 YouTube. How are you doing? This is Lauren Lawrence for those of you that have never been here before. If you haven't, stick around. I'm going to talk about how we're getting involved in some real estate investments. So it was in, well it was a couple months ago. My husband and I just bought our first investment property. This has been a long time coming. It's been something we've been wanting to do for years now and it all kind of started to when we went through financial university. I guess it was six years ago now that we did that. I was partnering with our first guy, our first little guy. And for those of you that are familiar with that, there's baby steps throughout that program to get yourself out of debt, to get you and your family financially secure and invested so that you can give out and pour out to other people and be generous. And that's what my husband and I love the most is that it doesn't just end with getting rich for our own family, but it's like we want to be wealthy and do well for ourselves because that's when you can give to other people and be generous. For our first investment property, we just got a single family home. Oh my gosh. All the pets. All the pets are here. So we just started with a single family home and the process has been kind of amazing so far. We initially thought we were going to property manage it ourselves and like I was going to take that on as a part-time job, but it kind of hasn't worked out. You want this? It kind of hasn't worked out that way because I think we just realized that it's more involved than we expected. So we hired a property manager. Really glad we did that. And actually, I'm going to do a part two video on that next week, like reasons you might want to get a property manager or reasons you might not want to, but if investment properties are something you have thought about doing in the past, then like I just want to give our experience and insight into that. Maybe it can get the ball rolling for you, but so there's so much information, just like anything else out there, the second you Google it, you have all these conflicting resources and you're like, which one should I listen to? But we have found quite a few like YouTubers and bloggers that we both really see eye to eye with. But we started with it this spring. We got our first house and we just got a tenant in there last week. We're so excited and what was awesome about the property management team is that they went ahead and did all the screening. They found the right family for the home and found people with good credit. And that's super important. So some tips. If you're looking into getting started with something like this, we've learned a lot just by kind of reading and experiencing. And I'm sure as we get further into it, because it's not going to be our first or our only property, we'd like to do more in the future that we're just kind of going to learn as we go. Okay. So all that being said, I want to give you five tips for you getting started on this. So tip number one would be do your research. Like I said, there's so many different schools of thought on this and find someone that's successful and that knows what they're talking about, but not in a get rich, quick way. The bloggers and YouTubers that we've really found we like are all about the slow process. Because I don't really think you can get rich quick. Like it's just building wealth takes time just like anything else good in life. Tip number two would be to buy what you can afford. Essentially, whenever you go to the bank to get pre-approved for a home, they're going to pre-approve you for way more than you need to be spending. And so like we had a number set in mind when we went to go get approval from the bank or from the lender. But we did not, I don't even think get close to what they were wanting to give us because we knew what we were capable of spending monthly should we have a vacancy in the home. Tip number three is find a real estate agent that you can trust and that you know knows investment properties. Going into this, like we knew quite a few realtors that we knew would be great at helping us. But we ended up going with a woman that she's actually one of our neighbors. She's amazing. But she's one of our neighbors and she was just telling me that she knows investment properties. She's done out of state investment deals for investors like that are coming in from out of the area. So she just she showed me that she was capable. And man, when I was watching her close the deal for us, I was just like, we picked the right one because she she was good at what she did. She knew how to negotiate and she was in it for us, which is what we essentially needed. Tip number four was finding a property that was not too far away. So we did go with a property that was about 25 minutes from us. And that might be on the the far side of what does she want? Oh, that might be on the far side for us. I think of what we're we'll want to do next time. We really want to be close to the property because in the beginning before the management company took it over, we were going there a lot and doing minor repairs and, you know, fixing the smoke detectors and things like that. And I was probably going there, oh man, three or four times a week for the first four weeks. And it was just becoming a lot of gas money and a lot of time, especially since I had my little girl with me. So I think if we had to do that in the future, we would definitely pick somewhere that was maybe within 10 to 15 minutes with within our home. So then tip number five would be if you're not in a place financially to even touch this, that's okay. Like, we weren't either when my husband and I got married, we had nothing. We we literally have built every had to build everything from the ground up. And that's just that's just come with saving, hard work and being frugal. And so we only spend money on things if we need it. Need is not want those are very different things. And if you can like, confidently ask yourself in the store, do I actually need this? That will get you on your way to saving money. That will get you on your way to be more frugal. And my silly dog, what does she need? Oh, Kira, do you need the ball? Oh, this was sad. Do you want me to get it out of the ball? So oh, she's back. The more you save your money, the more you down the road might be able to do something awesome like this, like we're we feel so honored that we were even in a place to do it. It took us a long time to get here. But we're excited that we're able to and like, yeah, it might take five, 10, 20 years even down the road before you're able to do it. But I'm like, go for it because this is going to be a really good long term investment. If you're able to do that one day, I say do it. Renting is fine. But it doesn't get you anywhere if you're wanting to build equity and long term capital. So we are just so excited. Like I said, stick to part two. I'm going to be doing part two next week about how to pick a property manager or whether or not you should be even picking one. Yeah. So I'm so excited to be here again. Awesome Monday. Love you all. And if you didn't already, go ahead, subscribe down there. I think it's down there. I don't remember. Anyway, go get messy, have fun, learn, and I will see you again soon.