45 Rentals and $0 Debt: The Money Mindset Shift That Made Me Financially Free

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Worried you’ll never be able to buy rental properties because you’re “bad” with money? Today’s guest was in the same boat until a much-needed mindset shift set her on the path towards financial freedom. Since then, she has built a debt-free, 45-property portfolio that gives her more than enough cash flow to live on! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Liz Carroll didn’t always have a healthy relationship with money. In college, she would ask her parents to bail her out of credit card debt and have her fiancé cover her car repairs. But one day, something clicked, and Liz realized she needed to take back control of her money. Her ultimate goal? Financial independence—and real estate investing would be how she achieved it. But rather than overleveraging herself, Liz worked hard, saved, and bought properties with minimal debt—paying them off as soon as possible! In this episode, Liz breaks down her very first deal, a $13,000 property (really!) that gave her the confidence to scale her real estate portfolio. She also talks about niching down and the exit strategy that’s allowing her to offload her properties, one by one, while helping her tenants achieve the dream of homeownership! In This Episode We Cover How Liz and her husband built a portfolio of paid-off rental properties Building and scaling a rental portfolio while working nine to five How to reframe the way you think about money so you can start investing Paying off your mortgage (early) to fast-track your investing goals Why living below your means is a non-negotiable for financial freedom Streamlining your business by refining your buy box and niching down And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-647 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you've ever told yourself, I'm just not good with money. Today's episode might completely
0:05.6	change that story. Our guest, Liz Carroll, once will leave the same thing, but she did the hard
0:10.2	work to rewrite her money mindset. And it helped her and her husband build a completely debt-free
0:16.0	real estate portfolio of 45 rental properties. Yeah, and Liz didn't come from a finance background.
0:22.6	She worked in IT sales.
0:24.3	She's proof that you can create financial independence by shifting how you think about money
0:28.9	first and then how you use it.
0:31.0	Whether you're buying your first property or you're trying to get control of your spending
0:34.7	before you invest, this episode is going to help you bridge
0:37.6	the gap between mindset and math. Liz, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
0:48.8	Thank you, Ashley. Thank you, Tony, for having me. I'm very excited to be here. And it's fun to think back of the rookie days
0:56.5	because it's been a while. Well, Liz, I want to start at the very beginning. You've said you used
1:01.7	to think that you were bad with money. What did that look like in your life at that time?
1:06.1	Well, for me, it looked like I had been bailed out on some credit card debt from my mom while I
1:12.4	got in a little credit card trouble in college, which today doesn't sound like a whole
1:19.0	lot of money, but back then, $1,000 with a maxed out credit card felt like a lot.
1:24.5	And I'm talking about 1989.
1:34.4	So this was a long time ago. And then when I got married,
1:41.0	you know, I had heard I wasn't good with money. I had heard that a lot growing up from what started when I was 12 and had some money stolen out of the ice rink locker, which I don't know
1:46.5	why a 12 year old at that time was bringing $40 to the ice rink, but I had all of it stolen.
1:53.1	I just felt like I wasn't good with money. I had made some money mistakes in losing money or having
2:00.6	it stolen from me.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 14 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BiggerPockets, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BiggerPockets and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.