Buy the least amount of properties to make the most amount of money.

Here’s Why

This weekend really got me thinking. We hosted our annual BBQ and I couldn’t stop looking at this picture my neighbor took of us with our baby at our dream home… that was completely paid for by our rentals!

You see, life was not supposed to go this way for us.

My husband is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. He moved here when he was 18 years old not speaking a word of English.

I was fortunate to be born here (and my English is pretty good ) but my father didn’t work and my mom did her best to put food on the table every night thanks to food stamps.

The best outcome we could dream of was a steady job to work at 30+ years. For many years, I believed that if I went to school and got a “good job,” I would be successful. But in real life I wasn't happy and felt trapped by a future that was chosen for me before I really even got to experience any of it.

I never expected to buy real estate. Honestly, I never even thought that I would own my own home. The idea simply came from my husband’s pursuit of the American Dream.

That one decision changed everything for us.

In 2018, we bought our very first home in New York. We lived in one unit and rented out the other for extra income. We were handed a gift in finding a place that would cover almost the whole mortgage!

All of a sudden I was exposed to a way of life that wasn’t just trading time for a paycheck. Yes, there is still work to be done. Yes, it can still be stressful at times, but there's a point where you can “set it and forget it” where I could manage my rentals alongside my day job.

Then the tipping point came. All our hard work came together as the cash flow from our rentals started to make more money than our day jobs.

Suddenly, life just felt lighter.

July 7th is the day that I made the decision to leave corporate America and live fully off our real estate investments.

We have been able to:

• Travel more because I don’t have to ask permission to use my own PTO
• Say yes to things that light me up
• Be present with my daughter who's now just eight months old…
• and my husband no longer works in manual labor.

So, this past weekend as we stood outside our Dream Home with our Dream Baby, reflected on the decisions that we've made over these past 8 years and here's what stood out to me the most:

• Deciding that we were important enough to have these choices in life was the first step we needed to take. We needed to bet on ourselves and go all in
• We understood we needed to make short term sacrifices for long term rewards. We weren’t willing to live off ramen, but living within our means was doable.
• We took imperfect action. Educated decisions and mitigated risk became the rule of our household…and of our future.