He “Stacked” 5 Properties in 6 Years: Now He Lives and Travels for Free!

Most rookies buy rental propertiesA $12,000 tax bill and 200 hotel nights later, Ross Elkhorn swore he’d never trade time for commissions again. Five years later, his house hacks fund his freedom and his side hustle pays for his first class flights.Today’s guest proves that getting started really isn’t as complicated as you think.This is the Real Estate rookie podcast. I am Ashley Kehr.And I’m Tony j Robinson. And let’s give a big warm welcome to Ross. Ross, thanks for joining us today, brother.Hey, thanks so much for having me, Ashley and Tony, this is a pretty surreal moment. Got to listen to both your podcast from past five years, and I know we connected out at an in-person event and I would’ve been kicking myself if I didn’t come say what’s up. So yeah, really excited to dive into how you guys helped as well as just some strategies that I learned along the way. So excited to be here.Yeah, I’m more excited to learn from you too, Ross. I want to start off with, you’ve said that 2000 eighteen’s tax bill was your breaking point. What was going through your mind then and what did that moment teach you about actual wealth building?Yeah, absolutely. So I was just for some background, I was for 10 plus years a medical device and healthcare software sales rep. And as a lot of people know, you’re very high commission based. And in 2018 had a really good year, was renting with three other guys in the northern Virginia DC area and at the end of the year, saw how much I made, saw how much I owed in taxes, and then when January came around, realized I still had to stroke a massive check to the IRS and I was like, okay, what’s going on here? I invest in stocks, I invest right in index funds. I have the foundation in place from the beginning, but I had heard a long time that real estate was a great way to just shelter that. And through different conversations that my partner and one of my business partners now on some of the properties had, he came from more real estate background. So we had been talking for a couple years and really after that it kind of paired with wanting to buy a house and that’s when really the mindset got going and that’s when I started to dive more into real estate, reading the books, listening to podcasts, figuring out how do I save some money?Rossa. I think one of the biggest things that people overlook when it comes to investing in real estate is the tax benefits. And obviously there’s the long-term appreciation, there’s the cashflow, which I think a lot of people understand, but one of the real unlocks in real estate investing and part of the reason that so many successful people who make their money outside of real estate eventually end up investing in real estate is because of those tax benefits. I guess if off the top of your head, what was your tax bracket? What did that look like for how much were you actually spending in taxes?It was the highest amount. I think I had to stroke a check in January for 33 grand and then we termed that we had an inside joke with our friends, we would just say taxes. It stuck with me. So that was what I had to pay outside of, I think it was like 175 grand on my tax bill. So I had made over half a million that year and it was pretty insane. That was really eyeopening where I was like, all right, I know I’m going to try to perform at this level over the coming years, which that was my highest earning year. And now I think to myself, wow, there’s some years where I’ve made less than that. Then I paid in taxes every year after, so that’s when it really was that wake up call and that’s when I started to realize I need to figure out a strategy to shelter this. And that was prior to thinking anything about starting my own business, entrepreneurship, those things. That was, I’m a W2 earner, I’m going to be a high commission sales rep for a long time.And Ross, I think it’s an important point because especially for people who are high income earning, I think that there’s potentially maybe more benefit for investing in real estate from a tax perspective and a long-term appreciation than there is from immediate cashflow today. Because if you’re making 500 grand a year, the cashflow you you’re going to make from real estate is probably going to be negligible in the very short term, but the bigger benefit that you’ll get is the ability to reduce your taxable income by half or maybe even more. And I know we’ll get into strategies and things like that later, but it’s just an important point that I wanted to call out because I feel that so much of social media today is just about cashflow, this and profits and all those other things, but when you take a big step back, I think taxes are a big part of that. So how did your first exposure to real estate education shift your mindset from just stacking money aside to actually starting to build that real estate portfolio?Yeah, so I think first it was just understanding the things that you mentioned, tax benefits, equity buildup, long-term having if you’re owning those properties, having people paying down the loans, the mortgage, and it wasn’t what is framed on Instagram and TikTok that we get hit with ads every day about, right, go buy a couple properties, go chill on the beach, drink my ties. That’s not how it’s, so that is what got me thinking. And then if I could shelter that while at the same time investing in the stock market for some of those, some more risky but more rewarding as well as index funds, that just built out a diversified portfolio. And that’s really what got me thinking. And then I never even thought, Hey, I’m going to have five properties, be a landlord. It was just, Hey, I want to move to this market where it’s very affordable.
I’ll buy one, maybe I’ll rent it out. And over time, this is a growing market. And when I traveled as a sales rep, I always laughed and this is what got my mind going. And I think it goes back to my creative days when I was starting my entrepreneur journey, knocking on doors, starting my grass cutting business, and I would see how I would target yards, and you can probably see the sales going on in my mind, but I would target yards that had high grass because I’m like, all right, they’re lazy. I need to go cut their grass. And that’s how people in the creative finance world find deals. But that being said, when I was flying to and from DC to North Carolina, Northern Virginia had so many houses and there wasn’t a lot of dirt. You’re flying over Lake Norman and Charlotte. It was all dirt. And I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s so much opportunity here. So that’s when it kind of clicked that I need to figure out a way that I can move to a area that is growing and right, and there’s appreciation, availability and there’s prices are going to be lower and potentially cashflow, but that long-term mindset that really made it happen.Now Ross, during this time, were you doing any kind of research on real estate or any kind of education? Was there some kind of aha moment for you maybe where you’re like, this book or this podcast or doing this is like, I need to follow this?So yeah, some of the first books that I started to read was my buddy who now we own two properties together, he said, Hey, go check this out. Flip Your Future by Ryan Pineda. And then there was also the ABCs of real estate investing. So that kind of just got the foundation going before diving into every single strategy. I know most people they read Rich Dad, poor Dad. I read that later just because everyone recommended it, but luckily my dad, they were, Hey, go invest long-term, whether it’s in stocks, whether it’s somewhat in real estate, but they were more in the market, not real estate. So having my friend who’s now my partner, us having those conversations long-term, giving those books, then what kept it going?So with this shift with your dad and then meeting your partner, was there any kind of mindset shift you had to have from your dad primarily investing into the stock market and now you’re kind of trying to adjust your mindset to real estate investing?Yeah, I think it was a lot of questions. It was just asking my partner understanding what are the reasons behind it? And he had some family that were his uncles who had commercial buildings, his parents had flooring companies, they were really on the real estate side. So it was that blend and it wasn’t just saying, okay, I’m going all in. It was just diving deeper, doing the research, asking the questions, and he had said, Hey, they have all these buildings, this is how they do it. And it did have to change that mindset of, and I think a lot of times people grow up and they are told one thing and they don’t expand that. I think one thing that I always try to do is listen to what everyone else who’s doing things successfully and study their business and study different areas. And that’s where then that helped me get outside of that narrow mindset of, oh, I can make all money in stocks to hey, real estate. Other people have done it, 90% right of millionaires are made out of real estate. So doing those kind of gave that leap and got me to start listening more and right, that’s kind of what transitioned into that where we are now.Ross, you just made an incredibly important point that I hope every single person listening paid attention to. We all have people in our life who want to give us advice, but that advice is always based on their set of experiences and their worldview and their own successes and their own failures and their own fears. And sometimes the person giving the advice about becoming a real estate investor or building wealth maybe hasn’t done that themselves. And their advice is coming from a place of fear or a place of man, I read this headline, or Hey, I knew this guy once. You knew this guy once. You knew this guy once who lost all their money in real estate. So I think it’s important for Ricky’s who are listening to filter out the advice that we get based on the level of experience that person actually has in implementing that advice.
And well-intentioned advice can be bad advice, nothing about the person, but just make sure we can filter that out. So I appreciate you sharing that. I want to talk about your first deal though, because you started with what Ash and I think and what we highlight in the podcast oftentimes is one of the best ways for Ricky Investors to get started, and that’s what the house hack. But yours was kind of unique because you bought this house hack via FaceTime, which I think might be one of the first stories you’ve heard of someone buying a property over FaceTime. So walk us through that story, Ross.Yeah, for sure. And before I dive into that, there is one point I do want to make just around what you had said, Tony, because I think it is very important if you are getting started, whether in your W2 job, whether you’re starting to invest in real estate, one of my favorite things to ask people who were successful, who were 30, 40, 50, 60 different areas of their life is what are things that you regret? What are things like mistakes that you made and talking to people who were successful because they could give you those advice. And then taking that and not just trusting the people who were your age, who you’re going out to the bars with or you were doing this right or who weren’t where you wanted to be. So always kind of putting yourself in the right room and asking the right questions. So I wanted to just touch on that. ButYeah, Ross, really quick. It’s a really good point. And I’m curious now from the folks that you’ve spoken with who’ve kind of guided you in this direction that you’ve gone on, what was some of that advice? Enlighten our rookie audience with some of the same knowledge that you were able to get?I wish I worked less. I wish I invested earlier. I wish I traveled more. So what did I do when I was 23? I traveled as much as possible. That’s why I have a travel company now. I invested all my money and I started my own business, went on my own. So I could obviously work a lot now but work less down the road. So I think it’s just asking the right questions and building out that life that you want to, and that’s a lot of the reason why a lot people listening to the show is they want that financial freedom. They want that ability to go do what they want and that’s what real estate does provide.Now, Ross, with this first house hack that you found on FaceTime, was this in a different market as to why you weren’t physically there?So it was in Charlotte, so I was living in Northern Virginia. I remember very clearly I was down here. I had the North Carolina territory when I was a sales rep. So I was down here and I had a lot of friends, half my friends moved to Charlotte, half, moved to Northern Virginia. So I was watching the Alabama Clemson National Championship game. My buddy said, Hey, I bought my condo for 230 grand. And I’m like, oh my gosh, the crappy houses, the neighborhood that we live in are like 800 grand. What the heck? And I was 27 single. I was like, I don’t want to live out in the suburbs yet. I want to live in the city. So immediately my wheels got turning and he actually said, Hey, my neighbor who is a loan officer is actually selling her property. Two bed, two bath condo seemed perfect, but there was an HOA cap for non-res.
I wanted to have the flexibility, but the good thing is she was a lender and she then was able, I used her as my lender for my first property. She introduced me to a agent and when I came down for the next time I met the agent, we went out and toured different properties and I had said my budget was about two 50 to 300 k. But as I did more research, started to realize here’s the good markets that you want to be in. If I have to pay another 50 grand to acquire that property, I’ll do it. And at the same time, while I was thinking through, hey, maybe I get a three bed new town home because then I can rent it out to a roommate, have an office, I work from home. I was also at the same time having conversations with people that I knew and trusted, trying to figure out, Hey, are there people who might need want to rent?
And it actually worked out very well that one of my close friends was like, yeah, actually I need somewhere to live for about a year or so, why I look to buy a house. So that worked out great. He covered a third to almost half of the mortgage and then it worked out where I got an office, I got my bedroom, he got his own bedroom, and that really gave me that confidence to buy. And yeah, I built that trust up with her and she kind of knew my buy box and I just communicating with her said, Hey, if you find something, I trust you. We have my buy box in place. If you say, yeah, let’s do it, FaceTime me. And I think the biggest thing, and I know we’ll probably get to this, is not having analysis paralysis. Taking action, I think is the biggest thing. And I see it so much from a lot of my friends where, oh, I wish I bought in 20 20, 20 21, and they wait, and then they got a rate that’s double what I got on two properties because kind of took that leap and said, it’s going to work out. I’m 30 years old and 30 years is probably going to be right more than it is now. So I think that’s probably, that lesson is just taking and not over analyzing things when you have trust and you’ve done your homework.That’s great advice, Ross. So we went over how Ross took the leap bought sight unseen and it’s going to pay off big, but how do you go from one FaceTime deal to negotiating a lakefront property and using 0% cards to fund furniture? We’ll go over that right afterward from today’s show sponsor. Okay, so Ross, after that first deal, you caught momentum fast, you started stacking properties and even buying land on Lake Wiley. Let’s unpack that next step. So how did that first property success give you the confidence and where did you get the capital to keep going?Yeah, so it gave me the confidence of, okay, Charlotte’s a good market. Having conversations with other people, starting to network with the right people and just continuing to have those conversations with my buddy who now is a partner on two properties of, Hey, let’s maybe buy something. My roommate moved out after a year. I thought, okay, why don’t we try to go get another property and I’ll live in it, we can house hack, and we both put 50% down. So went saw that property and actually around that same time, it was brand new construction again, taking action knowing this isn’t an up and coming neighborhood, it’s exactly what we want. We went under contract on that property first time we walked through in a hard hat, got a great deal on it. So that didn’t close for another nine months. But at the same time, having that confidence was we were a lake family, so my grandparents had a lake house that we built a ton of memories on for 25 years, and I have a boat out on Lake Norman that I was like, you know what?
If I’m going to have a forever home, I wanted to be on the lake. If you’re familiar with Charlotte, there’s Lake Norman, 25 minutes North Lake Wiley, 25 minutes south, and Lake Norman is where mj, you also have the NASCAR drivers, all the hornets, all the Panthers players live. So it’s a lot more expensive, it’s also more saturated. So for me as an investor and someone who’s trying to get a good deal, I’m like, okay, let me go to Lake Wiley. It’s also on the South Carolina side where there’s the bottom 5% in taxes. So I’m thinking of that way strategically and just started to look at things. My same thing, business partner who has uncles who have bought property, sat on it for five or 10 years. I had conversations with them. I had no idea what to look out for right in land. So they said, Hey, here’s the things you want to do.
Here’s the questions you want to ask. These are the things you want to go through with your agent as well as the others, and then you can vet those things out. So going through that process, went and saw some founder, a property that I really liked and threw out a low ball offer. It was at 300 grand and I said, Hey, let’s go two 50. But it was during COVID, I knew that there was probably pressure on the seller and it had been sitting there for a while. So I knew there was probably pressure on the seller to offload it and building that relationship with the agent, understanding his priorities, why he owned it. Come to find out his son was the one who spoke too soon and threw back the offer at two 50. And I was at a friend’s wedding and I started laughing.
I’m like, there’s no, or two 70, sorry, encountered, and I just started laughing. I’m like, wow, this really worked. All right, let’s go lower. And went back. And then he got kind of pissed and tried to go up 2 75. We landed on two 70, but the funding piece came from, again, going back to building the right foundation was investing 10% of every paycheck from my Phillips account, from my W2 each quarter or each time you bought, you got 15% off the stock. So I already knew I was walking into money at a 15% discount, and over that five year period that I was there, was able to double that stock. So I used that for 43,000 of the down payment and then took out a HELOC on the first town home I bought to use as that other part just because I didn’t want to get capital gains taxes from selling my stock since I was in that higher income bracket at the time.
So there was a lot of pieces, but that’s how I funded that. Yeah, I think just again, it was just like you got to take action. I get hit up by sellers all the time with mailers and text and all that asking for the property, and sometimes I want to text something funny back and I’m like, no, I’m just not responding because then they’re just going to hammer me. So that’s kind of how I got into it. And yeah, it’s been a great investment and looking to build on it three to five years whenever we decide the time’s. Right.So Ross, let me understand too, it’s a single family home, but there’s also land to build on it as well. Am I understanding that correctly?So it’s just land, so it’s three fourths? Yeah. Yeah. So three-fourths of an acre. It’s about 130 waterfront, 130 feet of shoreline, and it’s waterfront in a cove on Lake Wiley. So I saw that as right, it’s going to be able to build on it. I think the cool part is, is there’s another half acre next to it that the owner owns as well, but there was an easement on it. So he’s been holding onto that now, and the agent now has come back to me and said, Hey, are you interested in it? Because I could potentially build an A DU on that, and that’s where the creative part of building those relationships comes into play.Ross, can you explain what an easement is and why you didn’t purchase it at first because of the easement,I’m going to say I got to go back and it’s not great.Do you know what the easement, the restriction is for the easement?So you can’t build a dock on that property. So that was one of the biggest red, not red flags, but one of the reasons I didn’t buy it. I wanted to build a dock, build a house on it, but it’s cornered next to it, but there was an easement from some water runoff. But if you were to purchase both lots, it doesn’t matter, you could build an a DU on it, but to build your own home and not be able to build that dock, that’s kind of where it could be a challenge.So that easement is for you to have water runoff onto their property then for the land you own now. Yeah. So it makes sense for you to buy it rather than it’d be a lot harder to sell it to anybody else because you already have access to the property because of that easement. Yeah.So Ross, what’s the plan then? Because I know obviously it’s like a kind of long-term buy and hold, but at what point, or maybe if I frame the question this way, what do you think needs to happen in order for you to say, now is the time to build?When we want to move out of the city, we’re a mile from the city and all our friends, so we’re just kind of still at that stage of life and when the time comes starting my own business.So Ross, just for our viewers that are coming along with us, just give us the 30,000 foot timeline of your portfolio. So you started with the house hack and just walk us through what happened from there to where you are today.So bought the first house hack 2019, went under contract on the second property in June of 2020. Purchased the lane in October of 2020, closed on that second town home that we went under contract in May of 2021. And then from there, lived there, started renting out the first house as a long-term rental, and then me and as my partner and I learned the ropes, decided, hey, let’s go and buy another property. When the market and rates went up, we saw it as a good buying opportunity in an October, 2023, purchased a two bed, two bath condo and started to do medium term rentals. My wife actually had one, so when she moved in with me in January, 2023, she actually started doing hers. So I had been studying furnish finder, being in the healthcare industry, knew that and started to do that strategy. And then her and I purchased the home that we’re in now in February of 2024 and moved a mile up the street. We needed more closet space because it wasn’t just me as a guy. And then we got a two and a half year old bulldog and we needed a little patch of grass out back for ’em to run around.So I think one of the big questions that we always get from our rookie audience is how do we structure the partnership? And you’ve taken down a couple of deals with someone else. How were you structuring the partnership and what conversations went into trying to identify the best way to structure that partnership?Yeah, so I think the first thing is you always want to be aligned with your partner on trust. That’s the number one thing. No matter what the numbers say, no matter, oh my gosh, this is a great deal. It’s like, do you know trust that person because this is a huge decision. And even if they’re friends, do trust that they’re going to be, if you’re both type A and you’re both really organized, you might butt heads, but if one’s really good at one thing, one’s really good at another, that’s where it’s a really good partnership and you have to be able to have those candid, open, honest conversations because life changes happens. So that’s probably the most important point before you get started because heard horror stories from people that I know, obviously people in the business, so that’s number one. But I think if you go back to what I was talking about, these conversations started in 2016.
We didn’t purchase our first deal until 2020. So those we’re learning, we’re figuring out what’s important to one another, and we’re seeing we want to build a future together. And yes, we’re best friends, but at the same time we both know what one and another is good at and one another is not great at. So aligning those things and just, we had Tuesday weekly calls every single week at 5:00 PM whether, and he had a brand newborn daughter, a W2 job. So we made sure that we were doing those things and we aligned it where even though we house hacked, we put 50% down each, and then that’s where we both were on the deed. And then for both properties, so loan was out in my name for the first one, we had his name on the deed. And then from there if you wanted to roll it into an LLC, there’s a specific thing we can get into on that property since we’re at a 2.75 rate that there’s sometimes they may not want you to. But yeah, there’s strategies of even if you have that partner, do you roll it in LLC or how do you structure that? So happy to dive into how we did that and everything.I mean, I just appreciate that you started with before the structure just, hey, here’s everything that happened before we even had that conversation. And I think that’s a point that Ash and I try and drive home often is that without the alignment, without the communication, without getting to know and trust each other beforehand, it’s hard to even have a good foundation for a partnership. And ideally you want to date a little bit before you jump into something. Like you said, it was four years of you guys going back and forth before you actually made the decision to buy it together. And I do think that’s the best approach. Now, Ross, you’ve built a system around building your business, but you’ve also got a really unique skillset when it comes to credit cards and points, and you found a unique way to merge your business and your credit card points in a way that I think more Ricky’s needs to know about. So we’re going to go over what that strategy is after. A quick word from today’s show sponsors. Alright, so you bought some homes, you bought some land, but you didn’t just stop there. You’ve actually pivoted Ross into working for yourself and you’ve got a business around credit card points. And I want to talk about that credit card points. Maybe we can start with a quick definition, but how can a rookie investor safely use credit cards to finance things like renovations or furnishings without going into bad debt?So there’s two sides, right? If you’re buying your personal home using a card to purchase those furnishings, I always recommend, depending on, and this just depends on where you’re at in level of spend, there’s different cards. So one of the best ways to earn the most points is buy a welcome offer. So if you have a $5,000 expense and you spend that in the first three months, you then can earn, let’s just say it’s 80 to a hundred thousand points, you’re getting a big bang for your buck If you’re for another example, that’s what I did when I bought my first town home is open Chase Sapphire Reserve. I was traveling a lot. Most of my income goes towards travel, so I was able to earn that big welcome bonus. Another example though is from a strategic standpoint and also not going into debt would be when my wife and I bought this house, we had just gotten engaged.
We knew we were about to pay a lot of money for a wedding and for us, we were putting down money that we again took action. We weren’t even planning on buying a house. And the fact that we did enclose within 60 days, we weren’t trying to bring another 10, 15 grand to furnish the property right then and there. So being able to understand there are 0% interest credit cards that you can get. So my suggestion is don’t go to whatever the furniture store, home Depot, finance the card with them, get the cards that have the right amount of points, whether that’s Chase, Amex, capital One, because those are the banks that you then can use those points to go transfer and travel. But that 0% interest strategy is very key. If you want to have just an additional float, a little bit of leverage, those type of things, two, then not have to come up with that capital right then and there.
And then you have to make sure one, that you have the minimum balance paid off on auto pay and that’s really it. But if you miss that, then that money is due at that time. So just always make sure, right, that you have those things in place. So that’s on the personal side and we happy to dive into the business side and how my partner and I learned that, how I help investors now those more strategic ways. But yeah, if you’re wanting to do that, that’s very simple on the furnishings. And then there’s some other fun stuff that’s coming out around mortgages, landlording, all that stuff that we can dive into.Well, I think too, with the 0% interest credit card, not only just furnishing, but rehab materials, that’s what I’ve gotten the 0% cards for is to do the rehab and then either when I sell the property or I refinance it, I just pay the card off. And some of ’em, I think the most recent one I had done was like 12 months, 0%. But if you made your on time minimum payment for six months, they would extend it to 18 months. That’s a really long time, especially if you’re not doing a huge, huge project to be able to refinance or sell the property to be able to pave that off before the interest kicks in on that card.I was going to say the renovation is key, right? And if you’re doing prime example, when we first moved into this home, we wanted to, the other homes that I owned, I bought ’em, my wife wasn’t there, so we were sticking with the flat white paint, but when we moved in here, she wanted to have the drenched all same color, do it all, which it looks great, but what we had to do is pay contractors with cards. And again, when we had those expenses, we had to decide how do we want to do that. So having that 0% interest was really key on the personal side. And same thing when we did, when my business partner Mike and I did a rehab, a light rehab floors, cabinets and paint, same thing. We did the Chase business Unlimited ink, which is 0% interest. You were able to get that hundred thousand dollars, hundred thousand dollars, I wish a hundred k welcome bonus and points from Chase. And then that translates into one business class flight worth $5,600 on Qatar Q Suites in a lay down seat that I just took in April on our honeymoon. So that’s where maximizing and optimizing those is really key.Ross, let me ask because I think just hearing all these different cards you’re throwing out, I’m already overwhelmed. So what is the system or tool that you use to keep track of all of your different credit cards and the kind of bonuses or intro bonuses that you’re on? How does someone do all this without losing track of everything?For sure. So there’s a couple tools, but just to keep it simple for tracking, you have award wallet and then you have card pointers. So award wallet, you can keep all your cards, you have all your cards, you have the different points in there. And if you have different banks like Chase, capital One, Amex, or if you just have one, you can track it there if you want it. Simple stay with one bank makes it easy. But I recommend Chase Capital One, Amex, and then for bonuses offers all that card pointers. It’s an app that you can go download. We just actually released our podcast episode with Brooke, who’s a director of marketing there. She does a live demo, kind of explains that on our podcast. So if you want to listen to that, go check that out, it’s really helpful. And then award wallet we have coming on as well.
So those are just two simple tools to track. And then obviously you have your different bank apps, but yeah, it can get overwhelming at first. So I think it’s always just figure out, again, what’s your budget? What do you feel comfortable using it on? And if you just want one simple solution, that’s totally fine. Again, real estate, don’t go down the rabbit hole on Reddit and shiny card object syndrome because you will dive into the hobby very deep. But I think it’s always, again, back to what’s most important to you and what’s going to fit your lifestyle the best.Ross, one follow-up question for me, because sometimes we work with as real estate investors, we work with vendors who maybe don’t invoice and maybe you’re paying them from Zelle or Venmo or whatever it may be. And obviously I can’t use Zelle and use your credit card. Do you have a solution for folks that maybe aren’t from a vendor perspective, aren’t sending invoices?Yeah, so we have a product integration with a company called Emilio. So can actually, so from a business standpoint, you can utilize that if you aren’t have an LLC or if you’re doing it from a personal standpoint, there’s one called Plastique. It’s with a queue at the end. And that’s actually a couple of guys from Amex who created that one. But you can pay if you’re just doing a personal home for that. So the example that I use when my wife and I repaint or a house, we use Plastique, if I have any, let’s just say something goes down with a boat or something that’s personal, use plastic Emilio for anything else on the business side, and you get hit with a 2.9% fee. But at the end of the day, if I’m looking at that fee, the example that I used for the a hundred thousand Chase points to business class, I’m getting 5, 6, 7 times my points.
I’m not worried about that fee. And if you’re a business owner, that fee can be written off. So that’s just another tax strategy that you can utilize. And for people who are doing more real estate investing, we work with clients who, there’s developers who have materials, labor, a lot of that where their vendors may not take card. So if you’re doing some of those flips, rehabs, that’s where there’s big money. And I mean I see people who are missing out on six figures, seven figures a year of doing that and just stepping in and making those minor shifts. You translate that into vacations for your family where you weren’t getting rewarded at all. So it just comes down to asking the vendor or just figuring out what’s the best way to go about this.I was wondering about that fee. I didn’t know how much that would be as I haven’t used either of those companies or heard of those websites before, so I’m definitely going to check that out. But you think about it in almost on any other payment platform, you’re paying a fee anyways. I pay a lot of my contractors through a payroll. It’s like Gusto, but you can do 10 99 and I’m getting charged a fee anyways. I have to pay a monthly fee anyways to them to do that. The way I pay my cleaners, I just found this out yesterday, I’ve only been paying them through this one software for two weeks, so it hasn’t gone through a full month yet. It’s like a 7% fee. They’re charging me to pay my cleaners through this. And I’m like, okay, I got to figure out this is worth the convenience that it offers or change it to something else. But it’s like that 2.9% doesn’t sound that bad. I mean, how many people actually pay with cash for anything anymore? They’re paying that fee anyways with markups that people do at different restaurants or retail, things like that. So everywhere you’re getting chargedAnd you’d be surprised how many dollars sometimes are being missed. But Ashley, to your point, if you spend more on an established flipper or developer and you’re starting to do more of that and you’re spending over thresholds of let’s just say a million, we partner with Emilio and have specific product integrations that you can then negotiate that rate down. If they know you’re funneling in a ton of money and we have the connections that we can make and say, Hey, this person’s spending, they’re getting business, they’re going to happily do that. And then also there’s some strategies too where sometimes if you’re already paying via a CH, you could say, Hey, I’m going to pay it with a card. And then you could also then go back to ’em and say, well, you know what? Maybe I want to pay with a CH. Could you just take that 3% fee off? And then if they cut that 3% fee, go to Emilio or Plastique pay it, you’re coming out net even and you’re getting right six figures or however much you’re spending on points. So there’s different creative solutions that you can do. Everything’s negotiable as you guys know.I think another point to hit on this too is if you’re going to take the vacation anyways, you’re going to spend that money anyways, but why not get it weighed discounted, paying that 2.9% fee for getting at least minimum a thousand dollars if you get the a hundred K bonus points plus whatever you spent to get that, you get those points on top of the a hundred thousand. So yeah, I love credit card travel hacking. My family has been able to do a lot more travel than I ever imagined because of it.I am definitely not as advanced as you are. Ashton. It comes to the travel points, and as we’re talking, I’m kicking myself because my wife and I, we renovated a hotel last year and we probably spent 350 K or so renovating the hotel. And we did it all with a debit card. And part of it was because it was a partnership, there were multiple people involved and we had this new LLC that we had set up, and there wasn’t a credit card for this new LLC with all these partners. She like, Hey, let’s just put it all into the bank account. We’ll swipe it that way. But afterwards I was like, man, I should have just used my own credit card and reimbursed myself. But I guess Ross, let me ask, right? You have a partner on some of these deals. So how do you guys split the points? What do you guys do with the points if it’s a partnership?Yeah, so at the end of the year we just split ’em down the middle. So you’re able to, for Chase for example, he’s able to call them and say, Hey, I want to send these to Ross Alcorn, since that’s a Business Unlimited Inc. If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve, you can connect those and send those points to that other personAs long as they’re a member of the LLC.Exactly. So I’m an authorized user on that card. So he opened the card. And that’s a strategy too, is have one person open the card and then you can start to strategically align. Because there’s things with, and we’re going down a rabbit hole here, but with Chase, there’s something called 5 24 where if you’ve opened five personal cards within 24 months, they won’t allow you to. And that’s for Chase only. They won’t allow you to open another card. So when you start to get into the Points game, you kind of want to figure out, Hey, chase is my bank that they give 0% interest cards. They have the best transferable points. Make sure you’re doing that. I’ve been solely focused on that. Now I’m getting more into other ones. But those are some things, and you can do the same thing with Capital One and amex.
So when partners, we have developers, flippers, people that have partners, and at the end of the year they say, Hey Ross, we want to go on a vacation. Whether that’s a quarterly retreat, whether that’s end of year or we want to just take our families, maybe it’s not together. How do we get those points to each partner? There’s ways to strategically do that with people on those. So that’s a little bit more advanced, but that’s another strategy. So there are ways to split it where it’s not like partner one gets card, all right, Ross, you’re screwed. You don’t get any points.It can be my partners. I’m the one that tied it up. I’m the one that put the table. I just have before we wrap up, Tony, I have one more quick thing real quick is that I think that strategy also works really well where you can divvy up the points, say I’m my partner and I have Hyatt status or something where maybe he can take the Hyatt points and then transfer them to me if it’s our mutual credit card, but he was the main person that opened it, but I have the benefits or whatever that I could book it and stuff too.And that’s nice too. If you’re doing a partnership with someone that you’re friends with and you like to take those vacations, we get to benefit from those. We got to go to Greece last year, we got to go celebrate next year. We want to go do Turks and Caicos for our 35th birthday together. So it’s like those are the type of things where it’s not just like, oh, we’re getting the best deal. We’re credit card hacking. It’s like no. They create actual cool memories. And Ashley, like you said, you’re flying business class life flat to and from Europe.Yeah, my kids don’t know yet. It’s just going to be a surprise to them.I think the business idea, Ash, that we need to go out and execute on, it’s just how can we get all the people that we know that do renovations to use our credit cards and then they just pay us the cash and we get all the points for their transaction. If we can figure that out, then we’re set for life.I was just going to say, why don’t you buy another hotel? I’ll open a credit card in my name and you can just use the credit card. I’ll get you a nice big credit limit spend on that credit card and you can go ahead and use it and it’ll be like a private money lender.There you go. And if you guys need business bankers to up the credit limits, let me know. I work directly with those and they can get those.Well, Ross, thank you so much for coming on today. We loved talking about your journey, your experience, and the credit card hacking. Where can people find you and reach out to you?So you can just find [email protected]. All my social medias itinerary boss. And then we actually have a free points and miles cheat sheet that’s going to get you right, how to start earning points, how to start redeeming maximizing, and then it also comes with a transfer partner cheat sheet, which shows you how to transfer those. Chase Amex Capital One points. And then it also has a multiplier where it really just breaks down each of the cards and you can decide which one’s right for you. So we make it super simple. That way you can go do that. And yeah, itinerary Boss, and if you want to connect, that’s where you can find me. Thanks so much for having me, Ashley and Tony, this has been great.Yeah, thank you Ross. I’m Ashley, he’s Tony. And we’ll cut you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie. I.