Today on Radical Personal Finance, we interview Nicole Bryan. Nicole has a fantastic story. She began her career with very few advantages working as a teacher in the school system. However, at this point, she's managed to build financial freedom to the point where by the age of 40, she anticipates being completely financially free.

Nicole, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Nicole Bryan, Founder, Radical Personal Finance Thank you for having me. So I've invited you on. You're a listener of the show and you have your own unique financial journey to share. I love to have listeners of the show on because it profiles that you don't have to be a world famous financial expert in order to share real life experiences with other people.

So I'd love you to start simply by sharing with us a little bit about your story as it relates to money. Nicole Bryan, Founder, Radical Personal Finance Sure. I am originally from Jamaica. I came to the US when I was 13. And so we grew up pretty much in poverty, even though it didn't feel like it as a child.

Now in retrospect, I realize that we really didn't have a lot. My parents struggled a lot throughout. We celebrated when my dad would get a job. We would always like go outside and like dance and celebrate. Then I went to boarding school when I got to the States. Then to Georgetown.

And I remember when I graduated, my dad, you know, said to me, "You're going to go out and make money now, right? You're going to become an attorney or something huge where you won't ever have to worry about money again." And I was like, "Well, I'm actually going to be a teacher." He was really bummed.

I will never forget. And I said to him, "But you don't have to worry about me. I promise you I will take care of my money. I'll take care of my finances, even though I'll be making less than $30,000 a year. And I owe Georgetown a whole bunch of money." And so I think my journey started there because I actively started to educate myself on finances.

I read a whole bunch of books, Suz Orman from back in the day, anything I could get my hands on because I really wanted to follow my passion at the time, which was to teach and help kids in the inner city. But I didn't want to be a burden to my parents.

And so that's my story. Since then, I've done a whole lot with it. I started to use my summers as a teacher to do real estate first as an agent and then later as an investor. And then over time, I've really built a real estate portfolio as well as my financial knowledge that's now allowing me to provide a lot of support to friends, families, and colleagues.

And you're on the cusp of financial independence, right? Very soon. Oh my gosh, Joshua. I am on the cusp. I cannot wait. I can't tell you. I cannot wait. So is this accurate? You're on track. You're almost 40. You're on track to be financially independent at the age of 40.

And throughout your career, you've worked in public education. Is that accurate? Throughout my career, yes. I have not left the public education sphere. However, I have used some of my summers or evenings at some points when I was able to build a real estate portfolio on the side. Awesome.

So we'll get into some of those details. But first, I want to ask a question about growing up in Jamaica. So do you have any insight? What was it like to have a family income that was seasonal? You said you would celebrate when your dad got a job. What would your family's financial situation be like when he was working versus when he was not working?

Interestingly, I think it was more difficult when we came to the States, to be honest. My dad had more consistent work when we lived in Jamaica. He was a correctional officer. And so at times, there were down times, but he mostly was working. My mom's a stay-at-home mom. Times were still tough because it's Jamaica.

Income wasn't great. It was a family of four kids. We would celebrate when he would have some downtime to make his clothes because he was a tailor. So we rarely bought clothes. It was a lot harder when we came to the US. We moved to Brooklyn. We lived in an apartment.

And I felt it a lot more there. And I think it's because we had less family support. We didn't know that many people. And I think it was just more expensive to live in America. It just is. There's a lot more debt in this country. Why was his work seasonal?

Or why was his work intermittent? In the States or in Jamaica? In the States. Because he didn't really have a career. My parents didn't graduate from high school. They came here as immigrants in their early 30s. And you get a job for a while, and then you get laid off.

Or you came here in the '90s. It just was never consistent. How were they? He worked in various factories, and then he would get laid off a lot. How are they doing now? A lot better, actually. Both are doing a lot better. My parents are very driven and very hardworking.

And so even without having a high school degree, they've done well for themselves. I mean, there's just a lot to be said for getting up at 5 a.m. no matter what. Getting up on time. Going the extra mile. My parents both embody that. They just do. And I think that's a secret to their success.

My dad is a truck driver. He works a lot. He works for Amazon and does a whole bunch of stuff. He feels good about his finances. He doesn't complain about it anymore. And my mom is in the healthcare industry. She's a nursing -- a private nurse assistant. And she just gets called from all these wealthy people who always want to work with her because she's so awesome at it.

She takes care of their parents, their elderly parents, and she's great. So they're doing well. So let's go back to your story now and chart out the specific steps that you've taken that have brought you to, as we said, right on the verge of financial independence at this point.

At what age did you graduate from college, and what was your financial situation at that time? I graduated at age 22. I had just turned 22. I had about $30-something thousand in debt, student loan debt, and about $8,000 in credit card debt. But beyond that, I didn't have any other debt.

So I'd say maybe about $40-something thousand in debt. And I was working as a teacher, making about $30,000, if not a little bit less. Did you have any money or any savings to offset that debt? No way. No way. I had to pay my way through college. I supported myself through college.

So how did you live as a new teacher making a relatively low income? How did you live in order to be able to make progress toward your debt? It's a great question. I did what I think everyone should do, and what most millennials are doing now, but back in the days it wasn't that popular.

I moved back home. I moved home for about three years. And within that time frame, I paid off all of my debt. I put all my money towards my debt. And by the time I moved out, I moved out into my first home. I was about 25. I saved aggressively.

I worked every summer. And because I was teaching, I think my job paid. We had a loan forgiveness program, so they helped me with like, I don't know if it was 10% of my debt or 20%. I got some support because I was working in the inner city, and there was a loan forgiveness program, so that helped too.

What did you do during the summer to earn extra income? I taught summer school, and I got a real estate license, so I started selling houses. Tell me about that process. What inspired you to go into real estate? My dad had a friend in his 60s who owned a real estate company.

I don't know what, I don't even know how it started. He was working with someone. He came by the house, and we just started talking. He talked to me about how it worked. I had always been ambitious and liked to try new things, so I was like, "Okay, I have my summers off.

What if I try?" He said, "That would be great. You could work in my office once you get your license." And so I just, I did it. I took my, you know, when summertime came around, I did both summer school and got my license and started working in real estate.

I think mostly through him. And along the way, I decided it just made sense for me to buy my own house because of what I was learning. How many real estate transactions were you doing over the course of the years? I'm trying to get a sense of what your weekly schedule might be.

So tell me a little bit about how you integrated these two things and how many transactions you did, et cetera. That's a great question. I would say over, it depends. So during the summer, I was able to do a lot more because I had more time. So I don't know, maybe in an eight-week period, four or five transactions maybe.

Maybe four on average. I was very active. But then when the school year started, it may have been maybe four throughout the entire year. So we're talking about an extra, I mean, what, would you make three, four, I mean, four or $5,000 per transaction? How much extra money were you making?

About three, four. I was making about 15 to 20,000 extra. I remember my salary, I think maybe my fourth year into teaching or fifth year, I was making 60,000 from my teaching job. And I remember making 80,000 for the year because I had brought in another 20,000 from my real estate work.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Now you then started investing. So when did you start buying properties? I started buying, I think around 2005, around that horrible time to start buying. In retrospect, it was not the best time. I bought my first home, I paid $160,000 for it. And then a year later, I bought a townhouse down the street for 180.

This was back when banks were just giving away money. Remember those days? Indeed. You know, you could be 24 and cool as you're still going to get money from the banks. Then I bought another property for like 200,000, moved out of my first home, moved into that property, rented my first home.

And so by 2007, I had about five properties that I had purchased. And then the housing bust hit. Oh, yes. And then my properties depreciated about 40%. Depreciated, went down in value by 40%. Went down in value. That must have been not a very fun net worth statement to create after that.

Oh my gosh. I remember like around 2007, I was like, "Oh yeah, my net worth is about 300,000 and I'm like 27." I was like, "Yes, I'm on track. Millennial status is coming up." And then the following year, I was like, "Okay, I don't have any money." But the good news is that the properties were not...

The mortgage, the rents covered the mortgages. And so even though I had lost a strong equity position, my tenants were still paying the mortgage. So it wasn't the end of the world. I could still like wait it out, which I did. I think the good news at that time also is that my income was starting to increase because I became a principal for an elementary school.

And so I had like a 15, 20% pay increase. And then a couple of years later, I started managing principals. So even though my investments weren't doing well in terms of a passive income and equity perspective, my active income was increasing. And so that helped me a lot during that time.

Was the primary focus in transitioning to more of a management and leadership role the increase of income or something else? No, it definitely wasn't just the increase in income. I've always been a hard worker. I had learned a lot and I was doing really well. I was doing really well in my school.

I had transitioned to a charter school in a curriculum director position. And my second year in, the principal stepped down and the CEO approached me to become the principal. I mean, I had no experience. I was terrified. But I had been doing a lot of teacher development work as a curriculum director.

I had built really strong relationships and I was learning the industry really well from an admin perspective. And so it was a leadership role that I felt like I needed to do to push myself to become a better leader and to help even more kids, which was always the passion.

I grew up in Jamaica as a poor kid. When I was 14, I got a scholarship to go to an awesome boarding school. And as a result, I got into Georgetown and it changed my trajectory. So I always wanted to give back to kids who were from underserved areas, who were living in poverty, because my experience was that education was the way out.

So I had an opportunity to help even more kids as a principal and I did. My income went up. I actually feel like during those years, like 2008 to '11, I was working like 24/7 as a principal and getting my doctorate degree. It actually would have been a better time to invest in real estate.

I was so busy. Now, in retrospect, I'm like, "What if I had bought 10 more properties in 2008? I'd already be financially free." I couldn't focus on it because I was learning how to be a principal, how to manage adults and 450 kids, and I was in grad school getting my doctorate.

So I couldn't even... I had no extra time to do anything else. But in retrospect, financially, it would have been way better for me to have doubled down earlier and picked up more properties. I still had good credit. So during the down cycle, you basically sat to the side focusing on your academics and your job, but your portfolio continued because the tenants were paying your mortgages.

Did you start buying properties again at some point in the future? I did in 2011. What caused that change to where you started buying again? I had such a long... I'm going to try to make it short. After I purchased my fifth property, I moved... my parents had decided to start a business and they wanted me to help because, you know, to help lead that business.

It was a group home for the elderly. They wanted to purchase a property, get patients, and I would help run it with them. So I moved back in. I rented my home, moved back in with my parents to help start the business. And a week later, my dad said, "I changed my mind." Thanks for telling me now, Dad.

I was like, "I have tenants in my property who just signed a one-year lease." I was like, "This is ridiculous." I was so annoyed. I ended up staying with my parents for longer than I had planned on. During the time that I stayed with them, they ended up getting a divorce.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So they got a divorce. It was not pleasant. My parents and I started arguing. I moved into a studio apartment for like 700 bucks a month and lived there until I could save enough to buy another property. Because I never, I was like, "Renting is not for me." And when I started looking in 2011, I was like, "Oh my God.

What have I been doing for all these years? These properties are like half price." So between 2011 and 2014, I bought like four or five other properties. There was such a difference in the market. It was a buyer's market, a lot of inventory, tons of room to negotiate. I was like, "Oh my God." There's just so much wealth building potential in this market and I took advantage of it.

What type of real estate investment strategy have you pursued? I think when I just started, it was purely speculative. Everybody else was doing this whole, "Just buy real estate. It's going to go up and cash out later on." I think after I experienced the downturn and saw what it did to my equity and net worth, I did a lot more reading and educating myself and realized that investing in for cashflow was the way to go.

So at this point, I'm definitely a buy and hold investor. I purchased for cashflow. The property appreciates in value great, but that's not what I go in for. And my strategy is to buy properties in solid condition that don't need a lot of work and markets where the vacancy rates are average or below average, where I can get a 20% cash on cash return and in the next three years, replace my income as a result of it.

I was going to say I have mostly done traditional financing, but banks won't lend you money after you have 10 properties. And so as a result of having the maximum amount of properties, I've now started doing a lot of some seller finance deals. Are your properties similar in nature, all townhouses, all single family houses?

The first few I purchased were similar in nature. They were pretty much all townhouses in a particular area. And then I started to branch out. The last few I purchased, I purchased a couple of single families, which I turned into duplexes by renting the basements. And I started purchasing a couple of rural houses a few years ago.

My most recent acquisition was a quadruplex. And I now have a sixplex on the contract. So I think I'm now moving towards multifamily. Why? Because they are less risky in some ways. And what I mean by that is, if I have a single family that's rented for $1,500 a month, when that tenant moves out, I'm out $1,500 a month, right?

Like I'm out the whole amount. And that property could be empty for a couple of months. If I have a quadruplex, and I'm getting $2,000 a month with each tenant paying $500 a piece, if I lose a tenant, I'm still getting most of the income. And so I think it's been a way to minimize risk from vacancies.

You really take a big hit from single families when tenants move out. I think the flip side, though, is that if you purchase right and in a good market, there's a lot more, I think, appreciation if you purchase right. Whereas where I'm purchasing my multifamilies, they're pretty much cashflow markets.

I don't expect to make a lot in terms of equity. But I expect to have low turnover and to always be able to cashflow because I'm not relying on one or just two tenants to pay the mortgage on them. You're looking forward to proclaiming yourself financially independent within the next couple of years.

What's your definition of financial independence? Oh, gosh, Joshua. I actually read your definition. I love it. My definition is to be able to… I'll talk first from a financial perspective and maybe secondly about a lifestyle perspective. But financially for me, it's having enough passive income to cover my mortgages, utilities, transportation, insurance, food, and basic entertainment.

If I can get that, I have to calculate what would that cost? How much would I need to earn a passive income for all of those costs to be covered? And that number is my financial freedom number. I think that's sort of from a financial perspective. Are you willing to share that number?

Yeah, sure. My current number, which I think is on the higher side, is $7,000 a month. I could do it with less, but I'd rather overestimate. I also house hack. What I mean by that is that I have tenants paying my mortgage in full each month. So I could technically not include my mortgage in that number and it would make it $5,000.

So we'll come back to house hacking in a moment because I know this is important to you. But continue the theme that you were on about the financial definition. Now go on to the next thing you were going to say. I think the other part of this is the lifestyle definition from a financial independence part is probably what excites me the most because I started working at age 15.

And so I feel like I've already been working for almost 25 years. And I've always had to wake up to do what is expected of me. And it's not always been the way I spend my days isn't the way I would spend them if I were doing my own thing.

If I had my own business, if I were able to choose how I wanted to spend my time, it wouldn't be the way I spend my time now. And that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to work in the inner city and help kids and help leaders. It doesn't mean that.

I think it means I may not want to do it for 12 hours today. I only want to work three hours. A lot of the freedom side of it from a lifestyle perspective is what is most attractive to me right now. I have an 18 month old. When he's three, and when I turn 40, he'll be three.

And I would love to be able to have the flexibility to travel more with him, not have the atypical lifestyle where he has to just, he's in daycare and I only see him for two hours when I get home. I'd like to have richer, more diverse experiences with him before he starts school.

So that's a big part of it for me. How do you, what's your approach toward handling and managing the 168 hours that you have in a week? You've got a lot of balls in the air. How do you approach it? It's so, oh my, it's so tremendously challenging. So tremendously.

I'm out, I'm out. I wasn't always good at this. It's something I am actively working on because I, my role is very demanding. I'm the second person in command after my boss for our organization. We have five schools and I manage three of the principals. So it's a pretty demanding role.

And I started just a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, working with virtual assistants because I realized that there are certain procedural tasks that I don't need to do anymore that I've trained myself to do. So that's one thing I'm doing differently. I'm also increasingly accepting assistance from a variety of people.

As an educator, as a teacher, I was very frugal. Teachers tend to be very frugal. You make $30,000 a day, I mean, sorry, a year. I'll take 30,000 a day. A day, that's great, right? In a year, and it's like, I have not met a teacher that is not frugal.

So I had to move away from that. So I need, I have people come if I need my house cleaned, I don't have to do it myself. If I need babysitting support on a weekend, I need to hire someone for it. I am hiring out a lot more than I have in the past to get support with basic tasks.

Like I don't spend a whole bunch of time at the grocery store. I use Amazon Prime. I've tried to think through how I spend my time. And whenever I find that there's someone else who can do what I'm doing for less than I have, than I would cost to do it, then I'm going to, in most cases, have them do it instead.

In many cases. And I think, so that's my strategy. But even with that being said, I work tremendously hard. I'm up at five in the morning. I have my morning routine. Then my son gets up around six. I take him to daycare. I go to work. I get back, he's in bed at eight.

And then I'm back at work from eight till ten. So it's still a very tight schedule to meet this goal. When you were hiring, when you're talking about hiring virtual assistants to help you with your work, is that something that you're choosing to do out of your own pocket simply because it frees up your time?

Or are you trying to convince your boss that this is an organizational move and the company needs to pay for it? Definitely not the latter. I'm not trying to convince, no. It's a move that I'm making to free up my time. I can't even convince anyone right now. It's just, if I have a project that I need to work on and I could find somebody else to do it for $4 an hour or $5 an hour, or do half of it for $5 an hour, and I do the analysis and the strategy piece of the task, that's where I'm going to go.

I don't know if it would be recommended in my role at work. I don't know what the org-wide stance is for me to do that. But I know that for me to be effective in my job while building my financial freedom passive income business, I have to do it.

So I pay for it. I pay for it. It still works out, no matter what, I've always worked from home. I've always worked around the clock as an educator and as an administrator. So it doesn't, I mean, I guess it doesn't make a difference to me. I've never felt like I could just work and come home and not work more as an educator.

We always bring work home. So I don't feel like I had that leverage with my boss. Do you, in looking at some of these changes that you had to consciously make to spend a little bit of money in order to be more productive, whether that's hiring a house cleaner or hiring a virtual assistant to help you with some of your work-related, your job-related tasks, do you get the sense that you're doing too little too late?

Do you wish you'd done this earlier? Are you, do you wish you'd done it earlier? There's so much I wish I had done earlier. So much. That, absolutely. I don't know why, if I could say to the audience, I don't know why we are, we are so resistant to change as humans.

I, there's, I've always been an avid reader. I've read many, many financial books, many productivity books. So it's not an intellectual issue. And for most people, it isn't. It's just actually taking action and doing it. There's nothing I'm doing now that I haven't read about, that I didn't read about five, 10 years ago, right?

Like leveraging your time, outsourcing, taking bigger risks, all of that stuff, like getting rid of your limiting beliefs. There's a lot that I think, and it probably was triggered by having my son, things that I always, that I knew that I wasn't doing either consistently enough, intensely enough, or aggressively enough that I am now doing, because I've given myself this timeframe.

I'm like 40. I'm not kidding. I've told everyone. No going back now. I've even told my boss, told everyone, like, when I get to 40, two years from now, I will be financially free. And I am currently working backwards from that number. And that's, it's scary because everybody knows I've made that commitment.

But I think it's also been very inspirational or inspiring because I have to, I get up at five, I'm going for it. I'm up late. I'm more inclined to try new things. I need a virtual assistant because I'm not able to write a real estate contract on a property because I have a project for my job.

And that means I'm not going to make my goals for this year, my passive income goals. When I think about it that way, it's a no brainer. Yeah. Why and when and how did you start sharing your financial goals with others? You guys have great questions. Okay. Why, when and how?

Let's start with why. I think I would say the why is that I like to help people. I like to be around people who are driven and there are a lot of people around me who from my experience, either don't dream anymore or have entirely given up on their goals.

There's just no, it's not even in their schema that they could want something and go after it. And it's very depressing. It always, it always depresses me. And so I started sharing what I was doing and why I was doing it as a way to, I would say in some ways kind of model that even if you don't make the goal, just have a purpose, something you care about to show, to inspire, to support, to motivate all of those reasons.

And in terms of when, as an educator, I had to plan for my students. For them to learn to become great readers, great citizens, I had to plan every lesson for them for the entire year. As a principal, I had to write 20, 30 page strategic plans for my school, for my organization.

And I used to do that every winter. And I'd say about four years ago, in the winter, I was like, "I'm writing a 30 page plan for my job. I don't even have a two page plan for my life." It's just like something hit me. I think I was reading, it's either John Maxwell or Brian Tracy.

I can't remember which one. One of them has a book about goals that's really good. And I don't remember the title right now. - Brian Tracy has a book, it's called Goals. That's the title of it. - Maybe that's a bad judgement. I recall putting this book down in December, in the middle of my 20, 30 page strategic plan.

And just like this light bulb went off, I was like, "I don't have goals for my life, but I have a 30 page strategic plan for my job." And I started writing my butt off. That winter vacation, by the time I picked my head up, I had 10 pages with my vision for my life.

And I still had that document, which I share today with my mastermind groups. And I wrote it and I kept reflecting on it. And then the first year I was living it, but not as intensely as I'm living my vision now, but it definitely started that momentum for me.

And I think as a result of that, I started to have more consistent levels of success. And I was like, "Holy crap, this stuff works." You know, at first I was like, the goal was buy three houses a year and read 15 books. It was like some basic stuff, but the vision was big, but the goals were smaller.

And now I still have this pretty big vision, I think, for me, for my life, but my goals have gotten bigger. So I'm gaining more traction towards them. So the when is about four years ago. I think the why is so that everyone gets that we can do what we want to do.

It's not easy, but it's worth it. And I think my how has always been through constant learning. - Are you a handywoman? - In what ways? - Are you out there looking at your properties, walking on the roof, getting in there and fixing stuff? Or how do you handle, with the demands of your job, how do you handle the maintenance and repair needs of your investment portfolio?

- Sure. Great. I'm not, I don't consider myself handy at all, nor do I like to be hands-on. I like to leave things like that to the experts, people who are good at it, so that I can do what I do best and make more money that way. The part of real estate that I enjoy is making the deal.

It's like doing the math, calculating the cash flow, the passive income streams, and like making sure it's a great deal. And I lock it up, I'm like, okay, I'm good. Could somebody else manage it for me now? I'm not into doing that work. I have property managers for most of my properties, except for two, which I manage on my own.

They charge anywhere between 8% and 10%. They take care of repairs. They send me estimates first, which I approve. They get the job done. If tenants move out, they get the property to be rented for a fee, things like that. If for me to be able to scale this by 40, I can't be doing handiwork.

I can't be that hands-on. It's not the best use of my time. And I think I was more hands-on earlier in the game when I needed to learn it, which I think is helpful. And when I also had more time, didn't have a child, I wasn't a principal, so earlier I was more involved.

But at this point, I wouldn't recommend it. I think unless you're just starting out, I really wouldn't recommend, if you're trying to scale, doing so much of the work yourself if you're also doing a full-time job and a whole bunch of other stuff. A few moments ago, you were talking about your schedule, and you said you get up at 5 a.m.

and you have a morning routine. How do you mean that term, "morning routine"? Morning routine, I'm sure the Miracle Morning is a pretty popular book. Hal Elrod, he has a huge following, read that book a few years ago. It outlines what he calls "savers," which are six things to do every morning to prepare yourself for a successful day.

I actually had a really, really difficult pregnancy with my son and found that book at a really good time. And I say to my sister, jokingly, if it wasn't for the morning routine, God help how it showed up in this world. People would not like me. But it consists of the S is for scribing, so journaling for a few minutes each morning, sharing gratitude, things like that, affirmations, visualizing your goals, exercising is the E.

R is reading. And then the second S is silence, which for me is meditation. And so it's either spending a minute on each letter, five minutes on each, ten minutes on each, it depends. I don't get all six of them in every morning, but what I do as much as I can is, my gratitude journal is really important.

I do that every morning. I read my goals. So I start my day with revisiting my goals for the year, as well as how I break them down into monthly goals. Very helpful because sometimes I forget. I'm like, oh, I said I was going to do this this month, but I'm behind.

Like for the month of April, I have like, my year long goal is to do something special for my parents every month. So it's April, I'm like, wow, you know, I haven't done anything for my parents yet. I need to go get that done. You know, we forget. I typically recently have not gotten exercise in, which is something I'm working on.

It really bothers me. When I don't, I try to get that in in the evening. I'm an avid reader. So as a part of my morning routine, I'll read something uplifting or one of my books for the month that I'm reading. And then I just, then I start my day feeling like I've invested in myself.

I'm clear what my goals are for the day and my intentions. And I just, it feels more purposeful. Let's go back to house hacking. I know you've mentioned this word a couple times. Tell us what house hacking is and some of the different ways you've employed this concept throughout your career.

I'm doing this a lot more than I have in the past, I think, or a lot more effectively. It's really leveraging your home as a way to, I would say it's similar to Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad author always says, you know, your house is not an asset.

Everyone in America thinks that you own a home, you have an asset, but it's really a liability because it's debt. It's debt that you have to pay back to a bank or to whoever. House hacking is a way to turn your home into an asset because he's right. You buy a property, now you have to pay $1,000 a month to people.

It's not really an asset unless there are people in your home who are paying your mortgage for you. In that case, it's an asset because it's actually putting money into your pocket, especially if what they're contributing is above and beyond what the monthly mortgage is. So it's a way to leverage your home to create income.

I started, when I purchased my first home, my mortgage was $1,200, principal insurance, taxes, and interest. And I remember saying to my brother, you have to move in with me because that's a whole lot of money. So you paid $600 and I paid $600 a month. Now that I think about it, I guess I started my first home, I did have some income.

It wasn't fully house hacking because I wasn't living rent free. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I've always tried to have at least one other person in the property with me helping me with the mortgage. I've gotten really good at it now to the point where...

So at the bottom of the market, it was 2012, in my area, the market dipped like 40%. And I picked up a 4,100 square foot home that was, back in the days, it had sold for $600,000 and I got it for $320,000. And it's huge. So that's a lot of space.

It's six bedrooms, three and a half baths, three fully furnished levels, way more space than I could ever need. And as a result of that, I literally live in this house where I have a tenant in my basement who pays $1,100 a month who I never see. I can't even tell he lives here.

And then I have two other roommates who contribute another 1,000, which could be a lot more, but one is a really close friend of mine. So he has a deal. But essentially, I get to live here without paying for my mortgage because what they're contributing is above and beyond what my current mortgage payment is.

And in addition to that, it's awesome because they take the trash out and they help with babysitting and all that stuff. It's such a nice deal. I love it. Why doesn't everybody do this? Yeah, I've never understood many people's just desire to live alone. I don't get it. I get how somehow for some people it's somehow important, but it's different when you have a family as far as having people in the next bedroom.

There can be many more challenges. But I'd rather live with people any day than live alone. And house hacking is a perfect way to do that and make it financially profitable as well. As you just described, I think many people, if you just take a little thoughtfulness, can put together a deal wherein you buy the house and rent out enough rooms and you can either cut your costs substantially or even, as you just described, get to the point where you're making a profit on it.

Isn't that amazing? It is absolutely. And for me, when I wrote my vision for my life four years ago and I wrote out exactly what I wanted, I had envisioned the house I live in now. Because when we walked into this house, I was like, "Oh, the basement has three bedrooms and it has a bathroom." And there's something about having clear goals and knowing what you want that just really helps.

Because before moving into this house, I knew I'd be living rent-free, mortgage-free. So this is a steal. So I think it takes intentionality. It's totally doable. But it doesn't feel like I'm living with people. I have a huge level to myself. I mean, how much more space could we possibly want?

Yeah, indeed. But yeah, it's completely doable. Totally. You've built this real estate portfolio by building off of the back of your employment income, which started off relatively low as a teacher and now as a professional, I'm sure, is at least middle income. How has the financing process been along the way and what have you done that's allowed you to leverage a normal income into such a substantial portfolio with regard to your financing?

As I mentioned earlier, the financing process when I just started was pretty easy. Because back in 2006, you could get a loan even barely without having a job. So I think I got in, my first few properties I got in just because I had a stable income. You're a teacher.

That's a stable job and I had good credit. Pretty much was all it took. My first couple of properties were, I still was smart about it. I would purchase for like 3% down, live in the property for a year or two, move out, rent it, do it again. You know what I mean?

So I was always able to get in with pretty low down payments. Because you started with them as a primary residence, right? Yes. So I never needed the 10%, 20% down because I would always purchase as an owner-occupant. Live there for a year or two, move. Purchase again as owner-occupant.

Live there for a year or two, move again. So if you think about it, it's purchasing these properties with 3% down. Let's say it's $150,000. That's 3% down, it's like $5,000. And then getting closing cost assistance from the sellers, you know, if possible. And I could save $5,000 as a teacher working in the summertime.

Or I could purchase the property because I'm a real estate agent and I have to, and I kind of have more of an inside scoop. So to be able to leverage my real estate license to get better deals. That helped me out too. So I could use my commission towards either the down payment or the closing cost or something.

Have you done that on all the properties that you've bought? Not all. I did it a lot more earlier on. I don't do it that much anymore because I'm priced out of my current market. So I've started purchasing properties out of state. Because again, I'm looking mostly for cash flow and my market is no longer the best, one of the best cash flow markets out there.

Last question, back to the theme of financial independence. Have you wondered, and I know this is a legitimate question, not trying to insult your plan, but have you wondered with this aggressive goal of being financially independent at 40, have you wondered sometimes if it's all worth it? If you're not sacrificing too much now for the future?

I wonder about it a lot. I think about it a lot. I also think that it's something important for me to think about because I'm such a future-oriented person. I've read this book about that there are some people who are all, who are like, you're either present-oriented, future-oriented, or past-oriented.

And again, I forget the title, but I've always been future-oriented. So that's a danger because it impacts one's ability to enjoy the present. So I definitely want to check myself because I don't want to create this illusion that something will magically happen at 40, I become financially free, and life is perfect forever, right?

Life will always have challenges. There are no guarantees. And so I try to keep myself grounded and remind myself of that by not thinking that I'm not in search of this perfect life at 40. I am in search of freedom at 40 to not go sit on a beach and sip margaritas.

That is not my goal. I will continue to work. I think what, I would say the reason I'm not as concerned nowadays as I used to be is that I don't actually have the illusion that I'm going to be like 40, financially free, and never have problems and just sit at home.

I have a purpose, and I see my purpose as figuring this out for myself because there are millions of people who have no idea how to do this at all. And it is not dissimilar from my purpose in helping kids in the inner city. It doesn't feel that much different to me.

It's different content. But I think education helped to get me out of poverty, and I wanted to help kids get out of poverty living in inner cities, so I decided to teach. Financial awareness helps adults get out of poverty, and I really want to and need to help. It's similar, it's the same calling, so different content, maybe different audience, but I would like to do that on my own terms, at my pace, with my time, from the location that I choose.

But it still works, and it's still a part of this bigger passion of helping others out who are in situations where that support is needed. Does that make sense? Dave: It does. Nicole, this has been awesome. Final thoughts, share with us anything you'd like to share, and also tell any listeners who'd like to find out more about the work that you're doing, get in touch with you.

Just share any final thoughts of encouragement or advice, and also any contact information you'd like to share, please. Sure. I would say, first I want to thank you for this opportunity, Joshua. It's talking about writing your goals down and having them come to fruition. This is an example of that.

I listen to your show so much. I would encourage people to do that. There is so much free information nowadays, it is ridiculous. There's so much out there that we could learn. There are so many ways to think about this. I've learned a lot from hearing how you think about financial freedom versus somebody else.

I encourage people to read, go to the library, it's free. Listen to podcasts on your commute. Seems like very generic advice, but it's so helpful. This also sounds kind of cliche and trite, but if we're not willing to dream anymore and have a purpose and find our purpose, whatever it may be, it's not clear.

Life just seems so meaningless. My encouragement to anyone out there would be to really think about your purpose. If you don't know what it is, think about what you like to do or what you would like to do. Whatever it may be. Put a plan in place around it.

Because it actually, with a clear plan, things will start to happen. That's what has started to happen for me. I recently started financial freedom masterminding. I'm having a blast with it. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people works. I made a goal to do that this year. Now I'm leading two masterminds as a result of it with awesome like-minded people.

I can be found at facebook.com/financialfreedomlovers or via email at financialfreedomlover@gmail.com. I just again want to thank you. That's all I have to say. Just go after your dreams. Mad Fientist: Nicole, thanks for sharing an inspiring story and continue to encourage others. I love to have educators on this show because it does seem my experience has also been similar.

It seems like many people who go into teaching automatically assume that it's a sentence to a lifetime of poverty. And personally, I think it's a little bit silly. Number one, as a teacher, you can make a ton of money if you approach it a little bit differently. And oftentimes, there's a broken concept that somehow it's noble to not make money where I view money as simply a measure of the value that the marketplace puts on your work.

But the neat thing about your story is to demonstrate there are a lot of advantages of being a teacher. And as you've been able to exploit some of those advantages, flexible schedule, stable income, summer's off and show how even within the context of teaching, it is possible to build financial freedom.

So keep preaching the message and helping other teachers do well because I'd love to have many more teachers teaching because it's something that they love to do rather than something they are forced to do. Nicole Johnson: Yes, well said. I completely agree. Mad Fientist: Great! Nicole Johnson: And I will.

Mad Fientist: Absolutely! Thank you, Nicole. Nicole Johnson: Thank you so much. Have a good day. Mad Fientist: Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance. If you're interested in building financial freedom for yourself and your family, please subscribe to the podcast with our free mobile app so you don't miss a single episode.

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