How to Save for Your First Rental Property in 2025 (Starting from Zero!)
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Ready to take your first step toward building well through real thing IT all starts with mastering your personal finances. In today's episode, we're sharing the ultimate tips to take control of your money, cut through the noise and save for your first investment property without feeling overwhelmed. Whether you're starting from scratch, you are looking to level up your financial game. We've got actionable strategies to get you closer to your dream investment. Let's turn that someday into today.

This is the real state Ricky podcast i'm actually care and i'm here with tony jay Robinson .

and welcome to the podcast where every week, three times a week, we're bring you the inspiration, motivation and stories you need to hear to kick out your investing journey and luck because we couldn't be talking about personal finance without the personal finance expert herself, Mandy genson. So if you guys don't know Mandy, she's the host of the bigger pocket of money podcast. She's also an expert live in flipper and a real agent. And like we are so excited to talk to her on the show today. So mindy, welcome to the real sick about test.

Wow, I hope I could live up to all of that hybrid just gave me tody. I'm so honor. Thank you. I love being here.

lindy. Let's start off with what is the first step that a rookie investor should take to get their first investment.

You need money. And all those people who say you can buy with no money down, you might not need any of your own money, but you definitely need money and you need some sort of backup plan in case your money fails or your first investment isn't quite perfect. Have you guys ever invested in a property where you start like rehabber, you get into the property like, oh, somethings broken and it's really expensive.

I'd like to say that as soon as you buy a house, something is going to break, and the cost of that repair is inversely proportionate to how much money you have in the bank. So if you just spent every dollar on that property, you are going to have a new roof or a new age racked system or something giant that you're gonna to repair. If you have an emergency fund, if you have a reserve fund, if you are well funded, then something's gone to break.

It's going to be a light switch or a switch play cover. It's going to be something really, really small, but I have been buying and selling realistic forever and things break as soon as you buy IT. That's I think that's like the first love of real state or something.

So be prepared and be financially prepared. Be honest with your financial situation, tony, you're A B Riley on air and you have so much money, you can pay cash for every house. great.

That is a great position to be in. But if that's not your position, then you need to know your exact position. So take stock of what you have and where you're at.

What is your income? What are your existing debts? What is your investment strategy currently? Do you have any other investments that you could may be pull from like a four one, kay, that you could borrow for a dow payment, which I don't love unless you're get this smoking hot deal, but we'll go into that in a bit.

And finally, what are your expenses? I'm bedding that every single person listening to this show right now has something they can cut out of their expenses that could help them save a little bit more for their investment strategy. When people come on my podcast and they want to talk about their financial situation, I look at those four things, income, expenses, debts and investments.

And I really look at their expenses because a lot of people think that they're spending four thousand dollars a month, three thousand dollars month, ten thousand dollars month, but they're actually spending more. It's these little one OS or not. So one OS, it's the things that you sign up for and you forget to cancel. It's all of these these little like nicklin dimon, things that are taking away your ability to be able to invest in real estate. So first off, you need a really great emergency fund, but you also need to get a clear picture of your financial situation and be honest because when you're lying, you're only lying .

yourself when we're talking a lot right now about the defense. And I want to talk a little bit about the office of of personal finance and how you can kind of grow that side as well. But just one comment on the deep inside.

There's there's an APP that I discovered a few years ago now and it's it's a really cool tool is that we all maybe are familiar with davanzati envelope system, very antiquated, doesn't work as well. I think in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, when most things are digital, there's a company called cube money and cubs bet Q U B E and mandie wave in her hands in the air. And I I think it's one of the coolest personal finance tools that i've seen because IT replicates dave envelope system, but IT does so digitally.

And before you spend on your debit card, you have to select which cube or which envelope you're spending out of. So replicates of the same way. But IT allows you to do IT digital media. I assume that you've had some experience with this tall.

I have never this tool myself, but I saw IT at a conference. And the person who was explained, iming IT is showing me how IT works. He actually was a customer and he was showing me how IT works. And I was like, this is the best thing ever.

If you are having trouble with your spending at the beginning of the month, you just it's like a digital cash envelope system so you decide i'm gonna spend seventy five dollars in gasoline and five hundred dollars at the grocery store and then when you're at the grocery store, you look and you like, oh, my cube for groceries only has one hundred dollars left, but I just ring up one hundred and three dollars worth of stuff. So I either have to choose a different cube to borrow that three dollars from, or I have to put something back. And IT forces you in real time to be conscious of what you're spending and what categories are spending in.

And if spending is a problem for you, cube is the answer. I love that product. No.

I use IT before I was called proactive. And they actually like wound down that version, the product why I stopped using them because they like they shut down the initial version. But I got an email recently. They they come back to cubes. I was checking out the top mind for me.

right? Yeah, it's a really great product.

I love IT OK. So manning, let's say, listeners got in financial foundation stabilized. They understand their budget, where they're at financially.

What's the next step for saving for a dun payment? How much reserves should they have? Where should they go or how should they figure out the actual capital you'll need to buy their investment?

This is something you can do right now. Even if you have no money, no expenses, you couldn't possibly buy a house, connect with a real estate agent in the area that you are thinking about buying.

And if you've got a couple of different areas, connect with agents in a couple of different areas and start learning that market because I can tell you how much to say for until you have you won't know how much to say for until you have an idea of what things cost. Tony area is a little bit more expensive than my area, which is a little bit more expensive than Ashley's area, if I recall correctly, in the new new york state. So you're not spending minimum of five hundred thousand dollars on some little two bedroom, one bath that needs a whole lot of work a whereas I am mentally is like, that's cute.

Five hundred thousand if you're going to do something called house hacking, which i'm sure you guys talk about a lot, uh, when is your primary residence? You have A A lower down payment requirement or of a lower downpayment. Thresh holds twenty percent, is the the average that they throw out there.

So you don't have to play pay PMI. But I have a friend who is very smart, financially very wealthy, and he said, I ran the numbers. PMI was going to be seventeen dollars.

So I didn't sell the stock to put down twenty percent. I just put out ten percent, and now I pay an extra seventeen dollars to my PMI. So definitely don't discount the fact that you could just pay PMI.

His PMI is so low because he is so financially stable, he owns a lot of real estate. He's a sure bet and he's he's got a lot of money and in a great credit score. If your credit score isn't so great, that's another conversation we need to have.

Um but when you're saving up for a down payment, you want enough to put down comfortably and twenty percent down, I say twenty percent down. Lets go with three percent down. Three percent down is three percent of the purchase Price.

It's not three percent and that's IT. That's not the only cost that you'll have when you're purchasing a house. You've got titles insurance.

And if you think you if you don't think you need titles insurance, you're wrong. Um if you are buying your first property, you absolutely need title insurance. I've bought more than one property and I always get titles insurance.

I've never needed IT and I will continue to say you need title insurance forever. Study title insurance, depending on what state you're in, you have either a title company handling you're closing or an attorney handling your closing. They don't work for free so that's gonna a charge.

You have a home inspection um I have a rule of sub with home inspection. I think IT goes something like always, always, always, always, always get a home inspection um unless you're scraping IT and if if it's your first property, you need that home inspections. Your agent is not a home inspector, your friend bob, unless he actually is a home inspector, he's not a home inspector.

So unless you're scraping IT or going down to the suds, you need a home inspection because there's a lot of things that pop up on a home inspection that might shock you. Um so that costs money. You've got an a razzle. If you're getting a loan, your bank is absolutely going to make you get an appraisal and that cost money. So there's all these different fees involved in purchasing a property is not just the dow payment.

Rockies, we want to hit one hundred thousands subscribers on youtube, and we need your help while we take a quick ad break. You can go over to youtube dot com slash at real state rocky and make years described to the channel. Stay tuned after a break more from media want to .

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back to the show where we are joined by mindy jenson.

Two, funding your escorted account prepaying your insurance a year in advance your property taxes too. I mean, that's a large chunk of money .

there that exactly. And this, like I don't have A A altun front of me right now till I go down all of the things. But yeah, there's all these little things that add up.

I actually just had a client say, i'm sorry, i'm not going to be able to write this offer on this property because I wasn't aware of all of these costs and I felt really horrible that I had to properly uh, educated them on all of the little bit costs that add up. It's two to four percent of the purchase Price when you buy a home that you will need in extra stuff. So that three point five percent down is now like six percent on I mean link .

in the show notes to uh, closing disclosure. So this will kind of highlights some of the things that I talking about. And this is off a government website, just an example. But I will give you an idea of what are some of the charges and the additional fees that you may see. Obviously, that can give you the exact cost of what I would be, but you're working with a loan officer, they'll be able to give you an estimate of what this closing disclosure would be so that you do know how much cash you actually need to, to bring the closing. So we will include that link in the the .

show notes that also some. And you know that brings up another great point. Working with a loan officer, I work i'm an agent and I work with several different lenders because my client is in charge of which lenders they work with, not me.

But when my client doesn't have somebody, I have somebody that I recommend all the time because I know he can close. I have built a relationship with him by sending him a lot of clients. I can ask him questions.

I know he knows what he's talking about based on the the information that i've glean from him over the years of working with him. So if you're wanting to be an investor, but you're not quite sure where to start or you don't have money to to purchase right now, CBA lender, a local lenders and ask them questions. You might have to go through several people before you find somebody who is willing to talk to you, but the one that's willing to talk to you is the one you want to work with.

You don't want to work with the guy who's like that. I can't talk you right now. I'll call me back when you have a property other contract. Well, they're not in IT for you that and right now.

lenders aren't busy on that note, everyone who's looking for a linders head over to bigger pockets that com slash lyda finder and you'll find some bigger pox is approved linders there as well. And I really do think that a good london could be the difference between you getting started and you're not getting started. I know action.

I both have had some kind of creative deals. We've been able to work out with linders early in our investing careers really gave us the confidence keep moving forward. So couldn't agree with you, couldn't go with you more at that point.

Many but one thing I want to circle because I do you talk about the the defense of like a buckling down knowing your personal financial situation. You talk about some of the I once a hidden cost, but maybe some of the overlooked cost they're ky have when they're by in that first deal. But the the other side of that coin that I want to focus on just a little bit is, is maybe playing a little bit of often when IT comes to saving money for that down payment. So you guys have recorded in ton of episode of the money podcast. What have you seen folks do to to not only control their expenses, but to also grow their income so they can more aggressively and maybe more quickly save for that dawn payment?

The audience that they speak to a little different than the audience that you speak to, and even the audience that I speak to who was really focused on their finances.

Are you always a hundred percent aware of the entire financial picture? And you people will call me and say, hey, I would like to do this this finance review, here's all of my numbers and I look at their numbers like I don't believe these numbers and I don't know anything about your life, but I don't believe these numbers they're all ending in zero. Are you guessing or are you estimating? Or did you just round up and a lot of times they say, i'm guessing know your numbers.

Your numbers are your numbers. And until you have A A clear picture of what's going on, all you're doing is guessing and that's just hurting yourself. So once you have a clear picture, look at where your moneys going.

Focus first on your expenses. Are you really do these expenses align with your values? You want to be a realised investor, but you're spending all this money at the bar. You want to be a realized investor, but you're spending all this money on clothing you're real stay friends, don't care what you look like. And having the cute st parodies and the latest iphone and all these other things isn't going to get you to the position where you can be a real estate investor. So be honest with your don't cut everything out because that's a, that's a life that kind of sucks.

But look at what you can cut out that you won't miss or look at how you can reduce the cost of that item so you can still keep that in your budget or your m size of the b word in your life without having to, you know, give up all these things that you enjoy. But also look at what you can cut out. That isn't GTA matter.

You go out with the guys every friday night. Maybe you invite them over to your house on friday night and you have a barbecue and it's like a pot barbecue and everybody brings their own thing and that cost you way less money. And you do this over time, you're saving money that way.

There's lots of other things that you can do to save money. And we have a tone of episodes about cutting your expenses to be able to save for whatever IT is that you're saving for. But in on the flip side of cutting expenses is increasing your income.

And this was this was quite a great timing this morning, I was flipping through the news and IT said, this woman makes thirty thousand dollars a month on her side hustle. And I was like, i've got to figure out what that is. So I opened IT up.

And IT was SHE runs like A A social media marketing company. okay? That's not something i'm going to be able to do, but maybe somebody listening that their job in real life will go do IT on the side. That's a very low cost of entry to starting a business. I think you just .

need a computer. Fbp khan, there was actually a vender there, and I can't remember the name of her business, but he would go and create templates. And he was a private insurance m account.

And SHE was selling a subscription to join her private insurance accounts. You could follow IT, and SHE would create templates for real city investors to use to post on to their own social media. So they had to create this template once she's charging a fee for people to get access to IT.

And it's kind of like a scale able model because once you create on, everybody can use IT that's paying for IT. So like that just reminded me of that. And he was there to you know build this business out of something that you know is generating more income for her.

Yeah and IT doesn't have to be to real state um the social media marketing is like you're marketing whatever IT is your marketing. Ah another one of these stories these people were were working on task rabbit, which is a site that you can go and hire people to do tasks for you. They're working on task rabbit and they're making the one guy was putting together ika furniture.

Have you ever put together ika furniture? I am the ika put her together in my house. So i'm really, really good at IT.

If I didn't have this job, I could go put together. I key a furniture for people because there are people who are like, I can't read these directions. I don't understand, like what's you do with a few times? You'll figured that out.

But the one guy was making four thousand dollars a month, putting together a key furniture on his own time, working as much as little as he wanted to. So there's the the amount of money that you can make and the ways you can make this money is only limited to your creativity. But you even to be creative, you can go on C N, B, C and make IT series and look at what other people are doing.

Um there was and both of those jobs are very low cost of entry jobs. There was one person who said that he started a handbag line and IT SHE took thirty thousand dollars. And I was like, well, i'm gonna recommend that one at all.

Don't start to hear bag line. Because you have to have product. And if you make what you think is great but somebody else thinks is ugly, they're not onna buy IT and then you're stuck with thirty thousand dollars with a unselected hand back. So start small on these these easy to do, low cost of entry jobs, and see what sticks. I know every single person listening has IT in them to go out and make extra body.

May day you would be so proud, because my eight year old is actually a designing and making handbags and taking them to school. So he, the a word that I don't know we've ever used in our house before is guji. But somehow he learned what guji wasn't.

I asked him to explain and he said, well, it's a brand and it's seven. They make bags and I said, okay and he said, humans friends were making gucci ags. And he takes a piece of paper folds, IT, staples, three sides of IT, writes gucci on IT, and then attaches another piece of people.

Aper is like a little handle for you to put IT on your risk. They has probably made a hundred of them and he put them together in a lunch box and took them to school. He wore his sport coat blazer because that was his business attire and went to school and he made three sales yesterday. So i'm just waiting for the phone off from the don't like just see no, gucci has a trade mark, ana and want you to be a fully aware of all that you doing what you're doing yeah, that's twenty years that they had big thing because that's what he's doing. And he wore another sport coat to school again to date to ourselves.

because we have to seek one final outbreak, but will be right back after this.

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Okay, let's jump back in with mindy.

I love the entrepreneurial spirit they've seen at such a Young age there. But yeah, I didn't agree you right? There are so many little side of ideas that people tend to overlook that could be an easy way to bring in one, two, three, four or five extra thousand dollars per month to help you fuel that first deal.

But I think another area that a lot of people overlook when IT comes to increase in your income is leaving your current job. Now i'm not encourage you never wanted to jump ship, but there's a lot of studies that have been done. People who skip jobs, more regular, lead over the course of their career tend to earn more money.

And for me, I know when I first graduate from college, I think I was making, like, I don't know, forty grand a year when as as a new college grad, which for me at the time was fantastic, I was thousand weeks year like heck yeah. And I end up getting a another job offer in a completely different industry. I was working in marketing when I first graduated.

I've got a job managing a warehouse completely different. None of those skills translated right. I don't even know why they offered me the job, but I went from forty thousand dollars to sixty eight thousand dollars, right? And in the same exact person, nothing was different about tony.

Just a different job. I worked that job at six A K for two years. Then I got another job offer from another company at one hundred thousand dollars a year and just kind of started to to scale up from there. So within, I don't know, three years of me graduating from college, I almost I more than two x my income and IT was just because I was willing to take the jump s to go to some some other company. So I don't know you what what are your thoughts on people?

Maybe jobs skipped. We have had several episodes where we have interviewed people who actually did that exact same thing on purpose. They like, i'm GTA get this job. It's because it's going to give me this this company named on my resume or this type of experience that I don't have, which will then propel me to the next job, which will get me this company name or this experience on my resume.

And they absolutely hop around and crank up there their income because the retention bonus, the retention budget is less than the new higher budget in almost every company. So IT, which is so sad because having a great employee versus oh, they left you. Now I have to find somebody else.

I hope they'll it's short cited on the company's part but yeah absolutely I know we've interviewed somebody called a purple life on our show. I want to say this episode one hundred and eleven or one hundred and ten um SHE absolutely did that and financial mechanic was episode ninety eight and he also did that. He just they both the job up to tony. Richard.

tony is got a gucci bag set in next time. If you get. So mini I I won even though we are the real estate rookie show here.

And we mostly advocate for investing in real state. Let's say somebody listening has got their financial house in order. They've got their their savings and they're ready to deploy IT into real estate coming from you as a personal finance expert. Are there other investment avenues they should be considering first before jumping into real state investment that you would recommend?

Oh, this is a loaded question. I have always been real estate and stocks. I love the stock market. IT has been very good to me, but the stock market is also kind of fickle. I am investing for the long term. So when IT goes up, yeah but then the next day when he goes down, well, that's okay cause i'm not selling today. IT can be difficult for somebody who has not experienced the upside downs of the stock market to be in the stock market.

Uh, one of the things that we are advocating for on our show is to contribute to your companies for one k to get the full match if your company matches your contribution so frequently, the company will match um say I will match your contributions up to two percent of your salary. So you want to make sure that you are putting in there to get that full match. And then afterwards, if you're looking at investing in real estate, maybe your four in k isn't the right place for you right now.

Uh, there's a an investment vehicle called the ros I R A. And you're paying taxes now and then putting money in IT grows tax free. And when you are fifty nine and a half, you can withdraw the funds, tax free the entire funds at any point in time, you can withdraw whatever you've put in.

So we have a contribution limit of seven thousand dollars this year. If you have been putting in up to the contribution limit, let's say you have fifty thousand dollars in your roth ira in contributions and then IT has grown to one hundred and fifty thousand. You can always withdraw the fifty that you put in, but the hundred and fifty that's grown, you can't withdraw until you're fifty nine and a half um I like the roth ira, especially for Younger people because when you're Younger, you typically are making less than you will be making when you're older.

Putting the money in now when you're add a lower tax recit, you're paying you know twelve percent, fifteen percent taxes on this money and letting IT grow if you're twenty years old and you're putting that money in the the raf I R A, by the time you're forty, you're going to have just this giant bank account. So I really like the ross I array for people who are well funded, who are Younger, who are thinking about the future, and everybody should be thinking about the future. But i'd like the rough I R A.

Another really amazing account is the hc, the health savings account. You can only have this if you have a high deductable insurance plan, health insurance plan. But if you do, you're putting money into the h sa, the way that I handle my h sa.

As I put money in, I max IT out every year and then I cash flow, my expenses. I don't have a lot of healthcare expenses. It's usually like my kid dle gets to throw, so I go to the doctor and I have to pay, like, I don't know, eighty dollars at a pocket or hundred fifty dollars at a pocket.

I don't use my h sa money for that. I just put IT on a credit t and pay that credit card off at the end of every month. And the H.

I, C is growing. IT goes in tax free. IT grows tax free. And you can pull money out of there at any time to cover bill.

So I keep up receipts for all of my expenses and my health care expenses and then I can withdraw if I need money. I haven't needed any money right now. So it's IT just keeps growing and growing.

So if you have the ability to contribute to an atc, I would do that too. Um but you I say all of this Scott ched, the CEO of bigger pockets, started off wanting to be a realized investor, so he didn't put any money into his forever one. Ky, he saved IT for his doubt payment.

He bought a duplex, lived in one side, rented out the other in his side. He rented out half of IT to a roommate, and then after a year of living there, he did IT again and bought another house. So he is saving his money for his downpayments instead of putting IT into his four one k and that worked out really well for him because now he has, I don't know, eight units in denver, and he bought them a few years ago when then revelation was a way you cheaper.

So again, IT goes back to, what are your intentions? Be honest with yourself. But also you don't let the tax tail wagged the dog, but be aware of what the tax consequences are for not saving for your retirement, not saving in some of these tax advantaged accounts.

Um and we go into this ad nodia on my pipe cast. If anybody is interested in more information about that, i'm happy to chat with that. You can always email me, mindy. At bigger pockets, stop com. They think the hsc in the rather are are great a accounts to be putting money into while you're saving for your help payment.

And then once you have invested into these accounts, what's the best way to leverage the retirement accounts, or even non retirement stock account?

So you may have with the rough I R A, you can always withdraw the contributions that you have put in. That could be a great way to fund a smoking hard deal, but you can put them back. So if you withdraw those contributions, they're not there.

That chunk of your roth area is gone. The growth is still there to keep growing. That could be a great way to jump start your rather I but know that you're not going to have all that tax free growth anymore.

Um I am self employed through my real al estate agent business, so I have access to a an account called a self directed solo for a one K I can buy rental properties through that account. I can't manage them. I can do anything with them.

I have to be completely hands off, but I can so if I was gonna something in like florida, like a vacation rental in florida, that d be a great account to do that from because that all the money is right there. Um i've old, so i've been investing for a while. But you know if you had if you had the opportunity to put money into there into that kind of account, you have to be self employed um but you can buy properties within that.

You can borrow money from that account for downpayments for expenses. I'd like to have a plan to pay IT all back within five years if you're borrowing from your retirement accounts just so you're not taking the money out forever. Um you you can borrow from your traditional forever case.

You cannot invest in real estate in your traditional forewing case, but like a company sponsor for one, kay, you can borrow against the baLance if your plan allows for IT. And I believe it's up to fifty percent of the baLance or fifty thousand dollars, whatever is less, but that's another way to find. But I mean, have you guys ever had a just a smoke and hot deal? And you're like, okay, now where do I get this money from? There's not that many smoking hot deals pop up up right now, at least not in my area. But when they're there, you have to actually fast. So having different accounts to pull from is is a great know just having this account and be like, okay, i'm going to borrow this because I know i'm going to be able .

to pay back road. Talk a little bit about self directed. You talk about the self directed solo for one, kay. There's some other types of self directed accounts. Can you just quickly touch on a few views and those other types before?

So there's a self directed I R A. And that is available to anybody. Self directed solo, for one case only, available to people who are self employed. So the self directed irr ray, is you putting your money into and I R A is a tax advantaged account and then you can also use that to invest in real estate.

But that gets into I don't want to get into the winds too much, but your um your self directed I R A growth can be subjected to u bit, which is unrealized, unrelated business income tax. So you need to talk to a tax Price because I am not one. But before you're investing in a self directed ira, definitely talk to somebody who knows about real estate through a self directed ira be.

I think one of the one of the big debate here, and we see this in the rookie community, is should I pay off all of my personal debt before I start investing in real states? So maybe someone's got student loans, you've got car loans, whatever. Maybe should they pay off that debt before they try and buy their first real deal?

Maybe would you like me to elaborate?

That's not what they brand, he would say.

Mindy, very concise. Ence, I love IT.

I am that day for F, Z. I'm a little nicer. Uh, we actually had the author of the house hacking book crick curl up on our podcast episode thirty five.

I will remember this episode forever because I was such an I opening experience for me. He talked about how he graduated from college. He had eighty thousand dollars in student loan debt.

So instead of paying that off, he saved up for a purchase, bought his first house. IT was a duplex. IT was an up down duplex.

He rented out one long term, and he rented out his unit short term. And how he did this, IT was in one bedroom, one bath property. So he advertisers as a one bedroom with a shared bath.

And he put up a privacy screen and slept on a full time in the front room while he rented out the bedroom. And I will quote dave, live like no one else now, so you can live like no one else later. He, I didn't know a single soul that was living like, like cragged at the time.

He, he wasn't married to that many kids. He was living on the full time, renting out the other half of his property and renting out the basement. Housing costs were zero, and he was taking all the money that he would have been paying for housing and putting IT into a bank account so that he could save for his next property.

He bought the next one. I want to say IT was a five bedroom, two bathroom house. Five bedrooms are weird houses, so that's not as popular as a four bedroom or a three bedroom.

I think he added a bathroom, so it's now five bedrooms and three bathrooms. And he rented out, he lived in one and rented out for other rooms because he was an owner occupant. He could do that.

Definitely check your occupancy laws in your city and in your state. But he was continuing to make the minimum payments on his student loans while he is saving and investing in his real estate properties. And then all of a sudden I went to say, I was three years later, he paid off all of the student loans.

So uh, should you focus on paying off that before saving for your first property? Only if you are not going to be diligent about saving for your first property. But if you like, it's for somebody who is not good with money, who, oh, i've got a dollar and to spend, no, then absolutely pay off your dead first.

But if you can, if you can focus on the minimum payment to your debt and everything else with your first property into the your savings account just so you can get started, do that. IT is possible to do both. And I think that depends .

on why you're investing in real state too. Like if your not really investing for cash flow and you're just going for appreciation, then you're not going to have that cash flow to really snowball into your debt payments too. So you've got to think about what your strategy is that you're going into investing for two. Tony, did you have students learn that when you graduated college?

Yeah, yeah. I did. In our focus was getting our primary residents, you know, land the foundation for for our dead. And when I at the time I think that interested on the student loan dead was all like federal debt was like, I don't know, one point nine percent was something increase ze like that, right? So it's like why is a strong motivation to pay that off?

Ah I had student on that too, but I did what cracked did I pretty much paid the minimum until I started investing real state? Then I would take my cash flow and put IT towards the payments to pay off faster.

What i'm hearing is intentionality with both of your stories, and that's the most important thing. Have a plan and stick to IT as much as possible. Of course, life is gone to come and slap in the face a couple of types, but have a plan.

So I plan on paying off my student loan debt after I get my first property. I'm going to say for my first property, that doesn't mean, well, i'm going to say for my first property. But these genes are so cute or all.

They came out with a new iphone. They always come out with a new iphone. You can get back with your old one.

I have a super hold. I think I have a six. It's okay. It's still works .

every up many couple times. It's all creating broken on the back. Doesn't ever case .

that's called custom.

Did you say you have an iphone six?

I actually have a big though. But yeah, IT still works. That's more because I don't want to learn a new technology.

They change IT all the time. But but yes, yes, I have all phones and I don't care. IT works. I need google maps, I need texting and I need the music and that's IT and it's got IT and IT works. So why would I buy another phone when I could be saving my money for something fantastic? And I think, too.

if you are motivated enough to really want something, these life changes won't be hard. Like I remember when I was paying off my student loan dut, I had a spread sheet with my tracker and what I would input the payment that I made, and I would automatically tell me what my new baLances, and then I get to highlight light IT when I completely paid IT off. And that just was so rewarding to me.

You know, people make the poser boards to to track IT or though fill in the thermo ter of how much we've saved things like that. And there's tones of free work. Should say you can downal off the internet and per now if that will help you motivate you, giving you that excitement of being able to you color in that you've saved another two thousand dollars or something like that.

Turning you into a game can really be like like then you you're playing against yourself and it's it's a lot more fun when it's when you're the one who's putting the restrictions on you and not some outside force.

I think the game piece is one element, but I think putting IT on autopilot as much as possible, like if you can reduce the amount of will power you have to exert to follow the plan, IT became so much easier to stick with the plan.

Like again, when I when I was A W two employee and I talked about this in the podcast for I think I talked about to know money, but I had a bunch of different big accounts that were kind of replicating the envelope system. And when I got paid, I literally had a direct deposit set up for every single account. So there is a certain amount of my paycheck that went into the mortgage account.

There is a certain amount of my page that went into utilities. There is a certain amount that went into you just fund money for tony and his wife. There was money that in into groceries, that in into gas every single month I had zero brain power that went into quote and budgeting.

Then I just had to make sure I was spending from the red account. And IT made IT so much easier for me to say discipline because I did not have to think about IT. So the more you can do that with their personal finances.

the easy did they work to plan. absolutely.

I think that goes along with spending habits to the easier IT for you to spend. So I saw this real the other day of this girl sitting in bed on her computer, and he is like, I am going to buy this. And then IT says, like, input your credit card and SHE like falls out of the bad, closes your computer.

And I think that is the same exact way for me if I go to buy something and my rated card information isn't already saved in there and I just have to hit by now, I am not going to get up and go find my credit card, get IT out of my car ever IT is come back at input IT. I'll just like, you know, I never mind. I am I going and like that right? There is just such a simple thing of like the convenience to purchase things is so easy having your information say there's know you go to check out some places and there's like five different options of how to pay for this vivo, paypal.

You square like all these different things that you could have credit cards saved in and makes IT so easy that delete your credit card from everywhere if you are having that problem, but making those online purchases because IT is and lack your your credit card in your put IT somewhere in the safe where you physically have to go. Or you know you ve seen the people that put in the black of eyes. So it's like an emergency. You have to see out your credit.

Or if you want to buy something to buy, like one click to buy, there is literally no friction there, which is insane. To good point.

I have advocated for a long time if you're having trouble with your online purchases and your amazon purchases cancel prime. I'm on amazon and I look, I know you there's a button sort by prime. If it's not on prime, i'm not buying IT. But if I had a problem with buying stuff on amazon all the time, cancel prime because when I see, oh, shipping is five dollars nope, i'm not picked five dollars for shipping.

I'm with i'm like that with insecure. If that's what I need to cancel my scripts ping too because it's like, oh, you know, this would be really good for dinner let me instruct this and i'll make this or whatever now it's going to be like, you know what kids i'm sorry, no milk for your cereal. I didn't have time to go carding. Well, mindy, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of real state rookie. Where can people find you and reach out to you for more information?

I am all over everything at mini. At B, P, is my handle. However, I am really terrible at instagram.

So email me, mindy, at bigger pockets for questions about finances. You can listen to my show. Bigger pockets, money. We talk about money all the time, and I love talking about money and real state and the intersection between the two. So please, please, please read out.

I love to talk about this stuff. Well, man, day, thank you gun for coming on and sharing your a experience with all of our listener's name. Thank you having me I am also in his tony and will see guys on the next epsom of a real state burkey.