From Copywriter to Investor: Samantha's Real Estate Journey Real Estate Revolution Podcast | Ep 14

Coming up on this episode of the.

Real Estate Revolution, where do we start? Like, I know that there's obviously getting all the like, agreements and titles and that, but it's like, do we just have a meeting together? Like, do we want to look for a long term, like rental property or I don't even know what that would look like. Or like, the pros and cons of like, partnering.

Welcome to the Real Estate Revolution. I am Steve Valentine and I am glad you're here. Today we've got a special guest, Sam Montablano. She is a new member of the Limitless Circle and she has some great questions we're going to get into about where to start the investment journey, what to do with her kids and hey, what we can do to speed up that investment process and really protect ourselves. And we also got into the conversation about a guest homeowner property and how to create some income. So this, this podcast is full of a dynamic information, so you don't want to miss it. This episode is brought to you by Lawyers Title, our friend in the title business here in Phoenix, Arizona. They are also partners with Fidelity Title. Strike that Fidelity thing. This episode is brought to you by Andrew Caram with Edge Home Finance. He is one of our preferred lenders and sponsors of this podcast. If you need anything from Andrew, his information is below in the show. Not. Let's kick this off. Let's go. Welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Revolution. This is where we're bringing on guests and they're asking the questions and I'm answering and helping create a strategy. Today I've got a new member of the Limitless Circle, which is our community where Wendy and I are teaching people how to invest in real estate. We're also talking about life, legacy and how to build wealth through real estate. Welcome, Samantha, how are you?

Thank you, I'm great. I'm happy to be here.

Absolutely. So Samantha, like fill us in. What do you do for a living?

Yeah, so I am a copywriter. Specifically the last over three years I've specialized in email copywriting and now slowly ventured, I'm still doing that and like blog content strategy and things like that. But I am working on my first book, ghostwriting project right now.

Awesome.

For a client. So that's what I do. I mean I've always done part time hours with that because I also have three and a half year old twin daughters. So you know the balance between double trouble at three. Yes. Oh man. The threes are testing us in new ways. But they're so Cute.

They're so cute until they're not.

Yeah, it's definitely that, the balance. But I'm excited to talk with you today because it's just a conversation my husband and I have been having like over and over again of really making sure. Like, we both recently turned 30 and it was kind of like a wake up call for us of, you know, realizing all the shoulda, coulda, wouldas like that we made in our 20s. We got married when we were like 23. We've been together a long time and just have, you know, continued to like grow up together, really. And it was like, okay, where do we want to be when we're 40? Like, I feel like these next 10 years are, it's just like a different sense of urgency and also like having our daughters and really like what we are.

You know what's kind of crazy about that comment that you made is that, you know, we, we just turned 30 and, and where are we gonna be out when we're 40? Is that generationally, that thought process has changed immensely.

Yeah.

You know, when you, when you talk to people that are in their 50s and 60s, they typically didn't start thinking about, you know, the life that they wanted to lead. They were working, they were doing things. A lot of my older investors, I have those conversations with them and it wasn't a thought process until their kids were in college or out of college. Like, one of my main investors, you know, he didn't start really thinking about retirement, what life would be, look like or would look like until he was almost 50.

Wow.

And he's like, okay, so I'm going to work for the next 20 years to get to the retirement that I want rather than what you're talking about, which is my girls are three and what do I want life to look like for my family and my 13 year olds in 10 years? Like, what is a life going to look like then? And so I love that thought process that we're talking about earlier, which is something that I absolutely love to strategize with people, which is while we're on this call today is, you know, where are we going next? Like, how do we take our earned income and turn it into future passive income? And so I think those are some of the questions we're going to get into. So I'll let you lead the conversation and let's jump in and see what we got.

Yeah, yeah. So I've always known, both me and my husband, like, we've known we want to invest in real estate. It's just a matter of how and when. So we bought our first home. Let me think. Sometimes time is hard. It was October. Yeah. October 2020. We bought our first home, North Phoenix. Lived there. And then it was just, I think, locationally, like, both my parents and my in laws are in Rio Verde area, and we're just constantly driving back and forth because we don't. We don't have our girls in a daycare or school. Like, we'll likely homeschool them. And we're blessed that we have. Both of our parents are very, like, involved, and they're basically our childcare, you know, help for them. So we love the Rio Verde area. And we're like, we. It just started with an idea, and we're like, let's just see what's available, see if it's even possible for us to maybe get out there. And then it happened really quickly, and we ended up selling. We found a home here that was almost done being built, a new build. Sold our. Put our house on the market in North Phoenix, sold it, and it was kind of like, at the peak, we made a great profit. We bought it for 3.99, sold it 625, like, cash offer, and then ended up getting this house out here. And it happened all in a matter of probably, like, two weeks. And looking. Looking back, there's moments where I'm like, the first home. Like, I wish we could have kept it instead of selling it. It's such a great rental home. But at the time, it was like, we want to get out there. We don't know. Like, right now it's working and everything is working out, and God is, like, keeping the doors open. So we. We did it and we moved out here and. But now we're like, kind of at this point where it's like, we don't necessarily have a lot of, like, the cash flow to invest in, like, another property right now.

Okay.

That's why I'm excited to just talk to you and, like, see. See what kind of, like, creative opportunities are out there. But that's kind of just the backstory of, like, where we're at in terms of.

And I love that. And if you don't mind me breaking this down for a second, is that this is where I think people get a little misguided. Is that what you wanted to accomplish by moving out to Rio Verde? You felt like you had to sell your house to do that, correct?

Mm. Yeah.

Okay. But my question is, the person that you hired, was there any questioning of, can I get an Equity line, Can I do a cash out refinance? Is there a way to do both of these and keep it? Or was it simply, yep, I got to sell my house to do this? Yeah, I like to ask that question. And it's not to, like, you already are having a little bit of FOMO of like, I should have kept that house. Right. Whether it peaked and it came back down. If you bought it in 2020, you probably had a stupid interest rate on it.

Yeah.

You had a ton of equity in it that essentially could have been capitalized and still kept the property as a rental and moved it, you know, to the Rio Verde property. Now, there's some complications to that.

Right.

And it's always like, I had a conversation with somebody this morning who's 29 years old. They're like, I want to sell my house. Like, has anybody talked to you about keeping it? So this is, this is like the prime example of I like to look at things and go, okay, if we had met, I want to talk you and your husband. What was your husband's name?

Vince.

Vince. So I'm going, Samantha and Vince. Have you guys thought about what life looks like at age 50? And if we could keep this house and there's a strategy for it, would you do it? It's going to stretch you. Right. And sometimes we need a little bit of that push. Because what I'm doing in that sense is I'm going to talk myself out of a job.

Right.

Because here's the crazy part. If you go back to it and don't do this because you'll cry.

Yeah.

If you go back to it, you're like, God, I spent $40,000 selling my house. That was equity. And I could have borrowed against it and moved it if somebody would have just showed me how to do it. Right. So that's happened. Now let's fast forward, right? How much. How much equity out of that first property? Which, by the way, you, you did great buying in 2020. Right. You bought right before everything, you know, shit hit the fan. And then you capitalized on it, which is awesome. And you also capitalized on the fact that you guys probably sold it after living in it for two years. So you walked away with a couple hundred thousand dollars tax free, which is awesome. Well, if you didn't know, I've released my first book and published it is available on Amazon, Limitless Real Estate Strategies. I wrote this for, for anybody in the real estate business. I don't care if you're a real estate agent, lender, wholesaler investor. This will help you change and break some myths that you think are out there. It will also change your life, change your legacy, and ultimately help you build wealth while creating win win strategies. So pick it up on Amazon today.

Yeah.

So now my question is, did you put all of that down on the new property?

We put like 15% down on the property. So we kept about, after doing that, I think we had about not 80 to 90,000 left after doing that. And then the other thing of looking back, I think we, since it was a new build, like we ended up, you know, putting in a wrought iron fence like all around our property. And we had never, we never bought furniture like in our life. So we bought new furniture and like, things just added up really quickly and we spent more money than we were planning to. And looking back, I was like, I have to, I'm, I battle that sometimes of like the trying not to look back and like be upset, but just continuing to learn from it and move forward. But it's hard sometimes in the moment. And one of my goals was keeping like a chunk of the money that we made to then be able to invest in another property. And I feel like we just got caught up in the excitement of like a new home. And we're so happy living out here. But, you know, it's just that. Okay, here's where we're at. Yeah.

Here's the cool part that I want you to like really share with Vince is that even though maybe we could have done something different.

Yeah.

But I want you to look at that first house and where you guys moved to and the things that happened is that real estate itself allowed you to make that upgrade.

Yeah.

And it's not only an R O L, it's an roi. So we've got return on investment. We've got return on life.

Yeah.

And when you think about what you were able to do, you didn't go into debt to buy furniture or put rod iron fencing and those types of things. Right. That real estate still provided you that ability to do those things which has given you return on life. Especially when you're talking about twin three year olds.

Yeah.

There's, there's enough return on life just in that saying itself. Right. But to be close to your parents and those types of things. So there is still some things there that I would never look back and go, I wish we would have done something different. There's no regrets. Right. You got to look back and go, okay, could we have done something different? Maybe, you know, but, but we really don't know, but what I can tell you is looking at is, like, how well you guys did do. And now you've got some great equity in your property out there. Your kids are happy. Life is easier because you're not driving 45 minutes. One way to go. See your parents with your kids. Like, there's some other things there that are beneficial. So let's, let's not, let's not take that away from, from what you guys did do. Right?

Yeah.

So. So now it's looking at. So you put some money down. How much equity do you think is in your current primary residence?

That means how much is, like, paid?

So what you. What you think the value is versus what you owe on it?

I think we have probably over a hundred thousand, like, in equity, I think, or more. Because we bought it for five. I mean, sorry, 659. Okay. Is what we bought.

And then you put 15 down. And what do you think it's worth right now? Just throw a number out there. It doesn't have to be correct.

I'm not maybe, like, it's hard right now with Rio Verde and like, I'm not sure with, with the water.

Okay, I'm going to throw a number.

And you throw it out. Because I'm not sure.

This is, for example, sake. And because we're on a podcast, I want to go too deep into the personal info, but let's just say you bought it for 650. It's worth 750 now.

Yeah.

And you had put 15% down, which is close to $100,000. So let's say you have $200,000 in equity on the property, right?

Yeah.

Now you're going, okay, we have $200,000 equity, and you guys bought in 21.

It's 20. 23, 20 last year, 22.

22.

Because in June. Yeah, in June it'll be a year.

Okay, so let's say you have $200,000 equity. Right. You want to start investing in real estate. So there's a couple of different ways we can do this. One of the things that's really big on this, which I will make a connection off air, but for those of you out there is like, hey, if I have equity in my house, where do I tap into it without messing with the interest rate? Right. And so there's, there's what's called a home equity line of credit, or a HELOC is what some people refer to now on owner occupied, you can set this up. And the banks, depending on the credit unions or the Banks, they'll do anywhere between, you know, 80%, 90% loan to value, which is going to include your first mortgage. So just taking the quick numbers, you could probably get a line of credit for about 70 or $80,000 against your primary residence. Now, when you do this, it's essentially setting up a credit card against the equity on your property. Right. But what it does do is it starts to prepare you for opportunity when it arises. And this is when. When you're starting to think about where you and your husband want to go, which is, hey, we want to invest in real estate. So we want to start thinking about, do we want to buy a rental property, do we want to flip something? Right. You're starting to have those questions, which is one of the reasons you guys jumped into the limitless circle is, you know, where are we going next? Right?

Yeah.

One of the things that's really important is always being prepared for opportunity. Not only in mindset, which you guys are working on, but it's also in. Okay, if. If I asked you right now if. And what does Vince do, by the way?

He works for a company as a health coach. So he works full time from home. Yeah.

Okay, so let's say that Vince has a coaching client. He's on a call with them, and they're like, oh, my gosh, you know, they. They live in Phoenix and they're like, you know, my mom just passed away and I'm not sure what to do with this house. You know, and you heard me on the call last week, you know, talking about this. That should instantly perk Vince's ear of like, wait, well, what do you got? What are you trying to accomplish? Now, that's great in theory, but if you're not prepared with where my resources are going to come from, then you're never going to capitalize on it. So we want to do all the things to kind of push into. How do we prepare for those things? Right. One of the things you can do if you have a lot of equity in your house or some equity in your house is call local credit union in Phenix. We highly recommend Bell Bank. I've got a great rep over there. That takes about 14 days to set up an equity line. You don't have to go spend it. And by the way, do not set up an equity line and go consolidate debt. That's not what we want to do. We don't want to move equity out of the house into something just to reduce the bills. And right now, you're probably not going to reduce the bills much by doing that because of interest rates. But what it does do is it gives you the ability to be prepared if the right thing comes along to invest. And I think it's really important to see is, like, even though you and Vince might have a little bit of regret of not keeping that property, there's never a wrong time to start the process.

Yeah.

Because I assure you that you can catch up very quickly, you know, and you guys are on that mindset track of, okay, we want to be here. This is part of what we want to do for retirement. So how do we do it? Right.

Yeah.

So you guys are. You guys are on all the right tracks. You join the limitless circle. We're having this conversation right now, and it's kind of like, what's next? And I think some people, they start the process of thinking about it, but they don't follow through with being prepared or get connected with somebody that can help guide them through. Like, what's next?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's 100% why, like, we're in it and just wanting to make sure we can have our ducks in a row. And we also have the possibility of. Vince's dad has always, you know, had the offer out there for us if we ever wanted a partner. He has a lot of experience in real estate, too, just from the past. And so that. That's an opportunity there. I would just. What are the opportunity. Yeah, so it's just like, where. Where do we.

Where do you start?

Where do we start? Like, I know that there's obviously getting all the, like, agreements and titles and that, but it's like, do we just have a meeting together? Like, do we want to look for a. A long term, like, rental property or. I don't even know what that would look like. Or like, the pros and cons of, like, partnering? I'm not sure.

Well, so it's. There's such a great thing. So I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna spin this a little bit from the standpoint of exactly how we're working with our kids to partner with them on their first properties.

Okay.

Which is, hey, we're gonna partner on this. Somebody's either providing financing or down payment or something of that nature, and we're gonna do it together, which means we're gonna split the equity. We're gonna split the negative and the positive. Right. There's some months that might be negative, some months might be positive. So we have to be prepared for both those.

Yeah.

And we wanna know what the plan is. Is it for long term or short term. Right. So now there's a lot of people that would take that partnership and go, well, let's, let's go flip homes. Vince's dad has some money, we can go find a flip, and then we can manage it. And it doesn't go well.

Yeah.

Right. And now everybody is sour in your situation. As much as it would be great to go find a flip. My question is between you and Vince and Vince's dad.

Yeah.

Who's managing contractors, who's managing budgets, who's really doing this? Right.

Yeah.

Versus, are we finding something that needs a bunch of work that we can flip and refinance and keep as a rental? Because that's, that's where the most money is made, because that's where equity is given. Right. So remember I told you earlier, like, let's not cry about, you know, all the money I paid to real estate agents to sell my house. Same thing happens on a flip. You pay all these commissions and closing costs, and the market's a little different. And next thing you know, you spent 10% of your equity selling the house, rather than 10% keeping it in there as equity and refinancing out of it, you know, so that you can keep it. So I think it also has to do with some of our conversation, you know, in our first call in the Limitless Circle, which was, you know, wouldn't it be cool if. Right. And so starting to think about, you know, at. At what age you guys, you. You made the, you made the comment about age, right? So at 40. So in 10 years, how many homes would you want to own and how much passive income do you want to start to generate at age 40? At age 50, how many homes does that look like? And so there's this thing that we're gonna do in Limitless Circle called Dream Life Budget. And we started to get into it a little bit, which is at age 50, how much income do we really need or want to create the life that we want to live?

Right.

And once we can put a number to that, then we can start reverse engineering with, okay, well, we need to own 10 homes free and clear, or 20 homes leveraged that produce X amount of cash flow per month by the age of 50. How do we get there?

Yeah.

And we start working that backwards. Right. And so you and Vince have some great things. Right? And this is, this is where it gets a little complicated, but because you guys are both technically self employed, there are some amazing things that we can structure around some of this. That is Going to help get you there. Yeah, right. So that's the important part is that you have the ability to generate more income. So when you say hey, you know, we want to generate X amount of passive income, well that's going to transition into well, how many clients do I need to serve and how much income do I need to generate inside my business? What does Vince need to generate in order for us to buy a house one a year? How much money is needed there? Right, right. And so we start like really grinding it out because there is a purpose and a passion behind it in order to drive what's next. And here's why that's important. I have seen so many entrepreneurs where their income starts increasing, their, their business starts going great and next thing you know they're upgrading their primary residence, they're buying bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger trips and nobody's setting side a little bit to go invest in one house a year. And by the way, long term rentals are not sexy. They are boring. They spin in the background and sometimes they can be a royal pain in the rear end. But knowing that somebody else is paying those properties off over time and in 10 years, if you own 10 properties, what does it look like for life? What if you could sell two of those properties and pay two off? Like there's so many moving parts to it. If, if that makes sense as to like where do we want to go?

Yeah, no, it's true. And that's I think something we. Because I've been thinking about like the dream life budget and it's like Vince and I have talked about it briefly but it's like we have our idea but it's almost like that mind, like that internal mindset of like am I, is this like too big? Is it not realistic? Like I also don't like putting. I would rather have a larger goal and fall short of that than a smaller goal and miss it. But it's, yeah, just getting.

So tell me the number. That's why it's a dream. Right? What's the number?

I think by the time for quote retirement of like passive income would be, I mean the, the least amount we would say is like 30,000amonth. But I've always had like the vision for at least like 50 or more is truly like part of that reasoning is because they want to be able to just impact more. Like I truly believe like the more income we make, like my tool, you.

Know, great mentor Chris Harder says when good people make great money, they do great things. Yeah, right. And that, that is Truth. Right. It's. It's not about us. It's about what we can impact. Because while you might not need 50 grand a month to live on, think of all the cool shit that you could do and the people you could impact with $50,000 a month.

Yeah.

Even if you're still working.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

And, you know, I want to remind everybody that, you know, when you get to that point of creating that passive income retirement is not an age. It's a number in which you have income coming in that you don't have to work unless you want to work. Becomes a. It becomes a hobby that you get paid for rather than something you have to show up and do. Because if I don't, I can't pay my bills. That's what we want to get to. Right. So maybe. Maybe 30 grand is the number that gives you and Vince the ability to go, you know what? If we don't want to work today, we don't have to. But if we do, we can increase this and we can keep going. And by the way, I don't know about you, but I'm like, if I didn't have anything to do at age 50 and I had all that money coming in every month, I would be bored out of my mind.

Right, Right.

One of the reasons I love doing these things, like, there's passive income coming in and we own properties and we're still doing the real estate stuff, but it's because I truly enjoy what I do and I love having these conversations with. You know, I'm hoping that the advice that I give you at age 30 is advice that sticks, because I wish somebody would have, like, beat it into my head at age 30, because had they, I would have been prepared for the downturn in the market when all the foreclosures happened. And I definitely would have probably been retired on an island somewhere right now. Right. But I missed it because I wasn't in the mindset of it.

Yeah.

So. But real estate isn't the only piece when it comes down to it. And I'm sure you and Vince have explored other options, like, what else can we invest in? You've got some stuff in stock, you've got some stuff in real estate, but the goal is, is to look at some things and go, if we have X amount of income per year, you know, and Vince being in the health coach business. Right. Which my brother is big in that industry as well, it's like, okay, we have this money coming in. Can we put aside so much per quarter for the Next down payment. And if we do that once a year, and now we're prepared for that down payment, now we can go buy one rental a year. And by the way, you can't time the market perfect. You're never going to. The goal is to not buy things, just to buy things, but to buy things maybe a little marginum, maybe a little equity, maybe they need some repairs. And that's where we want to start. Right. Is that mindset of we're going to put aside some money so that every year we're ready to buy another rental property or we are prepared for when the right property comes up.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's what I think we. Because so with his job, he is employed and has like his set like salary. So my. Whether it's. If he picked up just other random work somehow to bring in extra income with my income, I have more of the flexibility to like increase or not. And I think it's finding that balance right now of like, I could push harder if I wanted to, but also the season being that I'm in with like my daughters being young and I still am and I'm the primary like caretaker really of them right now, even though, you know, Vince just doesn't have like the flexibility that I do. So it's that constant like how much do I push or not? Because I still want to be like a present happy mom, you know, and not. My goal has always been to never work more than like 20, 15 to 20 hours.

Okay, that's, that's amazing. So let's, let's talk about that for a second. Actually, I wish Wendy was on this call because. And we may have to do something different because this is where Wende went down this path is, you know, Wendy was a real estate agent. You know, we worked together, we did all those things, but we had kids. She wanted to step back so that she could be the mom and still do some work, but be present as a mom and a wife. And so when you look at. And I'm just going to draw this out because here's the cool thing, there's going to be a time like let's draw these timeframes real quick. And I'm probably going to botch this and my wife can correct me later. But these are the conversations we've had and I'll kind of give you a little time lapse of our life is like Wendy was in real estate. Our kids were little, so we didn't have twins, but they might as they were close enough right. They were 1 and 3. She wanted to be a mom. And you know, when they were like 4 and 6, they were going to preschool. And so Wendy started trying to find some place that she could find her identity in her work. For this reason.

Yeah.

She knew that once the kids got old enough and they were in school more and they didn't need her as much, she would look back and go, okay, they're 12 and 14. Who the hell am I now?

Mm.

I don't have anything now. You have something. You have your copywriting, those types of things which you can do. You don't have to do it in a crazy way right now.

Yeah.

But you're creating yourself an identity that you can work around being a parent because the parent is the full time thing. But here's the cool part. You're building your identity. You're going to create clients, you're going to create your business. And you have this path because believe it or not, 10 years from now, when the girls are 13, they aren't going to need you as much. And you're going to have that eight hours a day when they're at school and then they're going to be in sports and some of the other things.

Yeah.

Now you have this peace of mind that now I can, I can press fast forward on this and I can put it on steroids. Because you're building it slowly and you have time to build it slowly, which is amazing. Right. We don't have to go at light speed and sacrifice those years of our kids where you're at. So just like, don't, don't look back regret wise. Like we talk about selling that house and don't look at like, am I missing out on something while I'm raising my kids? Because you have the best of both worlds. You don't have to go clock in somewhere. You don't have to go drop your kids off at daycare at 6am while somebody else takes care of them for 12 hours and then go pick them up and be completely tired. Right. You can work into this over the next 10 years to where all of a sudden that 10 years is up. You're like, Sweet, I got eight hours a day to grind. I've got a clientele, I've built up, I built a business, I have all the things and now I can crush it. Right. And then we can speed up what we're talking about.

Yeah.

But until then, over the next 10 years. What if over the next 10 years, you guys loved parenting? You created a great life that you love with your kids and your husband. And we bought two or three homes in that 10 years.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Sometimes we look at things and we're like, we want to speed it up. But sometimes speeding up causes a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. And I'm just here to encourage you, like, don't buy into that. Like, I have to do this now because if I don't do it now, it's going to be a problem. But it would be great if like, hey, we bought one house every two years. Maybe that's the goal.

Yeah.

How do we save enough money for a down payment and be prepared for a house every couple of years?

Right, right.

And do we know what we want to buy?

Right.

And so I think that those are some of the things that I would kind of lead, guide and direct you in. And then, you know, there's, there's some other really great things and avenues which we're going to talk a lot about is like, so let me back this up just a little bit. Is Vince self employed or CW2 at the company he's working with?

No, he's W2.

So you have the self employment income. Right. Which is good because we want to keep that and we want to keep driving that because there's, there's some cool benefits. Right. To where. Okay. As things start to make money or things start to progress and the girls get older, we start looking at investing in the girls as an investment strategy. Yeah. Because there's things like whole life insurance policies. There are things like paying them through the company, which we talked a little bit about the other day on the call. Did any of that kind of blow your mind when we were talking about putting the kids on payroll and some of the things that we did.

Yeah, yeah. And I have heard of that before and that's like, I think it's, it's definitely in like, I know they're a couple years away from that, but yeah, it's just I feel like grateful that we have that like already and we can just put.

Yeah. And there's, there's some little things like even the girls, where they're at. I don't know what the exact dollar amount is, but. And this is such a morbid thing to talk about, but we've all known those people where unfortunately something has happened to their kids or when their kids get older, something happens to them health wise and they can't get health or life insurance. So whole life policies are ways that you can invest minor amounts right now that gives a life Insurance policy. That is something that creates a cash value down the road, which is something we did with our kids. And so there's like these little tiny things. Right. Maybe we're not ready to buy a house right now, but what are some other little investment things along the way that we can be doing to where we are creating some of those habits along the way?

Mm. Yeah. That's something I keep hearing about because we both have term life insurance. But then the. The whole life is what you're talking about of putting.

Yep.

Is something we definitely want to just ourselves and look into.

Yeah. The whole life. Which I can connect you with, with my financial person that does the whole life policies for us. It took me a long time to understand it.

Yeah.

And what's insane about the whole life insurance policies is that it's protected from lawsuits. There's a bunch of different benefits from it. Right. It gives a cash value that you can borrow against, depending on what you've put into it. And then there's a death benefit, obviously. And so when we started doing it with the kids, you know, they're insured for life. Like, my boys both have several million dollars worth of life insurance. Nobody will ever decline them. Like, if they went to go get life insurance at age 30 and somebody's like, oh, well, you're smoking or you're in bad health, we can't do life insurance for you. That life insurance will carry with them forever because it's whole life. Right. So that death benefit will be with them until they're 80, until they die.

Yeah.

Right. And we're going to invest in it for seven years, and then we don't have to invest anything else in it. And now you think about the girls. They're. They're three, and I don't know what age you can actually do the whole life policies with the kids.

Okay.

But with our kids, we did it at 16 and 18, and now there's money in those accounts that we've invested that they can borrow against. If they want to start a business, they want to do something different. Like there are some avenues there. And all those things are assets for the family trust. Right. So the beneficiary, if our kids pass, which it's a morbid thing to talk about, but the way it's structured is it's a family asset, so it goes back into the trust, and so it's protected from that standpoint. But, I mean, I don't know about you, but I have had some personal friends where their kids have passed away, and it's been really hard financially, emotionally. Right. Having to pay for things. So this is one of those small investment types and it's kind of crazy. Like, I think the first policy we did with them was, I think it was a half million dollar policy and I think it was $100 a month. Right. So because they're in good health and all those things, you can do those things. So it's also a great place for you and your husband to consider investing in. Right. And it doesn't have to be massive amount. It's. It goes back to, you know, something that I always say, which is a dripping faucet fills a bucket. We want to do a bunch of small things. They're going to gradually get us to that point of retirement or having enough money that's passive that we don't have to work for.

Yeah, yeah. I've never thought about that for kids either. And looking into like what age we can do that for them.

Yeah, it's insane. Like, I started looking at it from a standpoint of, I think, I think when the kids were 12 and 14, I had done like the Gerber life insurance plans, which was like, I don't know, 20 bucks a month. So at least gave a little bit of life insurance, especially when they started driving. Right. And again, it's a morbid thing. But guess what? Life happens and if we can be prepared for it. And I'm a big fan of like insuring and over insuring everything because when shit hits the fan, you want to have something. And so many people think of insurance as just a cost. But I mean, I was thinking about it this morning and I can tell you right now, like, like, I'm sure you guys have health insurance and car insurance and those types of things, but there are three times in my life that had we not had the proper insurance, I'm not sure exactly what would have happened. Right. The first time was in 2009 when I broke my neck. So I was doing a mad mud run. I was 50, 50 shot of being paralyzed.

Wow.

Right. I crushed C5, C6 in a race and I was in the hospital for a week. I got seven pins put in my neck. But had I not had health insurance during that time, that would have been a disaster. You know, multiple times in car accidents, you know, insurance has covered. We're dealing with one right now. And because we pay for extra insurance, it's covering some of the things that are going on. And the third thing was my mom forced my dad at the age of 55 to get term life insurance. And it was expensive. It was like a thousand dollars a month. He wasn't healthy, but it was expensive. Right?

Yeah.

But unfortunately, my dad passed away seven years later, and had he not had that term life insurance, I'm not sure exactly what would have happened to my mom and her business had he not had that term policy.

Right.

But what if early on in their life, somebody had done the whole life policy and it was there?

Yeah, right.

And it was set up. So these are the little things. And you guys are right at that spot where we can make some small adjustments that make huge ripples down the road.

Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely.

I feel like I've just been yapping.

No, it's good. I'm just like, taking it in and I'm like, I need to write. Write it down.

Well, it's going to be recorded, so you can go back and write it down all the way. What are the questions did you have, you know, regarding this journey?

I did. I'm looking at my. What do you think would be the. I mean, I can look. Look at, say we have like, a goal of how much we want to have saved for, like a down payment. And I don't know if like a partner. Say if we wanted to partner with Vince's dad on something like, is it. Have you seen it where it's typically like you split the down payment and everything is like 50, 50, like expenses and that, or I think it's just the goal of like, what should be our goal that we want to have saved. Like, I know I can do the math of like home prices and say 10 down or. I heard. I was listening to another one of your podcasts and I heard you talk about like a second primary home, too, and either renting that out, I think just still kind of wanting to have some sort of like, clear goal. Like, I'm very goal oriented and I'm like, I just feel like I need like a.

So let's, let's just take the average. Like, let's just say we're on a path and you're like, we want to buy a rental property. What does that look like? Okay, so let's take the. You know, I go through the buy box, which is, you know, here's the things that I would want you to look at from a buy box thing. Right. We're going to. We're going to look at price range. We're going to look at what is going to get you close to break even or cash flowing. You know, it's a little bit Tough in the current market. But if you were to buy a good enough deal with equity in it and you're a little bit of negative a month, it's not the end of the world. Right? Yeah, but let's just. If you said, hey, I want to buy a rental property this year, what does it look like? The average price, let's say in the market that I would guide you into buying a rental property is somewhere in the 3 to 350 range. Right. That's the price point we want to be at. You're going to have to put 20% down.

Okay.

Okay. On the typical. Right. We're not talking about creative. There's all kinds of other things to do. But let's just stay on the standard. Okay? I want to buy a house and I've got to put 20% down, which is about 70 grand, and that's going to give me a rental that's going to be close to break even.

Okay.

So you've got to save up 70 grand. Now, if you want to do it with a partner, it depends on what that partnership brings to the table. Okay, so could you speed it up? And here's always the thing that I love when we start talking about it is one of two things. Is that partner going to be a money partner or are they going to be an equity partner, or are they going to be both? And here's what I mean by that.

Okay?

I'm going to. I'm going to say Vince's dad is a partner in some way, shape or form. There's two ways to do it. I can either borrow money from that partner and give them a rate of return on it, whatever they're looking to do. And I'm going to utilize that money to go buy a house and I'm going to own the house, but I'm going to owe them money and I'm going to be giving them a rate of return.

Okay?

Okay. Now what that does is it's liability to you. Right. You owe them that money. Now if you partner with them, you say, hey, look, if Vince and I have a connection and we can buy a house at 10% below market and you have the cash, would you be willing to partner with us and you put the money into it, you get a ready to return on your money, but we have 50, 50 equity in it. Okay. That's another way to do it. The other way to do it is traditional financing where Everybody's putting in 10% to buy the house.

Yeah.

And now we've got a standard loan which we're both on. And we own this property as a rental, and we put it in some sort of partnership. That's a 50, 50 split. So if there's a broken AC unit on, it's $4,000. You guys both have to pony up two grand. Okay. Yeah, that's. That's what some of the different partnerships look like. Right. So those are questions for Vince's dad is like, hey, what does it look like? Do you have cash that we could borrow? Do you have cash? Do you want to invest with us? Do we want it to be a partnership? What does it look like for a long term? Right. It's a great place to start.

Yeah.

And it's also a great conversation to have because if Vince's dad or somebody you guys know has a half a million dollars in cash, they want a little bit of rate of return. You're like, okay, I found a house. Somebody just called. Their mom passed away and I want to buy it. You're now prepared to go and borrow that money to buy that house, right?

Yeah.

This is where it starts to get prepared. There's other things like you talked about. So if you. Your parents and Vince's parents that live here.

Yeah.

Okay. So if the three couples looked at something and said, hey, we'd really like to. And it sounds like you guys are all close and could actually do this together. Some families, I would highly recommend staying away from it as far as possible. But it doesn't sound like with your family. Right. You know, you've lived here. Where did you. Are you. You're not native, though, are you?

Yeah.

Are you?

I am. Okay. Yeah. I grew up.

Where did you grow up?

In Phoenix, in Fountain Hills.

Okay, so on the east side. All right. Do any of you have a spot like Muns park or Flagstaff or Show Low or Payson? Does anybody have a spot they like to go to for, like to get out of the heat?

Yeah, Heber. My parents had a cabin up there for a long time. They sold it. And then my dad actually has a. A hangar. He built a hangar up there on the airstrip. And they stay up there and they're.

Where's the plane?

I know it's coming. He's a retired pilot and he.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, he's talking about that.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Cool. I need a pilot and a helicopter to take me from the office to Munds park every Friday because I don't want to drive it anymore.

Yeah.

So here's the cool thing about that. How do we create something that's generational. In a partnership that either potentially we could vrbo. We can vacation together. There's another write off source there. Right. So there's some things like that that you could also look at.

Yeah.

So this is where we start getting creative when we start going, okay, well what does that look like if we all own a place together and you get a feel for it. So what happens is like, I mean, it's kind of crazy and I'll try not to get emotional about this, but we were up in Muns park this weekend and the very first home that we stayed in with friends in Mun's park came on the market this weekend. And at the time, Chase and Christian were one in three. Wendy and I were completely broke. Like we were lucky. We had gas to get up to Munds park to get there for vacation that weekend. Yeah, that was where the dream started for us and it has grown. You know, we talked about it on the way back from, from Flagstaff on Friday night. Like, did you ever think that we would have a place that would be so special in our hearts and so many memories with our kids and our family and our friends that we get to experience on a regular basis? That was also an investment. Right. We go back to that return on life and return on investment. And that's what started it. And so, you know, your dad's got a hanger up there or whatnot. Now you start thinking like, is this a place where I want to take my girls on the weekend and I want to start to build those memories. And by the way we talked about it earlier, what is the impact that potentially having a place like that is on friends of yours that might need a weekend away that you might be able to bless somebody. Right. And so you start thinking about all these crazy things that happen. So it goes back to that. Wouldn't it be cool if we owned a place up in Heber that we could send our friends to when they're having a hard time or maybe they need a break or they need to come up and get away from the valley. You start like really getting deep into those things and what real estate really provides from that point. It's not just the investment piece, it's the life piece. And Muns park has been got our second home return on life. I will never be able to equate like what the value is on that.

Yeah, ever.

And you guys are at that point where, you know, your girls are little and you start thinking about, okay, maybe our first investment property is a partnership with the parents, because it is only 10% down, and we could potentially go up there and start here. Right. Which is. Okay. We bought this partnership. We're going to use it every other weekend, and we're going to VRBO it the weekends. We're not using it.

Right.

Right now you've started that path, and so it serves a lot of purposes because you have multiple partners, which is great. Right. So the burden isn't all on you guys, but you're also starting the memory things. So the girls start growing up in those areas on the weekends and experiencing that during the summer, which I can tell you is amazing.

Yeah.

And it's crazy because this weekend, you know, my kids are 18 and 20 now, so we've been up there 15 years, and now they're driving up the mountain and meeting us up there and hanging out for the weekend, and it's a blast.

Yeah.

Except for my oldest managed to accomplish something that my wife have and I have never done, which is get two speeding tickets in two hours on the way down from Flagstaff. I'm not sure where he learned how to drive.

Right.

But, yeah. So those are. You know, it's crazy how we start to look at our kids. And I. I wish. Right. I wish somebody had these conversations with me when my kids were one in the three about, like, all these different little things that are an investment in them, they're an investment in your relationship with them and how the family, like, really operates together, which is a lot of fun as they grow up and you see things. And so the first property is a starting point. You might buy something bigger. You might stay in the same property forever. But it's something that we always hear from people. And I'm sure, you know, being from Fountain Hills with Payson and Sholo and things like that, like that you probably had friends that are like, yeah, we're going up to the cabin. It's been in our family for 50 years. Right. You start thinking about, what does that look like for my kids. Right. And so the path and the journey that you're talking about is all possible with those little, little steps.

Yeah. And that's something we absolutely want. Like, we've talked about that for sure. And it's something that I wish, when my parents sold their cabin, that we had, like, made a lot of memories. And over the years, they decided to sell it. And I wish, like, we could have had maybe that conversation of knowledge, of, like, could we somehow buy this? Like, how can we keep this in the family? But. But now it's Just that new conversation of us, you know, sure. Finding another. Another place. But that's definitely.

But again, here's. Here's the crazy part. This is what I'm so passionate about, is when your parents decided, like, hey, we're going to sell this.

Yeah.

Did they have a conversation? Did anybody challenge them? Like, I know you're thinking about selling this, but, yeah, what if. Wouldn't it be cool if. Right. There wasn't a challenge? Because they probably made the call to somebody, like, oh, yeah, we can sell that for you. We put it on the market, but nobody challenged their thought process and said, hey, have you thought about A, B and C? What if we did this? What if you could pull equity out of it? Right. Everybody has different seasons and reasons they do things.

Yeah.

But the question I always have is like, did somebody challenge the thought process and at least lay out the options and then give you the option to choose? Right. So at least you don't look back at it and go, I wished I would have known now what I knew then. Right. Or what I know then.

Yeah.

I always hate that saying. I always screw it up every time. Right. So, you know, that's what's awesome about where you and Vince Rat is, like, having all this information and going, okay, we have enough information to challenge every time something comes up. Like, hey, what. What should we do here? What does it look like? What does the strategy look like? Have we thought everything through or do we need to get some additional guidance on it?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think you guys are on an incredible path right now. Right. I mean, you're. You're starting in a really, really good spot. And now we just need to know how to maintain that and start, you know, letting. Turning the faucet on in multiple buckets in order to get you to that 30 to 50 or maybe, plus. Right.

Yeah.

And it's not a race. Right. It's the little things you do now that will add up to when you're 50.

Right.

And I don't remember at age 30 ever thinking about, well, when I'm 50, I want to.

Yeah.

It wasn't until I was almost 40 that I'm like, oh, God, I gotta speed this up.

Yeah.

Right. So you're light years ahead of all of that, which is awesome. So congratulations on that.

Thank you. Thanks. No, this was great.

We're just about out of time. So is there any other dying questions that you want to jump into here?

Let's see if you want. I am curious your opinion, if real quick on this, because we're thinking creatively, like, okay, how can we speed up the cash flow for a down payment? Like, where possible. We're trying to get creative outside of our jobs. Like, is there any other area to bring in extra cash flow and seed was planted of potentially taking our current home now and in like a high season where people are coming out here, like in February or something, like, and a lot of people come out here for horse shows or different things. We're thinking of potentially renting our home out for, say, a month or different parts. Turning our current home into a vacation property when it worked for us, or to capitalize on higher seasons if it was all like, properly insured and all of that. And I go back and forth on that. Like, is it utilizing an asset that we have or is it just like, should I put my energy somewhere else? Like, I. Because I know people that do it also.

And I want you to look at them. After somebody rented their house for a week and they packed all their crap up and took their three year old somewhere else. Yeah, you still gotta go live somewhere else. And, and I understand you guys could probably go stay with family, but that sounds like a huge inconvenience for everybody. Now, I will tell you this. There's this fun rule called the Augusta rule, that is you can rent your primary residence out 14 days a year without claiming the income so you don't get taxed on it.

Yeah.

Great. When the super bowl is here and all those things. But my question is, is like, do you want to go through and lock up your personal stuff, put your kids things away and worry about things for seven days to make five grand?

Yeah.

Right. Because I'm pretty sure there's other ways we could make five grand than that. Right. And so I always look at it from a standpoint of like, okay, if I didn't have kids, maybe.

Yeah.

Even if I. Even if I didn't have kids, I'd be like, I look at my house and, and we talked about it because our house isn't far from the stadium. Like, there's no way I want living somebody living here for the next 14 days. The amount of stuff that we'd have to lock up just does not sound appealing.

Yeah.

Right. Now, on that note, though, like, let me, let me post something different to you. So you guys are in Rio Verde.

Mm.

Do you have an acre property?

Mm, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Do you think you could build a tiny house in the backyard?

Yeah, 100%. Like, our property is very kind of. There's like a wash going through the middle. So there's kind of like a separate. That it feels almost like separated.

So here's the thing. Can you do something where we can add value to the house?

Yeah.

That is going to add potential income going forward. Because potentially, like, let's just take. Wendy and I are onto this new thing right now. It's kind of driving her crazy. She's like, you're gonna be the mobile home king. That's what's gonna happen. Right. So we. We started looking at manufactured homes, and we just finished our first one. It's awesome. Neither one of us really had to do anything.

Right, Right.

Because the company builds it, the contractor delivers it, installs it, and you're like, cool, I have house. Right? Yeah, you can. Like, here's the crazy part. We don't have to go through a bunch of permits and a bunch of building and plans and all these things. You could literally drop a very, very nice manufactured home as a guest home in your backyard for less than 100 grand.

Yeah.

Right.

All the permits and everything. Yeah.

If that's the thing. And you can rent that out for three months at a time for two grand a month. Like, you could speed that up pretty quick with something like that because you have the potential to do it.

Yeah.

So that's something I would kind of look at. Like, would we be willing to have a guest house in our backyard that we would rent out for monthly visitors? Weekly visitors, something of that nature. And I know a lot of people are doing very well with that. It's on site. You don't have to go far. You don't have to worry about it. If you did the manufactured home, it's brand new, it's going to have a warranty on it. It's a guest house that adds value to your current property, and you don't have to go through the whole builder thing.

And.

So that might be something we discuss is like, well, what does that look like?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So now maybe you get on vrbo tonight and you go, okay, what does 1,000 square foot house rent for per month on a monthly basis out in this area? Is it two grand is a three grand? Well, think about this. If it costs you $100,000 and you use your equity line to do it, you've just bought one rental property for a hundred thousand bucks.

Right? Yeah.

Now, if it's doing 2,000, 3,000, maybe on the weekends, whatever the case may be, like, there are so many aspects to it where you're at. Like, what does this look like?

War.

Right. So I would say, like, that's probably something I would start looking at and I can give you all the contact for like our manufactured home. And like, what would it take us to put a manufactured home back here? And we're not talking about like, everybody has the misconception, like, I'm not talking about mobile homes and trailers and things with wheels on it. I'm talking about like, these manufactured homes are super nice. They come out, they affix them to the lot. The one we just bought, it reminds both of us, Wendy and I, of the first home we lived in. It's that nice.

Wow.

It's got an island kitchen, it's got vaulted ceilings. We paid $127,000. Not installed, but for the house itself. It's 1500 square foot, three bedroom, two bath, vaulted ceilings, island kitchen.

Yeah.

But you can buy single wides, right? This is a double wide. You could buy a single wide. That's two bedroom, two bath. It's in great condition, like brand new for 70, 80 grand.

Yeah.

What does that look like?

Yeah, no, I love that because that's like a goal has always been like a casita or something over there. Like I've seen it. But that makes more sense than going through like a builder.

Yeah. All the building and permitting, like, trust me, like, I'm on to a new thing. I'm. I'm a little. My wife's a little. I'm a little obsessed with it right now. I'm like. Because we drove by a house the other day in at 7th street and Thunderbird, which is like just, just a normal regular subdivision, small lots. And I'm like, what the hell is that? Like, somebody installed a single wide manufactured home on a small lot in the backyard as a guest house. I'm like, is that possible? Yeah, because if it is, we're going to do more of it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So. And the crazy thing is the manufactured homes, you can buy them and they can be built and dropped off in 90 days. Right now. Now.

Wow.

You're lucky if you can get permits from the city right now. In 90 days.

Yeah.

So that is something that I would explore right now for you guys because I think it's potential because you have that larger lot out there and it's a great potential. Like again, you're doing two things. You're adding value to your property, putting a guest house on, and it's something you can utilize to create income.

Yeah, I love that. I definitely want a silicon to that more.

So I would definitely look at that.

Okay, cool. Great. Glad I asked that last question.

Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you for coming on and thank you for the questions. And I hope this was extremely valuable to everybody that's listening. And, Sam, I appreciate you and I appreciate you jumping in and trusting Wendy and I in the Limitless Circle and hope that, you know, anybody out there listening, jump in. And we have a great online community that we're constantly adding value from. A lot of the things that Sam went through today on the podcast that is going to be a tremendous asset for you now and in your future. So thanks for joining us, Sam. Thank you again. I appreciate your time and have an amazing night. This was an amazing podcast with Sam. I want to invite you to the Limitless Circle. This is a community that my wife Wendy and I have designed in order to bring you into the fold with a very small monthly investment that I guarantee you, you will get a massive amount of return on. So join the limitless circle@stevedvalentine.com and join our community there. Check out some of the other things I have to offer there. And let's go, let's get in and let's start building your life, your legacy and your wealth.