figure income and you did that instead of going to college, um, and getting a mechanical engineering degree, um, and are thriving now in this role uh uh right now financially independent. That’s pretty awesome. But a big part of this story that I feel like we just missed is you said I have seven years of financial runway and what the heck? I’m laid off, I’ll take a shot uh on this thing. That’s a powerful position to be in that a lot of people don’t have and they can’t take a chance on this thing that might be a scam even though, you know, Terry reputable company. You know, that but but that, you know, maybe somebody else might be thinking, hey, that’s going to be a waste of time. How did you get to seven years of financial runway to be able to have the luxury of making this this this this choice that has paid off so well?
Guest: Yeah, that’s fair enough. Um, so during that first internship, I’d started, I’d picked up a set for life actually was the first financial independent book that I ever
Scott: know that.
Guest: Yeah, yeah.
Scott: Thanks for the thank you for the plug.
Guest: Sure thing. You’re actually, you know, I’ve been, I feel like I’ve been doing a good job holding in the fanboy, but you’re kind of my role model, Scott. And uh, yeah, so I’ve been really, uh, you know, happy to, happy to be here and and meet with you and talk with you because I try to model a lot. Yeah, thank you. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Try to model a lot of the stuff that I’m doing based off of like how you’ve done things in the past. I really appreciated the book and how like actionable the the steps inside of it were, like it felt like it fit perfectly in my life, like starting from scratch, uh, zero net worth. Um how do you get to become financially independent in a reasonable amount of time? You save aggressively, you increase your income as much as you can and you invest it wisely. House hack if you can because that’s going to be huge the biggest ROI you can you can get and basically just implementing those things. Um, you know, never really never got a a fancy car until recently, but originally it was just like getting a kind of junker cars, one, two thousand dollars using them for two years and then once they broke on me I could still sell them for the same one or two thousand dollars that I bought them for because they were there was so much utility like that a car has and a car won’t go below a certain value. Um, but just doing all, you know, all the little stuff that the FIRE independent the, yeah, the FIRE community talks about and um, they they just kind of stack up over time.
Scott: Fantastic. Well tell us about your house hack. How’d you get into this property? uh, or your first one, maybe, but let’s go go through them and how how’d you get your your house hack?
Guest: Okay, sure. Um, so the first ever deal was actually, um, my it was my wife’s house. So we weren’t together at the or we were just getting together and um, she had this new construction three-bed, two-and a half bath uh house uh that was getting built. I was currently looking for my house hack. Uh like I I was looking for a multi-family, but um it it wasn’t happening and eventually she wanted to kind of we wanted or we both wanted to move in with each other. So we kind of struck this deal to where the house was still hers, I would move in, we’d live in the same bedroom and I would pay for all of our groceries, uh, but I would also manage on any house hacking stuff that we would do cuz she was interested in doing it also. I mean I kind of told her about some of the pros of not having to pay for, you know, your housing and she was like, okay, I’m for that. Like, okay, are you okay with renting out some bedrooms? She says, yeah, yeah, I’m I’m okay with that. I had roommates in college. So I said, okay, neat. I’ll be like the property manager and I’ll get, I’ll get to, you know, learn along the way. Uh you’ll get all the profits obviously because it’s your house. And um we did that. The her mortgage was 1,150. We rented out the bedrooms. Um 750 each. I guess furnished and that includes utilities and everything. Um our utilities were about $300 a month. So it worked out to be like we were getting $1,500 of rent and the mortgage and utilities was 1,450. So she had like an extra $50 to go shopping every month if she wanted to, uh, it was it was a it was a good thing and eventually we kind of, um, decided to try out Airbnb just because we heard like that can maybe make some more money and we might not be perfect at it at first, but we decided we wanted to at least learn and um, that was we we learned a lot and it it let us perfect our craft for future house hacks and other investments.
Scott: So three huge barriers to getting ahead financially, right? The negatively cash-flowing assets that most Gen Zers and millennials acquire, right? the financed degree, the financed car, and the expensive house, right? And you’ve now avoided all three at this point in the story, and you’ve accumulated a bonus asset, which is the cash flow positive spouse. Oh, yeah. uh in the process there. So that’s pretty fantastic. That’s a pretty powerful set of advantages uh out of the journey to financial independence. So what happens next after this house sack wraps it up with with that tongue and cheek comment?
Guest: Sure, absolutely. Um, yeah, my my spouse is definitely my my number one asset for sure. Um she’s she’s too embarrassed to come on like a podcast like this, but man, she’s she’s great. And uh, yeah, like you said, it’s there’s nothing like having someone that’s willing to like go in the deep end with you and you know, go along with all your crazy adventures and someone that’s actually just as passionate about it. So it’s um, it’s awesome having that and we’re both growing in the same direction and I’m super appreciative of that. My wife is in the Air Force, so we were originally living in San Antonio, Texas, and um, she was going to get orders to move to another duty station eventually. That’s where the Salesforce career kicked in and I was looking for something that would be remote. That filled that void. Now I can go work anywhere and move along with her. Uh, we ended up moving to a little town called Crestview, Florida. It’s right near Destin, Pensacola area. Um the panhandle of Florida. It’s a pretty popular little tourist destination. Um, but we moved like 30 minutes more inland, so it’s kind of away from a lot of the tourist stuff and an area that was more affordable and we found a the only duplex in the entire like tri metro area uh out of like 1,500 listings, we could only find one house that wasn’t even labeled as a duplex. It was a single family and I had to look through all the pictures to to notice that there was a mother-in-law suite. Um, so we ended we we closed on that deal. Thank goodness because we it almost backed out a couple times and we would have we were just our hopes were so high for that thing because it was the only thing we could find that we could house hack. Um, but eventually we we rented out the mother-in-law suite on Airbnb that was a 21. Um, and that one was bringing in anywhere from it was probably averaging about $3,000 a month on Airbnb. and the mortgage for this place is 1960. Uh so that was and we were now we upgraded from living in a a master bedroom in a house to living in a three bedroom, one bath, like main house that we had all to ourselves and there was just a mother-in-law suite along the um next door that we were renting out, had a full driveway. We never saw them. So we had all this privacy in a huge house and we were living for free plus some cash flow. Um while we were doing that, we were renovating this house, the main house that we were living in. we added another bedroom and a bathroom and uh eventually we’re like slowly acquiring uh furniture to do an Airbnb for this house as well. And um eventually we moved into the backyard of this house in a camper because we always wanted to do the tiny house thing and um yeah, that made the house hack numbers a lot prettier. Um brought in an extra $4,000 a month of of income. So now we’re living in a camper that most people think is kind of weird, but we’re pretty excited about it. At least at this stage in our life when there’s just two of us, it’s pretty fun and uh we get to take it on place.
Mindy: it a tiny unit now.
Guest: No, no, no. This is a this is a big house. Um this is where this is the Airbnb.
Scott: As we can say that is a roomy camper. That is not a tiny camper.
Guest: Okay.
Scott: So you you’re you’re bringing in $7,000 a month and I get it. Destin’s going to be super seasonal, right? You know, um for this. So yeah, there’s going to so that that’s your average. Uh, you have 1,900 payment. So you’re making almost as much as you are from your six-figure salesforce implementation job from from this property. Um, and you wanted to to to to live in that in that uh camper. If you didn’t want to and you wanted to move back in the main house, you’d still be positively cash-flowing your your house hack in a pretty nice house for a a uh uh uh a young married couple. Presumably you don’t have kids yet.
Guest: Correct.
Scott: Yeah.
Guest: Yep.
Scott: So, you know, so I mean this is this is fantastic.
Mindy: Is it just the two houses that you own right now?
Guest: So, we just recently, like this is pretty new, and like within the past two months, uh, we listed our, I guess, we, we, okay, four months ago we purchased a another duplex in the nicest part of town. Um, she was on deployment and the goal was to just start paying off debt and like small things here and there. Uh, but we this this deal kind of fell in our lap and we did an owner finance for another duplex in basically right on the lake of this beautiful park, um, in like downtown Crestview. And we decided to Airbnb that place as well. Um, so now that is two additional listings, and then we actually have so it’s a two bedroom, one bath on each side, but we also have it listed as a four bedroom, two baths, so you can rent both of the the duplex together. So, it’s kind of like three extra listings that we added to to the portfolio. Um, and that’s really kind of what gave us the extra little push to get to our cashflow 5 number.
Scott: Awesome. So what’s what are the numbers in that one if you wouldn’t mind? What how much are we doing there and what’s the the seller financing payment?
Guest: I believe, so it’s only been live for two months now. The first full month that we had, this is like this is probably our slow season right now. and it made about $7,500 um, for the month, which is pretty good and I’d be okay with like saying that that’s the average for the year just because like we we don’t really have the data to to for the rest of the the months. Um so 7,500 in gross revenue, and the at least the mortgage part is about $2,200, maybe 23 once you include insurance. Uh but there’s also expenses, you know, I know your jaw’s kind of dropped me, but uh, yeah, there’s also expenses included like that come along with Airbnbs. We we pay cleaners so that we’re not having to do it ourselves. We have to pay utilities and um restocking uh supplies and stuff like that and one-off uh repairs here and there, but overall it’s very worth it.
Scott: How much cash did you put into this deal?
Guest: Um that one we did the down payment, we put a down payment of 50k and then it was about $25,000 in furnishings uh and that was that’s it. 75k.
Scott: And the the the seller financed how much?
Guest: Um 325.
Scott: Awesome. So and and and that I mean this is just fantastic. So you you have two home run properties nearby each other in Crestview, near Destin. I I had Destin in my head for a sec for a minute there. Um and you’re you’re generating oh, easily $10,000 in cash flow. now 8,000 easily, $10,000 probably uh from these properties on an average basis per month.
Guest: Yeah. I mean so I have the numbers on me, or at least I have them memorized. Um at least for the entirety of our real estate business where it’s, it’s about 16,500 in gross revenue from um both properties uh on the Airbnb side and the property but back in Texas that’s a long-term rental now. Um the expenses for all of those properties comes out to about 1,1 500, 11,500. Um that leaves us with about $5,000 left over of of cash flow a month, but that’s after all expenses, after tax and everything and that’s being I think pretty conservative because we’re taking into account our low season numbers instead of our high season because we just don’t have the data for that.
Mindy: If you’re going to use numbers, you want to run them at the low season because if you’re saying, oh, I’m going to make $5,000 this month and then you make 10, you’re like, oh, that was a bonus. But if you think you’re making 10, you’re like, wow, I only made five. I wonder what happened. Like it’s the reverse doesn’t work. So I love that you’re running your numbers conservatively. I love that you’re making so much money in real estate. I thought you couldn’t make money in real estate right now.
Guest: Yeah. Uh, I think house hacks kind of break that rule a little bit and then the uh, you know, sometimes you just get lucky or you put yourself in a position to get lucky and we had enough resources and there was a person willing to sell at a good price with a good owner financing in the perfect location with in a small town that most people don’t consider doing Airbnb’s in. And uh, we were just able to get a good deal.
Mindy: Yeah, so I hate to correct when my guests say something that is completely inaccurate, but you just said something completely inaccurate. You said, we got lucky. No, you didn’t. You prepared. You prepared, you saved your money, you were investing 70% or saving 70% of your income, and you were prepared to take action when something popped up that met all your criteria. You didn’t get lucky, you were prepared and luck happened, or the perfect thing happened and you were ready to take action. So, sorry, I have to correct you.
Scott: You got lucky, but only the people with cash and time and the skill set and the experience that that Javier’s built up are in a position to get lucky.
Mindy: Yes, it’s not luck. It is preparedness and you took advantage of something that you were able to take advantage of because you were prepared. You were saving for the future and now the future’s here and you took advantage of it. So there you go. But yes, I agree with all the rest of it. You’re awesome.
Guest: Well, thank you. Yeah, I guess that’s that’s what financial independence is about, right? It’s just about, you know, creating opportunities and building options and flexibility into your life. And that comes way before you have, you know, your magic fi number. I was, you know, every year or so it came across like an opportunity of whether whether it was like increasing my income or finding a good deal. Um, and that came along just because, you know, I was on the journey at all. It didn’t have to be at the end of my journey when I already had the, you know, the numbers just say that I’m financially independent.
Scott: You’re a member of Sheeks Freaks. Um, can you walk us through how you joined that community and if that’s been helpful to you?
Guest: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I found it on one of your podcasts where you brought Jabar, uh, Jabar on your podcast and I was like, holy cow, there’s another young person doing this stuff and he was way younger than I was. I mean, he’s a he’s a rock star. Um, but yeah, I heard heard his show on your podcast and decided to check it out and at least, um, I I think I messaged Dan and um, you know, he told me to come check out one of their uh, one of their Zoom meetings and I was hooked like as soon as I saw like all the youthful faces that I was not used to seeing in like the FI space, I was like, man, this is awesome. I’m like the old person here. Uh, I was used to being like the the weird young one whenever I’d show up to all like the ChooseFI local groups or campF and stuff and so it was neat meeting other people that were super fired up about it and uh, the fact that I could help them out in in some ways was was awesome, but just just the fact that you find some community and like it helps you normalize the goals that you have and um, that was that’s the best part about it, honestly.
Mindy: Do you have a piece of advice for other young people who want to repeat your rapid attainment of financial uh independence here?
Guest: Yeah, okay. So um, I would say never stop learning and um prioritize financial literacy, uh, while you’re young because that’s going to give you a lot more options and flexibility than just the standard advice of someone saying go to college. Um, do the math on big financial decisions rather than just taking standard advice and find a community that normalizes your goals like I just finished saying. So um, yeah in any way that’s possible, Sheeks Freaks was awesome. I’m glad I found it when I did at 25, but I wish I would have found it at at 14. So if if any of the listeners or have people that are young adults or you know, are they are young adults themselves, I’d encourage them to go check it out, and we’d love to have more people and uh, you know, get to share and encourage and um, you know, get to FI together so we have some friends to hang out with when we’re all young and looking for things to do. But it’s not just like she’s freaks also you there’s a ton of other places that I I did uh FI local group meetups, campF, um economy is another place, the economy conference, um but even just listening to podcasts, blogs and reading books like that was basically my community for the longest time. Like I wasn’t comfortable going and like seeing other people in person. I was just like, well, I’m just going to do this stuff and listen in my in my ears, um, to you guys and and everybody else in the Fire Space and that was honestly enough to like make it to where I surrounded my, you know, myself with people that were giving me good encouragement and uh, you know, good advice and yeah, it made me feel like everything was normal because I knew other people were doing it and now to a point to where when I hear other people not doing this kind of stuff, it seems like they’re the weird ones and not me.
Mindy: I completely agree with that statement. It it feels, I I live in Longmont, it’s kind of a hub for financial independence and it feels very weird when I meet other people who aren’t doing this too. And I I I have to temper my my comments and my facial expressions cuz you saw me today recording the show, I’m like, oh my goodness, and in real life people say that I’m like, really? What are you talking about? So, yeah, it is uh, it’s sometimes difficult for me, but finding community is so important. People who speak your language, people who understand what you’re trying to do, then you’re not constantly trying to explain it or trying to defend your your choices. People just automatically get it and that just helps, it encourages you, it like you’re surrounding with yourself with people who are doing the same things that you’re doing and like they all just, everybody lifts you up. It’s just it’s fantastic when you find people that speak your language. So I’m so glad that you found the Sheeks Freaks. I that Jabbar Ota episode really paid off in in massive dividends. Uh, shout out to Jabbar. He was he was a great guest on the episode. We just had him on a couple of weeks ago as well. Um, Javier, this was so much fun. I really appreciate you sharing your story with us. Is there any place that people can find you to talk more?
Guest: Yeah, um if y’all show up in any of the Sheeks Freaks conversations, I’ll be there, uh and then on top of that, you guys can find me on Instagram, um, at fi by30. I try to put out a little bit of financial content. It’s nothing big. I tried the short form stuff and it’s just it’s not my jam, but you know, sometimes I just have something to say and I’ll I’ll put it out there and little blobes here and there and I even have some videos of me working on some of my Airbnbs. so.
Scott: Love it. I think you’re very conservative in your projections yet again with your Instagram handle.
Guest: Yeah, fair enough.
Scott: One last question, um, that I would uh ask you here is you we talked about other people and all that kind of stuff and not, you know, the community aspect. When you look around at the peers maybe you graduated high school with, you know, how how like like is it just a completely different landscape? Um out there? Is are you seeing more people starting to go down this path to some degree.
Guest: I think that it’s hard for me to see that. Uh you know what? I will say that there is some progress being made. Like I I know that Florida in general, they just passed a law last year to make personal finance like required uh to be taught as a as at least a half-credit to high schoolers before they graduate, and I was super pumped about that. Um and you know, I don’t know what the curriculum is that they’re teaching, but something’s better than nothing and like one of the things I remember in Rich Dad, Poor Dad that hopefully is no longer going to be true if more states passed laws like this is that like rich people stay rich and poor people stay poor, uh, because money is something that’s taught at home. It’s not taught in schools and you tend to learn that stuff from your parents and you know, so uh if more of this stuff can be taught at the at the perfect age of like 18 before you make any of those big financial decisions or mistakes like that’s where it’s going to create the most impact and give people some more options and choices that they can think for themselves rather than just listening to advice that’s been passed around for like the past 10 decades.
Scott: Something uh, when when when really right with with the way you thought about it coming out of high school and going in to into to that second year of community college because you modeled it out. There’s no right. There there’s plenty of right answers for going to college. There’s plenty of right answers for not going to college, but you did the work and modeled it out and made the decision based on that. And that’s what counts, and I think that’s that’s the starting point. I mean, you change that one decision, you just don’t think and you go there, maybe, you know, you’re you’re probably still successful. You’re still your Instagram handle, fi by 30, but you’re not fi by 30 by 26, I bet you. without making that decision very thoughtfully. So, maybe it stakes for that high for you in particular, but, yeah, love it.
Guest: Awesome.
Mindy: Well, Javier, thank you so much for your time today, and we will talk to you soon.
Guest: Yeah. Thanks Mindy. Thanks Scott. It’s been a pleasure.
Mindy: All right, Scott. That was two very impressive young men. Let’s talk about Javier. Holy cow to be able to at age 18 run a cost and time and benefit, a cost benefit and time analysis on college. When I was 18, my plans were to go to college because that’s what you do. I never considered that you don’t go to college after you graduate high school. For Javier to make these decisions at age 18 shows a maturity that again, I lacked and I’m so impressed by him.
Scott: We don’t usually do this, but you know, I think we have to allude to it in this moment. We we hung out with with Javier for about 20 minutes after the recording, um, just chit-chatting. And you know, a couple of things here. Javier did have, you know, a lot of a a privileged upbringing, I I would say. He was a janitor at 18 paying his way through uh community college here. And I asked him, I said, hey, how like is it hard or easy to build wealth for you? And he said, you know, I think you’re predicting this. It’s easy, right? I mean, it’s it’s easy for him because he made the decision, he made a decision that was calculated around his college education, uh that he ran the numbers on. He cut his housing expense to zero. He never incurred a large transportation expense. No student loans, no college education expenses, no housing payment, no car expense. Think how easy it is to build wealth even without the six-figure job that he went and got after a training course after several years of accumulating large amounts of cash, uh pending by, you know, uh bit by bit, month by month for that. And now he’s putting down these big chunks of money. It’s easy. And that’s really, you know, it’s hard to hard to, you know, say it say it like that because I know so many people are struggling to get by financially with it. But you make those decisions right early on, the game’s easy. It’s almost unfair. Um and he’s going to, you know, unfair, you know, positive way for Javier, but but he’s going to be a multi-millionaire easily by 30. He just works a job that anybody could get, um uh after a training a training module and has made a number of decisions there. Now he did it because he did it before he had obli liabilities that he built up in his life, but man that’s that’s a powerful lesson for someone listening to this show that’s 18 or thinking about these choices. The answer’s not don’t go to college, it’s make a decision about it. Make a decision about that housing and um, I think that’s it’s it’s something really powerful.
Mindy: Yeah, and it isn’t, like you said, it isn’t just don’t go to college. It’s choose to go to college on purpose, not just go to college because everybody says go to college after high school. If college isn’t your path, then college isn’t your path. And you know, college didn’t do much for me personally. If I would have thought about it when I was 18, that maybe I would have made a different decision. Maybe I would have jumped into the workforce right out of high school and had a different outcome. Uh, but instead I spent six years in college getting three degrees that I don’t use at all. And do I regret it? I don’t know that I regret it. I made a lot of friends, I had a good experience, but financially, it was a terrible decision. So, don’t just do something because it’s expected of you, do it because you want to do it. And I think that is the the underlying message here. College is not for everybody.
Scott: Or, you know, do it because it’s a good decision because a lot of people want a different type of college experience than the one that provides higher ROI.
Mindy: All right, let’s give a a quick shout out to the Sheeks Freaks group. You can find them at sheeksfreaks.com. That’s sheeks, f r e a k s .com. Dan Sheeks is an amazing man. All right, Scott, shall we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He, of course, is the Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, toodles, noodles.
Scott: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Calen Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Wineb. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
