How She Cracked the Code to Early Retirement with Fewer Than 10 Rentals—Starting from Scratch in 2022

Henry Washington:
You do not need a big, expensive, stressful rental portfolio to retire early. Today’s guest retired in her late 30s all with a small manageable rental portfolio that she built after 2022. That’s right, high rates, high home prices, she dealt with it all and was still able to retire completely on her own terms just a few years later. She used an often overlooked source for her down payment that many Americans have access to and quickly bought her first three rentals in just three months as a complete beginner. But she never wanted to scale to a dozen doors. In fact, it took her only half that many to retire from her W2. She’s sharing exactly how she bought the rentals, how much they make in monthly cash flow, her yearly income with real estate, and why knowing your enough can get you to early retirement decades faster.
What’s going on everybody? I’m Henry Washington. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Today we are bringing you an inspiring investor story featuring Lucy Hines from Cincinnati, Ohio. Let’s bring her on. Lucy Hines, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

Lucy Hinds:
Thanks for having me, Henry.

Henry Washington:
So glad to have you. And as always, as we get started, I want to know what your background was like before you got into real estate investing, especially since you have a little bit of a history with personal finance.

Lucy Hinds:
Yes. Thank you so much. So I’m actually a veteran of the United States Army.

Henry Washington:
Oh, thank you for your service.

Lucy Hinds:
Thank you. A fun fact about me is I used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes and helicopters, so that’s always my good icebreaker question.

Henry Washington:
Yeah, I have a hard and fast rule about that.

Lucy Hinds:
To not do it?

Henry Washington:
Yeah. If the plane’s going to land, then I’m going to not jump out of it. That’s my pretty hard and fast rule, but that’s awesome.

Lucy Hinds:
I do live by that now.

Henry Washington:
Paratrooper? Is that what they call it?

Lucy Hinds:
Paratrooper, yes. I was a big Dave Ramsey girl, so I read the total money makeover and drank the Kool-Aid big time about staying out of debt and eliminating debt. So I lived that life for years and years I’d say until I happened upon Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, and that really changed my mindset about debt.

Henry Washington:
Yeah, it absolutely does open your mind to how money works. I think people, I mean, everyone can accredit their start in real estate to reading that book, but it’s not a real estate book. It really just teaches you about how money works and how to think about money differently. That’s what I remember most about me reading that book. All right, what made you become interested in real estate? Because that’s a big shift.

Lucy Hinds:
So I think just kind of analyzing my portfolio giving me an idea that I wanted to build some passive income and how could I do that? So I realized that after the COVID spike in real estate that I had quite a bit of equity in my home and after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I thought to myself, “Well, how can I leverage this as debt potentially to make myself more money?” And I went down different rabbit holes of buying a business or starting vending machines and then real estate was one of the options as well. And then I dove deep into that rabbit hole and that was it for me of like, “Okay, we’re doing real estate.” I had a home equity line of credit for up to $176,000 that I could

Henry Washington:
Use to

Lucy Hinds:
Get started. And you know what I did with that $176,000?

Henry Washington:
I’m guessing you used it to buy some property.

Lucy Hinds:
I bought three in 90 days.

Henry Washington:
Wait, wait, hold, hold, hold, hold, hold.

Lucy Hinds:
Yeah.

Henry Washington:
Okay. Okay. So hardcore Dave Ramsey, read Rich Debt Poor Dad, start to change your mindset and then you take out a home equity line of credit. So for those who don’t know, you can tap into the equity in a property. It doesn’t have to be your personal residence, but that’s what’s most commonly used. And typically when you do that, they’ll give you access to about 75% of the equity. So it sounds like you had a good bit of equity in your property. Yes. You applied for a home equity line of credit and then you didn’t just go buy one house. You bought three in 90 days?

Lucy Hinds:
Yes. So they were back to back. So I was busy working on getting any updates that I needed, getting tenants in immediately and filling those houses. And I had all three houses with tenants and signed leases all before I even had a single mortgage payment and that was a win for me.

Henry Washington:
Well, that’s impressive first and foremost, but let’s back up a second because it’s hard enough to find one deal that you feel like it’s worth buying, but you found three consecutively. So how did you locate these properties?

Lucy Hinds:
Yes. So I found everything on the MLS, no wholesaling or insider deals. I found my first baby. I called my house as my babies because they’re-

Henry Washington:
I had nothing wrong with that.

Lucy Hinds:
They’re near and dear to my heart and nobody messes with my babies, you know what I mean?
I bought my first house or baby in a nearby neighborhood. I’m in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. So actually all of my properties are within a 30 minute radius, so all the greater Cincinnati area. Found my first one on the MLS. I purchased it for $215,000. It’s a three bedroom, two bathlab house, no basement. We like that for less things to go wrong. It’s around probably 1,400 square feet, just a great little starter home. We did a little bit of work to it. My husband and I, so my husband does help with some of this too. We did a little bit of work to it to get it ready on the market maybe a week or so. We just did some little painting and upgrades, nothing crazy.

Henry Washington:
So super cosmetic?

Lucy Hinds:
Yeah, just small things

Henry Washington:
And

Lucy Hinds:
Got that on the market, like I said, got a tenant in right away before we even had a mortgage payment. The jumping off point was once I had the lease signed, I was like, “Hey, I can do it. I did it. Let’s look for the next one.” And the next one is actually in that same neighborhood. You could literally throw a stone to the second house that I bought. So I’m like, “I’m playing Monopoly here. I’m buying up all the food.” So I was like, “Okay, I’m playing Monopoly here. I’m having a good time.” And the second one was completely turnkey, absolutely gorgeous. This house was a little bit higher on purchase price. It was $240,000, but similar layout, just nicer appliances and finishings and things like that. So that was 240,000.

Henry Washington:
So you got access to this line of credit. You started buying properties like crazy. What were you doing for work at that time?

Lucy Hinds:
I had left the Army active duty in 2017 and I didn’t start buying properties until 2022. So I was working a regular W2 job in a few years in between kind of where we left off. My career I’ll say was in HR and we can talk about this more later, but I’m retired now.

Henry Washington:
I

Lucy Hinds:
Retired early from my rental income. I worked in human resources for my whole civilian career, if you will. I was doing well for myself in a mid-tier manager making six figures. Nothing crazy though. So that would go toward the down payments or it would go toward the HELOC, toward paying off the HELOC.

Henry Washington:
So let’s chat about that for a second. So the first property you said you paid 215 assuming you used conventional mortgage, so 20% down and I’m guessing that’s what you leveraged the HELOC for. Am I right?

Lucy Hinds:
I actually always had to put 25% down. Just that was the agreement that I had with my current lender. So it was around $54,000 of the cash down that I had to put down on that 215 at that 25%. And I started with some cash that I had and some of the HELOC funds.

Henry Washington:
Okay. So you rented it out fairly quickly and so tell us what your rent is and then what your mortgage is, if you don’t mind.

Lucy Hinds:
Sure. So the purchase price was 215,000. The rent is 2,150. I know in the real estate world, we love to talk about the 1% rule. So that’s usually what I’m going for on these. The mortgage was 1,227.

Henry Washington:
Oh, wow. 1,227, bringing in 2,150. That’s awesome. That’s a great cash flowing deal.

Lucy Hinds:
Cashflow 923.

Henry Washington:
Yeah, that’s a pretty awesome deal. And then you were like, “All right, proof of concept. I did the thing. I rented it out. They’re paying the rent. I didn’t have to do much work to it. Let’s go do another one.” And then you found another one in the same neighborhood on the MLS again. And so this one purchase price was a little higher. It was-

Lucy Hinds:
$240,000.

Henry Washington:
240, but it was a little bigger, a little nicer, nicer finishes, totally turnkey. So you did nothing. You put 25% down off the HELOC. So what was your mortgage payment on that one?

Lucy Hinds:
The mortgage payment on that is 1,480.

Henry Washington:
And it rents for?

Lucy Hinds:
2,225.

Henry Washington:
So you’re just knocking them out of the park now. You’re just like base hits, single doubles, no big deal.

Lucy Hinds:
It’s good. It’s not exactly the 1% rule, but it was good enough. So cash flow is about 750 bucks. I’m good with it. And at the time too, I mean the interest rates on these are high fives and into the sevens. That’s awesome. So I wasn’t even buying during the two, three, four period. So to make that kind of money, even with that type of interest rate, I’m good with it.

Henry Washington:
So here’s what I like so far is that you are buying these and you’re essentially putting a decent size down payment down. What that’s doing is it’s reducing your principle and interest. That’s allowing you the room to cash flow. So yeah, second deal, not quite 1%, but it doesn’t really matter because you put a good chunk down, which allows you to steal cashflow even though it doesn’t quite hit the 1% rule. The 1% rule, guys, is just a rule of thumb. It’s not the law, right? Yeah. And every deal is a little different. The more money you put down, the lower you can be. You don’t have to quite be at 1% and still cashflow. And what I like about your strategy is that you are buying good quality assets. You’re not buying the cheapest house that you can find and having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing it up.
You’re buying good quality assets and good quality areas. And the reason I want to highlight that is because you leveraged your personal home on a home equity line of credit. Where I think people get in trouble with this strategy is they have equity in their personal home, they tap into it, which is great, but then they don’t do enough research to buy a good enough asset at a low enough price point for that deal to be a good deal. And you never want to leverage your personal home and then go buy a bad deal because now you put your personal home at risk because if your deal is bad, you end up having to pay to feed that deal and you still got to pay back that line of credit. And so you can get yourself into financial trouble pretty quickly by doing this strategy and not purchasing a good deal or not putting enough down when you purchase a good deal.
So I like the fundamentals that you use and I want to make sure that we call that out for people. I don’t think home equity lines of credit are bad. I don’t think they’re good. I think they are a tool in the toolbox and the way tools work on any job is you have to use the right tool in the right situation and you have to use it in the right way for that tool to be effective. And it sounds like that’s exactly what you did. So amazing. But you’ve only told me about two of these and you said you bought three in 90 days. So I want to hear all about this third deal and we’ll do that right after the break.
Allright we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am speaking with investor Lucy Hines who has leveraged her personal home to get a home equity line of credit and use that to start building a rental portfolio that has eventually sounds like led to your financial freedom, but you only told me about two of the first deals that you did. And you said you bought three in 90 days when you first got started. So what’d that third deal look like? First two were single family homes, the stones throw from each other. Was the third one the same?

Lucy Hinds:
The third one is in a different neighborhood but still within that 30 mile radius of the Cincinnati area. This one is actually a townhome. So it’s a little bit different and first time dealing with HOA, so that’s a little bit different. This one is a three bedroom, one and a half bath. So when I was kind of looking, I really wanted a three bedroom, two bath, but came across this great deal for this townhouse, three bedroom, one and a half bath. But the price was so good. I just couldn’t pass it out. The purchase price was $157,000. Yep. And it’s a three bedroom, two and a half bath. The mortgage and HOA together is $1,288 and the rent is $2,050.

Henry Washington:
Boom. Did you have to do any work to this one? That sounds like a really good deal.

Lucy Hinds:
Yes, we did put in a little bit of work. So we updated one of the bathrooms upstairs and we did a little bit of demo. There was some funky extra shelving going on in the kitchen, but not much. It was about $10,000 that we put into it.

Henry Washington:
That’s pretty good. So MLS deal, bought it, put a little cash in it. I’m assuming you used the same type of loan. So that cash you put into it had to come out of your pocket, yes?

Lucy Hinds:
Yes. And like I said, I always live below my means. It would just regularly be there.

Henry Washington:
Awesome. So another decent deal are these deals that you’ve left all your money in or have you refinanced these deals to pull any cash out?

Lucy Hinds:
I have not refinanced and all of the money that I’ve ever made on this business has gone back into the business until I retired.

Henry Washington:
Say that again for the people in the back.

Lucy Hinds:
All of the money that I ever made from all of the deals that I had went back into the business so that I could continue to grow it, so that could continue to buy, so that I could continue to pay down the HELOC while I had it, while I was working a W2 job. It’s not until I decided that I hit financial freedom and then wanted to retire that I would then begin using the money from the business to live off

Henry Washington:
Of. There you go. That is how you get to financial freedom because the whole point people want to get into it is they want to generate cashflow from their rents. But if you do that on your first couple of properties and you’re taking your cashflow and you’re putting it in your pocket, what people tend to find out is you got to pull it back out of your pocket sometimes to fix things, to solve problems, to be able to purchase more. And so when you’re growing and scaling, the best way to do that is to take the cashflow and reinvest it into your business so that you can get to your retirement number faster. But it sounds like you’ve got a history of fiscal responsibility, having gone through Dave Ramsey and just having being a saver it sounds like. So that definitely seems like it’s helped you.
So as someone who you were a Dave Ramsey accolade, you followed the Dave Ramsey plan, drink the Kool-Aid. Thank the Kool-Aid. Was it difficult for you to make the mental transition to taking on debt? Because I’ve seen people really struggle with it who are hardcore Dave Ramsey folks.

Lucy Hinds:
A hundred percent terrifying. You think jumping out of planes is scary? Scarier is taking on some debt after you’ve been obsessed with Dave Ramsey and his teaching principals for years. Jumping out of a plane is less scary than that. Okay?

Henry Washington:
But what I want people to see is you can leverage responsibly and Lucy is a great example of how she’s leveraged the assets that she has, but she’s done it in a very responsible way. She has found very good quality assets that she can afford. She has made sure that the rent is going to more than cover what she is spending. She’s putting a little more money down so that ensures that cashflow and gives her a way out if she needs out. Leverage is good if it is used properly. Leverage is very bad if it is used improperly. And I want to make sure that we’re harping on that for people. So what you told me previously was that you now don’t work anymore. So because you’ve leveraged this responsibly, how long did it take you kind of from start to the day you decided you were going to be full-time?
How long did that take you to get there?

Lucy Hinds:
So I bought my first property in July of 2022 and I officially retired in September of 2025, so just about eight months ago.

Henry Washington:
Awesome. Congrats.

Lucy Hinds:
Thank you very much. And I actually, I hit the number I’d say earlier than that. That’s just how the timing worked out. I figured I would stay till the end of the year and then just things happened at work and I was like, “You know, it’s time to go. ”

Henry Washington:
Yeah.

Lucy Hinds:
It’s funny

Henry Washington:
How when you start having some cashflow coming in, things that weren’t as annoying to you at work all of a sudden just are a little more annoying than you used to be able to deal with. But three years is pretty quick to reach financial freedom. But I think again, I think your journey to financial freedom was accelerated because you weren’t spending that cashflow when you got started. You were reinvesting, you were putting money down and you were in a strong financial position prior to investing. So I know a lot of people may not be in that strong of a financial position and that’s okay. There are ways to invest without that. But again, this is just highlighting that you can accelerate your journey A, if you’re putting your money back in, B, if you’re investing responsibly. So great, great work. So when did you buy your fourth deal?
Was it immediately, because you just rapid fired three in 90 days, did you do your next one shortly after or did it take you some time?

Lucy Hinds:
So I bought the next one almost a year later. So it took a break.

Henry Washington:
So you sat down for a minute.

Lucy Hinds:
Hard for 90 days, okay? And then I was like, woo, I’m tired. Let’s take a break. Also, this HELOC is looking a little big. Let’s take some time to pay it down so we can kind of reset, relaunch and just let the dust settle for a little bit because it was quite a feat. I don’t think for most people to buy three houses-

Henry Washington:
No, that’s a huge feat. Yes.

Lucy Hinds:
Let’s let that settle for a bit. So I had bought the third house, so it went July, August, September of 22. Those are the three. And then I didn’t buy my next one until the end of July of 2023. So almost a year later. That house we purchased for 235,000 and this house, the mortgage payment is 1,492 and the rent is 2205. And you’ll notice as my purchases go over time, my interest rates certainly climb. Like I said, we started at about 5.75 where we’re buying and we ended around 7.5%.

Henry Washington:
So

Lucy Hinds:
The market changed quite a bit. So the cashflow gets smaller as time goes, but it didn’t keep me from buying. I was very hopeful that it was still cashflowing and hopeful that maybe we could refinance over time.

Henry Washington:
Yeah. Interest rates are what they are, right? It’s not necessarily the interest rate that makes a deal good or bad. It’s the total numbers on the deal. If a deal can cash flow at 9% interest rate, it just depends on what you’re buying it for. And a deal cannot cash flow at 3% interest rate if you’re overpaying for it. So it sounds like to you, even though it was a higher interest rate in the seven and a half range, you were still able to make that work. Again, I’m assuming everything was the same. You put 25% down. Did this one need work or was it more of a turnkey?

Lucy Hinds:
No, this one was turnkey, completely turnkey. And it was, again, the more nicer fixtures and that’s where the purchase price comes into play with that being at that 235.

Henry Washington:
That’s awesome. So you did that for property number four. The numbers sound good, sounds like great turnkey property. It’s bringing in about five, 550 in cash flow a month, even though the interest rate’s a little higher. All right, that’s really cool. It seems like you have this formula of buying good quality assets and good quality neighborhoods where the rents are well and you’re putting a substantial amount of cash down so that these deals all make a lot of sense. I want to pivot and talk to you a little bit about where you are now in your investing journey and what you’re continuing to grow and invest in, but I want to do that right after the break. If you would like to connect with investors like Lucy, a great place to do it at is BPCon. This is BiggerPockets annual conference and this year it’s in Orlando, Florida from October 2nd to October 4th.
I’m going to be there so will Dave and so will all the other BiggerPockets hosts and authors. Early Bird tickets are on sale now and that’s always the best deal. So head on over to biggerpockets.com/conference for more information.
All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am chatting with investor Lucy Hines, who has shifted her mindset from a Dave Ramsey saver to a real estate investor borrowing on her personal home using leverage to build and grow her portfolio, but has done it in a very fiscally responsible way, which makes a lot of sense given your fiscally responsible background. Where are you now? Because now we’re in 2026. Are you still buying using the same formula? Things are more expensive now. What’s been your goal or have you hit that goal considering you’ve hit the financial freedom, so what are you doing now?

Lucy Hinds:
Yeah. So I did have a goal at one point to buy 10 rental homes, but after hitting about that five to six mark, I realized that would be enough for me to claim that financial freedom. So then if I wanted to live off of the profits of the business, then I could. So that really changed my mindset of, “You know what? I don’t need to grow more. I don’t need to take on more liabilities at this point. I’m in a comfortable spot.” Part of living below your means is being okay and comfortable with what you have with not wanting more. And I really just kind of had to have a check with myself at some point of, “You know what? That’s enough. I don’t need to be greedy. I don’t need to take it to the next level. I have what I need and that’s enough and that’s okay.” So at the end of 2025, we always do kind of an ROI assessment of like, how did the properties go this year in terms of how much money we put into it, how much rent?
Is it a good ROI or not? In one of our properties, we actually paid it off completely. We took a look at that six rental property and said, “Hmm, do we want to keep it or not? ” If we do sell it, it’s almost the exact amount of money that would pay off our primary mortgage. And for us, a personal decision or level of comfort that we wanted to have was we’d rather sell that property and pay off our primary mortgage, which is really just a nice stepping stone going into retirement to cut down on personal expenses and say, “All I owe now is taxes and insurance on my primary home.”

Henry Washington:
That’s wonderful.

Lucy Hinds:
Yeah. So we paid off our primary home and now we still have those five rental properties and I don’t plan on buying anymore at this time.

Henry Washington:
Look, you learned a lesson that a lot of seasoned investors don’t learn for several years and that is when to realize enough is enough. So here’s some wise lessons that I heard in what you said. First, you had a goal of getting 10 properties and instead of getting all the way to 10, you evaluate your portfolio each year and you see how the properties are performing and then you make decisions based on that. That is a seasoned investor thing. Not a lot of investors do that. Dave and I talk about this all the time. You should be looking at your portfolio at least on a quarterly or biannual basis and see if they’re performing like you want them to perform. Great. Super smart thing to do. Second, a lot of people get caught up in the growth phase and they’re growing for growing sake and not necessarily because it’s truly what they need or want.
Ask me how I know, right? It’s just me waving my hand saying, “I have been that person.” I am actively shrinking my portfolio right now. I bought a lot. I got up to 150 rental units at one point.

Lucy Hinds:
Wow, that’s

Henry Washington:
Amazing. We’re now down to under a hundred and my goal is to get to about 60 of my favorite properties, the ones that are in the best locations that perform the best and then I’m focusing on paying off those properties. I love it. It’s okay not to chase what everybody else is chasing. The beauty of real estate investing is that you can have a business or a portfolio that supports the lifestyle that you want. You don’t have to just go chasing doors. You can buy enough and I commend you for stopping prior to your … Because you had a goal and if you would’ve said, “Hey, I’m going to power towards my goal. I’m going to get to my 10 doors.” Everybody would have applauded you and it would have been awesome. But I think people need to applaud you more for saying, “Hey, I don’t need to get to 10.
I have enough. I want to focus on what I have and making sure that I’m maximizing what I have. ” So great, great points. I think that that’s going to help a lot of people who are looking to build and grow a real estate business.

Lucy Hinds:
Thank you so much. I appreciate you saying that and it means a lot to me and how I live my life in general and it is just being comfortable with enough. It’s not about keeping up with anybody else and it’s not about not doing what I said I was going to do. Things change and that’s okay. I’m responsible for myself and I’m not worried about what other people think or want to do. I’m building this for myself.

Henry Washington:
Now, Lucy, I’ve been talking to you for a little bit now and something tells me that you’re not buying real estate, but somebody with your finance background and savings background isn’t just not investing money. You got to be putting money somewhere. Am I right or am I right?

Lucy Hinds:
Of course I am. Of course I am. I’m not trying to sit around. I couldn’t possibly do that. Yeah. No, that’s so funny. Yes, of course I am. Now I have an interesting story and some people won’t believe me or say, “What the heck?” Or another expletive, but I am living off of $40,000 a year by choice right now because that is all that I need personally to live a fulfilling life. And yes, I still get my hair done and my nails done and I travel and I do all the things that I want to do on my little $40,000 a year. But guess what? With the money that I make on top of that, I can invest that and I still feel good about the fact that I have enough money to do the things that I want to do in life and I am still investing for my future goals, which for us is to buy a future primary residence in Florida.
So it will serve as a vacation home for us. We’re probably going to be buying in the next like five to eight years. So for a few years it’ll serve as a vacation home. And then once my kids are grown, we plan to move into that what is a vacation home to make it a future primary residence for us in the Florida area.

Henry Washington:
Awesome. This has been amazing. What a fantastic story. What a way to build and grow a real estate business and do it in a responsible way. A couple of last things before we get out of here, just some more housekeeping style questions. It sounds like you manage all your properties yourself. Are you still doing that to this day?

Lucy Hinds:
I do, yes. Not to say that we don’t ever have a handyman or a plumber come in as needed, but I’m a great painter. My husband is a great- I’ll hire you. … small things. So we do what we can when we’re willing and able and then yes, we do hire out things that are a little bit more skilled. But I completely manage the property, so I’m taking the rents every month. I’m making sure all those get paid. I’m calling and texting with the tenants to make sure everything’s taken care of, leases

Henry Washington:
Are

Lucy Hinds:
Signed, et cetera. I do all that.

Henry Washington:
Okay, wonderful. And last question before we get out of here, you left your W2. Is your husband a W2 still or Are you both retired from the real estate?

Lucy Hinds:
He is. He is still a W2. He has a date set of two / nine / 29 for his retirement. Oh, wonderful. So we’ve got less than three years. He’ll tell you down to the day. I don’t know it. He knows it, but he’s got less than three years for his plan to retire as well.

Henry Washington:
All right. And last but not least, can you give everybody just a quick update? What’s your portfolio look like now? What are you doing in terms of cashflow?

Lucy Hinds:
Overall, we have five units that are cash flowing for an annualized amount of $45,352.

Henry Washington:
Oh yeah, congratulations. That’s amazing. Those are great numbers and you’re living below your means on $40,000 a year. That’s impressive. Listen, if I were to have my wife call you, could you talk to her about the $40,000?

Lucy Hinds:
Sure. Yeah. Anybody can do it. A

Henry Washington:
Little bit. Yeah. Just between you and I, between us friends. Got it.

Lucy Hinds:
Yes. I’d be willing to do that for a friend.

Henry Washington:
Yes. Thank you so much. Congratulations on all your success. Thank you for coming on the podcast, being so transparent and sharing all of this information as well as these numbers. I hope this was helpful to all of you listening and we’re very excited to share more with you on the next episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast.