How Mindy Jensen Manages Her Personal Finances to Power Her Investing

Mindy Jensen from BiggerPockets joins us to share personal finance and self-management tips, strategy considerations, side hustle ideas, and what it is like to be a female investor in a historically male-dominated industry.    --- Transcript Michael: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co host,   Tom: Tom Schneider.   Michael: Mindy Jensen from BiggerPockets is joining us today. And she's going to be talking to us today about some personal finance tips for those of us who are just getting started, as well as what is it like to be a female investor in this space, and some tips and tricks and takeaways for all of our listeners. So let's jump into it.   So Mindy Jensen, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us today. I was telling you before we start recording, I am a total fanboy. I'm all giggly today. So thank you, again, for hanging out with us.   Mindy: Well, thank you for having me. I love talking about real estate.   Michael: Awesome. Well, you are in the perfect place to do so. So I know all about you, because I'm a big fan of your podcast, the BiggerPockets Money Podcast that you and Scott host. But for all of our listeners that might not be familiar with you can you give us a little bit of background on kind of who you are, where you're from, and then how you got your start with real estate?   Mindy I was born in a small town in Southern Illinois. And then I moved and moved and moved and moved and moved and moved and moved and moved. And I'm in my 28th or 29th house now, which is actually really relevant to the story. It sounds like a boring, I was born in a small town. And I have never lived in a house for more than six years in my whole life. And I just sold that house that I lived in for six years in January. So it's been like, we move all the time.   And that is really key to my preferred method of investing in real estate, which is called the live & flip, you buy a very unattractive house, you move into it as your primary residence, you fix it up while you're living there. If you live there for at least two years as your primary residence, it is tax free growth, when you sell it, you pay no taxes up to $250,000. If you're single, and up to $500,000, if you're married, I now have a new goal to actually pay capital gains taxes on my flip, I want to get to the point where I have to pay because I've made so much money, which is a very real possibility given our current market, the fact that I got this for a steel and a half, and we're doing a lot of work to it.   But in general, I live in flip. I love real estate. I love talking about real estate. And yeah, I'm a mom of two girls and I live in Colorado.   Tom: Awesome. I love the live in flip strategy. I think I would like you know, with these types of strategies, you know, you have to be very much on the same page as your partner so and I don't think it would fly as much but I'm curious in you know doing this strategy like how big of a renovation Have you done with a live in flip flip Have you done like, you know, like basically camping in in in studs, the ground? Or do you like have some sort of limitation on how big of a project it is?   Mindy: I have limitations now sold this is it's actually a really, really great example of like how big you can go, I have popped the top twice on houses. That means adding a second story, I will never do that again. Because I'm too old for that garbage. It is a lot of work. And when we were popping the top on our most recent house, my youngest was three years old, my oldest was six years old. We at one point had the washer and dryer in the kitchen with holes dug into the kitchen tile floor, which was gross anyway, we're gonna change it anyway.   We we drilled holes in the floor so we could put the out pipes and the water supply pipes into the crawlspace. And the rest of the house was walled off, or it was plastic tarped off because we were building the the addition and the second story.   So in the cold of Colorado, that's really not fun. And we were sleeping in a bedroom with our two children. And my father in law was sleeping in the other bedroom because he's an electrician, and he was helping us rewire the house. We took it from 60 amp service to 200 amp service and basically just rewired the whole thing. When you take it to the studs you can do that. So it was a big undertaking. We there's not a wall in that house that we didn't touch. But why would somebody choose to do this?   Well, I bought it for $176,000 I sold it for $598,000 and I put about $100,000 into it so you do it for the money.   Michael: Wow.   Tom: That's incredible. And the two years so the the tax.   Mindy: This match tax. I guess one more? Yeah, zero. It's incredible. My other specific to the live in strategy, or do you think back on some of the houses on the ones that got away like Oh man, I wish I was still in that? Or is the upside of kind of going through the process and getting those rewards does that, you know, just kind of smooth it over. You're like okay, I'm excited to be on the next one, you know, or do you ever like kind of fall in love I guess and you know, what's the name of the show? Love it or list it you know?   Mindy: Oh Always list it, always list it. And this is actually so I am a real estate agent. And I don't understand the concept of falling in love with the house. There's what is there like 40 million houses in America or something that houses in America, there isn't just one perfect house for you.   Michael: Yeah, totally legit.   Mindy: There's not just one perfect house, there's always going to be another house, that's going to be great for you. So I have never fallen in love with a house. We did have one house that we brought our two children home from the hospital and after they were born, that's really sweet. But the taxes on that house when I sold it for $17,000 a year. Oh, Wisconsin, super high tax bracket. So that I don't miss that at all. I mean, my, my current mortgage payment was my monthly tax only payment on that house. That's ridiculous.   Michael: That's crazy. I think that the saying goes the deal of a lifetime only comes around about once a week. So there I couldn't agree with you more Mindy.   Mindy: You know what the house that I just told I pointed to where it is, it's it's on the other side of town, that house that I just sold was the deal of a lifetime, but the one I'm sitting in now is going to be even more the deal of the lifetime. So yeah, you can find a good deal anywhere.   Michael: So I really want to dig in to two specific topics with you today, because I know that you're an expert in both. One, I would love to get some personal finance tips from you, for folks that are just starting their real estate investing journey I live in flip could absolutely be one of them. And then I also want to talk to you about what it's like being a female investor in the space. And I know that you've got experience again in both those areas. So if I am just starting out, and…   Mindy: I do I have like a lifelong experience, lifelong experience as a woman. So just starting out in real estate, buy low and sell high is kind of the the Pat answer. But really, if you are looking to get started investing in real estate, you need to be educated, you need to know what it is that you're going to do with your investment.   And it seems so easy to be a landlord. But there's a lot of things that you need to know if you want to be a landlord. And if you don't know those things, you are going to mess up and you are going to lose money. And you are going to, in some cases hate your life. I know when you don't know that you should screen a tenant. And you don't know that a 400 credit score is not indicative of a person who is going to be paying you on time every month, you might rent out to somebody who has a 400 credit score, you didn't know because you didn't even run it and you let them move into your house. And they trashed it because they are bad tenants. And you didn't know that because you didn't call it their past landlords and you know, their kids wreck the house and you didn't know they had kids because you didn't screen them.   There's, there's a lot of things and not that you shouldn't rent to people who don't have kids. I'm not advocating against fair housing laws, you need to know who's living in the house. And when you rent it to Michael and Michael doesn't have doesn't say, hey, I've got 17 kids, you know, you come into occupancy, you had a bit against occupancy issues. And you know, or Michael brings his brother Tom, and Tom brings his friend Joe, and then there's 76 people living in your house and you're like, wait, why is it trashed?   I'm not surprised at all. So, if you want to invest in any type of asset class, you need to do your research and if you cannot explain how you are going to invest and and how somebody should be investing in that particular asset class, you should not be investing in that asset class. I'm not in but Bitcoin. I'm not in crypto because I don't understand it. And this is not an invitation to send me an email to explain it to me. I don't want to know.   Tom: Michael's a big, big ferret guy, I wouldn't rent to him because, like,   Michael: Tom!   Tom: It’s cute, he's taught them to do these tricks that he showed us, but big…   Michael: Tom, time out. It’s chinchillas.   Tom: I think we segued…  Michael, I think we're okay. Chinchillas apologies.   Mindy: I'm gonna jump in here and say, OMG , I would never read to somebody who had ferrets because ferrets stink.   Tom: Michael apparently likes it. Sorry chinchillas.   But okay, getting back on the rails. Mindy, you know what I love my like takeaway from what you're talking about is just having your eyes wide open of like going into risk. I think like with any type of investment that you're doing it be it crypto real estate. Successful investors, they are cognizant and intentional about the risks that they're taking, be it who you're renting to be it the property condition and like what your capacity is, so just love that as like a takeaway on this episode of of intention with risk and eyes wide open in education and filling that gap.   Mindy: Well, that was a better way to say it.   Michael: No I prefer the 76 circus family.   Mindy, a question for you kind of in that same vein. And so we have the education side of things at the Rootstock Academy and I love that you brought up education totally unprompted. I just want everybody to know that we didn't prompt Mindy with that. But how do you draw the line between getting educated, and knowing when enough is enough to then jump in or dip your toes because I know that's something that I struggled with, I spent about two years self educating before ever doing a real estate deal. And even I'm still learning and I was 10 years ago, I'm still learning every single day. So how do you feel like you're you have enough to be dangerous to then go do something with without getting analysis paralysis?   Mindy: Well, started young is really great. Because when you start young, you feel like you know everything, and you don't feel like you need to do all the research. And that's how I got started. I just knew everything when I was 26 years old.   I do like that you said, you know, analysis paralysis. And at one point, do you do you stop educating? You need to be able to understand what you're doing? Hey, how do you invest in real estate? How do you rent out your house? Oh, you know, you just put it on Craigslist.   That's not enough information. You need to learn how you rent out a house. How do you screen a tenant? How do you buy a house? How do you collect rent, like there's a lot of things that you need to think about? Before you just buy a house and throw some people in it. You're providing housing for somebody, you're giving somebody a place to live, you need to know that it's a safe place to live. It's a habitable place to live. And you need to know that they're going to pay you rent.   I mean, once you can start explaining it to other people, I think you've done enough research. You'll always continue to learn, you will always continue to refine and hone in Hey, it turns out I don't want to rent to Mike that has 17 chinchillas. I want to read to Tom who has four little dogs because I know that big dogs cause disasters or I'm not going to rent to Tom anymore because his cats poo. That was not a pleasant experience.   And you know, you will always,  you will always continue to learn. Yeah, that's sometimes cat spray. But being involved in a community that continues to help each other out, is really the best way to go about it. I mean, BiggerPockets is a community of real estate investors helping other real estate investors learn how to do it explaining from experience that, you know, renting out to the chinchilla farm isn't the best choice. Or, you know, renting out to 17 guys who just turned 18 years old in your four bedroom house is probably not going to have the best results.   Yeah, and you're not discriminating, you're just being smart about your your applicants. But even how you find applicants is going to be something that you learn through asking other people.   Tom: Like synthesizing along with the education piece is like community is like such a huge piece about, you know, a really important aspect and feeling comfortable to make that jump, I think and Michael was was talking about just because investing in real estate can be difficult, right? You're right, you know, pop in the top and in Colorado in the winter, you know, having that community of people to one from the education standpoint, but to just as the either, you know, feedback loop or helping, you know, continuing to move forward. Kind of the combination of the two are is really important. And yeah, love BiggerPockets. This is a fantastic spot of that community aspect.   Mindy: Yeah, it's my favorite website on the whole planet.   Michael: I love that. You mentioned the community aspect of things. Because I think so many investors, especially those who are just starting out think that going from due diligence to then you're the first acquisition is that's it, I bought the property now I'm done. It's like, Well, no, now the work actually starts now you own the property. Now you really need that support for the ongoing stuff, not just from the due diligence acquisition.   Mindy: Yes, and this support is really important because sometimes there's not really much you can do. But having somebody to commiserate with is really helpful. But as you're in there talking to other investors, you pick up little tips. One of the best tips I ever picked up for screening tenants is to after they have seen your home, you walk them to their car, you just walk them out and you know, chat, whatever. But while you're at their car, you give it a little peek. Oh, look at that. I can't even see anything in there because there's garbage and wrappers up to the tops of the windows.   You don't want to rent to that person because they how they keep your their cars, how they're going to keep your house and you don't want to go into a completely trashed house. unless that's your thing.   Michael: And teach the road, no judgment, no judgment. I've heard of another similar tip of doing a FaceTime interview with prospective tenants and having them give you a tour around their current living situation.   Mindy: That's another really great tip, because then they're not really expecting to do a tour so you can see how they truly live. And this isn't to discriminate against people who might be slightly untidy, this is to prevent people who will not treat your property with respect from moving it.   Tom: Canary in the coal mine. One thing I love about these episodes is they're there, they can be very self serving. So I have a very self serving question for you. And this is, I guess, for broader people, or as well, if let's say I'm saving up for downpayment on the next acquisition to buy an investment property. What are your thoughts around like, where to hold that money? You know, or I'm going through a cash out refi and going to have a big chunk of change coming in them and to be using for these acquisitions? What do you think about holding it in a cash cash position versus putting it into an ETF or a CD? Or I'd love to hear your your thoughts on that. I mean, a lot, a lot, a lot there.   Mindy: A lot there. But it comes down to what is your risk tolerance, if you have just happen to have a big chunk of change from a cash out refi and you're looking for a property? How comfortable are you with that dollar amount dropping in value. So if you can't, if you need the $20,000 for your down payment, and you don't have a way to replenish that $20,000 easily, I wouldn't put it into an ETF, I wouldn't put it into the stock market at all, I would put it into a high yield savings account, which is only in air quotes, because they're currently at like point 5% or something.   You could maybe put it into bonds, I wouldn't bother with that. If it was not going to be a super long term play like two or three years. If you're going to get it in like three or four months, I would just put it in the cash account, your job is not to grow that, you aren't going to grow that in any significant way. You're not going to put it I mean, you could put it in Bitcoin and watch it go up super a lot. But did you see what happened with Bitcoin? This week? Wasn't it like? Didn't it drop like $30,000? or something? I don't I don't invest in bitcoins.   Tom: Crushed. Yeah, so I just put a very little amount and I've and I've lost, I've lost half of a very little amount.   Mindy: So how would you feel about your $20,000 that you put in Bitcoin because it's a sure thing, and then all of a sudden, now it's $10,000. And you're like, Oh, my money's gone. I don't like to lose $1. So I don't like to be really in really volatile things. I'm mostly in index funds, I have a few tech stocks, and you know, real estate, but I wouldn't put it into anything that that is volatile when you're looking to use it within the next two or three years. And even then, with two or three years, I'd be in like bonds, which are fairly safe, they're not even really growing that much. Your job is to protect the money.   Michael: That makes total sense. I guess that's a really great point in talking about like, your job is to protect that money and to go make that investment in the real estate. And don't worry about everything else. That's just noise if you're trying to grow it and grow it, but focus on the task at hand Don't get distracted. So no more Dogecoin betting Tom, enough is enough.   Tom: I know. And also just a point I want to clarify. Michael is not a ferret guy. I was being silly. Yeah, yeah. The guy didn't realize he clarify.   Michael: Yeah.   So Mindy, you've got some really great insight into a lot of folks his financial purview, I'll call it and so in terms of side hustles, when people are just starting out or looking to grow some additional cash positions to invest in real estate, what have you seen be really effective in terms of side hustles?   Mindy: There is this thing called a signing agent. And it is more towards the west coast of the country than the East Coast. It's four not attorney closing states but title company closing states and notary closing states, you are essentially walking somebody through the closing process and watching them as they sign their name on all the mortgage documents and all the closing papers.   And this is an amazing side hustle because you get to if you have attention to detail, and if you don't, don't even bother, but you get to read mortgage documents over and over and over and over. Again, you're reading the contracts, you're seeing all these things, it's a great way to learn about the process in general. And you make 150 $200 a closing, a closing takes what an hour, you can do those all throughout the day, if you have time during the day, when people are working is not when they need you, it's when people are off work. So nights and weekends.   If you're willing to work nights and weekends, you could make a good chunk of change. I've seen people making, you know, $2,000 a month, just on this little side hustle, and they're not even really spending that much time on it. The cost. The barrier to entry on this is a box of black ballpoint pens, a box of blue ballpoint pens, and a really good printer. And I think it has to be a laser jet, not an inkjet.   It's like a less than $1,000. And you have to be a notary. So you have to go through your state's notary process. I'm not one. So I don't know. I don't know all the process about it. But we talked to a guy who runs a school that that teaches people how to do this and teaches them how to get the jobs to be signing agents. And if you're really good, if you don't make mistakes, people will continue to request you because you're really good.   Tom: Gosh, I love that tip. I feel like I've seen so many like clickbait articles of like passive income. And this is like the one of the best ones I've ever, I've ever heard. I looked into the notary getting that I have a competition with a friend on who can get the most certifications. And this is one and it's not that I think it's like in the state of California where I live, it's like an afternoon of work. Or it's like a certain number of hours. And there might be a test and there's like a low oil, loyalty oath or something like that. So Mindy that's fantastic example of a great side hustle.   Mindy: I got another one. Let's hear it. Yeah. Okay, another attention to detail. I am a real estate agent, I also have a full time job. So I do not have time to double check and triple check all the things in my contract. After we're, you know, I write up the contract for my clients, we get under contract. There's a lot of dates and deadlines, a lot of dates and deadlines. I would just be crushed if I ever allowed my client to miss a date or deadline. And yes, the buyer should be aware of all the dates and deadlines, they should have that upfront. So they're not missing it either.   But I pay somebody who is called a transaction coordinator, I pay her to help me. Remember all the deadlines helped me keep all the deadlines helped me. She files my paperwork with my company so that I get paid, she submits it to the title company. So I get the check at closing. It's called the transaction coordinator, I pay her $400 per transaction. I did 15 transactions last year. And I'm not a busy agent. So you get in with a busy agent who's doing 40-50 transactions a year, you can make some big money.   And it's like an hour of work. It's probably not an hour of work. Maybe she spends, I don't know, five or six hours on my entire transaction from start to finish. She's got it down. I sent her the information. I introduce her to the clients, and then she just sends us an email. Hey, just reminder. I mean, I'm helping people buy $500,000 houses. I'm not going to let you miss a deadline. I would much rather pay $400 to somebody who double checks that I'm not missing deadlines.   Michael: That's such a good tip.   Tom: How would you market yourself as a transaction coordinator in like getting that type of business? I'd love it. Yeah. Just reaching out to agents?   Mindy: Yeah, I would absolutely reach out to agents go to every agency in the city and just say, Hey, I'm an agent, or I'm a transaction coordinator. I'll do your first transaction for free. This is how much I charge. This is how great I am I you know, I set it all up. I do all these things, whatever. It's not that hard. I want somebody as a backup because I am really good. But if I missed the deadline, I would just feel terrible forever. So I want somebody to help me do all the things. Yeah, if you want to go to like literally every agent, if you have one agent client, you will get a lot more because I'm going to tell everybody that I know how great Lacey is. Lacey is great.   Tom: Shout out Lacey.   Michael: That's fantastic. I love that. I love that tip. Because again, that's one of the things that's like in the real estate ecosystem. So you're getting exposed to the to the market to the industry, and you're making money. I think that's awesome.   Mindy: You're learning contracts, you're learning lenders, you're talking to home inspectors and title companies and you're really touching every part of a transaction. She's involved in every part of the transaction, and she sees all the things. So she actually did used to be an agent and said that she prefers transaction coordination.   Michael: So in flipping the narrative a little bit, so that those are some great side hustles that folks can do to help generate some additional cash for their savings for down payments or for investing. What are some of the pitfalls or traps that you've seen new investors fall into?   Mindy: Not being well capitalized, when you buy a house, something will break, I guarantee you, there are very few guarantees in life, it is a guarantee that when you buy a house, something will break, the cost of that repair is inversely proportionate to how much money you have in your reserve fund. If you are very well funded, you get like a broken light switch cover or something. But if you don't have a lot of money, all of a sudden your AC goes out, and it's 105 degrees outside, or it's 30 Below and the furnace breaks.   Something will break. And if you don't have money to pay for it, you shouldn't be buying a house.   Tom: Do you have a rule of thumb on reserves?   Mindy: I really like $10,000, To start off with, like per property rather than?   Michael: 1 million dollars.   Mindy: 1 million dollars. Yes per property. And that is, it's you know, it's a rule of thumb where rules of thumb are like give or take, I have a good paying job, and very low expenses, so I can cash flow, anything that comes my way, I don't have any reserve fund. But I also am able, you know, I have a great line of credit, I can just, if I need a roof, and for some reason my insurance company isn't going to pay for it, I can go and find the $15,000 to put a roof on my house, if you don't have any money in your reserves, you're going to really be hurting and you have to have a roof and you can't not have a roof.   $10,000 is a good place to start. And then I would continue to add to it at a rate of approximately 1% of the purchase price of the house per year. Once you get to like $20,000 I'm trying to think what would cost more than $20,000 to repair on a house right now. And you know, prices have gone through the roof with COVID. And all of the crazy supply issues that that we're having right now. So maybe $20,000 is going to be a better bet. But you know, if you're replacing stuff, it's probably not going to all break at once. And it's probably not going to cost you more than $20,000.   And yes, that is per property until you get to a certain point, like if you have four properties that are in relatively good condition. Oh, condition is another thing. Like if you have a brand new build, you probably don't need $10,000 in your reserve fund. But if you have, you know, a 1950s build, you should probably go $20,000 in your reserve fund unless it was just all you know, remodeled and everything's brand new.   Tom: Yeah, one thing I love about that response in it as well as is there's you know, it's it's dynamic, right? If it's a newer house, or if you have a big line of credit, like it's not real estate and all this it's not one size fits all, there's, you know, strategic considerations on where you're at and, and the property, all of that good stuff.   Mindy: Yeah. And it comes down to like, what kind of financial position Are you personally in? If you're well funded personally, you'll be probably okay. But you know, with COVID when they did them, eviction moratoriums that people stop paying rent, there were owners of four plexes and eight plexes that had 90% of their tenants not paying rent, I guess that doesn't work in a four Plex that would be 75% of their tenants not paying rent, how are you going to pay the mortgage on your house if your tenants aren't paying your rent? And if you don't have six months of all the payments in an account, you need to be getting six months of all the payments? I mean, how long has the eviction moratorium been going on? Like 10 months or something? And it's supposed to schedule through like, is it September? That's the student loan one. Maybe it's the end of June or July? I don't know…   Michael: I think it is September?   Mindy: Yeah, it's fluid with all the different states. But it's, that's a significant amount of time that your tenants may not be paying rent.   Michael: Yeah, that's a great point.   Tom: You touched on an item that I think is super relevant to current conditions, talking about price of materials talking about, you know, just kind of a dynamic market. I'd love to hear has your strategy evolved at all like with the cost of materials going crazy and with like appreciation going nuts on these houses? Or you know, is it as had been pretty consistent through the different market changes that we're seeing?   Mindy: COVID changed my strategy in that we were going to turn our former primary residence into an Airbnb. And when that got shut down, we decided we would rent it out long term. And after we saw all the appreciation going on, we said you know what, I don't really have time right now to go and run an Airbnb. I'm really, really a control freak. So I'm not going to pass that off to somebody else. Let's just sell it be done with the house and move on.   We were incredibly fortunate. We bought all the supplies for many of the projects around the house right before COVID hit. So all the wooden studs for the basement we bought at 2019 prices, not 2021 prices, which is four times as expensive. We've did a whole a big deck edition. And we bought those. They arrived on March, I think March 9, all that stuff arrived. So we like right before they shut down the entire country. We bought all these all of our supplies.   We're building a shed, and my neighbor is doing a renovation, and it's throwing away studs from the 60s. Why would you do that? So I'm going through the dumpster and I'm grabbing those studs, and I'm putting them in my garage. And now I have a new goal. I'm going to scavenge all of the supplies for my shed. And my neighbor's fence got knocked over with the snowplow. So they're building him a new fence. And we're the weirdos that are always working on our house. So he asked us if we wanted his his old fencing materials and his old cedar two by fours and his old cedar four by fours like, Yeah, I do. Because even if I can't use them in the house, I can, you know, he's like, I just don't want them to get thrown away, like I can put them to use.   Tom: What a win win that's brilliant.   Mindy: But I'm not planning any more big projects right now because it's so expensive. And I mean, you can't even go into the store and find two by fours sometimes and plywood. And it's we're doing a lot of painting now, instead of building. And I'm not sure when we're going to change back to building.   Michael: Smart.   Tom: Writing the plan in pencil. That's awesome. I love that that response is cool, because there's like multiple zigs and zags just based on what's what's going on.   Mindy: But if you're not dumpster diving, you need to start it's like construction dumpster diving, don't go to the back of like Whole Foods or something but or maybe. I mean, they throw away a lot of good stuff too. But if you're walking around your neighborhood, and you notice that your neighbor is doing some work peek inside, if you can skip buying 52 by fours because your neighbor just threw a bunch away. That's just that's just smart.   Plus, they're from the 60s so they're straight. I mean, they were sitting outside on the deck and it got wet. And then they still didn't bend and now you get a two by four and it bends before you can get it home. Sorry, I digress.   Michael: You look at it wrong. And it's a warped. Yeah. I was gonna say Tom and I were chatting the other day, and I'm doing a massive redevelopment project. And that budget has just got eviscerated because of the wood prices and other materials. And it's just it sucks. Like, I'm in the middle of it. And there's no way around it.   Mindy: Yeah, I have seen new builds where the buyer put the deposit down and sign the contract. And okay, we're going to start building in March, April. And the builder comes back and says, Okay, now it's going to cost $30,000 more, because wood went up so much. And if you don't want to pay that we understand, we'll refund your money. I've got a line of people waiting to buy this house at the $30,000 additional price.   So what do you do? Do you say yes? Or do you get your money back? I mean, the next house isn't going to be any cheaper.   Tom: It's all just rising so quickly related on the materials costs. I had some read to replace a deck in my house, and we ended up using this bamboo composite and it actually turned out really great. I was a little concerned but our contractor said he had used it on a couple of projects, so shout out bamboo composite decking.   Mindy: Oh, I haven't heard of that before.   Tom: Yeah, it's I think Momo MooMoo booboo, I forgot the name of the exact the name of it. Mozu it might be. But anyways, waterproofs, warranty, all that good stuff. This episode is not brought to you by but we're going to market it anyway.   Michael: Let's shift gears here, Mindy. And I would love to chat with you and get your thoughts, insights, opinions on being a female investor. And what that's like, in what seems to be often a male co opted space.   Mindy: Yeah. So it makes it really easy to that people. It's really easy to decide who I want to work with and who I doubt and it's based on how they treat me. I am not necessarily the only woman in the room, but I'm frequently one of just a couple. And if you you know when you're dealing with contractors, if you call me honey, I'm not working with you, sweetie, baby. Tell me what you need. Tell me what color you want. I don't have a lot of self esteem issues. So if you don't want to work with me, because I'm a woman, I don't care.   I know a lot of people who will work with me because they have this is 2021 Why is that even an issue? But it can be an issue for, you know, for people who aren't as obnoxious as I am. But I want to invest in real estate. So I'm going to and if you don't, if you don't want to deal with me, that's okay, I'll find somebody else who will.   But what is it? Like? It's gotten a lot better. I think that there is a lot more understanding that women are investors. I mean, we're just investing we're not I don't have to lift up the house, I don't have to, you know, use my muscles to do things. So it's like, there shouldn't be any difference. But there are, and I got big muscles. So yeah, it used to be a lot different. But now it's changing.   Tom: I guess, one kind of follow up. Final question related to that. Do you have any advice or recommendation for female listeners who want to become active involved in their area?   Mindy: I am going to go back to the advice that I gave in the beginning and educate yourself. When you come in knowing what you're talking about. People will listen. And the you know, it's okay to ask questions, but ask them in an intelligent manner. And do research in advance to see if you can answer your own question. But there's, you know, there's a lot of nuances in real estate, you can absolutely ask questions based on the nuance.   But hey, how do I get started? Is not the best question to answer to ask, what are the benefits of this strategy versus that strategy is a better way to go? doing a little bit of research, you know, understanding that there are differences and doing a little bit of work on the front end will get you better answers and more people who are willing to talk to you.   But there's a lot of self education, you can do YouTube channels, podcasts, books, blog posts, people are talking about real estate investing right now. And it's like the cool thing to do. And if you want to be a real estate investor, why do you want to be a real estate investor? What do you hope to get out of it? You know, ask yourself all of those questions, and then just jump in.   Tom: Love it. Michael, do you have any other questions? Or is it a good time to jump into some quickfire questions that we have?   Michael: No, Let's jump right in the quickfire? That sounds great. Perfect. All right. All right, Monday, so I'm gonna ask you a series of 10 questions. These are either or questions. Just kind of like a quick, quick response. Are you ready for some quickfire questions?   Mindy: Hit me.   Tom: All right. Consolidation or diversification?   Mindy: Oh, diversification.   Tom: High property taxes, or high income taxes?   Mindy: Oh, I don't like either of those. Um, I would say high income taxes, because there are ways to shield the income taxes. And there are ways to reduce your taxable income, whereas they're your property taxes, just your property tax.   Tom: I was going to let you get away with neither are you going but your answer ended up being much more interesting. Good one. I like that. All right.   High rent growth or low vacancy.   Mindy; Ooh. Oh, right. Yeah. turnovers their profit killers. So yeah, low vacancy, I guess. No, I like these questions.   Tom: I know. That's what that's why they that's what they call it the hot seat. All right. Next one. Cash Flow or appreciation?   Mindy: Cash Flow always because you cannot predict appreciation unless it's forced appreciation. I like forced appreciation more than cash flow. But you didn't say force you just said regular.   Tom: Yeah, I think you could take any flavor of that.   Mindy: Oh, then forced appreciation.   Tom: Excellent. Debt or equity?   Mindy: Equity.  No, well, no debt or equity?.... debt right now because it's so cheap. Yeah.   Tom: Yeah. I love it. Love it. Love it. All right. Next one single family or multifamily?   Mindy: I've always done single family, but I see the appeal of multifamily.   Michael: Alright. Alright, so, right.   Tom: All right. Yeah. local or remote investing?   Mindy: Ooh, I prefer local but I've done both. I just like to be there.   Tom: I think I know the answer to this next question, turnkey or massive project?   Mindy: Massive project.   Tom: All right, final three questions we're going to these are a little bit outside of the real estate box.   The midnight oil or the early bird worm?   Mindy: Oh, early bird worm. I go to bed super early but I get up early to early bird.   Tom: Early bird worm, me too. Alright. text message or email?   Mindy: Oh, email because it's illegal method of notification and text message is not.   Tom: Good. And the final question here, all of your answers are like really thoughtful like good, really great responses we've had like, I've learned I usually it's like I'm not learning things on these hot seat but like this. Alright, mini the final one. Olive oil or butter?   Mindy: Oh, wow, it depends on if you're doing high heat cooking. Butter will burn olive oil is a high heat oil. If I'm putting it on a muffin, it's butter.   Tom: Alright, butter. Butter. It is Yeah. You not only survived the hot seat, you thrived. That was fantastic.   Michael: I’m just picturing an olive oil soaked muffin.   Tom: Dude, olive oil cake. It's a thing. It's a thing.   Mindy: Oh, really? Yeah, I made brownies. Once I made it. I didn't have any oil. So I use olive oil and it did not taste good. I mean, they were brownies. They were still okay, but you could taste the olive oil with Yeah, that's really good to know.   Tom: Thank you so much Mindy for coming on. I love these. I love these episodes, because it's kind of self serving and just learning a ton. Really appreciate your time coming on.   Mindy: Well, thank you for having me. This is super fun. I like that hot seat. Actually. I just didn't like that one question.   Tom: That was the best Hot Seat I think we've we've had like over 100 episodes and…   Mindy: Oh, I was gonna say what is this episode two?   Michael: That's great. No, that that was that was by far the best one. Really? Thank you so much for taking the time for hanging out with us and helping educate. This was great.   Alright, everybody, that was our episode a big big, big thank you to Mindy. That was a lot of fun bar none best quickfire answers we've heard on the show to date. So for all of our future guests, that's a challenge to you to top Mindy's answers.   Hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you would like please feel free to give us a rating review wherever it is. Listen your podcast. If you're checking this out on YouTube, please feel free to subscribe to the channel so you get all the most up to date episodes as they come out.   Again, thanks for listening and happy investing.   Tom; Happy investing