BiggerPockets Podcast helped us make a disaster into dollars

[Lindsay Brake]

This is a story about how my husband and I stacked the concepts we learned from financial podcasts- live in flipped, travel hacked, BRRR, buy and hold rental real estate

I was inspired to write this after hearing the BiggerPockets Money podcast #69. Liz’s financial journey was destabilized and then strengthened by personal tragedy, and so was mine. My husband and I were pretty typical, two kids, two car loans, one income and one lovely house in the country. We were covering expenses, which included financed furniture, but not making big strides towards any particular financial goals.

In the summer of 2017 big things happened. I decided to rejoin the workforce. My kids are super social and they were always begging to see more friends, so off to pre-k they go and off to work I go to cover the cost. I took a sales job and received a car as a benefit. I was able to sell my personal vehicle for the same amount as the loan. I also received a long commute so I had a lot of time to find podcasts like Dave Ramsey, Afford Anything, Mad Fientist, and Bigger Pockets.

A couple weeks later our family home, and our financed furniture, sat full of **** water 5ft deep for over a week during Hurricane Harvey. Our Texas county got 60” of rain in a weekend, the levees north of us breached and the storm surge in the gulf south of us didn’t allow it to drain. Now is where we count our blessings. We were safe at a friend’s home. We had NFIP flood insurance. We both have salary positions and understanding employers so our income was not interrupted. We have a great support group of local friends and far away family.

So we ripped our home down to the studs and we became unintentional Real Estate Investors starting with a live-in flip. We used our contents insurance money and immediately paid off the furniture and mattress that is now moldy and chopped up in little pieces by the side of the road and paid off the other car. Now we are homeless and possessionless but have no debt except the mortgage. To get started on repairs we opened up a rewards card that had a nice introductory bonus points, 0% APR for 18 months and 1.5% cash back on everything and got to work. We put every material cost on that card and after our big project was done we celebrated with 4 round trip tickets to Orlando and 4 round trip tickets to Las Vegas all on points!

After over a year of work on the house and listening to podcasts on my commute to my day job, we sold our home and moved on from the Great Flood. We bought our home in 2013 for $72 /sqft and sold it for $100 /sqft without coming out of pocket for any repairs. With the leftover insurance money and the increased value in our home, after selling we bought a new primary residence outside of the flood risk area. It’s another live-in flip because apparently live-in flipping is a lot like birth, you remember the great outcome and have amnesia about how uncomfortable it really is in the moment. But buying the worst home in a great neighborhood and making it the best home in a great neighborhood that you actually get to live in is pretty fun I guess once you get the plumbing and electrical sorted. We also had enough leftover to pay cash for a Class A single family rental property in the same neighborhood that we are living in. My husband and I are both happy with our day jobs at the moment but want to continue to buy and hold rental cash flowing real estate as part of our overall retirement portfolio. First we are going to pay off our mortgage on our primary residence. This may be a surprise to you because it was to us but getting the claim money from the insurance company was much easier than getting it released to us from our mortgage lender. I want the security to know that if we ever fall on hard times again, we own our home outright and will have a place to live. And hopefully in the next 10 years we will have many many places we own that we could live in a pinch. Right now I consider us half free because our spending is less than half of one of our incomes, so either of us could walk away from our job without crippling our family. It has been an incredible attitude shift so far knowing “I am here because I want to be and not because I have to be” and I’m excited to continue to work towards complete financial freedom.

BiggerPockets Money showed me how to look at my primary residence as an opportunity. The hosts and guests made me realize that FI is important even if you don't want to RE just yet and how to use real estate to get there. How has BiggerPockets Money podcast changed your life?