From $20K/Year Salary to $20K+/Month Passive Income w/Ashley Hamilton

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ashley Hamilton had every card stacked against her in achieving financial freedom. She was a single mother with two children, earning just $20,000 per year working as a waitress, living in Detroit, one of the hardest-hit markets following the Great Financial Crisis. Sixteen years later, she’s making $50,000 per month in pure cash flow (and she has the receipts to prove it)! In Detroit, foreclosures were running rampant, houses were being repossessed left and right, but what could she do with almost no disposable income? Thanks to a $6,000 tax refund check, Ashley did what everyone told her not to do—buy a house during the crash. Fortune favors the bold, and Ashley was soon making $7,000 per year in cash flow from a single property. It was time to repeat the system and buy more rentals. With each tax refund, a new property was acquired, and get this—without using a mortgage. Ashley scaled fast thanks to her super-saver mentality, and now makes more passive income in one month than many people do in a year. She’s done it all with fewer rental properties, striving to have more cash flow instead of more doors. She’s walking through her portfolio, breaking down which properties make the most, and how to scale beyond financial freedom, no matter your starting point. In This Episode We Cover How to invest in real estate even if you have a low salary and little disposable income Why you don’t need a massive real estate portfolio for financial freedom The best piece of advice Ashley gives to new real estate investors The secret to scaling your real estate portfolio that 99% of people will ignore Breaking the generational poverty curse and giving your kids a greater life And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1177 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	This investor bought her first property when she was making only 20 grand a year.
0:05.1	Now she generates $50,000 in cash flow per month just from her real estate portfolio.
0:11.8	That is financial freedom, and she achieved it by just buying the same types of properties over and over.
0:18.2	And now she's using that freedom to completely transform her life and her health
0:22.8	for the better. Let's hear exactly how she did it.
0:30.7	Hey, everyone, I'm Dave Meyer. I'm a housing market analyst, and I've been an investor myself for the
0:35.8	last 15 years. And on this podcast, the
0:38.7	Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast, we teach you how to achieve financial freedom through
0:42.8	real estate investing. Today's guest on the show is investor Ashley Hamilton. She lives and
0:48.7	invests in Detroit and is one of the all-time most popular podcast guests we've ever had.
0:54.6	Ashley started her investing career
0:56.7	when she was struggling as a waitress with two kids
0:59.4	and slowly grew to 10 properties
1:02.4	when she first came on to the podcast back in 2019.
1:06.4	Today, we're having her back on for an update
1:08.9	because she has accomplished a lot.
1:11.4	Ashley has grown her portfolio to 40 properties today,
1:14.7	but she's focused on maximizing the cash flow she can get with a relatively
1:19.0	manageable number of properties instead of just trying to scale to as many doors as possible.
1:25.3	And most importantly, she's using her real estate and the time freedom
1:29.0	it has allowed her to make huge improvements to other areas of her life. Ashley is going to share
1:35.6	all about a huge personal health journey that was only possible because she took that first step
	...

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