Get Rich Education 600: Debt Is the American Dream
Keith challenges the belief that all debt is bad and reframes it as a tool for building wealth when used intentionally.
He contrasts destructive consumer debt with productive investment debt, especially in real estate, and explains how inflation, long-term fixed-rate loans, and rental income can work together to grow net worth.
Keith explores the mindset shift from prioritizing safety and being debt-free to pursuing growth through leverage, highlights the opportunity cost of avoiding debt, and offers practical guidelines for using borrowing rationally rather than emotionally.
He also shows how modern economies and many wealthy individuals rely on strategic debt, positioning it as a key part of a more intentional, asset-focused version of the American Dream.
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Complete episode transcript:
Keith Weinhold 0:00
welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith weinholder, there's bad debt, good debt and great debt. Are you using debt wisely, and are you ensuring that you stay in debt? Because debt is the American dream today, on get rich education milestone episode 600
Corey Coates 0:23
since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard in every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com
Keith Weinhold 1:06
the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com
Speaker 1 1:40
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 1:56
Welcome to GRE from Kennewick, Washington at Kennebunkport, Maine and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are inside get rich education. Yes, America's favorite slack jawed mammal on a microphone has got his act back on track, for your listening pleasure, since 2014 This is our 600th wealth building week in a row, you've been misled, not maliciously, not even intentionally, but somewhere along the way, a really expensive idea got planted inside your head, and it was once planted inside my head, that debt is bad, just blanketly bad, that the goal is to be debt free, that owing money to somebody else is something to escape as fast as possible. And look, I get it, if your mindset is in the old middle class consumer credit world like mine was for much of my life, debt feels heavy, it feels like risk, it feels like obligation, but the people telling you to avoid debt, they're the same people that never built much wealth now a reliance on 22% APR, credit card debt just To pay basic living expenses, because it's the only way that you could do it, merely making the minimum monthly payment that right there is the road to ruin. Why? Well, because the interest rate is high, because you have to pay it back yourself, and because it's unsecured, meaning that there's no collateral, and at the same time, the people quietly getting rich, what are they doing? They're using debt every single day. So debt is not the enemy, it's just the tool, and like any tool, it can build a house, or it can smash your thumb if you miss the nail. Well today we're going to separate the two, because if you understand this one concept, then you stop playing defense financially and start going on offense. In fact, I'll go further. Debt isn't the opposite of the American Dream used correctly. Debt is the American dream. Now, my turning point was really fueled when I made my first ever home, that $295,000 blue four Plex Building Two decades ago, with just my three and a half percent down payment. That meant that 96 and a half percent was borrowed. That's debt, and that fueled everything for me, and got the ball rolling on using that seminal four Plex to leverage even more debt and more property with 1031 exchanges and cash out refinances debt made that American dream free. Me because I could not have afforded $295,000 all cash back then. Now, a guest that we had on the show last year and the owner of a commercial lending company, Hannah Hannan, she recently talked about the virtues of debt. I met Hannah because we were both faculty members on last year's real estate guys Investor Summit at sea cruise. Well, Hannah went on a different cruise and saw in Jamaica that there were all these vacant and uncompleted houses just sort of weirdly stuck at different stages of construction. She asked the tour guide, why are these houses all abandoned? And and the tour guide answered, we don't have loans here in Jamaica. People have to work make money and then start the build, and then the build pauses while they make more money, and then they have to construct the next phase of the build as they go and go back to making more money like that. I mean, sheesh, that's awful. Can you imagine if you had to build a home or a rental property for yourself that way? Well, back here in the US, access to debt is what allows people to build wealth faster, especially in real estate, you can use other people's money control large assets, pay less in taxes and compound off a much smaller amount of capital. That's the difference. Debt availability is really good in the US compared to other nations, and that's the emphasis on the American part of today's episode. Debt is the American dream. Now, when it comes to the big misunderstanding, most people think that debt is really just one thing. They just lump it all like it's all bad, credit cards, car loans, student loans, mortgages. A lot of people, they really do. They just still throw it all into one mental bucket that's sort of labeled da, avoid that at all costs. I'm telling you, no way you cannot do that. I mean, this is like saying food is bad because candy exists. No, there's junk food and there's fuel. It's the same with debt. Consumer debt is a wealth killer. Investment debt is a wealth creator, and if you don't know the difference well, you end up avoiding the very thing that could move your life forward. Here's another way to think about it, debt doesn't make you poor. Using debt poorly makes you poor.
Keith Weinhold 7:36
In real estate, inflation is quietly paying your mortgage, even if you never made a principal payment at all. When you really understand this, it almost sounds too good to be true. Most people think inflation is just rising prices, and it is that, but they miss the other side of the equation. Inflation also shrinks debt, something I've been talking about for more than 10 years here. If you have a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, you're paying back that loan with future dollars that are worth less, and meanwhile, rents tend to rise, wages tend to rise, and asset values tend to rise, but your mortgage, it stays fixed. Inflation can't touch it, and that means that over time, your payment gets easier and easier to make. Oh, and then if you've got a tenant in place as well, oh, they're the one sending in the check for everything. And inflation is not just happening to you. It's now working for you. If you've got, say, a $500,000 mortgage loan, and inflation is 3% well, then inflation enriched you by $15,000 every single year. That's $1,250 a month just on this 500k mortgage loan. And if you've got an investment property rented out. You've even got the tenant paying down, oh, maybe $400 in monthly principal for you on the property, plus this $1,250 in inflation profiting, plus $100 of cash flow. This is $1,750 in monthly benefit before we've even added in your tax benefits and the appreciation potential. What made this all happen debt is what made it all a reality for you. When we talk about why the middle class fears debt, yeah, there is a mindset divide here. On one side, it simply says, get out of debt, stay out of debt and avoid risk. On the other we ask, How can I use that to acquire assets? So it's really like the first group is focused on safety and the second group is focused on growth, and after a while you have to ask bigger X. Potential questions like, do you want to live a life of safety, or do you want to live a life of growth? Now, I'm not knocking discipline, but there is a hidden cost to avoiding debt entirely. It's called opportunity cost. When you pay all cash, oh, well, then you lose leverage, you lose scalability, you lose tax advantages, and you often lose time. Hey, just like I would have by postponing my first four Plex purchase for, say, five plus years until I could have saved up all that money by myself. That's why playing it safe is often the riskiest move, because while you're sitting on the sidelines, inflation and rising prices are still in the game, and you've taken yourself out of the game. When we talk about the American dream, look, America was built on debt leverage.
Keith Weinhold 11:01
Zoom out for a second. This isn't just about you and me. America itself was built on debt. Railroads were financed with borrowed money that helped Cornelius Vanderbilt build his railroad empire in the 1800s in the 1900s highways were funded through government debt. Today, our entire suburbs are built on mortgages. Leverage didn't break the system. It built the system. So it's kind of ironic that today people are told the safest move is to avoid the very mechanism that built this modern economy that you and I are living inside every day. Debt is how things get done. Now, practically, yes, debt can absolutely wreck you if it's used poorly. So we think about some simple guardrails then favor fixed rate debt over variable match long term debt with long term assets, and you want to chiefly borrow for cash flowing or appreciating assets, and also stress test your deals assume that things won't go perfectly. So this certainly is not about being reckless. It's about being intentional. Debt should serve you, not the other way around. And now notice how I said to chiefly use debt for cash flowing or appreciating assets. I didn't say solely because you'll remember how last year, I talked to you about how I bought a new car for myself and financed as much as I was allowed, almost 100% debt. I had to make, like, a two or 3k down payment on the car because it was a special order. And once they start, you know, building it and customizing it for me, well, then they're at risk if they don't have a deposit, all right? Well, I found a way to make this car debt pretty good debt. Oh, and you might be thinking, oh, yeah, of course. Well, if you use it for business, you probably get some deductions that way. Oh, no, no. Business use totally a personal car, almost leveraged to the hilt, but it's not bad debt, and I'll tell you why. By the way, this isn't some high end exotic car. It's a BMW x3 SUV. It was like 53 or 55k and now how could I possibly call this good debt? Nope, I'm not running it out to other people or anything like that, because here, unlike income property, where a tenant pays it down, I do have to make these car payments myself. Well, in a word, the reason I did it this way is for the arbitrage. I got a fixed 3.99% interest rate for five years. Call it 4% Oh, I am almost certainly going to beat that by investing those dollars in real estate. So the 55k almost that I did not have to allocate to a car. Oh, well, that amount is enough for a down payment and closing costs on a cash flowing rental. That's probably going to pay me five ways with a total ROI that I expect to be multiples above the 4% interest rate, but the car's value depreciates. What about that debt on a depreciating asset? A car depreciates at the same rate whether it's bought all cash or all debt. It doesn't matter. Here is the better question, why tie up that much in a depreciating asset? 55k if I had paid all cash which I could have, I would have foregone returns and paid opportunity cost. Now, arbitraging car debt this way. That's not great debt. I don't put it in that category like real estate that pays for itself is and that is mostly because no tenant services. My personal car debt. For me, this car debt is just good debt, not great debt. Now how about some more guardrails? How can you keep yourself from going nuts and just trying to arbitrage everything. How would you know if you've gone too far? I mean, any person that's savvy with personal finance has to ask themselves a question, and that is always, what is the risk associated with this investment, or what is the risk associated with this debt, right? Because I already talked about the upsides of car debt this way. Well, the first risk is that I don't successfully arbitrage it. Rather than having the 55k sunk into the car, I have it invested elsewhere than say, it doesn't achieve a greater than 4% return. Well, the risk of that happening is small, maybe about a 10% chance. What's another big risk of leveraging car debt this way? Well, it's if you cannot make the monthly payment, which for me is about $1,050 a month, 1050 that's a comfortable payment. For me, if you can't make the payment that's called, you got yourself into an over leveraged condition. But for me, these risks are manageable. And this is applied thinking. This is clear eyed thinking, rational decision making, a level headed approach, a long term approach. It's common sense investing. Have a strategy and then invest your plan, not your emotions. Look paying off debt. That's often an emotional response, like when the debt is at a low interest rate and yes, understanding that debt is the American dream. Okay, this is still a pretty unconventional understanding, for sure, but it is pragmatism over emotions. When emotions go up, intelligence goes down. You can see that in a lot of places in your life. I can too. I think that a lot of the emotion happened to us when we were really young, perhaps age 12. And maybe you're saying, Oh, well, grandpa, he would not have arranged his finances this way. Grandpa wouldn't have leveraged all this real estate debt, and he sure wouldn't have thought that arbitraging car debt is savvy, but your grandpa was born before 1971 back when the dollar was still gold, backed if you're older now, your grandpa might have even been affected by living through the 1930s Great Depression. Our world does not work that way. Today, the dollar is no longer tethered to gold. It's just borrowed and lent into existence, and another Great Depression that's actually really unlikely. In the 1930s President Herbert Hoover refused to provide government support to prop up the economy, and sheesh today, any crisis is like immediately propped up by us printing a ton of dollars and then giving them out, just like covid stimulus checks and mortgage loan forbearance and all of that debt, debt, debt. Now I don't think that all of that is good, but you got to acknowledge that that's the world we live in today. If you're debt averse, because grandpa always said to stay out of debt, well then you know what you can take solace. Take comfort in the fact that today, ultimately, grandpa would have understood that the world changed, and he would want what is best for you.
Keith Weinhold 19:03
I'm get rich education. Host Keith Weinhold, this week, we're talking about why debt is the American dream on episode 600 with guidance that's practical, contrarian investor first and non emotional. Contrarian does not mean reckless. And by the way, just because something is mainstream, well, that doesn't necessarily make it bad, but in this case with debt, it often does. Here we're kind of back onto the old Mark Twain quote. Go out on a limb, that's where the fruit is. This is independent thinking for real world investors. It's where theory meets what actually works, and I'll discuss some specific actionable guidance for you before we're done today. But this is largely about ignoring the masses and following a clear incentive path. And what do the masses do? Now they kind of all gel together and get pumped up when they follow these debt free call in radio shows where the host advises the caller to always desperately retire debt at all costs. They'll even tell you work a second and a third job. You got to postpone vacations. They'll tell you to defer your life and go into lifestyle debt. Then in order to desperately stay out of financial debt, we're never going to get that time back. So just chill, take it easy with a lot of debt types inflation and sometimes tenants both passively pay it back for you. I mean, on these debt free call in radio shows, almost every time they give guidance, I kind of chuckle when I listen to this stuff. I sort of quietly ask myself, how would that path ever build wealth like when people are advised to retire 3% mortgage debt? Why dreadful sounding guidance like this happens is because it keeps irresponsible people from going over a cliff. That's all it serves to do. I mean, you're here listening to me because you're good with money, or you desire to be good with money and not give all your money away to creditors used intelligently. Debt isn't reckless. It's a tool, and it's one that lets you scale without trading every hour of your life for dollars. It seems to me that some of the groups of people that need to hear the debt is the American Dream message. They tend to be in a few groups. I need to be careful here, but I'm talking about groups like people with less financial education, engineers and women. It doesn't mean that people with less financial education are any less intelligent. And then when it comes to the engineering profession, you know that type of person tends to be unusually conservative, and I've worked for engineering firms in the past, so I wouldn't know this is somewhat of a paradox. Since engineers are the calculating types, you would think that they would have leverage and arbitrage figured out, and then women are a group that they tend to be more debt averse than most, and this is not a knock on women at all. In fact, women generally do a lot of things better than men do. I mean, I could go on and on there, like emotional intelligence and social awareness and relationship building and even multitasking and sticking to a plan, but I know couples where the husband does understand that it does not make a lick of financial sense to pay off the home, but he did it because the wife wants it so badly she deems that as security. But yeah, there was a time in my life where I thought that being millions of dollars in debt. Oh, that just sounded awful, like I thought that after graduating from college, but Oh, position well, with leverage in real estate, after a long time, you might get yourself where you're increasing your debt half a million bucks every year, but right alongside it, you're increasing your asset value 1 million bucks every year. Well, right there, since net worth is assets minus debt, you're increasing your net worth by a half million bucks a year because you have a big amount to leverage, because you've been a real estate investor for a long time. For example, debt made that American dream possible. But, yeah, the needling engineer type that's conventional and is like still the guy faithfully contributing to their 401 k which is locked up until their age, 59 and a half and keeps paying down debt. You know, they're the ones showing up to their engineering job in a pair of Dockers pants. I'm telling you, people that wear Dockers are not good debtors. I mean, do they still make stupid Dockers? I've got to look that up. Do those pants have pleats at the front or not? I don't even know.
Speaker 2 24:16
Levi's 100% cotton Dockers. If you're not wearing Dockers, you're just wearing pants.
Keith Weinhold 24:21
Oh jeez. And yeah, they still do make Dockers. I mean, the stereotypical needling engineer that dutifully contributes to a 401, K, he's got to have a complete dresser drawer full of stupid Dockers, no doubt.
Keith Weinhold 24:37
Hey, I can make a little fun of them, because I spent a lot of time in that world. I think it makes sense to contribute to a 401 K, by the way, but only up to the employer match amount. That way it's tax advantaged, and you're using other people's money one to one, but above that, oh, every dollar you lock inside a 401 k is $1 that can No. Longer leverage other people's money. That means no debt, no leverage, and a steep opportunity cost. Now to get a holistic picture here, we need to think through what are some reasons to pay down debt, or to pay off debt and completely retire it? Because there are some good reasons for doing that. I talked about credit cards earlier, student loan debt is also not good debt, because you must pay that debt, not somebody else, like a tenant, and now their interest rates are not as high as credit cards, but there's also no collateral with student loans. Maybe you could arbitrage it, like I did with my car, but student loan debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Like most other debt types, can you also want to pay off debt when an interest rate is working against you and not for you. Also, if you want to buy more property, but you need to lower your DTI in order to qualify with your mortgage loan underwriter that is lower your debt to income ratio before you take out another mortgage. Oh, well, that would be a reason, for example, to pay off a car loan. Another reason to pay off debt is if you're approaching retirement and you expect a decrease in your income, then you would want to revisit that here at GRE you might be structuring things to increase your income once you retire. That's its own discussion. They are some of the reasons to pay off debt. It makes sense sometimes, and with all those reasons, we've kept emotions out of it. But otherwise, yeah, bring on the good debt. Debt and loan are my two favorite four letter words the wealthiest people have the most debt. I've discussed that reality before on previous episodes, and I gave a lot of examples, like with Mark Zuckerberg and also with Jay Z and Beyonce, so I won't go into all that again. So therefore, let me discuss how, not only do the wealthiest people have the most debt, I mean, for example, I'm wealthier than I've ever been, and I simultaneously have the most debt that I've ever had. Not surprisingly, the wealthiest world nations have the most debt too. Let's look at it from the perspective of household debt as a percent of GDP. There are about 200 world nations, and sure enough, the US ranks pretty high 13th in this measure of household debt, the top 10 nations, counting them down from 10 to one is and look, they're all wealthy nations that have the most debt, Sweden, Denmark, Hong Kong, Norway, South Korea. Up to fifth is New Zealand. And then you've got the Netherlands at fourth, and then Canada, Australia, and number one is the nation that you probably think of as the most wealthy and stable in the entire world. It is Switzerland. They are number one in household debt per GDP, and then the poorest of the 200 world nations have the least debt and the highest interest rates and the least stable currencies. But see, the wealthy nations can borrow the most. These countries can borrow trillions because investors trust them. Their economies are productive and they can service the payments just like you see, say that I know you've got $5 million in debt. Just say that's true. All right. Well, now that's an interesting thing that I know about you, and now I can automatically deduce something else about you. I know that you must be pretty credit worthy for anyone to have even extended you that much credit. So a high debt level is a mark of creditworthiness. The richest people have the most debt and the richest nations have the most debt too. Debt is a contract with time. Here's the deeper idea, debt lets you pull future resources into today. It's financial time travel. But there is a catch. You need to deploy that capital into something that grows faster than the cost of borrowing. If you do that, you win. If you don't, then you just brought future problems into the present debt is time travel, and most people just waste the trip. That's why debt has a bad name. Debt Free surely is not the goal. But you know, even hitting a certain net worth or income mark is not an end goal. Their financial goal. But not the end. The end goal is genuinely living the best version of you. And in fact, let's listen to this together for a minute or two from the parallel truth. Are you really living? It's a little oversimplified, but this is quite a bit more substantive than civil engineers wearing Levi's 100% cotton Dockers. Don't be startled by the sound effects.
Speaker 3 30:23
If you really think working 50 years at a job you hate just to get a few years of so called Freedom makes sense, then I'm sorry to say, you have been brainwashed. This is not living. It's a trap. From the moment you're born, the system starts programming you. School doesn't teach you to think. It teaches you to obey, to sit still, follow orders and wait for permission. Then comes work, where your best years, your energy, your creativity, all get drained away to build someone else's dream. And they call that success. Retirement is the prize they dangle in front of you. Work hard now, they say, so one day you can finally rest. But by the time that day comes, your body's worn out, your fire's gone, and all those dreams you once had, they faded into routine. You traded your time for money and then your health to earn it back. And here's the cruel truth, that's not an accident. It's designed that way, a system built to keep you tired, broke and too distracted to notice what's really happening. They want you so busy surviving that you forget to actually live the scam is simple. They steal your youth when it's full of energy, passion and possibility, and then hand you back your freedom when you're too weak to use it. And the worst part, most people defend the very system that's enslaving them. They call it normal life. They laugh at anyone who questions it, because it's easier to believe the lie than to face the truth. But nothing about this is normal. It's just comfortable enough to stop you from revolting. They give you weekends, holidays and Netflix tiny doses of relief so you don't question the cage you live in. You were born to create, to explore, to build your own path, not to clock in and out until the day you die. The world doesn't need more workers. It needs more thinkers, more dreamers, more people brave enough to walk away from the illusion. So ask yourself, are you really living or just slowly dying inside a system that calls itself freedom?
Speaker 4 31:59
Yeah. Are you truly living or just existing with GRE plan, you can often retire in five to 10 years. So no debt isn't something to fear. It's something to understand. Because the difference between being stuck financially and moving forward faster than you thought possible, it often comes down to one thing, whether you avoid debt or you learn to use it, the American dream is not about being debt free. It's more about owning assets, leveraging wisely, and then letting time tenants and inflation do some of the heavy lifting for you, all of your life. Debt is the American dream, and I've got more on this for you today, coming up here on the show in future, GRE episodes, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Author Robert Kiyosaki publicly states that he has $1.4 billion in debt, billion with a B, not because he's irresponsible, because he understands leverage and debt often entails a tax advantage with it too. Later this spring, Robert Kiyosaki returns to the show with me here. He's been one of our more recurrent guests over time. Next week, Redfin chief economist, Darrell fairweather, PhD, sits down with me here. Also a lot of other prominent guests lined up, like real estate influencer thatch Wynn will be here with me and lots of other great episodes coming up, including a lot of content that you wouldn't expect to hear that can make a real difference in your life. Be sure to follow or subscribe to the show and also tell a friend about the show today could very well be one of these paradigm shifting episodes that you want to share on social media. More straight ahead you're listening to debt is the American Dream On get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 33:50
Let me throw out a simple idea, sometimes doing nothing with your money is actually a decision. Leaving it parked might feel safe, but over time, purchasing power changes. So the conversation isn't about chasing returns. It's about intentionally placing money somewhere. Freedom, family investments works in real estate people use every day housing, senior communities, essential properties, things tied to living and not trends, their freedom notes. Offering is built for accredited investors looking for structured income backed by real assets, not speculation. I am an investor with them myself. The Freedom team makes themselves available to walk through their approach, structure and operating philosophy, so you can ask questions and determine alignment before moving forward, while past performance doesn't guarantee future results, their historical operating philosophy has yielded 100% investor payouts backed by over 20 years of experience. If you want clarity before making any moves, book a clarity call. At freedom familyinvestments.com or text family to 66 866, text the word family to 66 866.
Keith Weinhold 35:12
Flock homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now Mom and Pop landlords can 721 the residential real estate request your initial valuation, see if your properties qualify@flockhomes.com slash, slash GRE, that's F, l, O, C, K, homes.com/gre
Tom Wheelwright 35:50
This is Rich Dad Advisor Tom wheelwright. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.
Keith Weinhold 36:02
You welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold its debt is the American dream on episode 600 now, just before taking the mic, about 30 minutes ago, I ate some raspberries. I looked at the package to see where they were grown Mexico. Someone in Mexico supplied them. There was a supply chain. Those raspberries were planted in rows with trellising grown, and then they need to be hand picked. They're highly perishable, and they need to be shipped a long way fast, therefore, I just simply had the exorbitant privilege of buying those raspberries from a lit refrigerated store shelf with my dollars. Well, effectively, a bank lent me those dollars. Most of my debt is real estate debt, where time, tenants and inflation service my debt for me. I mean, what an amazing world. I'm just here to control those flows, those flows of money between Mexican raspberry growers, for my property managers that manage my tenants and for the banks that provide the loan. I mean, gosh, debt really is the American dream. It made raspberries appear. This is a contrarian way of thinking, but it's calculated. It's unconventional, but it's first principles thinking, rather than emotions from grandpa. You know something I've said it before that. Hey, I'm proud that throughout my life I have never ridden the government dole. Once. Never have I done that. I've never accepted a subsidy, no covid stimulus checks. I've never accepted an unemployment check in my life, even though I could have been eligible one time. I'm proud of that, because otherwise taxpayers would have had to work for me and pay for me. But in a way, since so many of my mortgage loans are subsidized, I am riding the government dole to get 30 year mortgage money at a 7% interest rate, that's also tax deductible, so therefore maybe I'm paying 5% I mean, that's a really good deal, and the government backing makes banks want to provide lucrative loans to us, just like the FHA program that I personally began with on a fourplex, and Just like these first 10 Fannie, Mae, Freddie Mac backed investor loans that you can get for one to four unit properties. So although it's indirect, it's really like a government handout that we're getting. And what can we do when we can do our part in giving back by doing good in the world and providing good housing, not being slumlords. That's the path that we're on here and the future, it's always going to feel uncertain. Always, I'm encouraging you. You've got to plant the tree, you've got to take the leap. You've got to choose to believe that there is something worth building toward optimism is not about ignoring what's broken in the world. It's about deciding anyway to keep on going, and you're probably doing a lot right, working hard, earning, well, a little saving, but more investing. There's a problem that very few people talk about, labor income is taxed heavily, asset income is treated better, and then 401, K income, well, that doesn't even start arriving until you're about 60 or 70. And really, this is why a lot of high performing. Professionals eventually hit a wall. They make more money, but they don't feel much freer. The people who break out usually do one thing differently. They stop relying on one income source, and they start building income producing assets, and that's where I come in, you already know how to do things like budget and save. We all learned that quite a long time ago, and we've all heard the usual advice about maxing out your 41k waiting for years and just sort of hoping, and that might build a nest egg like that usually does turn into something, and it's better than nothing. It usually won't build outsized returns or freedom, though, and surely not while you're young enough to fully enjoy it. So get rich education is about a different path, building durable wealth through income, property, financial education and smarter leverage, certainly not day trading, certainly not get rich quick, just a proven framework for escaping overdependence on a paycheck, a generationally proven vehicle here and here you get the mindset and tactics to make generationally proven real estate a life changing investment because most people are Climbing the wrong mountain. A lot of smart professionals spend 30 years trying to save their way to freedom, but wealth usually grows faster when you own assets that produce income appreciate over time, offer tax advantages and can be financed with long term debt. That's how you get a lot of them. That is the difference between working hard and building leverage. So you can't out earn a broken wealth strategy.
Keith Weinhold 41:47
Most people earn income, but few people own income. You own the source of the income when you have rental property. A lot of smart professionals really learn that too late, Your salary alone doesn't even have the ability to make you wealthy, since wealth is freedom. So we use an abundance mentality to invest in assets that are scarce. Most people use a scarcity mentality, leading with loss aversion, to invest in something that's abundant and plentiful. So there is always opportunity out there in a market as big and as broad as the US residential real estate market. Where is that opportunity today? Well, I'll tell you that list prices rose 2% year over year to a median of 423k that's in the four week period that just ended according to Redfin. But notice I said that was the list price buyers haggled them down to about 389k that's really significant. It's really proof that sellers are willing to bend in today's markets. So therefore in most markets, I'm encouraging you to make an offer that's below the list price, as we know, available for sale property that is still scarce in a lot of the Northeast and Midwest, and supply is abundant in Texas and Florida. But here's the thing, although Florida inventory is higher now than it was pre pandemic over that six or seven year stretch, here's the new trend, and it's worthwhile to identify inflection points like this on a year over year basis. So looking at only the past one year, Florida inventory is now down 4% it's no longer going up. So it's possible that we've reached the peak of this new Florida supply. We could have hit the turning point now, and yet, builders are still buying down your mortgage rate to about 4% giving you that long term fixed rate on new builds. So I'm telling you, that's where the opportunity is now. As far as the rent side, nationally, I don't see rents going up significantly anytime soon, and that's for most everything, single family rentals all the way up to huge apartment buildings. Rent increases in the single family to fourplex space, they showed some real promise last spring, a year ago, but as we got into summer, they didn't really materialize. Now, although you get rent increases historically, it's never wise to buy and just assume that that is automatic. But I want to underscore the fact that you really should not count on a rent increase over the next year. So that's new builds.
Keith Weinhold 44:53
The other area ripe for opportunity. Here is burrs, buy, renovate, rent. Finance and repeat properties and among GRE listeners, burrs have been our most popular investment over the past two years. Yeah, Memphis, Little Rock, Birmingham and Kansas City, they are our hottest and most reliable burr markets, and we've really improved our burr operations since first helping you with those found the secret sauce, as far as helping you get the right provider that doesn't leave you hanging on the renovation, burrs are also good for you if you have fewer investment resources than what new build properties require. GRE coaching calls and our coaching program are completely free to help you with this now. Of course, our investment coaches listen to all the GRE episodes like you. They're aligned, and we have family guys that work here, like our investment coach Naresh. He has a wife and kids, and he's just the type of person that you want to see succeed in life and that you would enjoy working with over time. And we are all investors ourselves here, every one of us, so it doesn't hurt to set up a 30 minute consultation call to see if our GRE coaching program is right for you, some good, abundantly minded council for free. Our investment coaches have access to the best deals in real time. That alone is worth a connection. We're in constant communication with the top national providers in the best markets. So there might be an incentive today, like, say, a builder rate by down to 4% that didn't exist just two days ago or yesterday. So this is why investors are succeeding. They're also succeeding thanks to our recent Florida online live event. Connect with us to watch the replay and get in on these deals yourself. In fact, we have never seen so many incentives and price reductions in GRE history as we are right now. And see, here's the thing, when it comes to you making an offer below the list price, because our coaches work with other GRE listeners, they're going to know how low that seller is really going to go for you on that price. So that negotiation is some key information that you can learn. We have access to more than 200 deals nationwide, so contact our real estate investment coaches to get access and these burr properties can give you a super high ROI, because sometimes you can end up with as little as 10k or 20k of equity invested in an income producing single family rental. That's probably going to be 20k or more. And then with some of these developers that overbuilt in places like Florida, make that offer use good debt and take advantage of that interest rate in the fours. Buy low. And the reason that these new build deals provide positive income is because you buy at a lower purchase price overall, and you get a fixed rate in the fours, and you get a low property insurance rate, since they are new build properties, you don't need urgency right now so much as you need clarity, because there are opportunities, real ones, whether it's burrs in the Midwest or builder incentives in places like Florida, where you can Get those 4% rates. But the challenge isn't finding opportunity, it's knowing which one is right for you, and that's exactly what we help you do. And since our coaches are active investors themselves, they follow the same markets and the same providers and the same strategies that we talk about here on the show. So instead of guessing or going back and forth in emails, just get clear book, a quick call. It's free, it's 30 minutes, and it could save you months or years of going in the wrong direction. You can do that@greinvestmentcoach.com that's greinvestmentcoach.com the best thing you can do next is get aligned with the right opportunity. I'll chat with you in a week. I'm Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your Daydream.
Speaker 3 49:35
Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively the.
Speaker 4 50:03
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