Passive income is a must, especially if you’re trading your life in America to start living in Portugal. Why Portugal? Besides the climate, coastline, and comfortable cost of living, Portugal allows today’s guest, Brandy, to live abroad with a passive income visa. Brandy already works remotely, but will be giving up a significant amount of her income once she makes the move.
Brandy has multiple streams of income—her contract work, her eBay business, her rental portfolio, and her husband’s job. In total, this comes out to a handsome $300k per year, and that’s on top of the million dollars worth of equity that sits between her vacation rentals and her primary residence. But what’s the point of so much equity if you can’t use it? This is the main topic of today’s discussion!
Brandy is wondering what will make the most sense for her life abroad—keeping the rental properties or selling and investing in stocks? In order to offer suggestions, Scott and Mindy take a look at Brandy’s entire financial picture, where she stands in terms of retirement, how high her expenses are, and what she can do before her journey to start on the best financial foot possible.
Mindy:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast show number 288, Finance Friday edition, where we interview Brandy and talk about self-employment, short-term rentals, tax planning, and geographic arbitrage.
Brandy:
Are we on the right path because we have net worth, but we’re so heavy in real estate equity at this point that even when I track our FIRE numbers and track the potential of moving to Portugal as an opportunity in the future, I just wonder, “Am I thinking of this in the right way?”
Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my infant co-host who has never heard Rocket Man from Elton John, Scott Trench.
Scott:
Mindy, I really don’t like it when you take these intros and use them as an opportunity to projectile on me your frustrations with my…