Prashant Kumar, CCIM - Founder, MyRealtyGains
Senior Executive, Real Estate Investor & Entrepreneur, Restaurant Owner, Explorer of 100 Countries, Public Servant (Federal Agent & Police Officer), Philanthropist and Lifestyle Design/Wealth Coach. A Founding Managing Partner of Quattro Capital with a passion for living life leveraging freedom principles – financial freedom, time freedom, geographic freedom, freedom of purpose and freedom of relationships. Maurice used real estate and professional careers to generate passive income and build legacy all while empowering communities and helping others live their best life now through lifestyle design.
Maurice is based in Washington DC and the Mediterranean Region.
What You’re Going to Learn:
- Maurice Philogene guiding Tech Professionals to build wealth through Passive Investing
- What is an Idle age to start Investing in Real Estate?
- How much time should one devote in Passive Investing?
- How does money progress in Real Estate Investing?
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Show Highlights
Maurice Philogene guiding Tech Professionals to build wealth through Passive Investing
Maurice Philogene guiding Tech Professionals to build wealth through Passive Investing
Prashant Kumar, CCIM – How these tech people can slowly come out of the Rat Race, everyone knows that they are into a Rat Race. There’s so much consumed in their jobs. For them, Investing is only about Investing in stocks and bonds. There’s nothing else. They do not know what Investing means. How you would educate these people. What should they do to continue to build wealth on the side?
Maurice Philogene – I’m not asking them to quit their jobs. That’s not the purpose. At the same time, there should be a time when they should be able to quit. How would you approach that question?
I’m not asking people to quit their jobs either unless that’s something that they want to do. What I educate people on is for them to realize that a lifestyle they don’t need a vacation from is possible for them to educate them that they can try on life and want to legitimately try on life. And one of the ways that you can do it is by understanding that there is a certain expense load that you have as an individual, as a human, what are your basic expenses every month?
You have food, travel, car, kids, etcetera. If that’s $5,000, we take this amazing salary that we earn in the high-tech space. We are high earners in the high-tech space. Let’s call it, what it is. We take that amazing salary that shows up twice a month. We store I didn’t say save, I said store. You store a significant portion of that salary away because you know what people do every time they get a raise, they raise their standard of living and they’re still spending. We are slaves to spend but if you can store a good portion of that paycheck away and systematically buy assets, I don’t care if it’s multifamily. I’ll even throw stocks in just for a second, multifamily, stock, bonds. I don’t care but buy assets that will set you up later. That will pay you later. What people don’t understand is, that I didn’t either understand it until I was slowly self-educated on the topic that when you generate enough passive income to cover your basic needs, you’re free. Nowhere in formal education did they ever teach ( more and Prashant) anything about that. What we were taught, go get the job, go slam money into a will be available for you when you’re 65 years old and work until that point. And don’t worry, you’ll have your sixty’s, seventy’s and eighty’s to live. That’s insane.
People who are in the high-tech space. I was in that place too I’ve done everything from IT systems development to business development, to salesforce. Siebel back in the day, cobalt, Fortran, I worked on mainframes. I worked on the year Y2K problem for anyone who was getting a high paycheck or even a medium paycheck because I looked over my career path on average for the 20 years I was working, my average salary was $90000 but I systematically Invested in Real Estate.
In my journey, the Real Estate was single-family condos in the DC area. I got up to 35. Some of them appreciated. I sold the ones that appreciated, paid off the other ones with some of that equity, and then used my paychecks from work to pay the rest off. I found myself with 18 paid-off homes by 2014, paying $160,000. I wasn’t a 20 millionaire or CEO of a company, but what I did was give myself life options. I think that’s what you’re talking about for your viewership. We are so consumed with what we do in our IT space. I’m out of it, but you can see it’s still in me. We’re so consumed with it, that we are giving our life energy away to that company.
I am not bashing any company because I enjoyed my 25-year career. What I’m suggesting is people are blindly giving away major portions of their life for somebody else’s mission, and they don’t realize that they’re not setting themselves up to have a lifestyle of their own, thinking that the next title, the next paycheck, is going to make them happy.
The goalpost just keeps moving and moving. It never ends. It always moves. In 2012 or 2011 when I saw it kept moving, I fundamentally made changes. And that’s why at 46, I’m totally out. I’m totally time independent, financially independent, and living life as I think it should be lived.
What is an Ideal age to start Investing in Real Estate?
What is an Ideal age to start Investing in Real Estate?
Prashant Kumar, CCIM – Tell me the importance of starting early. Give me some insight into when should people start. I mean, what is the ideal age?
Maurice – My kids are starting. I have a 22year old and a 9-year-old kid. My 22-year-old has already started Investing. My nine-year-old is picking up the concepts. Now, you know the reason why time is so important, the reason my kids are starting now is that no one teaches us ceramic money growth. No one. It has to be self-educated, first thing. The second reason is about time and starting as early as possible. Because time compounds just like money compounds. Time is the only true asset that exists. You can’t get it back. In the average 79-year lifespan, there are 28,000 days. That means by the time we hit age 40, we have 14,000 days in decline on the backside. I have 10,900 and a change left. I started with 28. I think my bank has 10,900 left. We need the time. When you start Investing early, you’re doing two things.
One, it’s easy. There’s financial compounding that’s happening. You’re picking up an asset and asset and asset I get that but that’s the easy thing, of course, we need the more time we have to collect assets, the better. So the more your high-tech minds take that paycheck, store money from it, save up 25 grand, 40 grand, 50 grand, partner with someone, put it into an asset. The faster and the earlier they do it, the better. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is knowledge. I was very fortunate that I picked up personal finance for Dummies when I was 21 for $3.39 in a New York City bookstore randomly, and I read a paragraph that talked about Passive Income, it got me intrigued. That led me to a single family. That led me to multifamily. That led me to tax efficiency. That led me to Passive Investing. I started this interest in financial literacy and education, which then started an interest in how I live my life better now! Everything the earlier you can start, the better. But I will say because there will be some teens or 20-somethings listening to this podcast whatever, it’s good to explore.
Don’t feel stressed that you have to figure all this stuff out now, what Prashant and I are saying is to consider taking a portion of your paycheck and putting it into something that will pay you later. That should be the number one bill. And that’s how I did it Prashant. Future Maurice, 46-year-old Maurice is thanking 23-year-old Maurice because 23-year-old Maurice knew that 46-year-old Maurice was the number one bill.
I would pay myself first every month, systematically. If I didn’t have enough left over to pay the gas bill, it would have to wait till next month. I got it from reading books. That’s why I’m saying the build-up of financial knowledge, as well as financial knowledge, literacy as well as assets, are just as important but as you say, the earlier you can start, the better it will be all around.
How much time should one devote in Passive Investing?
How much time should one devote in Passive Investing?
Prashant Kumar, CCIM – Think about the power of Investing in the power of compounding. All of this is done if you are Investing in Multifamily or in these assets which are managed by professionals, not by you. All of this happens for you. You don’t have to do anything. I mean, tell me, how much time would anybody have to Invest in Passive Investing?
Maurice Philogene – I just had one of my newest Investors for Quattro Capital call me right before we started this. His first name is Thomas, Thomas is going to do $200 into a project that we’re working on now. We’re going back and forth on a few things. He’ll be active, sign some documents, and then he’ll get an update from me every 30 to 60 days. Then I’m going to bust my butt to turn that $200 into $400 or $450.
Then when we sell that property, bust my butt to take that $450 and turn it into $900, he doesn’t have to do anything but I respect what he already did, which was working his butt off to save 200 grand. That’s the funny thing about operators. Sometimes they talk about it in terms of money. I don’t see it in terms of money. I see it in terms of the life energy that someone has put in to save that money which is why I’m willing to work so hard on the Investment and Apartment complex side.
Prashant Kumar, CCIM – It’s a very good example that you know somebody has already done the work for and they are investing with operators like you and me and now we are taking it to the next level. But they already did a lot of work.
Maurice Philogene – I just wanted to add one more thing because I love your journey. What you just told me, from whatever the company was to the five, six years, that makes me happy, you know why that makes me happy not because you have the financial ability to do different things. It’s not money. It is a life option. This is what people are not understanding. It puts us in a position. I had a buddy who was investing in condos with me. He just did 4, I did 30. He did 4 high-end condos in DC, but he bought 4, sold 1 that appreciated massively then used his paycheck and the equity from the one he sold to pay off the other three. He has three paid-off condos that are generating at the time.
I haven’t talked to him for a little while, but at the time we’re generating $3,000 a month. That was it for him. He quit, he left DC, he moved to Thailand, and he became a bartender. He’s living the dream that every CEO who’s making $50 million a year says, one day I’m going to move to Thailand. But they’re so busy with time.
I think that’s what you’re getting at with your people but the one thing that I wanted to add, it’s about life options. I do coaching for people on lifestyle design around those freedom principles. Financial freedom, time freedom. Geographically free, virtualizing, your mail. The ability to move all over the world. Executing a purpose. My purpose was to be a police officer. Someone wants to be in tech we don’t know and then building relationships are so important because they meet people like Prashant who are higher-order thinkers. Not money thinkers, life thinkers. This Real Estate thing or any Investment but the Real Estate thing, most of the people who do it, like Prashant and myself, it is not the money, it is that it drives life options so we can live our way. And people keep confusing it as a money thing. I want money, don’t get me wrong but what I wanted more was the ability to control my day on a day-to-day basis. People can do that passively. That’s what you’re getting at.
How does money progress in Real Estate Investing?
How does money progress in Real Estate Investing?
Prashant Kumar, CCIM – You were making money in your journey, tell me the progression. How long has it taken for you to replace that income in Real Estate?
Maurice Philogene – I’ll give you the exact dollars. I don’t care. I’ve given it on LinkedIn. I started at $37000 in 1997 I finished at a low $200 in 2021. It’s also because Prashant I turned down promotions. I didn’t want to be a partner. What I wanted was the highest salary for the highest client impact role for the least amount of hours. I didn’t want the attention of higher leadership and all those things.
We get acquisition fees and passive income. By 2014, I had $160 coming in from single-family Real Estate. GP or general partner or own outright, I don’t know 26, 27, 28 complexes. In one year since I left Accenture, I replaced that $200,000 salary with about 1 million. It has come from different places. A portion came from Real Estate. A portion came from the fact that I started to be vocal on LinkedIn, and then people wanted coaching and consulting and all those types of things. And then there’s one more portion Cashflow.
Then a portion came from cash flow because my mind was available. I had started to do more Real Estate deals, and I could not believe how fast it shot up. From a $200,000 active salary, which means about $120,000 after taxes, to another active salary, because it is active work but a good portion of Passive Income is included in that.
It did not take a very long time, but that’s me being an active Investor. I’m very active. The person who’s doing it passively, as many of your listeners would, can just back into the number of deals that they have to do to replace their salary. That’s how easy it is.
If you find out that you need to be in six Passive Investments to replace your salary ten years from now or seven years from now. Now we know why we’re getting up every day to go to work to pay ourselves first because I need to fund those seven deals. The rat race feeling that people have is because they’re getting out of bed and they’re pressing repeat with no purpose. If we know that the purpose is to get the salary, to get the passive income to replace the salary, wouldn’t that make it easier to go to work every day. It’s a beautiful thing, man. It’s life options.
