The Financial Freedom "Stack": Start with No Rentals, Retire Decades Early

Here's a simple rule for building wealth through real estate. Get your own financial house in order before you go buy someone else's. Today's guest has bought dozens of properties, and he reached financial freedom in his thirties. And his secret isn't finding better deals. It's actually having a rock solid financial foundation underneath his investing, saving money, using leverage, managing risk. And he's created a system around these ideas that help him build millions of dollars in equity. And today, he's sharing all 11 steps so you can do the same. What's up, friends? Dave Meyer here, chief investment officer at BiggerPockets. My guest today on the show is Andrew Giancola. He's the host of the Personal Finance podcast. Andrew has successfully bought, operated, and sold many different businesses, and that includes several years as a full time real estate investor. And through those experiences, he's seen one skill set that separates the investors who succeed from those who fail. It's a strong understanding of personal finance. So Andrew actually built a system around it. He calls it the Financial Freedom Stack, and it combines real estate investing strategies with financial best practices, like emergency funds and market exposure, into one simple and repeatable package. Today on the show, he's breaking down this 11 step framework to show you exactly when you should be saving, when you should be investing, when you should be paying down debt, and when it's time to scale your portfolio. If you wanna build wealth in real estate without feeling financially stretched, this episode will show you exactly how. Let's bring on Andrew. Andrew, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Great to have you. Dave, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. For people who don't know Andrew or his podcast yet, maybe you could just give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you're involved in the real estate and investing space. Sure. So my name is Andrew Ginkola. I am the host of the Personal Finance podcast, and my entire goal with that show is to actually create a million millionaires. That's the, initial goals that I had when I set out to create the personal finance podcast, and our entire goal is to kind of empower you with your money. And that is the the big thing that we do over there. And so I started investing in real estate, back in the day where I was a sweat equity partner. So I was a sweat equity partner with two cash partners and got into real estate, in 2015 and then exited and and kind of sold my portfolio with those partners in 2018. We've got a lot of cool stuff just within those last couple of years, and it is something that is one of my favorite ways, to invest overall and something we talk about all the time in the show and is a huge, huge deal for the …