Jen Narciso: Investor Mama

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:

Building financial freedom sometimes seems incredibly challenging and elusive. We build it up as this incredibly difficult and sophisticated plan. However, it can happen gradually as you're going about your normal life. For Investor Mama Jen Narciso, building a $2M portfolio started with purchasing a duplex for 200k in 2013. Live in one half, rent out the other, fix up, cash-out refi, and repeat. Have a couple of kids along the way. Buy another single-family home in 2020. Let real estate appreciate along the way.

Doing this has given Jen the freedom to focus on raising her kids without the stress of working full-time. She's now a real estate agent & her husband continues to work, and she wants to focus on helping others, particularly moms, through her Investor Mama website and Podcast. Listen to her story and hear practical ways you can take your real estate investing journey forward. Jen believes anyone can achieve financial freedom and peace of mind by getting educated and changing their habits. If you really want to change your life, you have to change your life.

In this episode hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:

• How Jen and her husband decided to buy a property right out of college and more than doubled the value
  
• Using the FHA 203k rehab loan to help grow your portfolio by owner-occupying duplexes
  
• Making your kids become the reason rather than a distraction in growing your portfolio, and how it helps them to have a strong foundation in real estate
  
• How they saved 30% of your income
  
• How Jen wants to use her Investor Mama platform to provide more stories and more motivation for moms to know that they can get to wherever they want in life
  
• The importance of including your kids in money discussions and decisions

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro To Jen's Career
1:23 - Jen's Life Background
3:47 - How Jen's First Properties Grew
13:26 - Jen's Advice To People To Help Them Make Decisions
17:35 - Finding the Clues
20:03 - Freedom and Flexibility
20:46 - How Investor Mama Started
29:32 - Putting Your Kids in the Best Environment to Grow
36:00 How To Find Jen

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Minnesota Real Estate

Read the full transcript here:

Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL Freedom Podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.

Mike Swenson
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The REL Freedom Show where we talk about building wealth, gaining time and financial freedom through different opportunities in real estate. And I'm so excited today because we're going to talk about balancing real estate, balancing life and balancing being a mom. And so we've got the investor mama right here, Jen Narcisse. So Jen and her husband have together between them three properties, two duplexes and a single family home. They also have two kids, ages six and three. And so we're just going to talk about balancing life as life changes as different things happen. And so she's really passionate about helping moms with finances, kind of just talking about balancing the financial side of life as well. And so we've got a lot of cool stuff to get to welcome Jen to the show. We're so excited to have you

Jen Narciso
Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honour and pleasure to be on. So I'm really excited about today's conversation.

Mike Swenson
Share a little bitabout your background about life and how it's led to where you're at today. And we'll dig in from there.

Jen Narciso
Awesome. So yeah, as you said, I'm a mom of two, my husband and I first got started in the real estate world in about 2013, where we bought our first home out of college. We weren't yet married, but I don't know, probably things I wouldn't recommend other people do. We did. But that's just our story is I said, okay, like, let's just buy a house together. I when most of our friends are buying the dream home, quote, unquote, because we live in a very high cost of living area. So even in 2013, when the market pretty much had just crashed. It was still, you know, three $400,000 people were spending on their single family. And I said to my husband, like, this sounds wrong, like I just, we can't do this. This doesn't make sense to be like, and I literally kind of had the Rich Dad Poor Dad story play out for us. I was working there. I had two of my friend's father's one was an attorney, and one was an accountant. And the one guy literally would justify working super late because he didn't have to commute into the city. And so he could stay at the office later, because that would be his commute time. And then the attorney, my friend's father, like he'd go into work like noon, one o'clock, because he owned the building that the other attorneys also worked in. And so he had used real estate as a leverage to then had a poll. So I knew real estate was something I wanted to do. And he actually recommended I go read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And so right out of college, I said, like, let's just buy a property. He's like, we're not even married. And like, I whatever, like we'll just do it. And so we bought our first duplex at the time, it was like 200 and something $1,000, which now the value is over five. So we over doubled what we bought, and we lived in one unit and rent it out the other. We had no idea what we were doing, but we just did it. And it was amazing, because that then allowed us to save significantly, because our housing, it wasn't completely covered because we still lived in a high cost of living area. And even at that time, for our income right at a college. We weren't making that much. But it allowed us to save a lot, which then allowed us to get the next one, and so forth. So that's how we began.

Mike Swenson
And then in the meantime, you had kids along the way and introduce them as you were continuing to add more properties. So talk about kind of how that grew into the the other two properties that you had.

Jen Narciso
Sure. So we had our first one in that same duplex and we ended up so the first unit we were living with a one bedroom that we moved upstairs to two bedroom and then we realised we had nowhere to move. So we said let's just repeat the process and so we took out we it was also a we got very lucky with our real estate at the time rates were super low. So we refinanced took out the downpayment then for the next one and we bought a another duplex while I was pregnant. It was like literally the day I delivered was going to be the day we closed on the house and this was gonna be a bigger project though this was an even nicer area and it was going to be a one bedroom one bath we were going to build another bedroom enclose a porch so we were going to make it a two one and then upstairs was a five bedroom. So we went from like one one and a two one to two to one and a five three, which was this was a big luck leaf and so we ended up getting a FHA two or three kalo so that we were able to to pay, I think we spent like over $120,000 on rehab to fix it up, make it look really nice. So we fixed up the upstairs unit as the five bed, three bath. And then the downstairs. Like I said, we built an addition. So that was able to get us a lot more read making it a two bedroom, one full bath. And we were able to then also live there, because it was more square footage than our prior one. So we did the renovation with with our now six year old at the time, and when I was pregnant, and I've learned a lot a lot. It was amazing. And I'm so glad we did it. So we house hack, again that point. And then from there, I was pregnant again, the third time. And I was like, Okay, now we need, you know, we gotta figure out what the next plan is. And this was in 2020, right when COVID was about to hit and I sorry, we got to we wanted to house tech again a third time. But we figured if the housing market is going to kind of stabilise right now we really need to buy our single family because afterwards, everyone from the city was going to be moving into our area. So we said let's just jump in the single family route. And so literally April 2020, we went around to a real another really high cost of living area, and just low balled people, we just threw out multiple offers a low balling people, and we got one accepted. And that's how we got into our single family, which also has appreciated it's almost doubled since 2020. And now we're on to the next one.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, so now you've got two duplexes that you've bought, cashed out, we're able to use those finances to buy the next one. And so now you're collecting rent from four different people in addition to the house that you're fixing up and, and eventually sell at some point in the future or just hang on to depending on the strategy. But that's an awesome story. And I think it sounds simple. And yet so many people aren't willing to do that work and make that leap or take that risk. Like you said, you know, you did some crazy that not a lot of other people did and bought that duplex. And so you took that risk. And that's what differentiates you from the people that haven't invested yet is making the leap. Right. And that's why a big part of you know, what I talked about is overcoming barriers. Because at some point, to go from no units to having units, you have to make that leap. And I think that's what hangs a lot of people up and you are willing to make make the leap. So congratulations on that.

Jen Narciso
Thank you. And I will say like kids were our reason not our, like distraction or our reason not to, I should say so we did construction with kids, we lived with other families. And there's pros and cons to everything in life. So you could live in a single family home and not know your neighbours. Just like once you move into a home where you can move to a duplex or a triplex and pick your tenants kind of thing you know. So it's just like there's always for every con there is there's always a pro like our kids, we just actually had a turnover one of our units. Our kids came with us as we did the walkthrough. And as the tenants are moving out, we did our final walkthrough, we inspected we collected, we had the new tenants coming in, we collected the rents. And my three year old asked a lot of great questions of like, Is this our house? Do we own this? Who are these people like all these great things that as our kids get older, we're using these also to teach them, like this is how we take care of our properties. This is what we look for when we buy properties. This is how we screen tenants. This is how it works. This is how we collect our money and all this stuff so that when they're older, now they have a really strong foundation, to then take the leap and do it themselves.

Mike Swenson
For some people, you know, I've heard different strategies of you know, pick a property for each kid, the rents that come in could potentially be helping to pay for school loans and college or, you know, maybe that's a property that eventually sometime in the future they get and yeah, they get to see you working at that getting experience in real estate. So then it's not as scary when they decide whether or not they want to participate. You know, like I think about my three boys. I'm certainly not expecting them to want to do real estate, but they've been around it. They've seen it, you know, my my son's gone on some tours with me that I do with investor clients or walkthroughs or inspections and things like that. And so yeah, that's it's just getting them experienced. And then I've also interviewed a few people on this podcast where it's because their parents invested in real estate, that that's how they got their start. And so they're like, Yeah, I want to do this. I saw how this helped my family, and I want to go do it too. And so it's just exposing them right if you know if they want to do it great. If not, that's okay. But at some point they'll they'll know the lessons that they've learned from watching you guys do this?

Jen Narciso
Yeah. 1,000% The other thing too is because of the properties we've had, we've been able to catapult our wealth significantly. And the other thing is about to I feel very like obligated like I do not want to be a burden onto my kids. And so if nothing else, at least I know that my husband and I are taking care of so that when our kids get older, they don't have to worry about us. Like, they don't have to worry about long term care for plans, like we've already picked out our plots, like everything is done. So that all they need to worry about is that if they get, you know, we're, you know, have the 520 nines and all the stuff for them, but that they can at least start at zero or even negative, but don't have to worry about us on top of that, because I find so many of my friends don't have their own financial house in order. And then it's like, well, who's gonna take care of you now you're putting the burden on the kids like, it may be great that their college has some money towards it. But if your retirements not, then you're going to have a significant burden on your kids? And do you really want that and most people, I would say don't. So using real estate as that vehicle to, you don't need to own a million units, you can just own a couple in a great area. And then you just have options. Like you said, it could be for cash flow, you can you know, hand it off to your kids, or you can sell it and use the proceeds to go like, but if you have nothing, then you have no options. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Swenson
Well, and one of the things that I like to lift up for people is, yeah, if you put all your money into a 401 K, or into a retirement plan, the strategy once you retire as you go conservative, and now you're just pulling from that pot, until eventually you've used it all or you've died, like those are kind of two options. And so here with real estate, you can continue to have that you'll continue to have rents coming in, you'll continue to have appreciation, you can continue to purchase more properties as as those opportunities grow doing cash out refi, or different things like that. And so instead of your retirement years, kind of being skimping and figuring out like am I going to outlive my savings, now you just know that that's continuing to come in and grow. And so I was excited, we just had a closing last week of somebody that used a self directed IRA to purchase, they just retired and use part of their funds to purchase an apartment building with some commercial space. And so they're excited about that opportunity. This is their first real estate purchase. And it's right after they retired, and they're excited about seeing their wealth grow. Versus Hey, now we got to turn it conservative because we don't know what the stock market's going to do. And so we'll just see, like, those are those opportunities. Once again, it's it's choice, right? You have the choice to do that, based on the decisions that you've made today.

Jen Narciso
Yeah, I remember. So the quote unquote, Rich said they had kind of mentored me when I was younger, he always said, like, you want your ladies you have leverage appreciation, depreciation, income equity, and I think it was savings. And with that real estate allows you, you can make money in multiple ways. So whether you get a little bit of cash flow, or you have a little bit of equity, or you can leverage other people's monies and not put so much doubt, there's just so many Wealth Generators through it, that like even, like any, nothing's a guarantee in life, and you know, anything can go wrong, but your stock market could drop five 50% right before you go to retire versus lease, you know, real estate market may be down but you can like, if you've held it for a while, you maybe it's paid off, or maybe you're close to like you just have so many more things that you can do and that you control and you're not then waiting on this mystery fund to just all of a sudden pay. Like we said, it turns conservative when you're older. I'm all about optionality and real estate is like the best way to get that.

Mike Swenson
So Jen, what would you say to people? Because I know there's a lot of people that would be like, Yeah, but Jen, you did that, right? When you guys got married? I'm already married, I already have kids, you know, like, we're already 1520 years down the road. So now I can't do that. Because you know, I'm not I'm not in your spot when when you made those decisions to buy those investment properties.

Jen Narciso
So there's two things, there's the people who are like, okay, how can I get creative, because if someone really wants it bad enough, they'll figure it out. And so I always tell people first like, look at your own home, is there a way to maybe space off an area where you can maybe not do full time rental but Airbnb part of your house or do like midterm rentals, like maybe you're rendering to nurses or something just to kind of get your feet wet and see how you like it. It's still I know, it's still alive, especially if you have kids to do something like that when you're not used to living with people. But if you really want to change your life, you have to change your life, you know? So that would be my first thing. If that's really not on the table, I would look at okay, what are some other strategies I can still use to maybe get my feet wet. So maybe if you have in your primary residence, you build up some equity, maybe now rates are higher, you don't want to refinance. But take out a HELOC and go for a second home because you could put down 10% And maybe go the Airbnb route. So it's another way you can start getting your feet wet with real estate. Or maybe you save up for if you want to save up for 20% invest if you'd like we live in a high cost of living area so you're looking at another state and saving 20% It's in out west is very different than saving 20% on the coast. So that's another way you can use it. Look into, like you said, the self directed IRA, see what's in your retirement accounts already, if you don't have the money for the down payment, or if you want to be ambitious, and maybe you just have a nest egg sitting in a brokerage account, use that money to get into and pick your pick your poison, really, there's so many avenues of real estate, my biggest recommendation that was just find something that kind of feels good to you, and then just pick one of them. So if you want to start with your house, start with your house, and then just learn everything you need to know about short term rentals or mid term rentals and how you can convert your house and what systems you want to get in place for turnover and all that. Or if you want to go the long term route, figuring out how are you going to get the money if you don't have the money? Where do you want to invest all those things, but just pick one thing, and then just educate yourself? Surround yourself with great people who've already done it, and then take the leap into it.

Mike Swenson
I think about the analogy. So this weekend, we were out with our kids, and we went to an escape room. And so it's something that they've done maybe in the last six months that they've really started to enjoy now that our youngest is getting old enough. And and so we did this escape room, right? And for those of you that haven't done it before you start in this room and you start looking for clues. And so it's you know, does this mean anything over here? Does that mean anything over here? What about this thing? And then once you find a clue, then another clue presents itself, and then you continue to solve that puzzle. And so I think for so many people investing, they maybe just automatically discount themselves or just say, Hey, I can't do it. And like you said, there's you presented a few good options. And there's people out there that are like, Yeah, well, that doesn't work. For me, that doesn't work for me, I can't do that. But what if you take a curious approach of what would be the way that I could get started, and you just start asking questions. You know, I've often given people advice of lending later, they're like, Well, I don't have the money right now. And so why don't you go talk to a lender and say, This is maybe the type of property I would be looking towards? What would I have to do to make that happen? You know, like, work backwards from there, give me the puzzle pieces, and I can start to put it together. And then I know how much I have to save. And we can set a goal. Or maybe I find somebody that's willing to lend if the numbers made sense. And so you have to kind of work backwards from that. But you can't say, Well, this won't work. For me, this won't work in my situation. Think about it as that escape room analogy. I'm just looking for clues to figure out what my next steps gonna be. And once I get those clues figured out, then I'm good. And I can move on to the next step.

Jen Narciso
I love it. Like I said, there's always a reason to do something and always a reason not to do something. So for the same reason of why you say that you're not going to could be the same reason why someone else does. So I love that analogy of finding the clues because maybe you want to you like getting creative and doing like home design. A friend of mine. She's Whitney Hanson, the host of the money nerds podcast, she's literally creating a potted plants home, because she just came up with the idea and so she got funding for it because it's cool. And she's air being being I forgot where it's located. It's like our Midwest, but it's gonna look like a, like a pot. It is so creative. And she's doing it like she figured out a way and she did it. So maybe if that's like your Avenue, like go that route like us, us. I like the idea of like using clues to like find out also like what you're interested in and what you enjoy doing. And maybe there's a way you can still kind of monetize that using real estate as a vehicle to just live like a more optionality life, you know?

Mike Swenson
Yep. And yeah, you don't have to necessarily retire from your real estate holdings yet. It could just be, hey, this takes care of the car payment, or this takes care of food or something like that. How, for you guys kind of expense wise, the income that you have coming in from your rentals, kind of budget wise, I'm just kind of curious, like, what what is that? What difference does that make in your financial situation in terms of income coming in? Like what kind of what what's that covering for you guys?

Jen Narciso
So for us is kind of twofold. So one, it's really kind of allowed me not to have to work full time anymore. Because we can we still save like, I'm so crazy. So ever, we still save like 30% of our income, but even still saving 30% of income with that money from real estate. Like I still need to work a little bit, but I don't really have to work. You know, it's more of like, yeah, like we would love to build an additional or home or take, we still travelling we still live a great life. But we it just gave me so much more options. Now fast forward, that I don't necessarily want to work the WTO I don't have to. Well, that being said, because we do save so much that money really does just kind of go right into our brokerage because then I want to use that then to find our next investment. So even though we have that gap, I don't use that gap, but I couldn't use that gap. So again, it just created more options for me. Either I don't work or I work and then the money just goes into funnelling for The

Mike Swenson
next one. Yeah, more freedom and flexibility. Exactly, yeah,

Jen Narciso
you don't need to have a lot of properties, like we just like bought in a very high cost of living area, that the equity alone appreciated. And because we, you know, just held them for so long to the cash flow now is great. And once these houses are paid off, it's going to cover so my goal was really looking at these is that once these houses were paid off, could they cover our monthly expenses. And we're pretty much already there right now that if once these mortgages are covered, we could live for free. And that's not even factoring into our you know, retirement accounts and all that stuff. But I still like the idea of one for like, each kid and one for us. I really want to have like five, five houses. So talk

Mike Swenson
about investor mama, your your website, your podcast, how did that come to be? How did that idea start? And where is it going in? What's your passion with that?

Jen Narciso
Store? So I did launch the investor mama podcast, many conversations with a moms touch. And the goal is to really educate, motivate, and inspire moms on their money journey, because I kind of like we've been just kind of, you know, ploughing ahead with financially with real estate and with our money and all this stuff. And we kind of just lifted our head out of the sand once we started having kids and all these other moms are like, What are you doing? A lot of my friends and I realised that a lot of them had no idea what their money was even like, and they would keep coming to me for advice. And I love listening different podcasts and bigger pockets. And she was fine. I was like, why don't I just do a podcast and I was pregnant again at the time, and I needed a distraction. And so I launched investor mama, and I've absolutely loved it. I've met some amazing people literally all over the world. And I interview moms like on their debt stories, or just financial advice or tips or moms who are just whether they own a small business or they're a real estate, how they do that, but also with the lens of being a mom, because once you're a mom, everything changes like even for us with real estate, house hacking with kids and house hacking with our kids. It's just a very different experience. And same thing, like having a business or having anything. And so I just want to provide more stories and more motivation for moms to know that wherever they are in their money journey that they can get to wherever it is they want, they just you know need help. And like there's a community of other moms out there that are all in the same boat, trying to row the same way. And so that's how Mr mama got started.

Mike Swenson
Well, it's awesome, because you know, moms need community, moms need inspiration. And raising kids is a challenge. You know, like, my, my wife is fortunate to have three days a week and you know, where she gets to spend time with the kids, and especially in the summer, now that they're off. Like she can go to the park and do stuff where she can take them places or run the errands that she needs to and then balance her job as well. And so yeah, it's it's a challenge. And I love that you have a great example that you can share with people and you can help inspire them.

Jen Narciso
Yeah, and even for making the leap out of a W two into like a business or whatever, it's very hard for moms and just kind of overcoming the mental obstacles, or whether they want to stay at home or work. There's just so much also mental things that moms have to deal with. And also like dealing with ageing parents, and then like being the sandwich generation, I know what kind of both spouses but typically things fall harder on the mom, were like postpartum depression, and dealing with finances and like therapy and all that kind of stuff. So there was really also in the financial space, I felt like there was just also a lack of having these real conversations. And having a safe space for moms also share all their concerns and fears and all of that, and then you throw money on top of that. It's just yeah, just to really create community for people to kind of come together and share different issues and things like that,

Mike Swenson
for sure. Because Because yeah, money, money drives those conversations in terms of what work am I doing? What am I getting paid? What time do I then have available with the kids? You know, some moms love homeschooling their kids, and then with that comes different issues that come up, because yeah, you're you're with your kids. You're balancing crazy schedules. There's just so much to juggle. And so having that community is is a huge help.

Jen Narciso
Yeah, no, 1,000% Even the cost of having kids is significant for some people, and how to deal with that. So yeah, there's just so many things that I feel like as a mom least for me, even to that it's kind of like pushed under the rug, you know, and I wanted to bring light to a lot of the different issues that

Mike Swenson
I remember I saw a video within the last couple of weeks where somebody was talking about earning six figures and so a lot of people right it's kind of like oh, if I could just earn six figures then I'm good and and it was a a young single person was questioning that because somebody had brought up like six figures you know, when when you have a family doesn't go as far as you think it does. And so this right, right. And so this single person in the video like it was it was on tick tock and they had you know, stitched it or do edit it or whatever and they're like, kind of looked like are you kidding me like make six figures, this is a tonne of money. And I wanted to comment and be like, just insurance on my children. You know, like, that was the big thing for me because I worked at a nonprofit for 10 years, and my wife was, you know, still working part time. And I remember from Kid one to kid two to kid three, and I was like, holy cow, this insurance is no joke. And then, you know, what's not covered with insurance. And then you've got, you know, we went to the dentist, and we just dropped, you know, a few $100 Because there was additional things that weren't covered. And so now my other two kids are going to the dentist, this coming, you know, in the in the next couple of weeks, and you've got glasses for one, and you've got, yeah, all these things really add up. And so you've got to be on your game financially to be able to, to not only just survive, but have the wherewithal to look at, what do I want my future to be? You know, to get my head above the clouds and think how can I plan for my future to where it's not just kind of survive paycheck to paycheck, or just try to get through each day? And each week financially?

Jen Narciso
Oh, yeah, 1,000%. And that brings up a really good point of surviving and thriving, like, for my kids to go to camp that we have with our values. It's like $4,600 for four weeks per kid, versus our town camps. $1,000. Okay, for six weeks. So significant difference. But I will say that when my daughter came home from the town camp, I was just talking to my husband about this, her attitude, she's six years old, and like the things she came home, say, within four weeks, I could not believe, like, what the environment created for her. She's asking me these questions. I'm like, You are six, you are not 13. Like, where are you even hearing this stuff from. And now she's back at the other camp. That's the $4,000 one. And she's starting to like get back to herself. But I want to be able to provide for my kids to like, I don't want them just to survive, I want to have them go where I want to teach them how to like our values and what we believe in and all that kind of stuff. Like I don't want to just have to settle because, you know, we don't have the money to do it. And I know we're in a very privileged position. Now. It was because of the real estate allowed allows us now to make different decisions. And that's also why I'm so passionate about it, too. Because without real estate, there's no way we would have even been here. Because even if we were saving into the, you know, the 401, k's and all that to have the money like liquid that we can actually touch I can sell a house like I know that like I don't have to worry as much than just like a 401k kind of in this, you know, the metaverse kind of thing. Like it's just in this weird, you know, don't touch for another 20 years. But having that money also so fungible and so real, and we're able to touch it and hold it. That gave us a lot more power to make different financial decisions. And like, we're still figuring out Yeah, because it is super expensive and $4,000, I'm struggling with, oh, there's other ways we can do things. But again, it's just being able to have that kind of comfort level that now allows us to make so many more different choices that I didn't think I would care about a couple years ago. And I really do really care

Mike Swenson
about, you know, thinking about the lessons that the kids are learning about money. That's something that I've been a lot more conscious of is, you know, how we talk about money, I was raised growing up, like, Okay, we can't afford this and in Money is treated as kind of the scarce thing, and to realise that there is there is an abundance out there of money. And so yeah, what lessons are you teaching your kid and, and so I am going through a coaching programme, kind of a mindset coaching programme. And just last week, they talked about, you know, the thinking mind can process 40 bits of information per second. And they said that the unconscious mind can process 4 million bits of information per second. So all these like conscious thoughts I have about money, or how I was raised or what I'm thinking about, like you said, you know, what are your kids gonna now think about investing in real estate or planning and budgeting and handling money? All these things, we're teaching them consciously, but there's all these things that are happening unconsciously, that are developing their conscious thoughts. And so it's really important to think about what you're thinking about.

Jen Narciso
Yeah. And we kind of control that for our kids when they're so young to we want to put them in the best environment to grow and to thrive and to be where they will learn concepts about money. And, you know, money's okay. It's

Jen Narciso
not something scary. We talk about money in our house all the time. I know a lot of my friends don't. I say why not? Oh, I don't know. We just never did as a kid. I'm

Jen Narciso
like, well look where you are. Now. Don't you want to talk about it in front of your kids? Like we have major money discussions with our kids or family meetings or we're going to make purchase make a big purchase. We include them and all that. I know they're young, but they're so it's all about absorption. Yeah, in

Mike Swenson
our household. You know, one thing we talk about is when the kids want something or you know, ask about something or whatever it is we say look like we probably can pay for that, we probably do have the money for that. That doesn't mean we're just going to buy everything in anything that we want. Because we also have to pay for food, we also have to pay for housing, we also have to pay for insurance. And so yes, this thing that you want us saying no doesn't mean that it's because we don't have the money for it. It's because we're choosing to spend it in other areas and prioritising different things. So yeah, it's it's giving them more of the full picture, because they could care less about the housing expenses than insurance expenses, car expenses, whatever it may be, they're just thinking about the thing that they want. But hopefully, yeah, you're planting some of the seeds for the future where they realise, yes, I can buy these things, that doesn't mean that I'm going to because money has to get allocated in other places.

Jen Narciso
Yeah, and I did a great episode with the from money kids Academy. And it was really cool. Like, I need to start this with my kids, I want to wait till my youngest is a little bit older, but really even starting teaching the kids how to manage their own money at a young age to works wonders. So like, just letting them make whatever money decisions they want, but let them fail, whether you know, seven, that when they're 17, and they're now going to college and have to manage money for the first time and have no idea what to do with it. But if you start them young, and they're like just learning, you know, I should be saving a bucket for saving a bucket for investing a bucket for a carrier, you know, so forth. Now you're giving them complete control. And then also, money's not a big deal. Like when they if they get money, it's not like such a big deal. They just know what to do with it, because they've been taught at such a young age to just have to think about it. And then once they make the money decisions, and you know, if they want to spend it on candy, or whatever, that's fine, as long as they take it from that. And then, you know, again, lessons learned that they have to go through but I'm all about also starting going, you know, as soon as possible.

Mike Swenson
We just started this last week where well, we've got three boys. And so you know, big thing with having three boys in a row is, you know, there's a lot of clothes, toys, stuff that's accumulated because it's like, well, we'll save this for the next one, save this for the next one. Well, now that our five year olds are getting old enough, a lot of the smaller toys, or the bikes, or different things like that, that have accumulated from having three boys, we're looking to get rid of that. So what we talked about is planning to sell this stuff, and then use that to go on a vacation together. So we talked about what's a place that you guys would like to go on vacation. And let's put together you know, a little chart with a little thermometer. And so we haven't identified the location and the total amount of money yet, but we've started it with a few things just in the last week here of, okay, let's put this money towards a vacation. And so I was trying to, you know, latch a positive future thing on top of let's go through our stuff and get rid of stuff. Because now it's, they're gonna be more excited to decide like, Okay, I've got, you know, just, I'm thinking like video games as an example. It's like, you know, Hey, would you want to get rid of this video game like, well, well, I played that once, six months ago, you know, yeah, it's like, oh, but if that money could go towards a vacation that we're choosing, and then we also said to that, if we happen to, you know, raise more money for that vacation, well, then that can go to something you purchase on the vacation, or, you know, going to this thing that you want to do on the vacation. And so I think it changes their perspective about money, because now it's, there's an opportunity cost, like I could have this game that I don't play, or I might play once in the next three months. Or we could sell that. And now go on a vacation together that we choose together. So I'm trying to work with them. Because yeah, now they're old enough, they're understanding these concepts a little more trying to, you know, to teach them some of these lessons.

Jen Narciso
I love that. Yeah. And the more involved you get that they're just gonna pick it up. And now when they go on that vacation, it's gonna be like, a really even better vacation because they worked for it. Like they're participating it. It's not just that they're passively going on vacation. Now, they're an active member of the family, and you gave them goals. And that's, I think that's such a great idea. That's really cool.

Mike Swenson
I'll let you know how it goes. We'll see. Yeah, we're in like, week one here. So hey, the early optimistic phase, but at least the plan makes sense to us. The plan makes sense to my wife and the kids are excited about it. So we'll see. We'll see when school starts if their attention wanes, but who knows?

Jen Narciso
Yeah, but they're also the good age where I feel like they're older now that they can really understand things and when, like, when you're planning a trip to just not having it's so far away that it's like, okay, it's been like six months, like, where are we going?

Mike Swenson
Right. Right. So we're shooting for you know, being in Minnesota, going somewhere in the winter, where you know, okay, and, and then letting them know, like, yeah, we've got to buy plane tickets. We've got to book the hotel at a time. So let's see in the next you know, two months, what can we do here so then we can have that vacation in the winter and to get out of Minnesota in the in the snow. So

Jen Narciso
yes, definitely let me know how it goes. I'm very curious to see how like they keep up and stuff.

Mike Swenson
So how can folks learn more about you and what you're doing?

Jen Narciso
Yeah, you know, the investormama.com/connect And you can find my, all my social media handles are there. You can also go to an apple. I also go on Apple iTunes or Amazon, Google Play Anywhere you listen to your podcasts, just go to investor mama, and love. Yeah, definitely reach out to me, we'd love to connect. And if you have any questions on investing, or the mom side, or really anything real estate or business side related, shoot me a message and I would love to love to learn more about your story and how I can help you.

Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you, Jen for coming on and sharing. It's great to hear your perspective. Great to hear how your family is handling money, how you're having those conversations, and how your real estate journey has really helped to set up kind of a lot of your life and where it's at today. And so best of luck to you on the future and excited to see where things go.

Jen Narciso
Yeah, Mike, my thank you so much for having me on. It's been so great. And thank you for letting me share my story and hopefully someone another mom out there hears it was like, Huh, what is this real estate thing? And just a little light bulb, like you said just started asking questions. If they're here. How can I set up? Why not?

Mike Swenson
And you are in real estate too. We didn't really touch on that much. Or an agent so you can help people if they've got questions