How to Gain Financial Freedom and Retire in your 20s

For this episode, I am happy to welcome Rachel Richards on to the show! Only 27 years old, former financial advisor Rachel Richards has made a name for herself in the personal finance realm. In 2019, Rachel quit her job and retired, with over $10,000 per month in passive income! She is the bestselling author of Money Honey and Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement. Rachel is also a real estate investor with 35 rental units. Her valuable money lessons have helped thousands of millennials work their way out of financial despair. She has successfully done what no one has done before: made the topic of money management fun, entertaining, and simple!

Rachel gave us a bit of her background, telling us that she paid her way through school by selling Cutco Cutlery and therefore, had sales experience. This, coupled with her passion for teaching people about finances, is what led her to become a financial advisor. She said she didn’t last long because she wasn’t a fan of cold-calling people for clients. She had always been interested in real estate investing and had read a ton about it, so she worked for a time with another investor, and then a real estate agent. These experiences gave her the confidence to get into investing on her own and in 2017, Rachel and her husband bought their first duplex when she was 24 years old.

I asked Rachel to give us the details of her first deal - how she found it and how she financed it. Because she had her real estate license by this time, she said she had an advantage, because she had access to the MLS. She found the property she wanted, but the listing was expired, so she contacted the agent and found out that the owners were going to list it again once they had done some work to it. Because Rachel stayed in contact with the agent, she called Rachel a couple of days before it was listed again and gave her the chance to make an offer. They financed it conventionally, having both saved money after college for the down payment, and they managed to get a seller concession for the renovation that they had to do.

Rachel started writing her books while she was still working full-time and managing their rental properties, so we talked about how that came about for a bit. She said her family and friends had been asking her for financial advice for a while and she wanted to take this topic, which was normally boring and confusing, and make it fun and simple for people to understand. She said it felt like her first book, Money Honey, was always inside of her and she tried to make finances easier to learn about by sharing her own stories and mistakes. We also discussed Rachel’s second book, Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement, in which she discusses twenty-eight different passive income models that anyone can get involved with, regardless of age or station in life.

I asked Rachel to describe how she proceeded with her investing as she moved forward from the first deal. She shared with us that the different ways having her real estate license benefited her. She continued to monitor the MLS for potential deals, using subscriptions and saved searches so that she would get email notifications for properties she was interested in. She felt like this gave her a real time advantage, as she could be at a property within 30 minutes of it being listed.

Even though Rachel and her husband are no longer actively investing because they have the rental income they wanted to achieve, Rachel is still very passionate about teaching others about financial literacy so she is invested in creating online courses. The first one that she has created is called “Get Your Financial $hit Together” which you can check out by following the links below.

Join me as I interview this incredibly impressive investor and financial guru as she shares some of the secrets of how she earned financial independence! Don’t miss today’s episode with Rachel Richards on the Just Start Real Estate Podcast!

Notable Quotes:

“To me, real estate is one of the best tools for building long-term wealth. From an early age, I knew that this was going to be my path to financial independence.”

Rachel Richards

“From a very early age, I tried to save 50% of my income.”

Rachel Richards

“Just get creative… there are ways you can do this.”

Mike Simmons

“The last thing you want to do is operate from a place of panic and desperation.”

Rachel Richards

“I just try not to take myself too seriously.”

Rachel Richards

“I am not afraid to admit when I am making mistakes and doing embarrassing things.”

Rachel Richards

“Having my real estate license was brilliant because I was the buyer’s agent on all of our deals and would get a significant check at closing, which helped us continue investing.”