Are you considering early savings for your kids' college education? Then, this is an episode you won't want to miss! From diverse strategies to actionable tips, today's conversation is a goldmine for parents aiming to pave the best educational path for their children. So, go ahead and press that play button!

Key takeaways to listen for

• [01:18] How to save for your kids’ college education through real estate investing
• [14:10] Advantages of investing in real estate vs. an IRA for your kids’ college fund 
• [25:42] Pros and cons of using a real estate syndication as a type of 529 college fund
• [26:59] The do’s and don’ts of investing money in real estate syndications
• [30:32] Ways to teach kids the value of money

Resources mentioned in this episode

• [15:15] 529 Plan Withdrawal Rules: All You Need To Know – Forbes Advisor
• [18:55] Retire Early Using 1031 Exchanges
• [23:06] Nomad Capital
• [23:44] Kmart
• [25:57] Airbnb

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Mentioned in this episode:

Sponsored by Nomad Capital

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Clint Harris: 00:00:42

Within the world of syndication, what's the number one most important thing is time. You're rolling a snowball off the top of the hill and the longer the Runway, the more speed it picks up.

And you start having exponential growth that can affect your life and the time that you've spent with your family in a very meaningful way.

Neil Henderson: 00:00:57

Welcome to Truly Passive Income. I'm Neal Henderson.

Clint Harris: 00:01:00

And I'm Clint Harris.

Neil Henderson: 00:01:01

Today we're going to talk about college savings and the various ways that people do it.

We're going to talk a little bit about more traditional way that I've done it, and we're going to talk about an untraditional way that Clint has done it. So Clint and I both have kids. I'm a little ahead of Clint. I've got a nine year old, he's nine years away from college, conceivably.

And we set up a 529 account for him when he was born, funded it, just did a standard Vanguard Target graduation fund. And right now, you know, we've been putting money into it over time.

It's done well in the stock market for the most part, and it's got about $60,000 in there, and he's still got nine years to go. But Clint, you've chosen to do it a little bit differently.

And it's a common, not all that common, but something I've heard only real estate investors do it. But talk to me about how you chose to attack the problem of college savings.

Clint Harris: 00:01:59

Yeah, so it kind of happened in a roundabout way. We took one of our previous investments and eventually turned it into a vehicle to provide for the college education for my two boys.

I've got a four year old and a nine month old, so I've got a little bit of time, but, you know, it starts creeping up on you pretty quickly. So I've always fell in love with the idea of getting what you want and having somebody else pay for it.

Ever since my first house, which was a duplex and living there for free, that's always been something that once you kind of get a taste for that, it's hard to turn that down. So I wanted to see if there was a way for me to do that and make sure I was setting my boys up for success as well.

So the backstory is I bought a property in the avenues in Casey, South Carolina, just across the river from Columbia, South Carolina. I'll give you the number of 738 Lexington Avenue.

s for a long time. So between: 2010

We were getting these properties for so cheap that you couldn't get a mortgage. We'd save up and pay cash for them. So what happened was I bought a property for 28 grand in an area that traditionally had done pretty well.

It had dipped into some pretty rough times for a decade or so, and then the market crashed, but had a lot of potential in the future. So I picked up a property for 28 grand. I put seven into it.

ventually that rent got up to: 1100

There was still some capex and some deferred maintenance and things like that, but it did pretty well. We held onto that property for four or five, no, I guess closer to six or seven years.

When we moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, about that time, an Amazon distribution center had gone on down the street. And so the value of that area exploded. You know, kids weren't even a twinkle in my eye at that point in time. It wasn't part of the plan.

It was just an investment that eventually turned into the vehicle that's paying for their college. So I listed that property for sale one by one. When we started buying multifamily properties at the beach, I was liquidating our single family assets.

Some of them we did a: 1031

g that whole time. So I did a: 1031

I paid $100,000 cash for a property there. It was listed, I think for 105. I paid 100.

I did a: 1031

So I had 117 into it. It appraised for 143 and I was able to pull out 108. So I left $9,000 in that property, but I did a brrrr and pulled all the rest of it out.

took that property rents for: 1250

I did that: 1031

for me to do that was to do a: 1031

Pull that $100,000 out. I pulled that 108 out, and I use that to invest into a quadplex at the beach, which cash flows very well.

bnb quadplex on Texas Avenue,: 1603

nd it wasn't feasible to do a: 1031

So I used the BRRRR vehicle to get the cash out so that I could sit for several months and be ready.

And what I did is I took that single family property in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and originally I set it to pay off the month that that my oldest son, Fisher, turns 18.

Since then I changed the payments a little bit because the reality is, it seems like every year college is maybe becoming less and less of a wise investment.

Maybe he wants to go to trade school, maybe he wants to start a business, maybe he wants to go into real estate or construction or whatever it may be. That's one of the benefits of not going into education. Savings plan is doesn't have to be used for that. It can be used for whatever.

So originally I set it up to pay off when he was 18. And I changed it so that it pays off when he turns 16 years old. So he'll be 16 and our youngest should be 12 at that point in time.

And that gives us the opportunity to decide where that money wants to be spent and how it wants to be spent. So I recently had just a broker's opinion done on that property.

And through the explosive growth in the Fayetteville market over the last couple of years, they gave me a broker's opinion of 205 on that property. And so the reality is, how much is a Property in Fayetteville, NC going to appreciate? Probably not a whole lot more.

I mean, we're talking about 12 years from now. So 10 to 12 years from now, what's that property worth? I mean, based upon the value of the dollar going down, maybe 250, maybe a little bit more.

Probably not probably somewhere in that ballpark. But it'll be paid for. Right. And so the idea is we probably don't want to sell the property because.

Because there's a: 1031

Since then, when we had our second, the only thing I did is I took one of our quadplexes that we already own and I just accelerated the payments a little bit to pay off around the same time. Actually, it's going to pay off earlier for him, but about the same time that Fisher's his quote unquote college fund property is paid off.

We're going to have a quadplex in Carolina beach that's paid off. That current valuation is probably in the 750 to $800,000 range.

I think that market has significant more room for improvement, both natural and forced appreciation, barring any major hurricanes that we're probably in a situation where that could be paid off and could be in the 1 to 1.2, maybe $1.3 million range, at which time that property would be cash flowing very well because it's a short term rental quadplex. Or we could refi. But just because we refi. An objection that you could make there is, well, what happens if interest rates are 6, 7, 8, 9% then.

And you're absolutely right, but we don't have to refinance it all the way to the hilt, we could refi to 50, 60% LTV. Let's say it's worth $1 million and we want to refinance the 60% LTV.

That's $600,000 that we could pay out tax free, plus potentially another $200,000 from the Fayetteville property. So in the reality is that's college and med school if they decide they want to go that route. And I never made those payments.

I bought the property, I fixed it up, I went through the process of the forced appreciation. But again, this is something that I want. I wanted it for my boys that I would be setting aside for their education.

Instead, I'm setting it aside for self storage and other real estate projects that are continuing to build velocity. Because at this point in my life, it's not necessarily about the cash flow anymore. It is, but it isn't.

I want the cash flow and I want cash flow in assets are going to appreciate.

But more than anything, I want to continue to invest in assets that are going to give me more time where I'm not trading my time for money with different projects. So I don't want to do projects where I build them up and I sell them off by putting capital that could have gone first of all.

The $100,000 I made on that property on 738 Lexington Avenue, I never would have been able to save that at that point in time. This is early mid-30s. I never would have even thought about saving that for their education.

That was just kind of the byproduct of buying an area where I knew it was going to go up over time. And then you factor in rental income, other people paying down your note and the ability to refinance, which means capture that revenue back.

It's a non capital gain, which means it's non taxable. I can put that to work however I want to. So I'm not paying for their college. I have tenants that are paying for their college.

And even when I refinance and I pull that money out and I can use it for their education, the rents on the property are going to pay that back. So that's the route that I chose.

Neil Henderson: 00:11:26

All right, so a lot to unpack there. What I love. You're not the first person I've ever heard to do that.

I think the first person I ever heard employ this strategy was Brandon Turner when his first daughter Rosie was born. Remember him talking about buying a duplex, putting it on a 15 year note and going for that.

What I love about the strategy is it's very flexible and it's a hybrid active, passive strategy. Maybe the average person is not going to pursue that because they're going to pursue something more passive.

They maybe don't have the skill to identify a rental property that would be good for a brrrr. Or the ability to, you know, identify a market where you can buy a rental for $35,000. Obviously, you know, times are different now.

I'm sure you can find houses like that. I don't know that you want them.

But the core fundamental strategy still remains the same, which is you are buying an appreciating, cash flowing asset that someone else is paying down. Like I have contributed money to my son's 529. My in laws have contributed, his grandparents have contributed very generously.

But with you it's the tenant. And that's one thing I love about rental properties is that often it's an enforced savings plan that you're not having to do.

I mean you had to save the money in order to buy the property, in order to close it, renovate it, do all that. But then once you've done that, if it's running correctly, then it's the tenant that's increasing that savings bucket for you.

Clint Harris: 00:12:58

Right. There's not a magic strategy there. You can be flexible.

Because I think one thing that I've seen over time is that your plans are going to change and things are going to change. And you're right, nobody's buying houses for 35 grand anymore. You can't even get a Section 8 house for less than 60 or 80 in Midwest states. Right.

But I think that maybe that's a good time to bring up the power of multifamily. Because what I will say is that if this is a strategy that you think you want to employ, you can find a property that does this for you.

It may not be a single family home, it likely may not be a duplex, it could be a quadplex, it could be a house with an ADU or something. It's probably going to have to have a little bit of the juice because the market is really hot right now. But you can do it.

Like I said, a quadplex works really, really well for that. Because I got a quadplex that has a quadplex short term rental.

We would net $80,000 a year off of the property after the cleaning fees, the lending cost, the property management cost. Now it's our company so we're paying, you know, at cost property management for that. But you could make $80,000 a year off of that.

Now if you adjust the payments and there's an argument here, like you could put this on a 15 year note and get significantly better interest. I've got it on a 30 year note and we just accelerated the payments and you could always recast it later to get that down. However you wanted to do it.

I did that so that we're going to build up equity a little bit faster.

But if something weird happens and we need to lengthen it back out and lower the payments, we have the ability to do that versus being locked in at a 15 year. So I'm just getting a little bit creative with it.

You could argue that it'd be a lot smarter to do it on a 15 year note because you would get better terms.

But maybe Instead of an $80,000 net, you can have a $60,000 net or 57 or whatever it is, and now all of a sudden it's paid off by the time your son is a teenager. It's not linear, but I promise you, you can make it work if you make the decision that that's a strategy you want to pursue.

Neil Henderson: 00:14:51

And what I love about what you're talking about is often people, they get locked into that, well, I have to do a 15 year mortgage. Well, no, you don't need to do a 15 year mortgage. In actuality, I think you're smart to not get locked into a 15 year mortgage.

I mean, the rates are maybe substantially better right now. I don't know what the rates are currently.

But what you do by just accelerating that payments on that 30 year mor is you leave yourself that flexibility.

And I think what is so important about this strategy is that flexibility like you said, you know, I mean, you could sell the property if you want, you can refinance and you can choose how much you refinance.

If your son decides, hey, I'm not doing any school at all right now, you could say, all right, well I'll gift you the cash flow in order to sort of get started in life however you want to do it.

Whereas I, with my 529 program, I think the best I can do now they recently changed the law so that I can roll over a certain amount into a Roth IRA for him. But there's penalties. I have to pay penalties on it. I can't do a huge amount. It's only like I don't know what the exact amount it is.

And I don't want to quote it without looking it up. But we'll put it in the show notes but there's a lack of flexibility there.

And if my son decides, I don't want to go to college, I want to go to trade school, I don't know, 529 might pay for some trade schools, but not all trade schools.

And if he decides he didn't want to go to school at all, I mean, we're going to pay penalties in order to roll that money over into retirement account.

Clint Harris: 00:16:20

Right?

There was a period of time over the last decade where decade over decade, they look at like, what are some of the most important characteristics that make people inherently successful? I think we can all learn and we can all get better. We all strive to do that.

But what are some of the things that make especially young people starting out in life inherently successful? That they've got that it factor.

And for a long time it was emotional intelligence, being able to recognize what other people's motivations are and what they're looking for in life, and being able to provide that in a way that provides value and creating value for yourself and a rising tide lifts all ships.

And emotional intelligence for a long time was that factor that really seemed to propel people to success above and beyond what you would think that they were capable of.

Over the last few years, that has taken second place to the characteristic that they've dubbed adaptability, the ability in a very rapidly changing world to identify change, identify trends, and position yourself to where you can take advantage of that.

And so with that in mind, I think, and I don't recommend anybody, just go out and do this, and I'm certainly not that sharp of a real estate investor, but it does take a little bit of ability and there is some risk there because you're putting it on you, right? Your ability to underwrite and operate and pick the right property managers and things like that.

That having been said, if you're looking at adaptability, there's a lot of things you could do with a property like this.

accelerating the payments and: 1031

ally when I pass, my original: 1031

, $: 1400

But if he decides he doesn't want to go to school, doesn't want to go to trade school, he wants to start a business. Okay, well, I'm probably not just giving him the cash. He's going to have to have a business plan. It's his money. Right.

I would give him a forgivable loan. And if he meets certain metrics, then we could forgive certain amounts of the money at different times.

However, just to make sure as a young man that he doesn't screw anything up.

But it gives us a lot more flexibility and the ability to have adaptation to whatever the world is presenting us with that point in time that I think positions us really well in the long run for whatever that looks like. And again, it might be that we find something else that he finds something else that he wants to invest in.

kay, well, let's sell it. And: 1031

So to me, it just the ability to listen to the market and to instead of telling my kid who I want him to be, him having the opportunity for him to decide who he wants to be and me have creative ways to help him in that endeavor.

Neil Henderson: 00:19:25

Love it. Do you know if there are any tax implications to deeding the property to him?

Clint Harris: 00:19:33

w, just from Dave Foster, the: 1031

My goal would be, if we're not going to get out of that into something else that keep the property, put it into a trust, leave it to my kids and the liability goes away with me. Now, is it our end goal in life to own a free and clear property in Fayetteville, North North Carolina? Probably not. So then the options are.

Okay, well, what are the off ramps? Right. Qualified opportunity zone comes to mind. There's a couple different things that we could do, but I want to back up for a second.

The most important thing that we have here in this situation is time. Right. Because my son is 4, so we're talking about 12 years and it's not so much.

Yes, the tenant is paying down the property that's going to be paying for his education. But think about the time value of the money that I'm not putting aside for his Education, right.

If I wanted to save, say, he went to a private school or something like that, or ambitions of med school or whatever it may be, that's a lot of money to put away and save faster than the rate of inflation is chewing it up and faster than the rate at which college education is going up. So you're swimming upstream, right? Like, that's tough right there.

So if you look at the time value of money that I'm not having to put away, you and I live in the world of syndication. So within the world of syndication, what's the number one most important thing is time, right?

You're rolling a snowball off the top of the hill and the longer the Runway, the more speed it picks up and you start having exponential growth that can affect your life and the time that you spend with your family in a very meaningful way. So I don't want to get lost on focusing on the side of the conversation of tenants paying for my son's education.

It's one of the reasons why I mixed a multifamily into the property. Because with one tenant, one property, there's always risk of capital expenditures or people being vacancy for a period of time, whatever.

That's why I like multifamily mixed in as well. But on top of that, there's the time value of the money that I'm not spending on that.

Now, if I just took that money and I spent it on boat gas or whatever else, it doesn't do anything meaningful besides maybe create memories with my family in the short run, which are important.

But outside of that, if that's not money that was earmarked for recreation and things like that anyways, what can I do with that money and putting it into something in a meaningful way that can get you a better rate of return than a college savings plan is going to get.

And even the money that I'm making or the equity we're generating through the tenants making payments on the property is cannibalized a little bit by the interest rate or the property management fees. You and I know that we have better vehicles where we could take that money and put it to work other places, but that's a safer bet.

It's a safe bet that it's locked in the dirt and it's not going anywhere. But it's not just about that.

It's about the money that I'm not spending on that because someone else is paying that for me and my ability to take that capital and put it to work.

Neil Henderson: 00:22:34

We've so far talked mostly Here about direct ownership real estate. I mean, you owned a single family home, you turned that into duplex, you then turned it into a fourplex.

Do you think this is the kind of strategy that could work in any way with a syndication?

Clint Harris: 00:22:49

It's the same thing. Very much so. I just finished a conversation an hour ago about the continuity of the lessons of real estate.

of leverage, tax mitigation,: 1031

ue add or moving into doing a: 1031

I just didn't know the terminology in the nomenclature for it. It's the same thing, it's just on a bigger scale. But this is.

Neil Henderson: 00:23:54

I didn't mean that last part. I'm sorry. When you refer to Nomad, what specifically are we referring to?

Clint Harris: 00:24:00

So one of the strategies that we're doing now is we buy old big box retail buildings, Kmarts, grocery stores, warehouses. And there's very little appetite for that space. Just like when I bought that property for 100 grand. It was in fairly rough shape.

I fixed it up, I put 17 into it. All of a sudden it's worth 143 and I can refinance. I could pull that money out and move on to something else.

It's similar to the strategy that we're employing where we buy an old Kmart or warehouse for a couple million dollars. We put a couple million dollars into it, and when you convert it to a self storage facility, it's a class A facility.

And it's worth usually significantly more 8, 9, $10 million as the finished building because you converted it to a new asset class. Once you fill it up, typically it's worth More like 11, 12, 13, 15 million.

As a stabilized asset, you might have 5, 6, 700 tenants in there, which make it very stable because people aren't all moving in and out at the same Time. It creates stability where you can refinance, pull capital out, pay off all the investors, keep some money for yourself.

And when you're paying your investors and yourself by way of a refinance, it's not a capital gain because you didn't sell anything.

So even though it sounds scary because it's a couple more zeros and maybe you're dealing with a portfolio of 50 to $100 million worth of properties, it's really very basic. It's the same. You're buying it under market. There's forced appreciation by doing the renovation and the optimization.

There's an asset class conversion like I did with that quadplex with bad long term tenants. I converted it to an Airbnb property and the rents went up 3 to 4x.

By converting it to a short term rental, all of a sudden the value shoots up and it puts you in a position where in this situation, I'm paying it off by the time my youngest son is a teenager, you can refinance it. We could do it sooner. I could take that money and move on to something else. But that's not what that vehicle is for my family.

So it puts us in a position where other people are paying that principle down. We can recapitalize by refinancing, which means it's not a capital game because the deed never changed hands. It's exactly where it was.

And then that's the basis for my boys starting their life with whatever that looks like for them.

As long as they're doing it in an ethical, moral, responsible way, that's going to have a positive impact on the world around them, that it's free for them to use. As long as we do it with some oversight and make sure they're making good decisions.

Neil Henderson: 00:26:23

So let's talk some pros and cons here around the idea of using a syndication as a type of 529 college fund. Is that one a pro? You don't have to do any work.

If you buy a rental property or especially an Airbnb, that's not a passive investment, that's an active investment. Now a single family rental, you can probably hire a property manager and have it be a lot more passive. Same thing with short term rentals.

You're going to canalize a lot of the cash flow. Also pro is that you don't have to sign on the debt. You're not having to take on any debt.

If you're somebody who got an $800,000 mortgage and the idea of you being able to go out and Find a loan, additional lender for a long term rental is going to be a challenge. That's not something you're going to have to do. Now con, you have no control when you're investing in a syndication.

You're giving up all the control in return for it being passive. You also have no control when that property sells or when it refinances.

You must be very cautious about the timeline of what that investment is when you get into it. And you'd ask the sponsor, okay, is this a five year hold? Is it a ten year hold? You'd want to be very, very clear based on your timing.

Clint Harris: 00:27:38

Yeah, absolutely. And don't make an assumption if they give you a range on where it's going to land. Like, you have to assume the worst, right?

This is your children's education that you're potentially talking about. You don't want to assume that it's going to line up. You need to know hard and fast what that's going to look like.

And also I think that one of the things that's probably a struggle there is that most people that have young kids or middle school or high school age kids, you may not have the time to do it. If your kids are in 10th grade, you probably don't have time to do syndication.

If it's a little bit earlier and you do have time, there's a good chance you're not an accredited investor. So you can run up against as a non accredited investor. Sometimes it can be harder to find offerings where you can invest.

Now the good news is a lot of times those offerings are going to offer a little bit better terms for 506B, but you still have to look for them. Some of those fledgling operations that are kind of getting started will offer 506B. So they're going to offer better terms.

But the number one thing is this is not disposable income, right? This is important capital. This is life changing money for your kids and potentially for you as well.

So the number one thing that we always talk about in terms of diversification is like if you're going to do this, you really need to be diversified. And that means across asset class, geography, operator, and also the debt structure. Don't look at the deal and bet on the horse.

You want to look at the operator and bet on the jockey and just know that that jockey is going to be riding multiple horses on multiple different deals. You probably want to be involved into a fund structure or something that's going to spread your capital out between multiple deals.

But again, Whether it's syndication, I think it makes a lot more sense. If you're a high earning professional, the best thing for you is like if you're making over 250, 300, 350k a year, don't go buy a rental house.

You can, but like keep the main thing. The main thing. There's a good chance that you have the capital to invest in syndication above and beyond what you're trying to do for your kids.

But the number one thing is like, realize that there's always inherent risk with any type of real estate. Make sure that you know like and trust the operators that you understand the deal.

And then you're putting your capital diversified out there across debt as well as asset and geography to try to make sure that you're building stability in. And then you're exactly right.

The timeline is really important and I would argue a lot of times when I was on my journey towards reaching financial freedom, it's like, okay, once I replace my income, I can walk away from heart surgery or whatever.

The reality is, once I spoke to people that had gotten there before me, it was once you have more time, you're going to spend more money, you're going to travel more. So don't replace your income.

You need to make like 130 to 150% of your income because once you have more time, there's a good chance you're going to spend more of it. I would look at similar with the timeline for your children in their education.

Depending on what they want to do or their opportunity to do things early or pay for things early. Maybe don't wait till they're 18, maybe focus when they're 16. I mean, it could be military, whatever it is.

I think give yourself time to think ahead and also give yourself time if you've got a deadline when this is all supposed to come to fruition, build another year or two in there for yourself to have some wiggle room as to what that needs to look like. This puts yourself in the best position for your family.

I'm the first person to usually say, don't make a decision, let the numbers make the decision for you. In this situation with something this important, I don't think that's the case.

I think put yourself in a position where the numbers are there and you have the time to make the best decision for you and your family.

Neil Henderson: 00:31:03

How do you give your kids that amount of money and not have them feel entitled to it?

Clint Harris: 00:31:11

Do you think that's a great question. I've thought about this A lot, actually, recently, and I've struggled with it. I don't think there's a silver bullet here.

Like, I've got older son is an unbelievably picky eater, which makes no sense to. My wife and I were not picky eaters. She grew up on a farm, eating everything, like animals that they slaughtered and all kinds of stuff.

You know, I was one of six. You better eat what you can or you ain't getting. And then my second son, he's a garbage disposal. He'll eat anything.

So the reality is, like, I don't think you can make rules. And a lot of times that every child is different, every parenting style is different.

I think your parenting style is probably going to change from one kid to the other. So I don't think that there's a silver bullet. But I do think you have to be really careful about entitlement.

My wife and I have always said we don't care about dying with a bunch of stuff. We'd rather die with a stack of pictures of places we've been to, with people that we love in beautiful places.

And I think that's probably going to be the message to my boys is like, they don't have money. We have money, but they don't have money. And we're probably going to spend our money. And anything that they want, they better get it.

Now, if they do a good job of that and they turn out to be great people that are doing good things for themselves and the people around them, like, if they can show that they're responsible with a little bit and they take care of that in a meaningful way, it's going to make me want to invest in this and invest in their businesses. And there's going to be terms to that and there's going to be expectations. So there's not going to be a handout.

But, you know, if they're faithful with a little, then I would hope that they were faithful with much. So I don't think there's any expectation of what we're going to leave them.

And I think that it's important that they know that, that early on they know anything they get, they're going to have to earn it. My wife had always said starting when he was 6, like Fisher, our oldest, was going to have to have a business.

Well, we've got some beehives out on our hunt club. We started a little bit early because we harvested 35 pounds of honey this past summer.

And so my son started Fisher's Happy Bee Company and I didn't know how he was going to respond to that, but he took a bunch of jars of honey out onto the boardwalk at Carolina beach and he sold out in 90 minutes. And he made like 470 bucks and he was hooked. And he's an extrovert, too, so he loved it and he was all about it.

And since then, he started another business. And we're going to do a sea salt business, and it's called turn into a cool Father Son Project.

I don't care if they're successful with it or they flop with it, it doesn't matter.

But the hard work that goes along with it, the lessons that go along with it, standing out in the sun and selling that and engaging with people, being willing to walk up to people, hi, introduce yourself, getting rid of some of the fear that comes along with it. Those lessons are way more important than any level of success you could have in business.

So if I see a kid, a lemonade stand, or even like, just someone out there with a landscaping business or whoever it is, if they're doing things the right way and working hard, like you want to lean into that, we need more of that. The whole world needs more of that. And so I think character is the number one most important thing.

And if you don't have character before you have money, you certainly won't have character afterwards. And same thing with happiness.

If you don't have it before your relationships and money, you certainly won't have it because of your relationships and money. So I think character is the number one most important thing. We look for ways to try to instill that every day.

If they get that right, then I think that it will provide opportunity, and then what they do with that opportunity is up to them. But if they don't do it the right way, then the opportunity is probably not going to be there.

Neil Henderson: 00:34:40

Well, I think I heard recently, and I'm going to butcher this quote, but our most important job as parents is to love our kids and to make sure that they understand they're loved and to hopefully raise human beings who are capable of loving in that same way. All the stuff about money is great, and I think that's what you're alluding to a lot, is that it's not just about the money. The money is just a tool.

And all we're trying to do is is build a tool that we can then hand off to them later generations and allow them to forge their own path.

Clint Harris: 00:35:19

Well said.

Neil Henderson: 00:35:19

Well, I've enjoyed this conversation.

I mean, I don't regret I wasn't in a position to buy rental properties when we were doing that initial planning for my son's college, and now we're kind of too far down that road to really change tax. Now I just need to make so much money that it's just not going to matter.

But if somebody has that desire, if they want to do that, I encourage them to reach out to Clint, reach out to myself and ask questions.

Clint Harris: 00:35:45

Absolutely agree. And you know, we didn't set out to accomplish that.

I think it's just an example of one of the forms of freedom that real estate investing can provide for you, because by the time we made the decision to do that, we already had the properties in our portfolio where we could set it up that way. So again, I'll leave you with with this.

One of the few things that I say all the time is that, you know, when it comes to getting started, imperfect action is better than perfect in action.

Neil Henderson: 00:36:08

Thank you so much for listening and watching the Truly Passive Income podcast.

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