Fast-Tracking Financial Freedom (in Her 30s!) with JUST 5 Rentals

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Five rental properties are all you need to change your life. This income alone could cover all your bills, allowing your entire paycheck to go toward investing as you're fast-tracked to financial freedom and early retirement. Even if you’ve got a demanding job with long hours and limited free time, investing in real estate is STILL the right move. Today’s guest was able to utilize her (very limited) downtime to build a rental portfolio of six units, all while managing her hectic day job. Now, she’s in a great position to retire early and is even eyeing her dream retirement house as we speak. Jessica Cruel is editor-in-chief at Allure & SELF, but before the big title, she was living in expensive Newark, New Jersey, looking to invest in real estate while making less than six figures a year. After watching her ex-boyfriend successfully do a real estate deal, she thought, “If he can do it, I can do it better.” So, she bought a rental with multiple units but a sizable renovation checklist. It took her two years to turn it around, but now, she’s cashing the checks that will fund her early retirement. Six years later, Jessica has a six-unit portfolio, with enough income to cover her bills and a hunger to build her small, slow-but-steady, financial freedom-enabling real estate portfolio. If she can do it in her pricey area, why can’t you? In This Episode We Cover The single best strategy for starting in real estate (it will save you a TON) Why you DON’T need a huge real estate portfolio to retire early How to invest in real estate even with a demanding day job How NOT to get your AC unit stolen while you’re away (seriously) Buy your retirement home now! How to have your dream home pay for itself And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1135 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

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0:00.0	buy five properties and you can live for free in retirement.
0:03.7	This investor set that exact goal a few years ago and is well on her way to achieving financial
0:08.9	freedom and the option to retire early from a demanding career with only five units in her
0:14.1	current portfolio.
0:15.4	And the cool thing is that she's not spending tons of cash.
0:18.2	She's not employing some time-consuming marketing strategies. She's doing
0:22.3	strategies that you can start doing right now.
0:30.0	What's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer, head of real estate investing at Bigger Pockets. I, myself,
0:35.7	have been buying rental properties for 15 years, and this podcast
0:39.0	is here to teach you how to achieve financial freedom through real estate investing.
0:44.2	Today, we have a great investor story for you with someone named Jessica Krull. She lives
0:49.6	and invests in Newark, New Jersey. And Jessica, on top of being a real estate investor, has a very
0:55.5	impressive, interesting career in the media industry. But that demanding full-time career that
1:01.7	she has has motivated her to also find a path to financial freedom. So in between fashion
1:08.9	events and board meetings, she's dealing with tenants and toilets.
1:12.8	She's looking for deals just like the rest of us. Jessica bought her first property when she was
1:18.5	making well under $100,000. And even today, she only has a modest goal of buying five properties
1:24.3	trying to get to about 10 units by age 40 so she can cover her housing costs
1:28.9	in early retirement. Today, she has five of those units already locked up and she already has
1:34.6	seemingly hundreds of stories about overcoming property management issues and
1:39.8	inching closer to her goals one day at a time because as we all know, that's what it takes.
1:45.8	This is a super fun conversation, and it really just shows how almost everyone can benefit
	...

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