How to Build Your 2026 Real Estate Investing Plan

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Entrepreneurship, Business, Education, Investing

4.7 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By the time you finish this episode, you’ll have your exact plan for financial freedom through real estate, starting in 2026. See if you can answer these questions right now: How much money do you want to make every month? When do you (realistically) want to retire? How much real estate will it take to get there? And which strategy will actually get you to the finish line? If you can’t answer all four of those questions, you’re like 99% of real estate investors—buying properties just to “build wealth.” While “building wealth” is worth striving for, it’s not actually a true goal. It's what keeps investors working longer, unsure of when or if they’ve “made it” or how much farther they have to go. If you do one thing before 2026, do this: define your financial goals. Today, Dave shows you exactly how to do that. You’ll learn the formula to calculate your financial freedom number, how much real estate you’ll need, how long it will take, the one- and three-year goals you should set now, and the best real estate strategies for your situation. You could be retired in under 10 years if you start in 2026. What are you waiting for? In This Episode We Cover How to actually retire with rental properties in 10 years (or less) with a personalized strategy The best real estate investments for those with low money or little time How long it will take you to replace your income with real estate 2026 goal-planning that is achievable and gets you closer to early retirement How it’s possible to double your money in a matter of years by reverse engineering your investments And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-659 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠advertise@biggerpockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're closing out the year with one of our most popular episodes because what better time to plan your financial freedom than right after the holidays.
0:08.2	This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast and I'm Ashley Care.
0:16.0	As you unwind from Christmas and start thinking about what you want 2026 to look like.
0:21.6	This rerun with Dave Meyer is exactly what you need. Most investors go into the New Year saying
0:26.7	they want to build wealth, but they don't have a clear plan, timeline, or number. They just
0:32.7	stay stuck. In this episode, Dave walks you through how to define your financial goals,
0:38.2	calculate your freedom number, choose the right strategy, and reverse engineer your real estate game plan. Before
0:44.0	January hits, take an hour to map out what your future could look like. Financial independence
0:48.8	isn't a dream. It's a math equation. Let's get into the episode.
0:53.5	Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. Thank you all so much for being here.
1:00.1	I want to ask you all a question to start this episode. And I want you to be honest.
1:04.8	How many of you actually have a specific financial goal? And I'm not just talking about, oh, I want to be financial free.
1:12.9	I'm talking specifically, like, I want $10,000 a month in cash flow by 2035.
1:21.4	Like, how many of you have that level of goal?
1:24.8	I think if we're all being honest with each other, it's like basically none of us,
1:28.3	maybe 2% of you have actually gone out and done this. And that's okay. It took me probably
1:33.9	eight years of investing in real estate and being really into personal finance before I figured
1:39.8	out that I really mattered whether or not I had a financial goal. And that might be okay at the beginning of your investing career to be perfectly honest.
1:47.9	But if you want to build a portfolio of low risk, high upside investments over a sustained
1:53.6	period of time, you need to have a plan, you need to have a strategy.
1:57.1	And in order to have that, you need to have good goals.
2:00.4	And so today, what we're going to do
	...

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