How I'm Setting Up My Life In Florida

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

Alright, guys. So I wanna make a little bit of a switch here, and I wanna talk to you about some of the things I'm doing out here to set up my life in Florida. And normally, I'm I'm very philosophical, and I think almost too philosophical. What I wanna do today is I wanna get down to some practical things that I think go hand in hand with the veteran community. And I was talking about this with my friend Matt Jensen yesterday, And we're talking about the number of veterans out there who are dealing with homelessness, who are dealing with bad financial straits.

And, you know, I I think that a lot of in a lot of cases I'm on here on this podcast, and I'm talking to you guys, but I think a lot of people don't realize that I'm not rich, I don't have a lot of money, I have never had a lot of money, and in fact, I've probably been struggling for the better part of my life financially, particularly over the last, like, ten years. You know, I went to school for a bit, didn't know what I wanted to do. You know, I had jobs. I was working as a personal trainer. I made a good amount of money as a personal trainer.

I owned a gym for a bit, but, you know, I've never been wealthy. And there's been a lot of times when I was wondering how the hell I was going to pay the rent, how the hell I was going to put food on the table, and how the hell I was going to get to next week, let alone next month or next year. But since I moved to Florida, I've gotten an awesome job. I have been I've started investing in real estate. I bought a house, and I've actually set myself up so that I am going to be living without having to pay rent, without having to pay much of a mortgage, without having to pay much of anything to live.

And that's given me the opportunity to save money, and to get myself back on track. I think a lot of you guys don't listen to the show because I'm some wealthy guy or anything like that. You listen because I'm in the trenches with you, and I want to give you something practical that you could potentially do for yourself. One of the things that Before I go into this, I want to also say this, I'm not a fucking expert. I don't know shit about real estate investing.

Everything I've learned, I've learned either from Marquion Sitch on his course, Active Duty Passive Income, or I've learned from BiggerPockets, the podcast with Brandon Turner, and also the Real Estate Rookie podcast. Before you do anything that I'm talking about, go out and learn from people who are a lot smarter than I am. I'm not telling you to do this. I'm not I'm not saying that, you know, you should do step by step according what what I'm doing. This is my experience.

I'm telling you what I'm doing, and maybe that'll set off a light bulb for you. But in the veteran community, we have this thing. It's called the VA loan. And the cool thing about the VA loan is that you could buy a house with little or no money down. Little or no money down.

So I just bought a house. The house was $340,000. I brought in $5,000 and then an additional $900 at closing, which is really, really, really low. Like, really low. And we'd actually prepaid a lot of this stuff, and I actually got $3,800 back at closing, which is a really rare case for a lot of people.

I don't want to say that my results are typical, but it is possible with the VA loan, because under the VA loan, you can come in with very little money down or no money down, and you can literally get a house without taking money out of your pocket. So I did this, and the house that I'm getting is a single family home with a studio in the back. So there's, like, a mother-in-law suite, and it's got a little kitchenette, and it's a studio apartment. Right? It's got closets.

It's it's doesn't have bedrooms or a living room or anything like that. But it's about 600 square feet. And when we saw the house, the house itself is about 1,300 square feet, so 30 total. It's on a big lot with a huge backyard in Florida. When we saw the house, we were like, Oh, maybe we could live in the house and rent out the studio.

And that would have been that would have helped with the mortgage. But what we're gonna do instead is we're gonna live in the studio apartment, and then we're renting out the main house. And the people will be like, well, why would you live in a studio apartment? And what when you got this huge house that that you could potentially live in? And the reason is to save money.

Right? I get to live in that studio apartment. I'm still the I'm still the the the the first record address owner. Right? Which which you have to be under a VA loan.

And then I can rent out that main house for, you know, the amount of the mortgage, which is gonna be like, you know, $2,100, $2,200 dollars. And then basically get the mortgage paid for, and then continue to work and just stack money up. Right? And think about that. Right?

If you could get to a point to where you could have your mortgage paid for, you're you're sacrificing a little bit, maybe, you know, you're living in a smaller space, but you're getting your mortgage paid for, how much money could you save? Right? You're not paying mortgage, you're not paying rent. You know, for the most part, you're you you got your expenses of of living covered. And that's gonna give me an opportunity to to get to a tailwind financially so I could start saving up more and more money.

Right? And then the other aspect of the VA loan is that you could refinance out of it and then use it again. So, you know, if interest rates are are are good and you have, I think, 25% equity in your house, right, you can start to refinance out of it, and then you could go and use your VA loan to get another house for no money down. Right? And you can keep doing that over and over again till you have a portfolio of real estate.

Right? And that's what a lot of people are doing out there. And again, I am not an expert on this, and I'm probably butchering that whole process. I've been talking to people, getting a lot of advice from people who know a lot more about this than I do, which I suggest you do too, not me, but somebody else who's a lot smarter than I am. And And check this out, because I think it's an opportunity for those of us in this community who've been maybe you know, we've been getting by, but maybe struggling a little bit to get ahead.

And it's something that I think, you know, it's unique to our community with all of these these privileges we have with the VA loan, that that we could do this. And I just wanted to put it out there, you guys know what I'm doing. And that's the plan. We live there, get the mortgage paid for, live without having to pay rent, and build equity in the house, and then go out and buy another one, and then go out and buy another one. And it'll probably be a slow, long burn.

It's a little bit stressful. I gotta get the house painted, I gotta get the floors fixed, get the toilets reset. But it's something that you can do to to ease up stress in other departments. Alright? And again, like I said, I'm an idiot financially.

You never want to take financial advice from me. But this is something that I've discovered, something that I've been working on, and I wanted to put it out there for you guys so that you guys can go out there and find some of these resources. The resources that I'm using are, like I said, Markeon Sitch, a good friend of mine who I've had on the podcast, has put out a course out there specifically about this called Active Duty Passive Income. You should Google that. Check that out.

And also Google BiggerPockets. Brandon Turner's BiggerPockets real estate podcast. He's got a bunch of books out there too. And also the BiggerPockets real estate rookie podcast. Definitely check those out.

So hope you guys try this or think about it. I hope you guys go out there and learn more about this, and let me know what your experience is. Are you trying this? Are you are you scared to do it? If so, why?

Let me know, and I'll talk to you guys soon. This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul podcast, and I am out.