Looking for Direction, Trying to help Mom retire...

[Luke Doyle]

Hey!

My name is Luke. I am 30 years old and I am located in British Columbia, Canada. I work seasonally as a tree planter and have done that for the last 12 years. My dad growing up has always been a fan of real estate and always told us to buy as soon as we can. He never really got deep into the technical side of things, his strategy was always just buy and hold. I followed his advice and bought a house 6 years ago in Kamloops. Just last year my partner and I refinanced that Kamloops house and took the equity from it to buy a short term rental in Revelstoke BC. 

I broke my ankle last year and talking to my Mom one day I found out she has ZERO plan for retirement currently 59 years old. I had nothing to do sitting on the couch all day after surgery so I started listening to audiobooks, podcasts, reading some books and watching YouTube videos. Just trying to consume as much content as possible. The problem I am running into now is that is seems there are many paths you can take in this world but choosing the right one can be very unique to each persons situation. 

So let me outline mine. 

My mom (Deirdre) and her partner (Bruce) gross about $60k a year each. They are vastly different in age and Deirdre would like to retire before Bruce. She owes about $250k on her current house and it is probably worth $650-750k. She has a basement apartment that offsets some of the costs of living right now. 

My partner and I have house in Kamloops that is functioning as a student rental. We currently owe about $500k and its worth about $750k. We have about $4000 a month in rental income with $3000 a month in expenses. The short term rental in Revelstoke was purchased for $700k with 20% down. It is our first year running it but I would estimate our annual expenses are around $40k and we will gross $50k-55k in income. 

I am somewhat at a stand still right now trying to accumulate money before I make another decision. I am going to work for a full year this year which is somewhat unusual for me being a seasonal worker. So I should be able to save quite a bit of money. I have about $20k in crypto, $5k in a wealth simple robot investing account, my partner owes me $25k that she will be paying back over the next year, and my brother owes me $30k that he will be paying back over the next year. So I estimate that at this time next year I will have  around $80-100K. 

The goal is to generate enough "passive" income that my mom can retire, obviously haha. I am just wondering what you would recommend as the best direction for us to head in. I know the first suggestion is probably going to be BRRRing but that strategy just makes me nervous because A. I am not super handy so would mostly be paying for the renos and B. I don't fully understand what are the best parts to renovate or best way to calculate ARV. I am not opposed to BRRRing and if that really is the best option I will dive deeper into it.

She would ideally retire in 5-7 years and on that short of a timeframe I was thinking it might just be best to pay down the Kamloops house so that it has no mortgage rather than trying to scale up to a lot of doors with a lot of debt in markets where it is quite hard to cashflow. I know paying down the mortgage is not something people in this community recommend ever but it just seems so simple to get us to where we need to be haha. But thats probably just the lazy way out! 

Let me know what you guys think and I look forward to your ideas.