James in Arizona has done very well financially. He's got 18 rental units, 10 houses, and four

duplexes, and he makes over $1 million per year as a real estate agent. On his rental properties,

he owes about $1 million in debt, but he also has $2 million set aside in cash that could

easily pay those debts off. So James is at a crossroads. He's not as passionate about being a real estate agent anymore, and he has a family.

He has a wife and two young kids who he'd like to spend more time with.

So he's tempted to just play defense and play it safe, use some of his cash to pay off the rest of his debt,

and then work less, and live off his investment income. But he's also torn because he

wants to save that cash for a potential market correction where he could use that cash to buy some

really good deals. And he's also not so sure that paying off three and a half and four percent

mortgage debt is the smartest move. I'm going to give my thoughts in this edition of Ask Coach

and we're getting started right now.

Welcome to the Ask Coach edition of the podcast. We haven't met yet. I'm your host, Chad Carson.

You can also call me Coach, and my mission here is to help you get out of the financial financial grind so you can do more of what matters. And in the Ask Coach series, I do my best to answer your burning questions about real estate investing and personal finance. Today's question came in by email from James Mishner. I want to thank James for letting me share the details of his situation with you. I've actually had some back and forth emails with

James, but I want to read part of his original email to me. And so I shared some of the details of

his properties and how much he owes on those properties. But he also says the total cash flow

would be $260,000 if I paid those properties off. I'm 34 and I have two beautiful kids and an amazing

wife. And I've been thinking of playing it safe and paying these properties off. I'm 34 and I have two beautiful kids and an amazing wife and I've been thinking of

playing it safe and paying these properties off to save time for my family, to have peace of mind

and just plain playing defense and working less. I hesitate though because when the market

corrects, I want to be able to take a full advantage of it and my rates on these debts are between 3 and 5.25%.

What's your advice? Answering this question is very nuanced, they're very personal. And in a way,

there's no way to give you an exact, this is what everyone should do type answer, because it's going to be

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