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Carl and Mindy from 1500days.com add a ton of color to the financial independence community. Don’t let their goofy demeanors fool you though! They are serious real estate investors with a TON of knowledge to share. They’ve got experience in pretty much every aspect of investing: single stocks, index funds, flipping single family properties, being hard money lenders, and even syndicating a deal to buy a trailer park.
You’ll love hearing their stories with their fun loving personalities!
We also chat about…
- the FI community’s love of craft beer (for those that can drink it!!)
- the importance of fitness
- the difference between biological and chronological ages
- crazy people biking in January in Minneapolis
- Maine being beautiful
- how awful Colorado is [OR IS IT?!]
- tax gain harvesting
They were a blast! Enjoy this chat with Carl and Mindy, and please subscribe to us in iTunes if you enjoyed it!
Show notes and links from today’s episode
- 1500days.com (Seriously check it out. If you like fart jokes, this is the blog for you)
- Mrs. 1500 Twitter (not the Bond Villain version) Mr 1500 Twitter
- Mrs. 1500 Email | Mr. 1500 Email
- Mr. Money Mustache
- Pimp Your Ride
- The Lucky Years
- Self-directed 401k article
- Sense Financial
- Stack Overflow
- How to Tax Gain Harvest (say wut?)
Key takeaways from our chat with The 1500s
1 – You can overcome any background
Gwen and Carl grew up hella poor. Like, no light up shoes poor. That’s a big deal to a 5 year old.
Both of them were motivated by their pasts and vowed to never be poor ever again. Carl is now a millionaire and Gwen is off to a very solid start.
They could’ve used that background as a reason to not excel in life, but instead they took that fire and stoked it to create wealth and success.
2 – Why trailer park investing?
Trailer parks come with a negative stigma most of the time.
Savvy investors, like Carl, Mindy, and their friends, can take advantage of this for some serious gains! If you can get it to a point where you own the land and are only responsible for some plowing (like say, if you buy a trailer park in Maine where it snows a whole bunch) and landscaping, you would be set!
Trailer homes themselves are not good investments….. but the land under them can sometimes be had for a very attractive price.
3 – How to leverage your solo, self-directed 401(k) for real estate investing
Only available to self-employed people!
Do what makes sense for your stage in life. Gwen is hesitant to invest with her 401k money, while Carl & Mindy are far more comfortable doing so with all their diversified investments. Make sure to do your due diligence!
Solo self-directed 401(k)’s work like a bank. They give out the money in one big chunk and then the people pay the money back little bit by little bit, tax free! Think of all the awesome tax benefits!
4 – Are J and Carl workaholics??
Carl never took more than a week off in his entire 20 year career!
Having laser-like focus is fantastic when you need to finish a project, but it’s
Your mind needs to relax in order to recover and it can’t do that if you’re busy stuffing your brain full of information all. the. time.
J has 99 problems and working too hard is DEFINITELY one of them.
Meanwhile, Gwen is over here takin it easy on the porch in the hammock without a care in the world…. heck, she quit her job because of the on-call requirement!
Carl recommends going half time the last few months before quitting or take a sabbatical to find out who you are without work.
5 – Quitting your job doesn’t make you any happier
You are the same person with or without your job. Quitting your job doesn’t mean magical rainbows will appear every day and all your problems will vanish.
Happiness comes from the inside.
Finding out what makes you happy is probably one of the BIGGEST favors we can do for ourselves in life. Do yourself a favor and run through a couple of thought exercises on what makes you happy.
You won’t regret it.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Olivia from the Birds of a FIRE blog. She writes about financial independence and hacking luxuries for w-aaaay less. She’s a 25 year old woman who lives in New York City, is a spreadsheet and programming nerd, and saves a whopping 70 percent of her income. She believes everyone should be able to retire early so she created a FREE 20,000+ word financial independence 2 week email course that comes with a super in-depth spreadsheet so you can save more, invest better, and retire sooner. You can find her at birdsofafire.com/firedrill.
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