Mindy Templeton is a Kansas City-based real estate investor who was, at one time, $165,000 in debt. A mindset shift a few years ago led her and her husband to aggressively pay down that debt and start buying single-family rentals in the Kansas City area.

She and her husband have full-time jobs and are parents to two young children. She started Investinginyourwealth.com about two years ago as a way to track her journey to paying off that $165k of debt, and now that they are debt-free, she is working on building wealth through diversification. She is a firm believer in having multiple strategies for investing, so real estate is not her only strategy, but definitely her primary focus. 

In this episode, we talk to Mindy about the mindset shift she went through that led them to adjust their spending habits, the creative way she acquired the funds for the downpayment on their first rental property, and why she doesn’t want to build a huge portfolio of rental properties.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• How Mindy Templeton and her husband dug themselves out of $165,000 in student loan and consumer debt
• The two mindset shifts that allowed her to pay down debt
• The generational divide when it comes to finances and retirement
• How they leveraged a loan from their 401k and a relative's HELOC to purchase their first investment property
• The difficulties of competing with cash buyers in this market
• Why real estate is the perfect vehicle for frustrated entrepreneurs
• Why Mindy is focused on building a small portfolio instead of a huge one
• Why it's important to know what you want your life to look like as an investor
• Why she prefers to invest in her local market
• Why she prefers to have professional property management take care of her properties

Books and Resources Mentioned

• The Road to Family Freedom: roadtofamilyfreedom.com
• Instagram: @LikeMindedInvestors
• Website: Investing In Your Wealth
• Book: Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin

Follow Us:

• facebook.com/roadtofamilyfreedom/
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• twitter.com/r2familyfreedom

Other Stuff:

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• For show notes and past guests, please visit roadtofamilyfreedom.com/episodes/
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This is a machine transcription, please forgive any non-sense

Vendee Templeton is a Kansas City based real estate investor who was at one time $165,000 in debt with a mindset shift a few years ago, let her and her husband to aggressively pay down that debt and start buying single family rentals in the Kansas City area. heard her husband have full time jobs and our parents have two young children. She started investing in your wealth.com about two years ago as a way to track her journey to paying off that $165,000 in debt. And now that they're debt free, she's working on building wealth through diversification. She's a firm believer in having multiple strategies for investing. So real estate investing is not her only strategy, but definitely her primary focus. In this episode, we talked to Mindy about the mindset shifts she went through that led them to adjust their spending habits, the creative way she acquired the funds for the down payment on their first rental property, and why she doesn't want to build a huge portfolio of rental properties. I'm Neil Henderson, and this is the road to family freedom. Before we get to this week's shelf, we'd like to make you aware of something we are self storage investors. We buy existing self storage facilities and vacant buildings that can be converted to self storage in the Sunbelt. We buy them with cash and somewhat loans. And we use private lenders who become Equity Partners in our deals, these Equity Partners share in the cash flow and the profits when we sell when we find a deal that we're considering. We call the Equity Partners and offer them a share of the ownership secured by the property. So if you've ever driven by a self storage facility in thought, I wonder who owns those things, and you have any interest in learning more about the storage business, we'd love to chat with you head on over to rove to family freedom.com slash storage that's road to family freedom.com slash s t o r a g and set up a time to chat. We look forward to speaking with you.

All right. Enough out of us Let's hit the road to family freedom.

Mandy Templeton Welcome to the road to family freedom at long last we got a little jinxed. We've had to reschedule a couple of times, then finally we get to go and I'm having technical difficulties. So it's good to finally good to finally make your acquaintance.

Yes, very nice to meet you. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'd like to get started by having you tell us where you started debt wise, because I think it's a really great story for people to hear.

Sure. So you know, essentially, when I first started my Instagram account at investing in your wealth, about two years ago, I'd started it to hold myself accountable to paying off my debt. And in total, myself and my husband had dug ourselves a debt hole of collectively 165,000. And a big portion of that, as most people probably have the same was student loan debt, that was over 100,000 of it. And then the rest was just little stuff here and there like car loans. And we actually we didn't have too much credit card debt. We paid most of that off when we first got married. And since then we haven't carried credit card debt. So that was one good thing we were doing. But yeah, once once we got that $165,000 in debt paid off. And you know, it kind of opened up that we weren't living paycheck to paycheck any longer. And, you know, it really got me thinking of what's next. What do we do from here. And you know, one thing, of course, a lot of folks that go through debt pay off, a lot of people are familiar with Dave Ramsey, and I did listen to, you know, paying off the debt, having your emergency fund, but I didn't agree with him on investing while you're paying off debt. So that was another thing. In my opinion, I was doing well that, you know, we had already started, of course, contributing to our 401k is through work. We had Roth IRAs, I even started thinking about my kids college, and started five to nine for each of them when they were babies. And so I had already been investing. But you know, a lot of it got me thinking most of these accounts, I can't really do anything until I'm 65. And that's 30 years away from for me. And so you know, a lot of it was like, what about the gap years from now until I'm 65? And then what about after I'm gone? What does that look like? You know, and so I just really started, we talked for over a decade, we want to get into real estate investing, and that was as far as it went. And you know, we didn't know anything about it. Of course we didn't have the funds before getting out of debt. And then time was a big excuse as well for us. So probably similar to what most people go through before they get into it. And then about two years ago, I started I decided to jump in and start educating myself. So that's kind of my story leading up to get getting into investing. Okay, so

before we get into the real estate journey, was there any kind of any systems or sort of a mindset shift that you had to go into two years ago when you when you started attacking that debt?

That is a great question. I actually had a lot of stuff happen, you know, a lot of it was maybe I just started getting older and wiser, I don't know. But I really started to question things that I never questioned before I started reevaluating my values, and what was important to me, and, you know, I really started aligning what I was spending on with my values, whether it be money, or time, or just things like that, I really just started evaluating things a little bit differently. And, yeah, so I think those things, you know, really shifting my values. And that was, that was a big piece of it. And then another one was, I think a lot of people also have the belief that, you know, for you to build wealth, you have to come from wealth, or rich people invest in real estate, that was a big thing for me, you know, I didn't know that I could be a millionaire one day that that didn't seem like a realistic goal. You know, I, I came from pretty modest beginnings. And so yeah, so just kind of, I think those are the two big things, the values, and then believing that I can, in fact, do all of those things myself, if I, you know, put in the time and effort. Now, I can see the results down the road. So

yeah, it's a huge mind shift. And a lot of people just have the same sort of mindset with whatever they grew up with, you know, whatever their parents, however their parents lived, and you know, my parents, I love my parents, and they've been very successful, but a, that the times are different. They grew up in an era with pensions, pensions are long since gone for most people unless you work for the government. And just the idea of the idea of working for 40 years in one job so that you can then retire at 65. Seems a little risky to me.

Yeah, a few months back, I actually made a post on Instagram that I mean, it got shared so much. And it was just simply saying, you know, 15 years, educating yourself or in school, 40 years working, and then 10 years after, if you're lucky to retire. And I just put, why aren't more people questioning this, you should be questioning this, it's your life. And I just got so many reactions of people that were like, Wow, that's really powerful when you break it down like that, because not many people live past that. I mean, it's a reality.

So and what you said is very important, which is aligning your spending with your values. And the problem, I think, is that a lot of people think that their spending is aligned with their values, but their spending is probably more aligned with their parents values. And they're not really, they're not living their own life. Were there any books that sort of that you remember, sort of resonating with you at the time, or any software that you guys use to budget, anything like that.

So I'm actually kind of old school where I like pen and paper. And I really, I actually used a physical check register for my balancing up until just a few years ago. And now I use this app, that's called spending. And it's very similar to a checkbook where, but it's an app now. So I just, anytime I have a receipt, I just log it into there, I can categorize it. And I know how much money I have each month allocated to each of my funds. So that's has been huge for me, I've always been a big budgeter. And you know, of course, in my debt pay off, I was going off the zero budget where every extra Penny I had accounted for, and it was going towards paying off debt. And now I do value based budgeting where it's like, if something comes up this month, and it's aligned with my values, like an opportunity for me to go do something with my family to create a memory that is aligned with my values before I would have been like no, every penny has to go to debt. So so that has changed a lot. And then for from a book perspective, one book that I read a few years ago was your money or your life by Vicki Robin. And that book just it just got me just thinking, you know about so many things that I had never considered before. Just a lot of my energy and my time where I was spending it. And, you know, I really, I think another thing that I did a few years ago is I stopped the busy life glorifying that which a lot of People do kind of started cutting back on activities for my kids. I don't want them to grow up having a busy I have to run around from sunup to sundown. I want to have downtime for them and for us. And so yeah, that that book really helped a lot with with all of that. Okay, so

let's talk about real estate, did you start investing in real estate before all your debt was paid off? Aside from your personal residence?

I did. Once I get a wild hair to try something I get a little impatient. Sometimes that serves me well, I think it did with investing in real estate. But yeah, so you know, eventually. So it was January of 2019, was when I started researching. And we actually closed on our first rental property on my birthday, which was March 26, about two years ago. And so at that time, we were almost done paying off our debt. So we were down to the very last student loan that my husband had. And so we are also at a point where my youngest was getting ready to start kindergarten. And so I also had that monthly amount cleared up of daycare. So those couple of things. I was like, You know what, let's jump in. Let's do this. And, of course, I didn't have enough cash saved up for my downpayment. So we leveraged the HELOC because my mother in law had some equity in her house, and she wanted to see us succeed and our goals. And so she let us utilize that with you know, zero interest, kind of a intro rate that she had. And that was how we came up with the downpayment to purchase traditionally, our first rental property.

Gotcha. So how much do you recall? Did you have to come to the table with any kind of money at all?

I mean, we had to pay my mother in law's HELOC back after the fact. But no, we were, we were able to use that HELOC. And we did we just put 15% down and did a traditional 30 year loan. And then, you know, in our market, the majority of our houses are in like the $100,000 value range. And so that kind of gives you an idea of, you know, it's around like, I want to say 15 grand or so that we have to come up with gotcha. And then we actually, when I tell people the story, they're like No way, our very first tenant that moved into that property, he paid the whole year rent up front to us. And we're like, wow, we just got, you know, a check for $12,000. And so I was like, that's about how much it takes for a down payment on a property. And so I took that, and then use that for the down payment on our second rental property. So yeah, our first two were pretty turnkey off MLS, we use the realtor, and you know, they just needed like paint and cleaned up. And, you know, we did a few, but we did everything ourselves, got them ready to go and got them rented quickly. And we did use property management, we were a little bit nervous to take on that. Mainly, I was mainly concerned from a legal standpoint to make sure that we weren't that we were sticking to all of the guidelines necessary. Because in the Kansas City Market, tenant rights and everything, it's kind of a big deal. And so I didn't want to do anything that could potentially get us into legal trouble. So, so So yeah, that was our first two properties. And then, you know, I during that time, I continued to educate myself, learn more network, start connecting with other investors, and like, started brainstorming, like, Okay, I got to keep finding ways to come up with money to continue to purchase properties. And so our third property, we actually, and this is our third property in the first year. So I bought three that first year, that one I actually bought off of a wholesaler. And so that was my first experience, you know, being a not having a realtor in the transaction. And then also, I told him, I was a cash buyer. And I didn't know what exactly that meant yet, but I heard someone tell me that once you find a deal, you'll find the funds for it. And so I was like, I'm gonna go with that concept. And we found a hard money lender for that one. And we did the bur strategy for our third one. And then fourth one was pretty much a repeat of the third one. And we're under contract for the fifth one right now. So

saw Instagram.

Yeah, so not sure what we're gonna do with the fifth one yet. I'm thinking about trying out a Fliss because the value of the home isn't in line with rents in the area. And so I don't know that it works for a buy and hold. So yeah, we'll see. I'm still still deciding every few weeks to make up my mind. Yeah.

So I want to circle back for just a minute and talk about that HELOC because that can be borrowed funds can be challenging to Deal with a lender. How did you get around that? Were you able to put it in a bank account? Let it season for a while.

Are you talking about the heat lock on with my mother in law? Yes.

The very first great

question. That's a great question. I didn't know about season money. And then like you said, I was like, Hey, here's where my down payments gonna come from? And my lender was like, No, no, no, it can't be a gift. And so I was like, okay, think outside of the box here. So what I did is I had, I took out a 401k loan. And then I immediately paid that back using my mother in law's HELOC. So the funds were able to come from my 401k loan. So it was like a magic

shell game, but hey, it works. It works.

Yeah, it sure did. So yeah, that's, that's how we did that. And then we also use the HELOC on the fourth property. We actually, we took advantage of the nice low rates on our personal property, and we refinanced and our house has appreciated and so for our fourth one, instead of using a hard money loan, because those rates aren't as favorable, we used our HELOC for the fourth one. So

yeah, that's how we that's exactly how we bought our two of our rentals was with just using a HELOC. Luckily for us, we had enough equity we were actually able to buy, we were able to use the entire HELOC to buy the property as cash and burritt. And then pay off, you know, pay off the entire HELOC. So it's just you know, it's great. It's magic. I wish I wish the market were in a position that we could do that more right now. But it's a tough market to do that right now. So

yes, I'm feeling the same way. So.

But being a cash buyer, and we're, we're trying to buy a property in a more expensive market, we're trying to buy a small multifamily market. I don't want to say exactly where we're looking right now. But we've lost out on a couple of deals because we've been beaten out by cash buyers.

Yes, that's the same here too. I mean, there's, you're always going to lose if you're, you're on a cash buyer.

Yeah. And so what we're trying to do is, you know, and it's more money than we have, and we're trying to figure out ways to do this. We're problem solving comes in real estate, we're trying to figure out how to present ourselves as cash buyers, and go to we've got some friends and family, they got some money, and we're going alright, hey, you know, what could we do? I already talked to my lender about it. And he said, Yeah, we're good as long as not a gift. It's got to be a promissory note, because we still have enough for the downpayment. It's just if you come, even if you're we've even we were over ask, and I think we were even the top offer on the deals that we've offered on and we still lost out because the person was a cash buyer. That's just,

that's tough.

Yeah. But so when you were getting yourself educated about about investing in real estate, what would you say was the key lesson that you learned that allowed you to be successful?

I mean, I think there's a couple of things that were helpful for me, of course, you know, I think everyone finds bigger pockets is probably one of their first educational routes. And when I found bigger pockets, I searched for investors that were on bigger pockets that were in my market. And I went out and you know, kind of connected with them on social media. And that actually opened up a whole world to me where one of those investors had started a local Meetup group. And because I started that path and listen to his podcast, and then I found our local meetup. That was where I found literally every resource I could possibly need from the deal itself, all the way through, you know, that cash out refi and property management even. So I, I found that it contractors, my hard money loan lender, so So yeah, it was a very helpful for me, and then you know, another thing that has been helpful is just like screaming it from the mountaintops that I'm an investor, even when I wasn't necessarily an investor yet. I just started building up that confidence and other people, for me as an investor by saying, I'm a cash buyer. I'm an investor, I buy and hold even though I hadn't bought and hold anything, held anything yet. You know, people started being like, oh, Mindy's an investor. And my fifth property actually came to me through that, where I had just kept posting about it. And on my Facebook, you know, I had a good friend that reached out, he's like, Hey, I got a good buddy that his mom passed a few years ago and he's ready to sell the house and do you want to go take a look? And I was like, I sure do. So So yeah, I think a lot of that, you know, that education piece, it can kind of take you down some rabbit holes. And I think, for me, it helped to start educating and combining networking. And, you know, really just communicating what I'm trying to do. So others know. And then I can also I've been helping other people, as well, because now I have people that are like reaching out to me with questions. So I think it just kind of creates this whole, you give you get kind of community, if you will.

It's one of the you know, for years, I had an entrepreneurial itch, I don't think I knew it at the time. And I was constantly looking for, you know, coming up with ideas, you know, on long drives, my brain will always start sort of working on ideas and business ideas and things like that. But one of the wonderful things about real estate is that it's repeatable. It's very repeatable. And so I don't have to come up with an entirely unique business idea that, you know, hope, hope that there's a market out there for their real estate investors everywhere who you can emulate, and you can learn from them. And you can basically just copy what they do. And that's one of the things I love about real estate investing. And it, it still allows me to scratch my entrepreneurial itch, but I'm not having to it doesn't feel as risky, as you know, opening an arrest, opening a restaurant, which I don't recommend anybody ever do.

Right? Right. Yeah. And I think you bring up a really great point that, you know, when you're going out and starting to learn what others are doing, one of the struggles that I actually had from that was, I was like, Okay, these guys are doing this, and they're doing this. And I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And I also realized quickly that, while it's nice to take and learn from others, their journey and their path is going to be completely different than mine. And so, you know, I initially got started thinking, I've got to scale up, and, you know, I've got to have hundreds of units and, you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars of cash flow a month, and that's just, you know, not aligned. Once again, with my values. I'm, I really love having time freedom to do what I want. And so I don't want to create more stresses. And so I, I had to kind of tune in and say, Okay, I can take pieces, like I can take the birth strategy, for example. And I can use that. But I don't want to have hundreds of properties, I want to have a smaller portfolio, and I want to optimize that portfolio. So it's performing and giving me what I need. But also, I don't want all the headaches of a large portfolio, because at the end of the day, even if you have property management, even if you've, you know, done read on all of your houses, there's still going to be stuff that happens even if you have a team, you are still at the end of the day responsible for that. So, so that was a big takeaway I had, you know, after the first year or so, following everyone's journey of, hey, my journey is my journey. So

and being okay with that. I mean, it can get very seductive to sit there and look at somebody who's like, wow, you know, we bought, you know, we have a previous guest, a husband and wife who bought 50, over 50 units in two years. Wow. And that's great. I applaud them. That's an entirely different life than somebody who is investing in real estate syndications. Passive investing in syndications or somebody who's a house flipper, I think it's very important to sort of know thyself.

And yeah, I definitely learned that.

Yeah. You know, and my, our good friend, friend of the podcast, Alex felice, he's always saying, I'm lazy, you know, I'm lazy, I don't want to he admits it. This, I'm lazy, I don't want to, you know, to have to do all this work for it. And I feel that, you know, he's a photographer, he's very, very talented photographer. And, you know, and there's something to be said, for people who we don't like doing the same thing over all the time. And we get sort of this month, I'm going to, I'm going to focus on photography, or this month, I'm just going to spend time with my kids and, and I think that can be incredibly powerful to just know yourself and know what your life the life you want to look like.

Yes, so important.

Okay, so all of your properties are there in the Kansas City area, correct?

Yeah, I have not gone outside of my market. As of now. I don't need to we have a great market. And I like having a little bit of hands on capabilities. You know, I like doing demo. And if it's a little project, I'd rather put that sweat equity in on my own. I'm also kind of nosy and sometimes I want to like, go check on my babies. How are they doing? So Yeah, I think out of state, I don't know if that'll ever be for me. But for now, we're good in Kansas City.

Yeah, we invest long distance, and we were just our market just dictated that to us, we just didn't live in a market that was gonna cash flow and do the kind of strategy that we wanted to do. And it is a very different, it's very different, you definitely have to just sort of step out there and feels like a bigger risk than it is. But it's still a risk.

Right?

You are you're not self managing, you have a property managers, correct?

Yes, I do use a property manager. I mean, we've talked about taking it in house. But for now, I enjoy again, having that from a legal aspect. Like during COVID, we did have one of our tenants who wasn't paying, and we did have to move forward with eviction notice. And, you know, luckily, they walked us through all of that. And that was perfect for us having, you know, both my husband and I working full time having two kids. You know, of course, we're working on another renovation project at the time. So we had a lot on our plate. So I'm thankful that we had them in place. And yeah, one day we might take it in, but for now, I'm good.

Yeah. No, I'm sort of the same way. So you but your new husband both still have w two jobs? How much time would you say your real estate endeavors are taking you per week right now.

I mean, as far as Currently, I'm not as active right now I do. Obviously, I'm always looking for a good deal. So I do a little bit of diving for deals, if you will, each week. So I spend a couple of hours on that my husband's a little bit more hands off, he's more of if I need help, or I need to like run something by him and get his input. Then he gets involved. But he usually kind of lets me run with it. And then if I'm getting a little crazy, he's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about today? So yeah, I would say just a couple of hours. Now, you know, once we find our next renovation project will be going over there on the weekends. And that's fun to us to go. I say that now, in the process. It's not as fun on some of the days. But on the weekends, when we are doing a renovation, we'll probably spend three to five hours on Saturday and Sunday over there. Our kids come they help do whatever we need, sometimes sometimes they complain. But I like doing that though, because I have other hobbies and interests. And so yeah, I like to keep it low.

Well, the point is, is not necessarily to run a business, the point is to build cash flow and wealth to allow you to then do the things that you want to do.

Like I said, I'm very active, I like to go run, I do yoga, I volunteer a lot. So I read a lot. There's there's just always something for me to do that I enjoy. And so yeah, I definitely don't want to work myself into having to put in, you know, 20 to 30 hours per week. I think, if I can keep it under five hours, that's probably ideal for me. Gotcha.

So in addition to investing in real estate, most of our most of our guests tend to be sort of single minded real estate investors, but you also invest in 401, K's, Roth IRAs, hshs, things like that. Do you have kind of a, like a bucket waterfall or anything like that? You know, I mean, there's a lot of people who talk about in the fire community, I'm trying to remember, you know, what the order is, is sort of the the order of things that you have those buckets that you fill, do you have any sort of a system like that?

No, I'm kind of just a creative genius, I guess. I don't know if you'd call me a genius, but it's really, you know, for me, I think it's based on a couple of things. You know, like I mentioned, we had student loan debt, I wanted to ensure my kids don't walk away with student loan debt. So we do have those five to nine for them. But now I also have a house for each of them. So that's going to help as well with funding school or, you know, their first property or whatever that looks like. But as far as kind of my investing order, I definitely think you have if you have a 401k and you have an employer match, I always do just to the match, you know, some people go way above and beyond and I'm like, No, I just get the match and then I move on to the next. The Roth IRA is my second choice. And, you know, I think there's so many benefits of the Roth and one of the ways that I utilize it is it's like my emergency cushion cushion. You know, of course I have my cash reserves in my emergency Fun. But if push comes to shove, I know that I can take out my contributions now without any tax implications. And so that is peace of mind for me. And then I also like that, you know, it's tax free down the road. So and then from there, I think my third favorite, which is kind of underutilized is the HSA. And, you know, as someone who has struggled with health issues, and we, we maxed out our, you know, our deductible out of pocket every year, it's just part of living with an autoimmune disorder. And so that's something that I have just been getting, as much as I can put back into that HSA and trying not to touch it, so that it's there for us down the road. Because I think I read somewhere that the average retiree spends, like $250,000 on just health expenses. And so it's one of those things that people don't really plan for, and it can, it also is one of the top causes of bankruptcy. So, so HSA is important. And then, of course, real estate, kind of my, you know, primary now, so I'm still doing all of those other things. But, you know, if someone came to me tomorrow and was like, Okay, if you, you know, had $10,000 or whatever, which bucket Are you going to put it in, I'm going to go buy another property all day with that. So I'm kind of in my scale up of my rental portfolio, so I'll probably for the next you know, three to five years, that'll be my number one priority is more real estate.

Well, I mean, real estate, it's it's such a it's already tax advantaged time as your best friend at cash flows, it puts off debt, you know, puts off dividends. It's just, yeah, I love it. I'm already fan so well. mendy Templeton, you've got like minded investors community on Instagram. If our listeners want to find out more about you, what would be the best way for them to reach out to you

potentially going to Instagram, my handle is at investing in your wealth. You know, I do also with another friend on Instagram, we do the like minded investors, there's a monthly meetup, the third Thursday of every month, lots of great guests and content there. And then I do also have a website, just investing in your wealth calm. So that's the best way to find me.

Thank you very much for sharing with us today. I hope I hope it warms up there in Kansas City soon.

Thank you. I was very glad to be on the show. I'm glad all of the technology worked out, we finally got to connect. So

Alright, Mindy. Well, you have a great one.

Thank you. You too. No,

bye. Okay. That was Mindy Templeton, with investing in your wealth calm, you can also find her on Instagram, at investing in your wealth. And also at like minded investors, we thank her for her time. For me, I would say that the key lesson learned on this one is to align your spending with your values. I mean, all many of us spend so much time I spend so much money on things that don't really align with our values. You know, we think we need that nice car. And we spend, you know, huge amounts of money every month on it, when really you just need something to get you from point A to point B, you know, and I listen, I have a thing for Tesla's I drool over a Tesla and I sit there and I look and go, Oh, I wouldn't mind having a Tesla, I wouldn't mind never having to you know, fill my car with gasoline ever again, that would be really, really nice. But you know, what is more aligned with my values is having time freedom and spending more time with my wife and my son. And if I were to buy a Tesla, now I have to work for that. And that means less time with my friends and my family. Now someday I may make enough money that I'll buy a Tesla, but right now my values are that the time freedom, that the money that I would spend on a Tesla gives me is more important to me. money she was she was very creative. You know, they didn't have money for a downpayment. And she went to her mother in law and said, Hey, can you can you help us buy this rental property? And she said yes. And then she discovered that also Guess what, she couldn't use that money as a downpayment directly because it was a gift. And it was borrowed, it was basically borrowed funds, the lenders don't like that. And so then what she did was then she was able to pull money out of her stick alone out of her 401k to make up the difference for the down payment and then just paid her paid her mother in law back out of that. So get creative and she it cost them about $15,000 to buy that first property knowledge she of course you know, as most people do, they go to bigger pockets. Hope A lot of you're coming here as well, but just network learning to network with local investors. This is such a people business. And as we said, you know, this real one of the wonderful things about real estate is that it's repeatable. And you can find somebody who's doing something that you want to be doing, and you can learn from them, and you can repeat what they're doing. And the other thing is to again, and we stress this a lot, which is tell everybody what you're doing. Tell everybody your investor and and if if you're not investing yet still tell people, they don't need to know that they don't need to know the details. Because you will be amazed at the deals that will come to you the people who will come to you who can help you. Location, they are doing this all locally, she is Kansas City based and they're investing all five of their properties are there in the Kansas City area. And she said she's got no plans to go long distance at this time, time. Her her husband both have w two jobs still, her time freedom is incredibly important. Her she's really trying to use real estate and her investing to create that time freedom and she doesn't want to build a business around it. She wants to create wealth and time freedom. And I think that's I think it's wonderful. I think it's very important to know that about yourself. And she said, she's spending about two to three hours a week in this kind of maintenance mode, and then more like six to 10 hours when they are in the middle of renovating a property. Once again. That was Mindy Templeton from investing in your wealth calm, I highly recommend you go and check her out on Instagram. And at our website. We think our first time I'm Neil Henderson, this is the road family freedom. Thanks for listening. We're doing this all again next week. Let's set the road. Hey, before you go. If you liked the show, we would be delighted if you'd head over to pod chaser and leave us an honest review. And do let us know why you liked the show how long you've been listening, and in particular what you find really useful or entertaining. And let us know if there's anything you think we should change. Also, if you have specific questions about real estate investing, especially self storage or short term rentals, shoot us an email at info at Rhodes family freedom calm, and we'll be happy to answer your question on the show and might even turned into an entire episode. Thanks for listening. We're doing this all again next week. Until then, safe travels on your road to financial freedom.