How to Retire Early with Fewer Rental Properties Than You Think w/Chad Carson

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

You want to retire early, so you come up with a plan. “I’m going to buy ten rental properties and call it quits, then I’ll never have to work again.” Within a decade, you’ve got your ten rental properties, but now you want more. You buy another ten, then a big apartment complex, and now you’re raising money to buy even more. You have zero free time, investors to answer to, and a lot of stress. This wasn’t what you wanted. Let’s take it back to where you are now: how do you actually make it to early retirement?

At the height of Chad Carson’s real estate investing career, he was working eighty-hour weeks flipping homes, buying rentals, and dreaming of a financial freedom-enabling portfolio. But when the market crashed, he took a step back and asked, “What do I really want?” Thus, the small and mighty investor mindset was born. Now, Chad is retired early in his forties, working just two hours per week and making six figures in passive income. Want to do it, too?

Today, Chad discusses how you can build a small and mighty portfolio with fewer rentals, more cash flow, and ultimate time freedom. We’ll show you how to reverse engineer your goals to build the real estate portfolio you ACTUALLY want to own, why having hundreds of doors isn’t completely worth it, and the “metrics of success” you can use to measure your progress toward financial freedom.

In This Episode We Cover:

How to retire early (like Chad) with a small real estate portfolio

Why “door count” isn’t an accurate measure of success in real estate investing

Reverse-engineering your financial freedom and how to start working toward it today

Discovering your “why” and how NOT to get stuck in the day-to-day drudgery of adult life

Measuring your progress toward financial freedom with the “metrics of success”

Knowing when is “enough” and why winners know when to quit

And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Grab Chad’s Book, “The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor”

Join BiggerPockets for FREE

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Craft Your Personal Real Estate Portfolio with “Start with Strategy”

Property Manager Finder

See Dave at BPCON2024 in Cancun!

Who Cares About the Number of Doors You Have—Cash Flow Is What Actually Matters

Chad's BiggerPockets Profile

Dave's BiggerPockets Profile

Door count is a terrible metric. Please stop using it.

00:00 Intro

01:56 You DON'T Need 100 Rentals

05:18 What Do You REALLY Want?

09:53 Why Work More?

14:04 Metrics of Success

23:36 Reverse Engineering Financial Freedom

26:42 Does Door Count Matter?

33:13 What is "Enough"?

37:20 The Dish

Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1004

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