La liberté financière avec 5 enfants est possible | Investissement immobilier

Scott: Bienvenue sur BiggerPockets Money Podcast, numéro 63, où nous avons interviewé Jordan Klint.

“Ne copiez pas mon histoire exacte. Je ne pense pas pouvoir copier mon histoire exacte. Ajustez un peu. Si vous n’êtes pas doué ici et que vous êtes ici, changez-le. C'est tout à fait correct et je ne dis pas du tout que le mien est le seul chemin possible. Parlez à quelqu'un et ayez quelqu'un à côté de vous ou derrière vous, vous donnant un coup de pied dans le dos, peu importe ce dont vous avez besoin, et avancez ainsi et démarrez le train . Parce qu'une fois que ça roule, la chose roule. Il n’ya pas moyen de l’arrêter ».

C’est le moment de réaliser un nouveau rêve américain, qui ne consiste pas à travailler dans une cabine pendant 40 ans, à peine à se frayer un chemin. Que vous cherchiez à mettre de l'ordre dans vos finances, à investir l'argent que vous avez déjà ou à découvrir de nouvelles voies pour la création de richesse, vous êtes au bon endroit. Cette émission est destinée à tous ceux qui ont de l’argent ou qui en veulent plus. C’est le podcast BiggerPockets Money.

Scott: Comment ça va, tout le monde? Je suis Scott Trench et je suis ici avec ma coanimatrice, Melle Mindy Jensen. Comment ça va aujourd'hui, Mindy?

Mindy: Scott, je vais très bien. C'est une belle journée. Je suppose que peut-être il neige, mais c’est vrai, j’aime toujours la neige, alors c’est une belle journée. Je suis vraiment excité pour l'épisode d'aujourd'hui parce que Jordan Klint est notre invité. Aujourd'hui, il m'a contacté il y a mille ans lorsque nous avions dit que nous recherchions des personnes qui ont atteint l'indépendance financière tout en ayant des enfants.

Et Jordan n’a pas que des enfants, il en a cinq. Et la sagesse conventionnelle – Je suppose que la sagesse conventionnelle autour de FI n’est pas vraiment une chose, mais tout le monde dit que vous ne pouvez pas faire cela avec des enfants. Et Jordan dit, d'accord, je vais le faire quand même. Et il l'a fait. Et c'est son histoire.

Scott: Avec cinq d'entre eux. À 33 ans.

Mindy: Oui, non seulement a-t-il frappé FI, il a également frappé FI avec cinq enfants à 33 ans. Ce n’est donc pas 50 ans.

Scott: Ouais, si vous recherchez une histoire réaliste qui ressemble à une personne qui aime les mots au bout d’un an et qu’elle la découvre assez rapidement, mais pas de manière très voyante, c’est le spectacle qui vous convient, je pense.

Mindy: Oui, et tu sais comment il l'a fait? Il avait un plan.

Scott: C'est vrai.

Mindy: Ce n'est pas quelque chose qui va vous arriver. L’indépendance financière est une chose à planifier, mais comme nous l’avons dit, dans 62 autres épisodes, de petites modifications apportent d’énormes changements et ont d’énormes répercussions sur votre avenir financier.

Avant d’inviter Jordan, écoutons donc une note du sponsor de l’émission d’aujourd’hui.

Prendre des risques financiers peut sembler logique à ce moment-là, mais quand ils se transforment en grosses erreurs, nous finissons par être stressés et brouillés. Il peut être difficile d’obtenir de l’argent et d’adhérer à des processus, surtout si vous exploitez une entreprise. Pour les propriétaires d’entreprise, il est important d’éviter les erreurs financières. Une solution de comptabilité simple telle que FreshBooks peut vous aider. FreshBooks est un logiciel de comptabilité en nuage qui garantit que vos états financiers sont correctement suivis et organisés et que votre entreprise est conforme au moment de l'impôt. Voici comment FreshBooks aide.

Premièrement, il vous permet de rester organisé avec un suivi du temps simple et intelligent pour vous et votre équipe. Deuxièmement, au moment de la collecte, vous pouvez créer et envoyer des factures très bien finies en environ 30 secondes ou moins. Il vous permet d’enregistrer et d’organiser vos dépenses en appuyant simplement sur votre caméra mobile. Enfin, il vous permet de payer en un clin d’œil en acceptant les paiements par carte de crédit directement sur ces factures.

Mieux encore, FreshBooks vous permet de rester en conformité avec les rapports utiles dont vous aurez besoin pour la saison des impôts. Pour le moment, nous proposons à nos auditeurs un essai gratuit de FreshBooks pendant 30 jours, aucune carte de crédit requise. Allez sur FreshBooks.com/BPMoney et entrez BiggerPockets Money dans la section "Comment avez-vous entendu parler de nous".

Si vous voulez apprendre à retourner des maisons, les émissions de télévision ne sont pas l'endroit pour commencer. Oui, ils pourraient vous faire monter en puissance, mais vous avez besoin d'informations pratiques d'experts en immobilier confirmés. Voici un meilleur moyen. Consultez les groupes financiers de réadaptation, Guide 100 de Flipping Houses. Je le regarde en ce moment et c’est vraiment cool. Il vous apprend à créer votre entreprise étape par étape et à répartir les risques et les avantages liés à la réhabilitation de propriétés dans un but lucratif. Rehab Financial Group est un prêteur privé qui aide les investisseurs à obtenir un financement rapidement. Cela aide les réhabilités à conclure de bonnes affaires et à revitaliser leurs communautés. Avec des taux concurrentiels, des paiements d'intérêts uniquement et sans pré-pénalités, le groupe financier de réadaptation met vos besoins en premier. Découvrez donc si vous vous pré-qualifiez et si vous songez à investir dans l’immobilier, consultez le Guide 101 de Flipping Houses. Visitez RehabFinancial.com/BiggerPockets ou appelez le 610-632-8695. Encore une fois, c’est RehabFinancial.com/BiggerPockets ou appelez le 610-632-8695.

Mindy: Ok, merci beaucoup au sponsor du show d’aujourd’hui. Jordan Klint, bienvenue dans le podcast BiggerPockets Money. Je suis très heureux de vous accueillir aujourd'hui.

Jordan: Ouais, je suis tellement excité d’être ici.

Mindy: Alors pouvez-vous nous expliquer où commence votre voyage avec de l’argent?

Jordan: Oui, je peux faire ça. Cela a donc commencé – je viens du sud-ouest du Michigan. Je sais que Mindy est passée par là. C’est un endroit vraiment génial au bord du lac Michigan. J'étais l'aîné de six enfants. Nous étions tous scolarisés à la maison et grandissions donc c’est un peu de mon passé. Mon père était électricien industriel, son travail était donc très contractuel. Quand il y avait des travaux, tout allait bien. Il a travaillé 13 jours, 12 heures par jour. C'était le maximum que vous puissiez travailler.

Mais il le ferait pendant plusieurs années et il n'y aurait plus rien. Il serait en congé pour les hivers et ce genre de choses. Donc, j'ai vraiment appris certains des principes que j'ai appliqués plus tard dans ma vie et qui sont là tous les jours, c'est quelque chose que nous avons vu. Donc, quand les temps étaient bons, c'était du beurre de cacahuète et de la gelée et des hot-dogs, et quand les temps étaient mauvais, c'était du beurre de cacahuète et de la gelée et des hot-dogs. C'était très cohérent. C’est comme ça.

En y repensant maintenant, j’aurais probablement dit que nous étions une classe moyenne inférieure, je suppose, en train de grandir. Mais cela n’a pas été le cas car nous n’avons jamais vu ces hauts et ces bas. En tant qu’enfants, nous n’avons pas vu cela. Je suppose que c'était juste une de ces choses qui sont arrivées. J'ai toujours su que je voulais rester dans la région, alors j'ai finalement rencontré ma femme et nous nous sommes mariés.

Quand j’avais 20 ans et qu’elle était un peu plus âgée que moi, j’avais 20 ans quand nous nous sommes mariés et que nous étions tous les deux à l’école. Elle étudiait pour devenir infirmière. J'étudiais pour devenir ingénieur. Nous nous sommes mariés, sommes restés dans la région – je suppose que c’est un peu le contexte.

Mindy: Donc, vous êtes financièrement indépendant mais vous n’avez pas d’enfants, non? Parce que tu ne peux pas faire ça avec des enfants.

Jordan: Oh oui. J'ai cinq enfants, donc ce n’est pas la même chose que zéro. Cinq est un nombre différent, oui.

Mindy: Légèrement plus grand.

Jordan: Vraiment plus grand. Quand nous nous sommes mariés, j'ai eu ce poste d'ingénieur pendant que je travaillais à l'école. Je ferais trois mois d'école, puis trois mois de cette opportunité. Et je me souviens, c’était un dimanche soir et je ne sais pas si je pourrai y retourner demain. Et ma femme, on en parlait et oui, on peut y retourner demain. Et j’allais bien, j’y retournerai demain. Je pense que je pourrais le faire pendant 20 ans et qu’il me faut ensuite en finir.

Donc, à ce moment-là, je me suis fixé cette échéance de 20 ans. Je suis comme, je dois cesser de travailler pour l'homme dans 20 ans. Je n’avais jamais entendu parler de qui que ce soit qui aurait fait cela à ce stade de ma vie. C'était avant que je sois avec M. Money Mustache ou FI avant qu'il ne soit même sur Internet ou quelque chose comme ça.

Mais c'était quelque chose, j'étais engagé. Je peux le faire pendant 20 ans si je fixe un dernier délai. Je ne savais pas comment j'allais y arriver. Je ne savais pas à quoi cela allait ressembler. Nous n’avions pas d’enfants à ce moment-là. Mais c’était l’une de mes promesses et c’est comme si nous pouvions y arriver.

Mindy: Très bien, parlons un peu de votre scolarité, puis des 20 ans. Quel âge avais-tu quand tu as dit que je ne pouvais faire cela que pendant 20 ans?

Jordan: Je pense que j'aurais eu 21 ans, je pense. Mais d’une manière ou d’une autre, les 20 ans où j’allais avoir 42 ans – quand j’ai eu 42 ans, je devais être seul, avoir ma propre chose imaginée avant l’âge de 42 ans. Ce devait donc être quelque part dans ce quartier. Je vous ai dit que j’ai eu mon diplôme d’école à l’âge de 22 ans, alors c’est peut-être ce qu’il était. Quelque chose comme ca. Mais je sais que 42 était mon année morte. Donc, à 42 ans, je devais avoir tout compris, sinon je serais un échec interne.

Mindy: Donc pas de pression.

Jordan: Pas de pression.

Mindy: Donc, avec votre scolarité, j'aime vraiment cette chose coop. Était-ce par le biais d'une école ou …

Jordan: Ouais. L'université Kettering était l'école. Il est principalement basé sur l’ingénierie. Ils ont quelques autres programmes que vous pouvez faire. C'est plutôt cool. Quand j’ai regardé autour de moi, j’allais rester dans le Michigan pour mon Bachelor’s. J’ai fait deux ans de collège communautaire et j’avais donc un programme d’associé, ce qui est une façon très très intelligente de le faire et je le recommanderais à tous ceux qui cherchent.

Cela vous donne deux ans de plus pour prendre une décision quant à votre scolarité et les collèges communautaires représentent un dixième du prix des établissements privés ou des écoles de quatre ans. De plus, mes associés et moi-même avons été mutés à Kettering et ce programme de coopération prévoyait l’obtention d’un diplôme. C'était ce va-et-vient entre les stages rémunérés essentiellement et ensuite l'école et vous allez-et-vient.

Et vraiment, cela vous aide à développer votre côté ingénierie. Je ne pouvais pas imaginer obtenir mon diplôme et je n’étais jamais allée dans un établissement auparavant, puis je me suis présentée pour dire: oui, je vais justifier cet énorme chèque de paie que je gagne et je ne sais pas comment plier un plan. Je ne sais pas comment trouver une salle de bain. Je n'ai rien de tout ça. Je ne pouvais pas imaginer ça.

Donc c’était vraiment bénéfique et encore une fois, si cela vous intéresse, c’est l’Université Kettering. C’est un programme extraordinaire. Vous pouvez le faire vous-même par le biais d'autres institutions. Je sais que chez nous, dans l’ouest du Michigan, ils ont un bon programme d’ingénierie, mais chacun doit trouver son propre stage. Donc, si vous avez ces liens, ça vaut le coup, mais Kettering était plutôt cool parce que c’était une exigence et ils ont des conseillers en orientation et des choses comme ça pour y arriver.

Scott: Donc, vous avez eu une éducation très intentionnelle qui vous prépare directement à bien gagner votre vie de fils à la fin de vos études. Vous le faites à un coût extrêmement bas à cause de choses. Quelle est votre situation financière en termes de revenus et d'actifs après l'obtention de votre diplôme?

Jordan: Oui, alors j'ai contracté un petit emprunt. Nous avons emprunté environ 20 000 dollars pour nous scolariser tous les deux. Nous avions donc un diplôme en sciences infirmières et un diplôme en génie, ce qui nous rapportait environ 21 000 $. Je pense que nous aurions pu le faire différemment. Mais ce n’était pas une priorité, c’était disponible.

Scott: 20 000 $, c'est bien.

Jordan: Encore une fois, collège junior et ensuite saigner dans ceux-ci. Nous avons donc obtenu notre diplôme en sciences infirmières et en génie. Ce sont deux des champs. Comme si vous pouviez trouver un emploi dans presque n'importe quel climat économique, vous pouvez trouver ce type d'emploi. Nous avons donc pu décrocher de très bons emplois dans notre région. Nous n’avions pas à bouger ou quelque chose comme ça. Encore une fois, ce sont comme la vanille, fade, basique, nous pouvons obtenir ces emplois n'importe où. Ce n'est pas un problème.

Scott: Alors qu'est-ce que vous avez fait juste après avoir obtenu ces emplois? Qu'as-tu fait – comment as-tu commencé à aborder tes finances personnelles dès le départ?

Jordan: Oui, je suppose que plus tôt nous avons eu une sorte de réflexion avec Dave Ramsey. Essayer d’éviter cette dette qui est très mauvaise. Encore une fois, j’adore Dave Ramsey si votre valeur nette est inférieure à 50 000 dollars, je pense que c’est vraiment le meilleur rapport qualité prix. Et si vous pouvez définir ces principes, voici ce qu’est un budget. Je ne peux pas dépenser plus que ce budget. Évitez les paiements mensuels de toute nature. Tous ces genres de choses.

Ceux-ci vous ont vraiment préparé à lancer vos dépenses à partir de là. Sur le plan personnel, nous avons acheté notre première maison – c'était avant notre mariage, en fait. J'ai acheté ma première maison. Ce fut un flip live-in que j'ai fait. Mon père l'a financée, puis j'ai fait le travail et je l'ai fait, puis nous avons réparti les bénéfices sur le backend après notre mariage. Nous y avons vécu deux ans, puis vendus avec les exemptions accordées aux propriétaires.

Mindy: Je connais ce plan. J'aime beaucoup ce plan.

Jordan: Alors ça s'est retourné. Nous partageons ces bénéfices qui ont été reportés. Mon père a la moitié. J'en ai la moitié. Cela fait partie de mon acompte sur notre première maison réelle où c’était juste ma femme et moi.

Scott: Était-ce un tremplin pour votre situation financière à l'avenir?

Jordan: Je pense que c'est vraiment le cas. C’est une bonne chose d’avoir cet acompte, tu sais, à ta première place. Les gens mettent beaucoup de temps à épargner pour cela, mais c'est vraiment le principe qui nous permet, si nous pouvons vraiment le faire. Peu importe ce que c'est. Nous pouvons trouver un moyen de le faire.

Donc, c’est une des choses qui a bien fonctionné pour nous, c’est que nous n’avons jamais eu un barrage routier. Nous disons simplement que nous l'avons compris la dernière fois. Nous allons comprendre cette fois. Que pouvons-nous faire pour changer progressivement ou l'augmenter et que nous puissions passer à l'étape suivante.

Scott: Quelle était votre … vous avez dit que vous suiviez Dave Ramsey et tout ce genre de choses. Quelles étaient certaines des choses que vous pensiez faire peut-être différemment en ce qui concerne les dépenses de votre ménage par rapport à certaines personnes que vous connaissiez qui se trouvaient dans une position similaire en termes de revenu?

Jordan: Ouais. Nous n’avons jamais reçu de paiement de voiture. Nous n’avons jamais eu de voiture neuve, mais ces paiements de voiture – je ne pouvais même pas comprendre comment les gens pourraient essayer de justifier ce genre de choses. C’est l’une des grandes choses que Dave dit, c’est qui allez-vous mettre sur votre liste de paie? Ainsi, chaque fois que vous recevez un de ces paiements mensuels, Netflix figure sur la liste de paie. Cela met GM sur la liste de paie. Je ne veux pas qu’ils soient mon premier employé. Je ne vais pas faire ça.

Donc, ce genre de mentalité nous a vraiment aidés. Je veux dire, nous avons quelques abonnements mensuels à présent, mais c’est l’une de ces choses. Si vous pouvez les éviter, ces choses s’additionnent avec le temps et cela vous tue vraiment. Nous avons donc conduit des voitures difficiles. Des voitures à mille dollars et des choses du genre, mais c’est l’une des choses que vous apprenez avec le temps. Je peux trouver une bonne affaire sur l'achat et je peux m'en occuper.

Surtout avec YouTube maintenant. Tout le monde peut remplacer un roulement de roue. Trouvez juste quelqu'un là-bas qui l'a déjà fait et vous pouvez vraiment le copier. Donc, cela ne prend pas beaucoup. Je veux dire, je pense que je suis naturellement utile et c’est ce qui va sortir de mon histoire. Mais je ne pense pas que ce soit un obstacle pour quiconque à présent. Je pense que vous pouvez résoudre ce problème en utilisant au moins Internet ou un tas d'autres moyens de surmonter certaines de ces choses.

Encore une fois, mon histoire n'est que mon histoire. Si j'avais dix ans de plus, cela serait probablement un peu différent. Si j’avais dix ans de moins, c’est différent, mais je ne dis pas que vous ne pouvez faire aucune de ces choses. Vous pouvez surmonter tous ces petits obstacles si vous avez juste une mentalité.

Mindy: Ok, je vais me lancer ici et dire que je le suis aussi – je ne veux pas me dire naturellement utile parce que je ne le suis pas. Je suis très pratique sur YouTube. Vous pouvez savoir comment faire presque n'importe quoi sur YouTube. Je pense qu’ils n’ont pas la même vidéo que la chirurgie à cœur ouvert, mais vous pouvez trouver tout le reste sur YouTube.

Donc, si vous ne savez pas comment changer un interrupteur, vous pouvez trouver une vidéo YouTube qui vous montre exactement pas à pas. Vous pouvez trouver une vidéo YouTube qui vous montre comment réparer quoi que ce soit, en fonction de la chose réelle ou du type de voiture que vous possédez. Quelle que soit la partie qui vous manque. YouTube est incroyable.

Je peux imaginer faire cela – je veux dire, je l'ai fait avant YouTube, mais j'avais des livres. Je ne peux pas imaginer ne pas compter sur YouTube pour le faire. Vous n'êtes pas obligé d'être naturellement pratique. Vous pouvez simplement regarder quelqu'un le faire et ce n'est pas si difficile.

Jordan: Ouais, totalement d'accord. C’est comme ça que nous avons fait notre premier retournement. Les gens les appellent, il y avait quelques métiers spécialisés que nous avons faits là où nous ne les avions pas faits. Comme pour la plomberie, quelqu'un d'autre l'a fait simplement parce que cela semblait compliqué. Mais après que j’ai payé cette grosse facture au plombier et que cela réduise un peu mon profit d’arrière-plan, je pense pouvoir comprendre cela.

Donc, pour aller de l'avant et pour tous les retournements, je veux dire que nous faisons tout ce que nous pouvons légalement faire. Je veux faire précéder cela. Mais c’est l’une des choses: vous pouvez résoudre ce problème. Je veux dire, il n’ya pas d’obstacle maintenant.

Mindy: C'est très intéressant que vous disiez cela, quoi que vous puissiez légalement faire. Parce que je ne fais que des scènes de vie. Vous êtes donc légalement autorisé à travailler chez vous. Vous n’avez pas besoin de faire appel à un plombier pour effectuer les travaux de plomberie chez vous. Mais c’est une bonne distinction, car lorsque vous renversez une maison dans laquelle vous ne vivez pas, vous devez alors engager quelqu'un. Dans la plupart des cas, la ville ou la municipalité vous obligera à embaucher un titulaire de permis. Mais oui, quand c’est votre propre maison, vous pouvez apprendre vous-même.

Scott: Et beaucoup de cela est basé sur l'assurance aussi, non? Donc, vous pouvez être autorisé à le faire. Il se peut qu’il ne soit pas assuré et que vous soyez responsable des problèmes à venir, est-ce exact?

Mindy: Eh bien, quand je le fais, ouais, je suis responsable des problèmes qui surviennent quand je ne le fais pas correctement. Je le fais juste bien. Jordan, depuis combien de temps êtes-vous marié avant d'avoir des enfants?

Jordan: Je pense que nous étions mariés trois ans avant notre première.

Mindy: Et avez-vous obtenu un diplôme universitaire et avez-vous de vrais emplois?

Jordan: Nous avions obtenu un diplôme universitaire. Nous étions entrés dans notre première vraie maison – nous avions déjà fait cela un tour ou quoi que ce soit, mais ensuite notre première maison où nous étions chez nous, nous y étions. C'était, notre deuxième maison était un autre retournement. C'était un autre tour de rôle. Nous avons ajouté une deuxième histoire, donc c'était génial. Nous avons commencé cela sans enfants et nous avons terminé. Nous avions certainement des enfants au moment où nous avons terminé celui-ci.

Mindy: Attendez, on dirait que vous n’avez pas fait cela en 12 secondes.

Jordan: Non non. Donc, cette fenêtre de deux ans lorsque vous faites une inversion de vie, vous avez parfois besoin de deux ans. Il y a deux ans de travail. Encore une fois, à ce stade-lorsque nous avons commencé, nous avions tous les deux un emploi à temps plein. C’est donc comme dans quelques heures, mais c’est l’une des choses que nous avons toujours trouvées agréables. Alors les soirées étaient, tu descends chez Culver et tu descends chez Ménard. Nous avons utilisé beaucoup de ceux-ci.

Donc nos nuits et nos week-ends, c’est comme ça que nous l’appelions. C’est là que nous avons trouvé le temps dont nous disposions pour faire ce genre de choses et vous avez vraiment créé une sorte d’agitation latérale. Encore une fois, c'était avant même que nous l'appelions une agitation latérale. Mais vous avez construit ce côté branché les nuits et les week-ends et le temps de télévision. Nous n’avons pas regardé la télévision, alors voilà.

Scott: On dirait que ces deux ou trois premières années avant que vous ayez des enfants, vous allez vraiment à fond. Vous avez un très faible niveau d’endettement, vous obtenez de bons emplois, vous économisez beaucoup d’argent. Vous ne soumettez pas de paiement pour une voiture. Vous tirez parti de votre situation en matière de logement et de votre maison pour tirer parti de la situation des résidents et de tous ces avantages fiscaux et ce genre de choses.

Quelle est votre position dans deux ou trois ans si vous payez toutes vos dettes et que vous commencez à accumuler une quantité considérable de liquidités investissables?

Jordan: Oui, donc nous étions – encore une fois, c'est un peu comme cela que nous avons commencé à nous écarter légèrement de l'approche classique de Ramsey. Donc, nous n'avons jamais payé notre maison tout le temps. Ce n’est pas quelque chose que nous avons fait. Nous aimons les taux d’intérêt plus bas et nous voulons en quelque sorte simplement voir ce qui existait et ce qu’il en reste. Et puis, c’est à peu près à quel moment le crash aurait commencé, à peu près au même point.

Donc, nous allons bien, nous allons garder un peu de ce liquide autant que nous le pouvons – nous ne allons pas payer la maison et des choses comme ça. C'était donc l'une des choses que nous n'avons jamais vraiment faites. Mais oui, nous investissions beaucoup dans ces jeux de rôles, mais nous nous en sortions plutôt bien. Et c'était vraiment agréable.

Une des choses qui nous a plu, c’était de ne pas avoir d’enfants, mais d’investir toutes ces périodes dans nos emplois de jour, puis dans nos activités de nuit et de week-end. Mais cela s’est en quelque sorte enraciné dans ce que nous étions. Alors, une fois que les choses ont un peu changé, les gens qui y allaient se sont un peu précipités. Nous avons travaillé assez dur et cela nous a plu et c’est un peu ce sur quoi nous avons bâti.

Je pense donc que c’est la principale chose que nous avons connue, et même plus que la situation financière, c’est que nous pouvons le faire. Nous avons déjà fait des nuits et des week-ends. Nous pouvons trouver comment faire cela. Et puis après avoir eu un enfant, deux enfants, trois enfants, nous avons en quelque sorte construit à travers cela. Cela change avec les enfants. C’est un peu différent, mais vous pouvez trouver le moyen de tout faire fonctionner une fois que vous aurez jeté les bases.

À partir de cinq enfants, ce serait différent, j'en suis sûr. Mais je pense que le principe est le même. Mais encore une fois, vous devez jeter les bases. Donc, pour nous, nous avons simplement ajouté une brique supplémentaire à cela et vous avez continué. Ce n’est pas quelque chose qui a été un grand changement.

Mindy: Avez-vous économisé quelque chose que cette fois? Avez-vous eu des économies et des investissements en dehors de la résidence?

Jordan: J’ai donc toujours investi jusqu’au match du 401K, notre match du FSA, si nous étions dans ce genre de système d’assurance. Mais je ne mettrais que dans le match parce que je ne voulais pas investir le temps nécessaire pour apprendre le marché boursier, je suppose. Et puis, jeter de l’argent là-bas semblait toujours un pari si vous ne saviez pas ce que vous faisiez. Donc, je n’allais pas en mettre une tonne de plus là-bas. Mais encore une fois, nous construirions.

Finalement, nous devions commencer à acheter. Nous achetons éventuellement des immeubles locatifs dans cette histoire, mais nous économisons et en achetons un, puis économisons et en achetons un. C’est donc à peu près ce qui a fonctionné en bout de ligne. Nous avons donc obtenu environ 50% de notre revenu, soit un investissement ou une épargne. Mais pas directement sur le marché boursier. C’est une chose que nous n’avons pas vraiment faite.

Scott: Je suis désolé, quel était ce pourcentage? Avez-vous dit 50%?

Jordan: Environ 50%, oui. Je n’ai pas les chiffres exacts parce que c’est ce que nous avons pensé à l’époque, mais c’est probablement ce qui se passait. Et au fur et à mesure que ma carrière augmentait – j'étais très chanceux et je réussissais bien dans mon domaine, ma femme démissionnait. Je voudrais obtenir une augmentation de 10 000 $, elle diminuerait la valeur des heures de 10 000 $.

En gros, étant donné que nous avions plus d’enfants, chaque fois que nous avions un enfant, elle ne retournerait pas à autant de travail. Je n’y retournerais pas, je n’y retournerais pas, et finalement c’était finalement juste une mère qui restait à la maison maintenant.

Scott: Alors pouvons-nous traverser ça? À quoi cela ressemblait-il lorsque vous avez eu votre premier enfant? Quelle était votre position à ce moment-là?

Jordan: Financièrement?

Scott: Financièrement, puis comment avez-vous …

Jordan: Nous étions forts et pendant que nous avions la gamine, elle était toujours à l'hôpital ces trois jours avant de rentrer à la maison ou quoi que ce soit et je suis rentré à la maison et j'ai installé toutes les fenêtres de la maison. Parce qu'elle a dit, les fenêtres devaient être à la maison avant de ramener le bébé à la maison. Et donc je mets toutes les fenêtres dedans. Et quand vous le faites vous-même, c'est un peu compliqué. Donc, j'ai raté mon partenaire là-dessus, vous savez.

Mindy: Cela ressemble à ma vie.

Scott: Mais vous avez eu votre premier enfant et votre femme a-t-elle immédiatement passé à un nombre d'heures inférieur?

Jordan: Non, cela n’est certainement pas arrivé, je ne pense pas, avec notre premier enfant. Donc, à peu près à ce moment-là, elle a probablement changé pour un poste de relève à l’hôpital, qui paye mieux mais il faut être plus flexible dans le service dans lequel vous travaillez pour ne pas toujours travailler dans le même service. Donc, elle était comme un flotteur, je suppose. Mais cela aiderait à compenser une partie de cela. Et ensuite, elle ferait sa propre planification.

Donc, si elle voulait quatre jours cette semaine, elle pourrait en prévoir quatre. Et puis, si elle n'en voulait pas la semaine suivante, ça marchait bien. C’est ainsi que la planification a fonctionné. Cela a donc très bien fonctionné pour nous. Elle était allée – je suppose qu'elle faisait des soirées à ce moment-là, alors il y avait quelques jours par semaine où j'avais un enfant, je suppose. Mais j'étais papa et remodeler et tout en même temps là-bas.

Mindy: Bon, alors que faisiez-vous pour la garde d’enfants pendant que votre femme travaillait et que vous travailliez? Nous avons des gens qui posent ces mêmes questions encore et encore. Soins aux enfants, soins de santé et ce genre de chose.

Jordan: Donc les soins de santé, à cette époque, quand nous étions à plein temps, nous avions des soins de santé par mon lieu de travail jusqu’à ce que je n’y aie plus été, je suppose. Garde d'enfants, nous sommes dans le même temps que ma structure de soutien. Ma famille est là-bas, donc ça a plutôt bien marché. Encore une fois, elle travaillait en deuxième quart pendant la majeure partie de cette période. Donc je partirais à 4, je suppose. Alors elle partirait à 2 heures.

Donc, elle travaillait seulement quelques heures par jour – nous avions besoin de quelques heures seulement d'une gardienne. Nous pourrions la laisser chez ma mère, ma sœur ou quelque chose du genre, puis je pourrai la chercher et dîner avec celui qui la regardait, puis la ramener à la maison et terminer le projet.

Encore une fois, cela fonctionne bien pour notre situation, précisément parce que nous avions la structure de soutien, mais je pense que c’est l’une des choses que vous devez prendre en compte. Nous avons pris l'engagement à un moment donné, je pourrais gagner beaucoup plus d'argent si nous nous rendions à Houston ou dans les champs de pétrole du Dakota du Nord ou ailleurs.

Il y avait des choses qui étaient de bien meilleures opportunités seulement du côté du revenu et du dollar, mais ensuite cela va changer vos dépenses du côté précédent. Et vous devez en tenir compte. C’est donc certainement grâce à ma mère et à mon père. Ils nous ont vraiment aidés là-bas. Mais c’est comme ça que nous avons retiré les gardiennes.

Scott: Est-ce que cela a continué avec tous vos enfants?

Jordan: Cela devient plus compliqué quand vous dites, je vais déposer cinq enfants pendant quelques heures. Alors ça change définitivement. Mais encore une fois, alors que notre vie a changé, nous avons ajusté ce que nous faisions sur le côté. Nous avons donc changé cette structure. Donc, nous faisons moins de flips maintenant à l'extérieur de la maison. Les résidents ne sont pas aussi compliqués, car vous êtes avec les enfants et c’est quelque chose de plus facile à faire. Les flips dans d’autres résidences extérieures, nous le faisons moins maintenant, simplement parce que c’est un peu plus compliqué.

Mais oui, nous avons fini par payer pour une gardienne, car avec cinq enfants, c'était un lourd fardeau pour tout le monde. Nous avons donc une gardienne maintenant. C’est une soirée debout. Elle vient, regarde les enfants, les pose. C'est bien. Mais nous tenons simplement compte de cela, c’est comme une dépense pour le mariage, je suppose. Nous l'appellerions à ce stade. Donc, vous devez faire le travail dont vous avez besoin de ce côté pour que tout reste fort et en bonne santé.

Mindy: J'ai donc posé cette question à beaucoup de gens. J'ai posé cette question aux gens de ma vie et aux gens de la série. Et la garde d’enfants semble tout simplement être quelque chose que vous devrez planifier. Si vous ne vivez pas avec votre famille, vous n’y vivez pas, alors ce ne sera qu’une dépense.

Quelqu'un m'a déjà envoyé un courriel une fois – qu'en est-il de cette dépense? C’est une dépense qui vous est propre et vous en tiendrez compte. Ce que j’ai découvert en posant autant de questions aux mêmes gens, c’est qu’il n’ya pas de bouton magique pour la garde d’enfants.

Si vous voulez avoir des enfants, vous devrez envisager des options de garderie, que vous soyez une mère au foyer ou un père au foyer et que vous ayez des familles peut aider. Ou vous ne pouvez pas ou ne pouvez pas être un parent à la maison et vous ne pouvez pas avoir de famille, vous devez engager quelqu'un et cela va être une dépense.

Je pense que c’est juste, il n’ya pas de magie à dire, il suffit de les laisser dans le camion. Comme vous ne pouvez rien faire qui ne soit pas sûr. Vous devez prendre soin de votre enfant. C’est donc intéressant ce que vous avez fait: c’était un choix conscient de rester auprès de votre famille ou vous vouliez simplement être là?

Jordan: Donc, je veux dire que c'était définitivement un choix conscient. C’est une communauté de vacances. Je veux dire, c’est un endroit vraiment incroyable et à part Janvier et Février, le reste de l’année, c’est vraiment génial. En fait, la photo de la plage derrière moi – nous sommes en Floride en ce moment et ma mère a mes enfants. Il faisait moins dix degrés quand nous sommes partis et il était de 78 quand nous avons atterri. C'était donc un très gros changement.

Nous sommes à une petite escapade pour l’anniversaire de ma femme, mais vous pouvez en retirer une partie, vous savez. Mais oui, vous devez juste décider. S'il est plus important de garder le côté revenu de cela et de le garder élevé, vous pouvez le faire. Mais il ya des compromis et nous ne voulons pas faire deux revenus tout le temps. Cela ne faisait jamais partie du plan. Nous ne voulions pas les avoir à huit heures par jour.

Ce n’était pas vraiment le plan de tous les temps. Donc nous ne l’avons pas fait. Je veux dire, mais je ne pense pas que ce soient des facteurs limitants, comme vous l’avez dit. C’est juste un ensemble différent d’entrées dans votre formule.

Mindy: Et vous avez dit le mot "planifié". Vous avez un plan pour ce que vous voulez faire et je pense que c'est le cas. Si votre objectif est l'indépendance financière, vous devez alors élaborer un plan. Cela ne va pas simplement arriver. Tu ne peux pas être comme, oh peu importe, et tout à coup, tu as assez d’argent. Vous devez faire un plan.

Scott: Donc, deux ans plus tard, vous commencez à avoir votre premier enfant. Nous avons parlé de la façon dont vous avez réussi à surmonter certains des obstacles en matière de garde d'enfants, faisant de toute évidence le choix intentionnel de ne pas vous lancer dans la chasse au gros revenu, mais de rester avec votre famille. Quand êtes-vous devenu intentionnel dans la création d'un revenu passif?

Jordan: Donc, encore une fois, comme je l’ai dit, j’ai fixé cet objectif de 20 ans, je ne savais pas du tout ce que j’allais faire. Je n'ai jamais vraiment entendu parler de quelqu'un qui aurait même réussi à le faire. Je veux dire, je suppose qu'il y a des gens qui gagnent à la loterie et vendent votre startup technologique et des choses comme ça. But I wasn’t in tech and I don’t play the lottery, so neither of those were going to work out pretty well for me.

So one of the reasons we started to look around was okay, what are we going to do next after we finish our second live-in flip, which we actually held onto for a while. So we didn’t sell that one right away. We did put that second story on but it took us a long time to actually decide to move from that place. But we started looking around. This is right about, probably the bottom of the recession.

So we’re up to 2008 now. I think we had three kids at that point—no, we only had two kids still. So bottom of the recession and we started to look around and was like, some of this real estate that was pretty expensive a little bit ago was starting to look cheaper. It was definitely on sale. So we started looking there in the Fall of ’08 and then picked up our first place in ’09 and that’s where we went from there.

Scott: So going into that purchase, how much did you stockpile? How did you come up with the liquidity to purchase that deal?

Jordan: Well, the very first deal, we had some cash, obviously. And then we did have a ton of equity in that house that we were living in, so the first one we actually rolled was just a line of credit on our personal residence. We were able to pull off that first property.

Scott: And that’s because you added lots of value to it. The market went down but you had added so much value to it through sweat equity that you were still able to pull out a big chunk.

Jordan: The market probably went down almost 50%, probably, in our area. Again, we’re a vacation community so things are really different. I’m sure there are some people out there that are familiar with that but the high ends are crazy high but the low ends are still pretty high because it kind of gets compressed in the middle there.

The mid-range houses got hurt pretty bad, but yeah, no, we had a ton of equity in there because we had done so much in the previous point. And we were in the position where even if the thing sat empty for the whole year, it wasn’t going to affect too much. We’re very conservative in that. That’s the value. We don’t want to get it aggressive or anything like that so our story probably went a lot slower.

Sometimes I listen to these people on here and I’m like, holy moly, they did it so much faster than I ever could even think about doing. But we weren’t ever going to put ourselves in a position where it was going to be a stressful situation if we had some vacancy or if we had some kind of major problem or whatever.

Everything went a lot slower than it could have gone but again, that’s what we were comfortable with. We weren’t looking to get rich quick. That wasn’t even one of the things we were even thinking about. Again, we had this 20-year deadline. So when you’ve got—now, it’s down to 15 years or whatever. But it’s getting shorter and shorter but you still have a long runway on something like that. So we didn’t have to get aggressive.

Scott: Let’s go to this first deal. You take out a line of credit and you buy this deal. How much passive income does this produce? This is your first cash flowing investment.

Jordan: Yeah, again, we didn’t quite know the formulas. We didn’t quite know that there was probably an easier way to this. I knew the construction side of it enough and I’m looking for solid houses. So I avoid weird additions, things like that. To me, that’s going to affect the long-term maintenance on something like that because you don’t know what kind of yahoo turned a screened-in porch into a bedroom. You don’t know what’s really going to be there.

So those are the things I kind of avoid. I avoid flabs. We do have a few flabs up in Michigan but again, it’s one of those things like, I’m not really interested in something weird. I do love roof problems, so houses that have a lot of water pouring in, that’s a good value to me. I can fix all that. But you can find your little niche there.

So this was a house, it was a foreclosure. It had some roof issues. I’m like, I can fix these pretty quick. Again, I didn’t know about the 1% or anything like that. I didn’t know that but I knew a year and a half earlier, this thing would have sold for over $100,000 and we picked it up for $59K I think, or $60K. Something like that.

Scott: So once you fixed it up, how long did it take you to fix it up and what were you renting it for?

Jordan: We put somebody in it, I may basically, immediately. The beginning rent, again we didn’t know, but I’m like, if we rent it for $650, I know we can make some money on this. I didn’t know even how to look and see what other stuff was renting for. Again, this is our first shot at this so I’m like, let’s try $650 because it’s going to more than pay this line of credit that we have and it’s going to—we knew what the insurance was and we knew what the taxes were going to be so I’m like, I think we’re going to be okay there.

$650 was way too low for the market so we had it filled up in a matter of no time with some great guys. But that became one of our principles going forward was, probably, every time we list a place, we could get a little bit more money but that wasn’t always the point. We wanted to get a little bit better tenant, is what we were looking at. So if we leave $50 on the table, that wasn’t going to be the end of the world to have a better tenant.

Scott: J'aime cela. I think a lot of investors come at it with a completely different approach. They’re like, how do I get the most rent but deal with the least amount of repair problems? Give me a structure with the repair problems that are up my alley and then I just want a tenant that won’t give me any trouble and I’ll sacrifice the rent on that.

Jordan: Yeah, but that’s one of the things. I don’t want to put down anybody else’s perspective on this so if you have an avenue or you think that you have something else, then you should exploit that. But again, I knew what mine was. I’m an engineer. I don’t really want to interact with 40 tenants. That’s not really up my alley. But I can fix a roof problem. So give me a roof problem, let me have better tenants, and make a little bit less money and I’m going to be okay with that.

Scott: So I think what would be awesome to hear next is, how did this kind of progress right up until the point where you actually discover the concept of financial independence and began going down that rabbit hole. What was the journey up until that point from here?

Jordan: So probably all through this point, and we’re going to get to it later, but I was probably thinking, oh—a construction company. If I open up a construction company, that way, I wouldn’t be working for the man anymore and I can have that rolling and then I can phase out of my W-2 employment and then more into this self-employment thing.

So for the first, at least ten years, that’s what I would have been thinking, is something more along that line. Like I could find—I’ll do the work that I want to do. I’ll be honest. I’ll call people back because if you can call people back, you’ll have a business. And that’s all I really need to do.

So that’s probably where I was thinking that I was going to go, had not thought at all about passive income being the key there. Definitely, you learn that over time as you’re more involved in this and less involved in that. And you start figuring out, hey maybe this is a better path. So that’s where we were at.

Scott: After that rental property, did you acquire more rentals? Did you invest your money somewhere else? Did you stockpile cash? What did that look like?

Jordan: Ouais. So we got our first rental and we were like, this one worked out great. Had a great tenant. Then we’re like, hey, we’ll just look for the next one. So then the next one was a short sale, which I had never done a short sale. I didn’t know what a short sale was going to be, so we put in our offer and it was like six months, the bank sat on it. And we were like, okay, it’s probably not going to happen. So we didn’t worry about that one.

So then I went, hey, there’s going to be an auction right down the street from my first rental property. I go over to this auction and take a look over here. So I show up at the auction and there’s only two bidders at the auction and one is a couple that I really respect, or one of the people that I always kind of thought, hey maybe they’re doing this thing—I had never actually spoken to them about it but I’m like, the Millionaire Next Door kind of thing.

They didn’t look like it but I always had this suspicion. I’m like, I think they’ve got something going on there. So they were there at the auction, and then my tenant at my first property was there. So those were the only people that were there. The older couple said, okay, we’re not going to do this. And then I’m like, I can beat out my own tenant for a house. This is going to be easy.

So I beat him out and then I got my second one there. And then the short sale called up and they wanted to close. So we closed on the same day on our rental house number two and three, we closed the same day, which was kind of stressful. And again, not probably how you would have planned it.

But that’s definitely how that went. And then my good tenant, he did eventually find his own place and he moved out. So you kind of find out he’s looking when he shows up at the auction with you.

Scott: So you have these three properties now. I assume you fixed it up or do you get a tenant right in there? Going from there, basically I want to know, how does that portfolio keep building over time until you—

Jordan: It goes exactly like this. It was slow and it was boring and there was nothing just amazing to say about the whole story. So we basically—we added pretty much two doors a year. That’s kind of how we were looking. That’s about how we could cash flow on our own side.

We occasionally would pay for them straight in cash and sometimes we would have enough saved up to pull it off and pay for it or use the home equity. So we would pay off the home equities and then fill them back up and pay them off and fill them back up.

Before the banking rules changed, I was able to get a home equity on one of my investment properties, which was pretty awesome. I know they’ve adjusted the rules like four or five times since then. But we had that one for a long time. So that’s how we kind of used it. So it just went up and down, up and down, and add another couple here and there. We were looking for the stuff.

I was very selective. I wasn’t going to stretch it. I wasn’t going to buy something that wasn’t a good fit for us. I wasn’t going to buy something that was far away. Every house we owned was within five miles of our house or something like that. I wasn’t interested in something else. There’s a couple of markets that are a little bit further away that you can do better. Your numbers will look better.

But we were like, we’re not going to touch those. Those are out of our scope. So we really limited it down and that way, you knew when you were going to find those two houses a year because there’s only going to be like four houses that fit your criteria and you’re not going to win all four of them. So you’re going to win a couple of them. That’s kind of how we looked at it.

Scott: J'aime ça. What you’re talking about is so repeatable, right? You have a strong savings rate. You have low expense rates in your housing, transportation, I assume you’re living responsibility everywhere else. So you’re stockpiling a lot of cash.

So you’re buying solid singles. One after another that you’re extremely comfortable with that are really convenient for you at every aspect. And you’re just doing it slow and steady over a period of years. Où finis-tu? Et après?

Jordan: I had a couple of different jobs. My next W-2 jobs changed a couple of times. I wasn’t really in tune with what my goal was yet. I still had this age 42 number sitting out there that I was thinking about once in a while and I would adjust my ten-year goals and my five-year goals and everything and make sure that they were somehow on track for this. But again, I didn’t really know how I was going to get there.

Eventually, I was out of a job and I got this great promotion and I was super stoked about this promotion. And within three months, they promoted somebody else from below me to above me and then it pushed me down and it got all messy and I was not thrilled about this. And I’m like, well, this is kind of a good thing and I was really excited about it. What am I going to do now that I have this boss that I didn’t want to have?

I would never have signed up to come and work for this position so it just kind of happened. And I’m like, you know what I’m going to do? I’m just going to knuckle down. So that’s really when we figured out, hey, we’re going to get this whole thing up and going. We’re going to make sure we hit our numbers. We’re going to make sure we get the right number of houses, we get them paid off, and we’re going to be able to pull this off.

Because I loved my employers that I had but when it comes time to it, your W-2 employer is going to let you go. If it’s good for them, it’s what they have to do. I mean, there’s no other way to look at it. So that stable income that you get every other week or every month or whatever that you’re getting paid—that’s not really that stable because you don’t have control over the back end.

So they lose a contract, they have to let some people go. And one of those days, it’s going to be you. I did survive a few layoffs but when you see that happen, you’re like, how did I survive this layoff and he didn’t survive this layoff and that was just kind of just how it went? So you learn ways to stay employed and then you learn like this is not that stable of a paycheck, honestly.

Scott: So it sounds to me like this line of thinking became more concerning to you because the position at work changed for the worst. So you were liking it but it wasn’t really essential to mind that the paycheck could evaporate. But then as soon as this new boss came in place and you weren’t liking your position as much, the risks became magnified. You’re like, not only do I not like this but it’s also risky and as of this thing that came to light. Is that fair to say

Jordan: It was definitely—it put that sense of urgency. It really kind of kicked me in the pants. That would have been 2013, I think. 2012, 2013, somewhere around there. And I’m like, we’re going to step on this now. And again, step on it again—I’m pretty flow, I’m pretty conservative.

So it wasn’t like that next year, we had it all rolling or anything like that. But we really ramped it up so we started to do some stuff. We doubled up on a few things. We made sure we had some flips going outside and personally flips. We moved. We moved back.

Scott: What was your position like at that point? How many properties did you have and what was your passive position at that point, when you kind of had this motivation?

Jordan: Yeah, so we would have had probably six properties or seven properties or something like that. We had a couple of loans. The rest of them would have been paid off. We weren’t up to the point like they wouldn’t have paid for our lifestyle at that point, but we were very conscious like, hey, we’re going to really double down and commit to this.

So we had a pretty level—we hadn’t bumped our lifestyle that much but we did cut some things out like, we’re going to cut back. We’re going to save a little bit. We’re going to scrimp. We’re going to try to lower our spending side. The quicker you lower that spending side, the quicker you’re going to get to it on that passive income side. So it’s one of the things we really hit it pretty well there.

Scott: What were some of the changes on the spending side?

Jordan: So we dropped eating out. It just went away. We cut back on a few other things like that. We didn’t do a ton of vacations before but we dropped all the vacations, things like that. Most of the times, a vacation day for me was we would take it off to work on a big project.

So some of it, you get a roof or whatever, you can’t always pull a roof off on a weekend. So you take a Friday off and a Monday off from your day job, you can get a roof done in a four-day week. You can make that happen. So that was one of the things we looked at.

We started to pick up some work, like just actual contractor work. I have my builder’s license, so I’m approved in Michigan to do some of that stuff. We picked up some side work and did that, too. My wife helped out a ton. She enjoys that. And again, we had built a lifestyle where we were able to stay on our feet and keep going for lots of hours every day. And weekends, and things like that.

But she was supportive of me and she wanted to make sure that we were in a position where we were going to be stable. And again, I love my employers. That wasn’t the thing. It was just you realize at some point, you’re like, if it comes down to it, they’re going to let you go and you’re going to be back on the street and you’re looking for a new job and nobody wants to do that, especially an engineer. We hate looking for new jobs.

Mindy: So what sort of passive income were your properties generating at this time?

Jordan: So in 2013, we were probably doing—I mean each house does a couple of hundred bucks, probably. It was probably stable. So we were up in the $1400 a month, maybe something like that, I guess.

Mindy: Okay. So that’s not replacing.

Jordan: Definitely not at that point. But that’s why we had to step on it and we knew we had to step on it.

Scott: What were your lifestyle expenses before and after your kick in the pants there?

Jordan: We probably were able to cut probably $600 a month out of our expense side and not change our backend of our lifestyle a whole lot. But again, we were very aware of our spending and we’re very in tune. As a marriage, we’re on the same page. So some of those decisions are a lot easier for us.

But again, we ramped up some of the side income stuff and then really committed that we were going to get some more doors, basically, and make that happen. Did a couple more flips. Then it really started to roll. Again, this is a great time. If you’re going to pick a time in history to really start doing this stuff—starting 2009 and then ramp it up in 2013, it’s a great time to do this stuff. So again, I’m definitely blessed by the situation that we were in.

Scott: Let’s fast forward to the next milestone that you receive in the journey.

Jordan: Yeah, so that would have been November. We go down to my uncle’s for Thanksgiving, so I love going down there. And he has a different outlook on life and a different take on things. And that’s one of the things. So we sit there and we talk and we go over some stuff. And we realized probably in November of ’15 that we had gotten to a number—it wasn’t the number that I originally thought.

But if we scale back our lifestyle just a little bit, we would be stable. So I was within spitting distance of that FI position and we’re like, okay. If we just build up the courage here over the next little bit and get a little bit more passive income coming in, we’ll be in a position where we can back this down all the way. But it took me all the way from November of ’15 all the way until August of ’16 to actually step up and commit to that position. So again, I’m slow. I’m a little nervous and jittery, so it took me a little bit of time.

Scott: That’s not that long. But let’s walk through that ten-month period.

Jordan: Yeah, so August of ’16, we were definitely in a spot. I wasn’t sure how my W-2 employer was going to take it when I came in and said, I’m going to retire. They’re not prepared. I would have been—that would have been, 33 or 34. Something like that.

Scott: Seven or eight years ahead of schedule.

Jordan: Ouais. But again, we had really pushed down on the spending side. That was one of the things I want to make sure people understand. If you can commit—it’s so much easier to cut a dollar of spending than increase a dollar of income coming in. I mean, I can’t express that enough. Raise your hand and clap, whatever you need to do, but that is a point.

So if you’re at $4000 a month spending and if you can get that to $3000, that changes your 4% Rule. It changes any kind of passive income. I mean, those are just huge numbers. And think about what you’re going to gain if you can give up eight hours a day of sitting at a desk or whatever you’re doing. I mean, think about that.

So we were at the position in August of ’16 where worst case, if I had to do a little bit of outside work, I could pay the bills. So I went in, sat down with my boss, and explained this. And you could just see the like—what? I’m obviously a little bit different. I’ve got the big, red beard and everything so people don’t always know how to take you in a position like this. And again, you’re getting up into the FU money numbers, so you have a whole different outlook on life and it changes how you perform at your job.

That’s one of the big things. Like, I can do what needs to be done and I don’t have to worry about somebody having a problem with me because, have a problem with me. I’m going to do what’s right for the company every single time. That’s not an issue. You can’t really touch me. So that’s one of the things, I think it’s really good for the employer in the backend. But it makes for some weird conversations because they’re not used to losing that leverage all the time.

So you come in and say, hey, I’m going to make a change here. If you want to work something out, we can work something else out. Otherwise, if it’s all or nothing, I’m going to take the nothing instead of the all. So that’s where we were. They were very, very gracious and decided that some of me was better than none of me so we did work out a part-time position going forward.

My role did change a little bit but I was still able to help them part-time. Which again, that cushions—if the plane is coming down to land or whatever, you’ve got a nice, soft runway then.

Scott: And that’s what you wanted, right? That was the best possible outcome for you?

Jordan: It probably was the best possible outcome. I went into that meeting 100% uncertain of the outcome. Like, I had no idea if they were going to rip away my key card and throw me out the door that day, or if they were going to work out some kind of part-time deal. I was not at all sure. Probably should have been more confident that they would have worked something out, but again, I was uncertain and that’s why I waited so long because it’s just a little scary to go in and tell them.

If I were to do it again today, I would probably be just as scared. I mean, that’s not something—if you’re in that position, take a shot at it and do it but realize that if you’re a solid employee, they’re going to want you to stay around and I know I hear stories about this happening all the time where people are able to work out remote gigs or part-time gigs as a way to cushion and do a gradual step down. So it definitely worked out for me and it can work out for you.

Scott: So when you went into this, one of the big, I think, concerns that a lot of people have when they’re about to do this is healthcare. So I got all the numbers in place but that’s an expense that now all of a sudden comes in place. Were you prepared to handle healthcare expense if they cut you off?

Jordan: Yeah, I started preparing that day that they gave me that new boss that I wasn’t super thrilled about. I’m like, I’m going to make sure this is all ready to go in case this gets really bad, I’ve got to have something lined up that day even though—

Scott: Even though you have five kids.

Jordan: Yeah, even though my passive income wasn’t going to be there back in 2013, I’m like, I’ve got to be ready for this. So yeah, we are on one of those medi-shares type deal. That’s what it’s called, right?

Mindy: Yeah, the medical health shares.

Jordan: So it does qualify for Obamacare insurance but it’s not insurance so don’t get them confused. It’s like an inner agency donation program kind of thing where essentially we’re just helping each other out. So it’s a little bit different and you’ve got to get used to that. But every insurance now is a little bit different than when they were in two years ago, so there’s some getting used to even for some regular W-2 insurance.

Pricewise, we pay less than we paid at my other job. So even though I don’t have anybody else contributing, my personal payment is less every month than my payment was before. So it definitely works out good. Ours does have a religious component—we had talked about that before but it works out well for us because we are appropriately religious.

Mindy: Yeah, and I think Phillip Taylor from Episode 38 went into the health share plans a little bit as well. They can be a really great option when health insurance is so expensive. You still have a job though, right?

Jordan: I still work at that same employer, yep. I’m still part-time there. My wife says I like it too much to quit. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not certain. But I’m still there. I really enjoy helping people out and my actual skillset lines up really well with what they need. So it works really well and I don’t have a lot of reason to change it at this point, so if you want to say semi-FI, I’m fine with that. Semi-retired, I’m fine with that.

I don’t really need the definition. That’s not going to change it. I’m pretty happy with my current position and as long as it stays something that we both can be happy, it’s going to stay. I don’t see any reason to really speed it up and change it.

Scott: How many days a week were you working—obviously, you were full-time before. How did that change after the conversation and what’s it like now?

Jordan: Yeah, so it took a little bit of time to actually change my role so I was engineering manager at the time. I had a bunch of reports and things like that so we gradually phased out some of that. I went into more of a project-based position and still engineering projects. A lot of cost-savings and improvement ideas, things like that. And I also picked up some software stuff that wasn’t in my background before. I’m not a software engineer. So I did pick out some of that just because the role was available so now that’s one of the things I do with quite a bit of my time.

It went down—as soon as we got the transition, it went down to three days a week. So I work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So my Wednesday is my Wednesday-Friday. If you want to know a way to make your other employees smirk and hate you, call it Wednesday-Friday every single week and you don’t show up until Monday and they work Thursday and Friday and then text them on Thursday and Friday a bunch of times that you’re off and you’re home and you’re doing other stuff. So that’s a good way to motivate other employees, right? So my Wednesday-Friday, that’s my big thing, is Wednesday-Friday.

Scott: C'est génial. And you still work the three days a week now?

Jordan: Yup, still three days a week. Again, it’s pretty flexible. I do work from home some and I kind of come and go when I need to so it doesn’t really get in the way, and when you have time off like that, I don’t need to take—I do have some vacation time. It’s a little bit different in this position, but you don’t have to take days off to go to doctor’s appointments and things like that so you don’t have to worry about a lot of those kinds of things because I do have open days every week already, so it really kind of works out pretty well.

Scott: What has changed about your lifestyle, then? Do you go on a lot more trips, travel—what are some of the perks?

Jordan: So again, one of the things that’s important to us is obviously our family and our kids, so we homeschool our kids as well—the ones that are old enough, I guess. We have a 12, 10, 8, and then two four-year-olds so the four-year-olds are young still.

So I help out on Thursday and Friday. I guess I’m part stay-at-home dad but then we push a lot of our project work on some of the rentals or any of the flips that we’re doing. We do push that to Thursdays and Fridays as best as we can.

There’s still the emergency calls. But I’ll do that. I went back to school and started to get my doctorate, so I work on that some. But pretty much, I mean I think that’s what retired life is supposed to look like so I’m doing whatever a 35-year-old semi-retired guy would do.

Scott: C'est génial. So as far as finances go, do you have plans to continue building the portfolio or are you kind of done there?

Jordan: Yeah, again, I’m going to build it the same way. We’re going to go slow. We’re going to be appropriately cautious. We’re going to let it grow a little bit. We switched over. We’ve done a lot of things in the community to kind of change that, so I feel like I don’t know if ‘made it’ is the right word, but I’ve gotten to the point now where I want to help other people and I want to give back a little bit.

So we’ve done some land contracts with some people where we’ve given them pretty good deals and made that happen where they might not have been financeable at a regular bank. So we’ve helped some people like that. And I really—I mean, I like it. It’s kind of fun. And then we’ve done like that. We’ve looked at a few other different kinds of projects because you can open up your horizon a little bit when you get that flexibility.

So we’ve looked at some weird stuff and haven’t always decided if we want to do weird stuff yet. We do have an offer accepted on an apartment so that will be our first multifamily at all that’s there. So we’re going to try baby steps again. It’s a five-unit with a standalone single-family. So it’s six doors together but we don’t have anything like that so it’s a little bit different and it needs a ton of work.

But I think we know how to make that happen. So again, go slow. Go steady. And then we’ll just keep going. I don’t know where it will take me in the next five years, ten years, I’m not really sure. There’s nothing pressing at this point. There’s no need to change it up a ton.

I did some construction work this summer outside and found some stuff that I liked and some stuff that I didn’t like as much so I think there’s a guy that I’ve been working with so maybe next summer, we’ll do a little bit of that and maybe we won’t but it’s one of those things, you don’t do it in the winter but that’s no fun, so we don’t do that in the winter.

Scott: J'aime cela. I mean, you’ve won and you’re just like, great, I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to figure it out.

Jordan: I definitely don’t want to say we’ve won. That doesn’t sound right. I don’t want to say we’ve won.

Mindy: You’ve won! I will say that you have won. You don’t have to work anymore. You get to work at a job you love. You choose what you want to do. You don’t do what you want to not do. There are people who have to be doing all that stuff in the wintertime because they have no choice. You won because now you can choose to not do that stuff when you don’t want to do it. I will say it.

Jordan: The Lord has blessed us a lot so.

Scott: You did it slow but you speed it up. Those people don’t have five kids while they’re doing this and they’re not doing it at 33.

Mindy: I have two and my live-in flip was really, really difficult.

Jordan: Yeah, we bought a farm. We did move. We bought a farm. It needs a ton of work. It’s a hundred and something years old, which is pretty old for Michigan. So it is cool and we’re trying to claim it back from the wilderness. The wilderness takes over so quick. So that’s our new little treat. We don’t have any animals yet.

We don’t have it cleared up to that point but I know the kids are kind of interested in doing some of that stuff and that’s something we’ll play out. I don’t think we’re going to get a combine and do all that type of farming or anything like that, but it’s pretty cool. You never know.

Mindy: My friend, Mr. Frugalwoods, has this awesome tractor. And maybe not a combine—what’s a combine, is that the one that picks the corn?

Jordan: It’s the one that harvests the corn, the giant one.

Mindy: Yeah, okay. You don’t need that. But you definitely need a tractor. If you have a farm, you need a tractor.

Jordan: I’ve got a backhoe. As soon as I got the farm, I went out and got a backhoe. Everybody wants a backhoe.

Mindy: I want a backhoe.

Jordan: Je connais. You can smash so much stuff. It’s so fun. So yeah, I had to go out and get the backhoe. It was the first big purchase. I did not take it on payments, so it was a cash purchase. Don’t buy a backhoe on payments. If you can’t buy it in cash, don’t buy it.

Scott: That will be the quote we’ll do to market the show.

Jordan: Yeah, so that’s the fun stuff. Again, I’m super excited to see where it goes from here. One of the things that I’ve really tried to work on now is talking to other people and trying to figure out, how do you actually change somebody and get them the perspective they need? So nobody came to me and said hey, you can do this.

So between 18 and 24, I could have used somebody to come and say what this was and tell me what it was. But I didn’t have anybody. Nobody—or maybe they did and I was just too dumb to hear it. Je ne sais pas. But there was nobody picking that stuff.

Mindy: I was going to say, did you listen? Would you have listened?

Jordan: Je ne sais pas. Peut être. Peut être pas. But now I’m here and I’m like, hey, you can do this. We’ve got to figure out, what actually does it take? So one of the things—I try to do a lot of work with my W-2 employment there where I talk with other people. People love to complain and they love to tell you how much they hate their job. And I do not like listening to people tell me how much they hate their job. Because you can change some of that stuff. There’s tons of stuff.

So I had one guy come up to me and say, I hate this thing, or whatever. And my daughter, she was probably 11 at the time or whatever. And I’m like, okay. Well, what are you going to do where in ten years when my daughter comes to work here, and she’s not your supervisor? And he’s like, what do you mean? Your daughter is like younger than me.

I’m like, yeah. But if she’s on a path, she’s going to be your boss in ten years and you’re going to be doing the same job and you’re going to say, I hate this job and you’re going to tell her you hate this job. And I don’t want that for her and I don’t want that for you. So what can we do for next year where you have either a different outlook on your position or you have a different position?

These are all things that can change. Well, I don’t have a degree in this. You don’t need a degree in social work to help people. Don’t tell me that. You can help people. There are so many ways to help people. You can have your current job and on the side, you can help people. You don’t even need to change positions.

So like, when people tell me these things, that’s one of the big things that I try to work through is what can I do to try to help them see that they have this barrier in front of them and they’re using this as like an immediate roadblock. I have five kids. You can do it. It’s just going to look a little different. I don’t have a degree. I can’t do it.

No, you don’t have a degree so it’s going to look a little different. But we can get over this. And that’s one of the things. Like, I want to be the one that’s there that says, hey, you can do this. This is really doable.

Mindy: That’s perfect. I can’t add to anything on that. This is doable. Tu peux le faire. In the beginning, you said that your story isn’t—what did you say? It wasn’t exciting or it wasn’t like—

Jordan: There’s nothing flashy. Yeah, like—

Mindy: Yeah, there’s nothing flashy. Mais tu sais quoi? That means that it’s repeatable. Scott and I talk about this over and over again. These stories that, oh, first I was born into wealth and then I won the lottery. That’s not repeatable. Hey, I bought a property I could afford and I put a tenant in there who was really awesome and then I bought another property that I could afford. And then I put a tenant in that one who was really awesome.

And that’s the story that other people can do, too. Tu peux le faire. Anybody can do this. You just have to make the plan to do it and then follow through. You can’t just sit there. Oh, I wish I was. Well, what is this saying—you can wish in one hand and blink in the other and see which one gets filled up first? Donc voilà.

Scott: Well, if you do wish, then Jordan’s daughter will be your supervisor in ten years and you will be complaining about it.

Jordan: Totalement. Ouais. I’m going to make sure she gets on that track where she can come in and actually pull that off or something. But it’s more just, you just have to have these conversation points where you can get somebody awake and alert to where you can actually talk about. Because most of the time, people hear the words that you say and they make a sentence, but that sentence doesn’t mean anything to them. It just goes right in.

And I’m like, how can I say this stuff where it’s not just a sentence full of words that don’t mean anything and actually try to make the difference and really try to help somebody out? I mean, this isn’t—again, don’t copy my exact story. I don’t think I can copy my exact story. Adjust it a little bit. If you’re not gifted here and you are here, change it. That’s totally fine and I’m not at all saying that mine is the only path.

But get with somebody and have somebody there alongside of you or behind you kicking you in the butt, whatever you need and move this along and get the train going. Because once it rolls, the thing rolls. There’s no stopping it. It’s Newton’s first law, right? An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest stays at rest.

So if you’re at rest, and you dissatisfied in your job, you’re going to be in it and you’re going to be in a different position, in a different company in ten years. You’re not going to change that. But if you get this ball rolling, you can make a little incremental improvement and you can be somewhere different.

Mindy: And once it starts rolling, you can’t even stop it. You just watch it. It’s almost like it’s doing it on its own. After—you’ve got to push it a little bit but then it starts going and yeah, that is Newton’s first law. There you go. That is perfect. I didn’t know it was his first law. I didn’t study that. In college, I studied fashion design and we don’t talk about Newton there.

Okay, Jordan, is there anything else that you want to share with us before we move onto the Famous Four?

Jordan: I want to make sure that my kids get a perspective of money that’s very similar to what I have. But I can’t replicate what my parents did for me. Because my situation is different. Just like my situation is different than yours and my parents were different than your parents. I understand that. But I want to make sure that they’re picking up some of those highlights. And again, I’m not at all saying that I’m doing this right. But I’m trying and I’m going to make some mistakes and make some adjustments.

I’ve got five kids so there’s a chance that I’ll get one of them to work out just right. But I want to make sure—again, being well off or arrived or whatever you want to say, we can afford a lot of stuff. But stuff isn’t the thing that’s going to make you happy. And I want my kids to realize that. That’s one of the things that I try to press on them.

So you could stand in the line at the store and we could buy every single Lego, whatever. We can clean out the shelf at Wal-Mart. And that’s really just going to be Legos to step on. It’s not going to actually change it. It’s not going to make you happy. And it’s probably not a good use of money. And they don’t have a path of income stream and they don’t have an active income stream where they’re going to generate that kind of money.

So one of the things I want to make sure that they pick up is what are these underlying principles? Yes, my background’s a little different than my folks was, but how can I get the same attitude of life to pass through? So growing up, we didn’t talk about the actual dollars and cents that much. Like, I didn’t know what my dad made. I didn’t know what a mortgage costs. My folks paid off their house and I didn’t even know it.

Like, it didn’t even come up in conversation. Maybe they said it but it wasn’t—they had those deed or mortgage burning parties now or whatever. But like I didn’t even know that they did that. So that’s one of those things. I try to be way more upfront with those details and be like, this is what it costs. This is what a tenant pays every single month and this is what it costs us to have that asset sitting there, you know. And you can see the little difference there.

But I want them to start picking up on the stuff that I just go through daily as a responsible grownup. I guess you don’t even think about all the things that come in and out. So they understand bills aren’t just mail. Bills are different than just mail. Do you want a lot of bills or do you want a little pile of bills?

So that’s one of the things that we try to make sure they’re picking up because I mean, society is even different and there’s a lot more things going on and you can spend a lot of money. I really hate those monthly subscriptions. They get you. It’s $9 bucks. Who cares, $9 bucks. Well, it’s $9 every month and then once you open that floodgate, $9 turns into $90 and who knows what’s going on after that.

Coupez votre câble. Get rid of that. That’s the first thing. Because it’s wasting your time. You’re stuck at home. You’re not making money watching TV. I’ve never heard of anybody saying they’re making money watching TV. You find me that guy.

Scott: If you can cut all of that stuff, then you can buy a backhoe, which does buy happiness.

Jordan: You can buy a backhoe. I don’t know if it buys happiness, but it’s fun. But you can smash stuff. The smashing stuff, you can’t overrate smashing stuff.

Scott: Do you let the kids smash stuff?

Jordan: I have let the kids smash stuff.

Scott: C'est génial.

Mindy: I think that a backhoe equals happiness so I will—

Jordan: Put that on a t-shirt, Mindy. I bet you could sell a lot of those t-shirts.

Mindy: A backhoe equals happiness? Okay. What’s your address? I’ll send you one. With royalties. Okay, it is now time for our Famous Four. These are the same four questions and one demand that we ask of all of our guests.

Jordan, what is your favorite finance book?

Jordan: So I love a lot of the books that are talked about all of the time, so I think Millionaire Next Door really changed my mindset a lot. Thou Shall Prosper was a great one. All the Kiyosaki one kind of stuff. Those are all great. That’s not the one I want to talk about. Here’s the one I want to talk about. It’s called Leadership and Self-Deceptions. It might not sound like a business book or a finance book. And then it’s a super easy read.

You’re going to breathe right through it and it’s not going to make you comfortable. You’re going to squirm. So if you want a book that’s going to make you squirm a little bit and you’re going to realize that you’ve been doing some stuff wrong. But I think on my point is it’s going to change the outlook on your family, your job, your kids, your marriage. All those things. There’s a chance that you could affect all of those.

And that’s like the underlying foundation that you’re going to build your wealth on anyhow. So if you can make some adjustments to that part of your life, you’re going to be surprised as to how far you can go.

Scott: Wow, I’ll have to check that one out.

Mindy: Yeah, I’ve never even heard of that book before.

Jordan: Je connais. Nobody ever talks about it. So I went through a real tough patch four years ago and then this was like a thing and it opens up your mind. You’re like, I never even thought about this. But if you can change some of that, again, it’s that internal head perspective.

I think that’s really where you’re going to build all of these monetary decisions and you’re going to get a ball started rolling and everything like that. You’ve got to get it out of your head space so you’ve got to get some of that head space cleared up. This is going to help you. You’re going to like it.

Scott: Génial. I’ll definitely check that one out.

Jordan: It’s written by like Anne Binger Institute or Arbinger Institute, something like that. I would tell you the author’s name but it doesn’t have an author.

Mindy: Okay. We’ll check that out.

Scott: Number two here. What was your biggest money mistake?

Jordan: So I kind of went back and forth on this one. But here’s the one I’m going to talk about for sure. In 2010, so recession—we’ve got to remember recession. Working at a manufacturing shop, engineer, great job. They say, we’re moving the plant down to North Carolina. I was like, well, I’m not moving to North Carolina. They said, there’s nine months’ runway on this move.

And I’m like well, perfect. There’s nine months—in nine months, I’ll be able to find a job, even in the recession, I’ll be able to find a job, right? Engineer, no problem. They’re like, and because you’ve been here so long, you get a severance. And it was like a six months’ severance. So I’m like, this will be great. So I’ll just roll right into this other W-2 job. I’ll take my nine month severance. I’ll double income myself for six months, or whatever it was, and this will be fabulous, right?

And that’s exactly how it played out. Which just sounds super boring, right? But here’s the thing. If I had been a little bit aware they were going to pay me for six months to do something else, right? Which was what they did. They paid me to go work at a different place for six months. They could have paid me to actually start something and I didn’t really use that as an opportunity to kick my own self in the butt, but I could have rolled, probably at that time it would have been more of a construction company or something like that.

But if you have a six months’ head start where you’re getting your full old paycheck for six months, that really is going to transition you well into that next thing. So I do think about probably, I mean again, it didn’t cost me money. But that was one of those things, you never get another chance like, I’ve never had another shot where somebody pays me for six months to do nothing.

Scott: That’s the best mistake I’ve heard on all of the money shows. That’s the best mistake.

Jordan: I didn’t want it to sound like that. That’s just something that, it just sucks that you don’t really think about it in the right sense. I thought I was doing the safe thing. I thought I was being responsible or whatever but that might not have been the best thing to do. And we know a ton of builders got ate up in the recession. So again, if you could have called people back, you could have started a company in 2010, probably. It’s all it takes.

Scott: Hey, six months, huge opportunity, and I missed it. I think that’s just great perspective that we don’t get very often from folks about hey, I missed a shot, an opportunity that I could have taken right here, that might have played out. I could have reached my goal faster.

Jordan: I know they talk about engineering and layoffs to do that—there’s that book, right? One of those guys, I don’t remember who it was, but he wants you to like set it up where they let you off and give you this severance so you can go do your next thing. And I had it and it was all laid out and I just didn’t even think about it.

Mindy: That is Sam from Financial Samurai who has that engineering layout. He engineered his own layoff and that’s great, but you also need to look at, okay, I got double salary for six months. And who knows, I’m sure you’re awesome at building but who knows that you would have been able to make this.

Jordan: Totalement. I used that six months, I actually bought a house and it was horrible and I fixed it and I still have that house and it’s beautiful. So that’s what I did with it instead. But it’s one of those things like, if I had to go back and I did that like ten times over again and you gave me ten more chances, I’d probably try the other thing ten times straight.

Mindy: What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out?

Jordan: So my best piece of advice is right along the lines that we talked about a little bit earlier but there’s this interview question—I’ve done a lot of technical interviewing, which technical interviewing is you see the resume, the resume is going to work but then you’ve got to figure out who this actual person is and if they’re going to mesh with your culture and things like that.

So one of the questions I always ask in my technical interviews is I ask them how they would rate themselves. A scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate yourself? Scott, how would you rate yourself overall? Life, relationships, work, finances—how would you rate yourself right now?

Scott: Oh, man. Maybe like a 6 or 7. 8?

Jordan: 6, 7, 8. Those are the answers I always get. It’s like a ton of 6, 7, 8. And like I say, I didn’t care what their answers are. I don’t tell them that. They stress about the number so bad because they don’t want to sound too good and they don’t want to sound too bad. So they don’t want to stress about it. So I didn’t even care about what they say. As long as they didn’t say 10.

That’s the only thing. I don’t want them to say 10. So, I’m giving away my interview questions now, too. But then I say, what are you going to do a year from now—what are you going to change in your life so you can come back a year from now and tell me, instead of being a 6 or a 7, you’re a 7 or an 8? What are the things you’re going to do?

I sit there and I listen. What I’m trying to pick up is, are they able to identify some weakness in themselves, something that they are causing or a way to look at an opportunity as a roadblock or whatever and are they going to be able to turn that into something else?

What I hate hearing is, I need to get a job where I make more. Or, my boss sucks or something like that. Don’t ever tell somebody in an interview your boss sucks. Don’t ever tell a landlord when you’re looking at a new place that your landlord sucks. Don’t ever say any of that stuff because like—

Mindy: Preach. Totalement.

Scott: That’s good advice.

Jordan: It’s one of those things, like, let’s limit these obstacles and identify it in yourself and let’s make a change because you can make these changes and I’d love to be part of the one helping you make them or somebody else can help you. But if you can identify that in yourself, you are prepared to actually go out and nail this.

Scott: J'aime cela. I actually, just to share a little tangent here—every year, I have this little journal that I work in and I basically rank myself. How’s my fitness? How’s my profession, my business going? How’s my personal financial situation going? How’s my relationship going? How’s my lifestyle? How’s my spirituality? How’s my mental segment? And there’s probably one more in there I’m forgetting.

And then I rank myself on those and I go okay, where’s my biggest weakness? And that frames my goals for the following year. Kind of along the same lines. I think that’s a very good exercise. And for a while, it was finance. But then after you probably reached some of your financial goals, the weaknesses in your other area becomes glaring and you go after that.

Jordan: That brings up one more thing. You guys can put it here or you can stick it somewhere else. In that first year that we were semi-retired or whatever, between my wife and I, we really kind of did a health focus and we changed a little bit of the structure on how we were living our lives on that side. Because when you’re just going and going and going, it’s so easy to—I deserve this or that, or I want a whole cake, not just a piece of cake. I’m going to get a whole cake.

Des choses comme ça. So we actually lost a ton of weight. Between the two of us, I think we actually lost like 90 pounds. And that was pretty awesome. So we had gotten a little bit lax on looking at that, and that wasn’t something we had even considered. So that’s another opportunity. Quit your job, go down part-time, and then lose some weight.

Scott: Well, then. So now that you’re retired, you attend a lot more parties because you have Wednesday-Friday, Thursday-Friday, Friday-Friday, Saturday and Sunday, right?

Jordan: No parties. I don’t go to any parties. And even the ones you have to go to now, because what are they going to do?

Mindy: We’re breaking stereotypes here. Now, you’re a party animal.

Scott: Well, when you do go to parties, what kind of jokes do you tell? Do you have a favorite joke you tell at parties?

Jordan: So I do have a joke and it’s pretty good. But I also have a landlord story. I don’t know if I can say a landlord story in my jokes section?

Scott: Let’s do both.

Jordan: Okay. So here’s the joke. We’ll get that one first. How can you tell if you’re talking to an extroverted engineer?

Scott: Because you’re talking to them.

Jordan: No. They look at your shoes instead of their own. It really is true.

Scott: All right, so what’s the landlord story?

Jordan: So that’s my joke. My landlord story—this is my best landlord story. I do tell this one a lot. So I got a house, there’s a lady living there, a young lady. She says, can she have a roommate move in, and I’m like yeah, yeah. We’ll work it out. This is before I knew you probably should get your lease change when you let a roommate move in and all those kinds of things. Maybe there was a party or two or a few.

It had a clay tile for the drain. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with clay tile. The thing that happens with clay tile is it gets little holes in it and the roots get in and yadda yadda yadda. So this was a house that had that problem and we’d get it rooted out every once in a while. It wasn’t that big of a deal—

Mindy: I already know where this story is going.

Jordan: They had a party. Yeah, this is—I don’t know what the term I’m supposed to use for the family show, right? So they call me up and say, the toilet is not flushing. Okay. So I do all my own calls at this point. I show up there, get it out, start roller-rooting, pull it out. There’s—I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here—a condom. You get a condom. That’s a word.

I send it back in. I get like five more. Send it back in. I get a lot more than five. I have like a five-gallon bucket and there’s a ton of them in here. I have no idea—like, what am I supposed to say now? Because these are two younger ladies and I don’t want to say anything exactly. So in my best passive landlord way, I left the bucket there. I left it there for like three days and then came back a few days later to pick it up. I’m like, I think that they’ll get the message about it.

Because I didn’t know how to have that conversation and maybe that makes me a bad landlord or whatever. But I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that. But very honestly, I left the bucket, came back a few days later and picked it up. Didn’t have anymore problems related to those kind of things.

Mindy: Oh, my goodness. Yes, only flush human waste and toilet paper down a toilet.

Jordan: I did eventually, we dug it up and we got the PVC put in. So it’s great now, whoever the prospective tenant will be next. Don’t worry about it.

Mindy: Beurk! Yes—I’m listening to your story and I’m like, that’s me. That’s my life. That’s my husband. That’s my experiences. Those people are the people that—the ladies that have the party. They live down the street from me. I have a house down the street from me and they have adult parties where people can come over and do adult things together.

Jordan: Maybe it had happened over a period of time, too. Je ne sais pas. I didn’t ask. That was for sure.

Scott: You’re not joining any of these religious coops for health care.

Jordan: Yeah, I don’t know. Ne demande pas.

Mindy: Well, that was a delightful story.

Jordan: Not a good joke, but a good story, yeah.

Mindy: Okay, Jordan Klint, where can people find out more about you?

Jordan: I’m on Facebook with my wife, Leah Jordan Klint. I’m also on Facebook. I’ve got a, I don’t know, a different page or whatever that I post some of my musings and interesting stuff. That’s called, It’s Not Just About Me and My Dream of Doing Nothing, which if you get the reference, points for you. But find me there. Probably Facebook’s the best way. On LinkedIn, too. You’ll see the giant red beard. You can try to track me down there.

Mindy: Impressionnant. We will link to all of these in the show notes for the show. It can be found at BiggerPockets.com/MoneyShow63. Jordan, this was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for sharing that you can in fact have financial independence with children, with more than one children, with five children. Which is, as you said in your pre-interview, more than some people have.

Jordan: More than zero, yeah.

Mindy: That’s more than zero. That’s a lot more than zero. That’s five more than zero. Learning grade school math as my children are going through grade school math. I do not remember any of the sixth grade math that my sixth-grader is going through right now. But that’s another story for another time. Okay, Jordan. Thank you so much for taking time out of your vacation to chat with us today. J'apprécie vraiment cela.

Jordan: It was a pleasure.

Scott: Yeah, thank you.

Mindy: Okay, we will talk to you again soon.

Scott: All right, that was Jordan Klint. Mindy, what do you think?

Mindy: I love his story. I love that he didn’t listen to conventional wisdom. Again, I said conventional wisdom. There is no conventional wisdom when it comes to financial independence, but I love that he listened to other people and he said, you know what? I don’t want to work there anymore. So I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to have five kids and I’m going to be retired and real estate plays a big part in his life because real estate is kind of a really great way to reach financial independence.

Scott: Yeah, I also love how he’s a bit competitive. He didn’t like that someone got promoted ahead of him at work and he said, I’m going to use that as fuel to leapfrog right into financial independence. I thought it was great that he started out the entire process without having a game plan handed to him. I had a game plan handed to me.

I had the fortune of reading Mr. Money Mustache and learning from Brandon Turner about the house-hacking strategy right out the gate for my career to kind of accelerate towards this. He didn’t have those things and he still was able to kind of go about this in a really intelligent way and build financial information for himself just by figuring it out.

Mindy: And do you know why? Because he had a plan and this whole thing is not that hard.

Scott: He had a goal. Right? He had a goal. And then that plan shaped together over the course of years, right? Four, five, six, seven years.

Mindy: Yes, he had a goal. He devised a plan to reach his goal. He got there eight years early and with five kids. And I don’t think that we stressed enough during the show that he has five kids. He has five kids. And that’s five mouths to feed—that’s seven mouths to feed because he’s got a wife, too, plus him. It’s a doable thing. You have to make a plan. What does your life look like? What do you want your life to look like? And then form your finances to help you reach that goal. It’s not rocket science.

Scott: I also like how he was pretty helpful in some cases as well where he’s like, yeah, I don’t know if I’ve won or not—he’s won. He’s won.

Mindy: He’s won. Yes. You win life when you get to retire when you’re 34. With five kids.

Scott: I’ve got a friend who brags about his finances all the time. He’ll tell me, my credit card company calls me almost every day to tell me that my balance is outstanding.

Mindy: Hahaha. That’s horrible, Scott.

Scott: The blame for that joke can fall on Garrett, who sent me that joke. Garrett is a listener from Woodbridge, Illinois.

Mindy: Garrett, that’s a terrible joke.

Scott: I’ve been waiting to use that one. I don’t know, I have to force it there but—I thought it was great. I chuckled.

Mindy: Well, I’m glad you chuckled. That makes one of us. No, I actually did laugh. That was kind of funny. I was just kidding, Garrett. That’s a lovely joke. Thank you for sharing with us. Okay, Scott, should we get out of here?

Scott: Let’s do it.

Mindy: From Episode 63 of the BiggerPockets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, saying sayonara.