Seven years to the dream of being financially free!

[Jayson Cornwell]

My name is Jayson, I was raised in Idaho since I was 12. At 18 I joined the Air Force and was stationed in Korea and then Italy. I then got out of Active Duty and joined the Washington National Guard. For my civilian job, I am a Corrections Officer with Spokane County and have been doing that since 2009. 

I have a wife and three daughters ages 8, 5, and 3. I am a busy body and am always doing something. I graduated from Gonzaga with a Master's Degree in Organizational Leadership in 2012 and have turned my attention to learning about being my own boss. I recently completed my 5th deployment on the 1st of November, 2016 and have done a lot of self-reflecting about the legacy I would like to leave. 

I have under 7 years left in the military and am hoping to be financially free at that time. Currently, I am running numbers on houses and reading everything I can get my hands on. I am going to be moving forward with investing in rentals and could use any advice the BiggerPockets community would like to give!

[Scott Ellis]

Welcome @Jayson Cornwell.  I replied to your Kendall Yards post, but thought I'd chime in here as well.

First, don't despair about the current climate.  It's tight right now.  I've been watching the larger multi-family market this past year and there's maybe 1/5 of the deals that were available earlier this year.  It's similar in the smaller multi-family and single family market.  However, it'll shift again.  I imagine there will be another wave of properties come spring.

And per your goal of 7 years, I'll respectfully disagree with @Thomas S. and take the side of "Go for it!" However, for it to be a true goal, make sure your wife's on board with it.  Otherwise it'll be extremely stressful for both of you.

My goal is to double the number of doors I purchase every year over the next 4 years. Look at that concept for you and your 7 year goal:

• Year 1: You buy a single family rental. You stress out.  You're worried about the accuracy of your projections. You don't know what you don't know, but you're learning and (most importantly) you took action and did your first deal.
• 2 units: A duplex. Your first deal is the hardest, so you'll have learned a ton about financing and where your projections were faulty. Now you find a duplex and realize that you reduce your risks by having two units together to minimize the pain when one is vacant.
• 4 Units - Maybe you like duplexes, or maybe you want to reduce risk even further and purchase a 4-plex. By now you've met some other investors and are learning about hard money, private lending, or creative financing options and how it could accelerate your wealth building.
• 8 Units - Maybe you sell your initial single family and use that equity to buy two 4-plexes over the course of a year.  
• 16 doors - Ok, this is starting to seem like a daunting number, but then you realize that you've already got a good portfolio to establish trust with commercial lenders. You've also learned that bigger deals actually seem easier to fund; so you buy one 16 unit apartment complex.
• 32 doors 
• 64 doors

Admittedly, years 6 & 7 seem daunting. However, very doable if you're partnering with others on apartment deals.  

Now, using VERY simple back of the napkin math; if you stuck to this plan and average $100 profit per door per month, you'd have 127 units earning you $12,700 per month, or $152,400 per year before taxes. AND, your taxes will be greatly reduced because of depreciation and several other tax advantages for real estate investors. WOW! You could live very well in the Spokane region on $120,000 per year of passive income.

Okay.  Now it's easy to poke lots of holes in this.  And there's plenty of variables that aren't taken into account; especially on the funding side.  But for me, it's an easy way to sketch some actual numbers to the nebulous phrase "financial freedom" and how long it will take to achieve it. 

Maybe you don't get there; but I honestly believe you could get through year 5 without it being totally overwhelming—and that's still 30 units or about $36,000 a year in passive income.  While you can't retire to a beach yet, that's still life changing income.

I'd love people's thoughts on this way of ballparking things, and if there are any reasons to just throw it out all together.