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When we think about the benefit of owning rental properties, we often think about financial freedom. And when we think of financial freedom, we think of having the ability to stop working so that we can spend our time doing things that we enjoy far more in our lives—spending time with family, traveling, volunteering, etc. In this episode, Jeff shares a personal story about how he was reminded that financial freedom from real estate actually also offers a different type of benefit, as well.
Episode Transcript
When we think about the benefit of having rental properties, we tend to think about financial independence. And when we think about financial independence, we tend to think about our ability to unshackle ourselves maybe from a day job or from other obligations like that, and instead spend our time doing different things that we are much more passionate about hanging out with our kids traveling, doing things like that. But I recently had a personal experience I just wanted to share with you that gave me an ever so slightly different perspective on the benefit of real estate and just how grateful I was for it. So let’s cue up the theme song, I want to share this quick story with you in this important takeaway. Welcome to racking up rentals, a show about how regular people, those of us without huge war chest of capital or insider connections, can build lasting wealth acquiring a portfolio of buy and hold real estate. But we don’t just go mainstream looking at what’s on the market and asking banks for loans. Nor are we posting WE BUY HOUSES signs we’re just looking for quote, motivated sellers to make lowball offers to you see, we are people oriented deal makers, we sit down directly with sellers to work out Win Win deals without agents or any other obstacles, and buy properties nobody else even knows are for sale. I’m Jeff from the thoughtful real estate entrepreneur. If you’re the kind of real estate investor who wants long term wealth, not get rich quick gimmicks or pictures of yourself holding fat checks on social media, this show is for you. Join me and quietly become the wealthiest person on your block. Now let’s go rack up a rental portfolio. Hey, thanks for joining me for another episode of racking up rentals. Show Notes for this episode can be found at thoughtful rt e.com/e 164. Please do us a big favor by hitting the subscribe button in your podcast app. And the Follow button as it might be called now really helps fellow thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs to find us. And of course, make sure that you don’t miss any upcoming episodes onward with today’s episode. And if you are a regular listener to this show, first of all, thank you for that. And you might have noticed, as I know many people did, there’s been a little hiatus in this show that I can tell you that it was an unplanned hiatus. But now I’m coming back. And I am excited to be back here with you. But I thought I’d tell you just a little bit about what happened with the hiatus. And one of the important things that I learned from this kind of personal experience. This year is my 20th wedding anniversary, which is something I’m so excited for and about and proud of. And I was really looking forward to celebrating with my wife. And so she and I love to travel like many people do. And we love to go to Europe also like many people do. And so we planned a trip for three weeks to go to Europe, we’re actually going to go to the island of Corsica, which is part of France for most of that trip. And we were really looking forward to that. And so I was preparing to be gone from work for about three weeks. And so that meant pre recording, and several podcast episodes and scheduling them to be released while I was gone and doing a few other things, buttoning up several things before we left. And we were supposed to leave on a Wednesday. Well, on Monday, it was my wife’s birthday, actually, two days before we were supposed to leave on the trip. And that Monday when she woke up, and she wasn’t feeling 100% And she actually wasn’t feeling 100% The day before, either. No, she wasn’t feeling awful. And while there were a couple of funny things kind of that she was experiencing. It wasn’t really super clear as to you know, what maybe was going on, we thought maybe she had just been, you know, kind of tired. But on Monday, this the symptoms kind of persisted. And they seemed a little bit concerning. And so we call the doctor and the doctor said, we really think you should go to the hospital. So we went to the hospital on Monday on her birthday. And she ended up being in the hospital for two more nights and came home. I believe it was Wednesday or Thursday it during the day. And so we found out very quickly after we got to the hospital that we were not going to be able to take our trip which was you know, very sad, but it was also just an additional stressor because I know she was reluctant to go to the hospital because she was worried you know, someone might say you might not be able to go on this trip. So she was in the hospital for a few days. And the advice clearly even after she got out was not to be doing things like traveling and getting on airplanes and whatnot for a while so I don’t need to go into the details of her, you know, medical situation but there have been more tests and things since then. So we’re still kind of trying to get to the bottom of it. Now the amazing thing is, from my perspective, I had almost finished preparing to go on vacation during this exact time. So to some degree, I had actually prepared myself pretty well to be away from my business, but not 100%. And some of the things I didn’t get done that I was planning to do those last couple of days were recording podcast episodes, and things like that. But it was a little dicey, seemingly for a couple of days in the hospital. My wife is still rather young, we both are, you know, I guess that’s all relative, but in our early mid 40s, and we’re not really used to these sort of medical experiences. So it was a little bit jarring. And as we were sitting there in the hospital, I just found myself thinking about how I didn’t need to be thinking about my business. And it started to give me a different form of appreciation for the rental portfolio that I have built. And that’s really the point of this, of this episode. I was sitting there realizing that as I was there, focusing on what was most important in my life, my rental properties, were still just doing their thing. It didn’t affect the properties, it didn’t affect the tenants, I mean, that tenants didn’t know, it didn’t affect any of that. And those properties were still working for me, even when I couldn’t be working for myself in that moment. And that gave me an important reframe, which is the gist of what I hope that you will get out of this episode. Normally, when we think about passive income, and we think about financial independence, we think of them as being an enabler of things that we want to do, you know, I want to stop trading time for money, I want to stop being so busy at work that I’m missing my kids soccer games, and we want to travel and I want to visit all these places, I want to do all these things, I want to volunteer, and I want to spend my time differently. And that is all amazing. And real estate can absolutely do all that. But what I had this realization, and this little reframe for was the idea that real estate, in the financial independence that can bring is also an enabler of your ability to put your attention elsewhere, when you need to, even if you don’t want to have to place your attention on that thing, when you need to. Real Estate enables you to do that, even if it’s not something fun that you’re moving towards, but something that is just flat out more important that needs your attention. You won’t be suffering financially, as well. Now, if I had had a W two job, I would have honestly still blown it off and said, Well, you know, sorry, job that you’re gonna have to wait, I don’t care what the consequences are. But the point is, there would have been some consequences to that, in all likelihood, because the engine of my ability to earn money would have come to a screeching halt, as I was focusing my time where it needed to be focused with my wife. But with real estate, nothing stopped, even though my attention needed to go elsewhere. So I know that I am in this episode preaching to the choir, in the sense that you already know, real estate is awesome. You already know real estate is the vehicle that can give you financial freedom, financial independence, I think there’s basically no chance you would be listening to this if you weren’t already a subscriber to that belief system. But this little experience that I had
gave me a different perspective on that same topic, that it’s not just about allowing myself to stop working so that I can, you know, take vacations more often, and things like that, although that’s what we were going to be doing. It allowed me to take my focus and place it where it needed to be, even if the thing that I needed to be doing wasn’t a fun, exciting thing that I had been looking forward to for a long time. And I was very grateful for my real estate portfolio for a slightly different way than I ever had been before. Couple weeks after she got home from the hospital. I actually personally came down with COVID. So it was like another, you know, week or so of being kind of out of commission. And so the lesson was reinforced yet again that I was very, very grateful that I could afford to take a week to just heal and recover. And because I know you are wondering, my wife is actually doing pretty well. Right now she’s feeling very good. There’s still tests being done by several doctors to figure out exactly what did happen. And then, of course, most importantly, exactly what to do about it in the future to prevent it from happening more in the future, but she seems to be on a good track. And I am so incredibly grateful for that. We have also chosen to frame our trip as not being canceled, but simply being postponed. So we are looking forward to having that experience together again in the future as soon as she kind of gets the green lights from doctors to be able to travel. But I want you to take away from this episode, not just a little personal update for me or an excuse as to why there hasn’t been an episode in a few weeks. But most importantly, I want you to take this away. If ever you feel frustrated, or like progress is moving slowly in your rental portfolio, of course, think about all the great things you will do. Once you achieve that financial independence. The trips, you’ll take the way you’ll spend your time, the way you’ll garden more and be at the soccer games and volunteer in your community and all the things you want to do. But also remember that it will give you the freedom to put your attention where it needs to be even if it’s not a fun thing that you need to put your attention on. It will give you great peace of mind to know that if you need to go spend time with a sick family member or do something along those lines. Your real estate is supporting and funding your ability to do that along the way. That is it for today’s episode of racking up rentals, kind of a new way of thinking about why it is important to be racking up those rentals. Again, show notes can be found at thoughtful rt e.com/e 164. Please do us a big favor by hitting the subscribe button in your podcast app or the Follow button and rate and review the show maybe rating and review the show might be the most important thing you could do to help and I am so grateful for that. I do see every single review. Did you know that we have a Facebook group for thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs as well. It’s called rental portfolio wealth builders and we’d love to have you join us there. Just go to group dot thoughtful rt.com And the magic of the internet will redirect you right there. If you liked this episode, please take a screenshot and post it to Instagram and tag us we’re at thoughtful real estate, all spelled out on Instagram. I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you for your patience during this little hiatus. Until then this is Jeff from the thoughtful real estate entrepreneur signing off. Thanks for listening to racking up rentals where we build long term wealth by being a win win deal makers. Remember solve the person to unlock the deal and solve the financing to unlock the profits.
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