Becca Hintergardt on The 6 Steps to Living Internationally on Passive Income – EP 275

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For anyone that is interested in retiring early, moving abroad, living off of passive income, and spending your days on the beach of your dreams, today’s interview is for you! 

My guest today is Becca Hintergardt. Becca is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area with lots of experience with multifamily deals as a co-syndicator and operator. In the middle of the COVID pandemic, she made some moves and eventually picked up her family and moved to the blue zone in Costa Rica to have some fun in the sun and live the Caribbean lifestyle. She tells her story in her book, 6 Steps to Put Your Income on Autopilot and Move Overseas, which you can download at HintInvestments.com

In this episode, Becca walks me through the six steps you need to take to move internationally and live off your passive income. You’ll learn how long it takes to set this up, and you’ll be surprised to learn that it doesn’t take as long as you think. Lastly, we discuss how to put together the income to move and how to continue generating passive income after you do it. I hope you’ll enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Key Takeaways with Becca Hintergardt

  • The unique health benefits of living in blue zones.
  • Why Becca left the San Francisco Bay Area–and why so many people are leaving major cities in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
  • The big thing so many people overlook when trying to assess whether or not they could live off of passive income.
  • How multifamily investments played a role in Becca’s passive income planning.
  • Why you can’t live an international lifestyle accidentally–but you CAN pull the levers to make it a reality in a year or less.

Becca Hintergardt Tweetables

“Don't live the deferred life plan. You'd never regret bringing your children and your family overseas and having a different experience for all of them.” – Becca Hintergardt

“Don't follow the line in what everybody else is doing. Think for yourself and grow rich. Location, independence, and lifestyle by design.” – Becca Hintergardt

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Josh Cantwell: So, hey, guys, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. Hey, listen, I have just an incredible interview for all of you. Her name is Becca Hintergardt. She is the founder and CEO of Hint Investments. And today we’re actually going to talk about international lifestyle planning. Becca is a multifamily syndicator. She has invested in multiple multifamily deals as a co-syndicator, as an operator, used to live in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. And just here in the last two years in the middle of COVID, picked up her family and made a bunch of different moves, pulled a bunch of different levers to ultimately move her family to what’s called the blue zone in Costa Rica and live the ultimate lifestyle, the ultimate kind of sun, fun, Caribbean lifestyle. So, if you all have any interest in retiring early, passive income, and living on a beach of your dreams, this is absolutely the interview that you want to listen to. So, to jump into some of the content, Becca and I are going to talk about, number one, international lifestyle planning and the six specific steps that you need to take to set your life up to move internationally and live off of your passive income.

 

We’re also going to talk about, number two, her book, which is actually called the 6 Steps to Put Your Income on Autopilot and Move Overseas. So, make sure you download that at HintInvestments.com. Number three, we’re going to talk specifically about how long it actually takes to set this up, and you’ll be surprised it doesn’t take nearly as long as you think. Number four, we’re going to talk about the strategy of pulling the levers and putting the puzzle pieces together to create the income. Okay. It’s a little bit of a Frankenstein approach. And finally, we’ll talk about her model of creating additional passive income now that she lives in Costa Rica permanently of creating additional passive income through multifamily syndications. You’re going to love this interview. I loved it when I recorded it with Becca Hintergardt. Here we go.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Josh Cantwell: So, Becca, listen, thank you so much for joining me on Accelerated Investor. I’m so excited to talk about international lifestyle planning with you, and I know you’re doing this from Costa Rica. So, you’re living it. So, how are you? And thanks for jumping on.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Oh, my pleasure, Josh. Thank you so much for having me. I listen to your podcast all the time so I’m delighted to be here and I’m coming at you from Nosara, Costa Rica, a boutique surf and yoga hub, off the Pacific in Costa Rica. It’s an amazing place. It’s one of the blue zones of the world. So, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with these but these are places where people live a very healthy lifestyle and there’s a large concentration of centenarians here. These are people that live to 100 years and beyond.

 

Josh Cantwell: I have gotten away with blue zones and I wish I could adopt that entire lifestyle but my grandmother, who I just saw last night, is 94. And even though she lives in Youngstown, Ohio, which is not a blue zone, she lives very much a blue zone lifestyle. She gets up every day and she’s constantly moving, walking, going to the garden. She’s outside. She’s been essentially eating organic vegetables and organic meats from the farm all of her life. And I’m like, “Hey, man, if you’re looking for the fountain of youth, you just got to look at GG Fran and she essentially is living the blue zone lifestyle.” So, actually, why don’t we start with that, Becca? What is a blue zone and why did you move there?

 

Becca Hintergardt: Yeah, great question. A blue zone, there’s plenty of books on it, but it is a place where just like your grandmother, people live healthy lifestyles. They profiled the food that they eat, people that study blue zones. And it’s very similar to maybe what your grandma is doing, organic food. They’re out there working in the garden every day. There’s a big part in being with family, having family around which increases your level of happiness and your longevity. Other blue zones in the world are Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Sicily, and Guanacaste, Costa Rica. That’s the province I’m at.

 

Josh Cantwell: That’s fantastic. So, people ask about the fountain of youth that exists. It just depends on whether they want to adopt that lifestyle. But that lifestyle has been profiled, found many places, and identified in many books. And like you said, there are many centenarians people that live to 100 and over that live there, and there’s a very specific way to do it. It’s very possible. My grandma has been probably doing it by accident but I know what it takes, what she’s doing. So, you moved there because you love this concept and you help other people basically execute this concept of international lifestyle planning. So, when I say those words, what does that mean for you?

 

Becca Hintergardt: Right. That’s helping people devise a plan to leave the rat race behind and do a bit of a salary arbitrage in which you can live in a tropical paradise for a fraction of the price that you can in the U.S. and maybe leave your job entirely if you have the passive income set up as I profile in my quick guide and e-book or just sort of straddle things part-time and not work as much as you need to. And we are living proof you can do this. We left the San Francisco Bay Area in August. I have two kids, 11 and 12 years old, and the school was a nightmare with the pandemic. You know, it was such a joke with the schools, Josh, is that these boys are clever. These fifth-grade boys would actually take pictures of themselves and put it on their backgrounds when they’re on the Zoom call and then go play video games. These clever, clever guys. But you could imagine the disappointment as a parent doing Zoom School. And so, we just said, “Hey, everything at home in the San Francisco Bay Area was a minimized version of what we knew, all the sports camps, the school. Why don’t we just pick up and go to a place where we don’t know a minimized version of it? It’s the version we never knew and everything’s new to us, and it’s not a lesser version.”

 

So, what we did is we, my husband, quit his job. He’s part of the great resignation, the white-collar workers that leave it all behind. We rented our too big of a house in the San Francisco Bay Area that we bought 10 years ago and we are here living off passive income. Off that, our single-family home and other multifamily investments that I’ll be happy to tell you about later but we’re living proof you can do it.

 

Josh Cantwell: That is so fantastic. So, where, Becca, that this desire to have this international lifestyle come from? When did you discover this? Was there kind of an event at work that just you’re like, “I’m fed up and I’m done, I’m out,” moment? What was it like or where did this come from? Because I think so many people want to do what you’ve done, live in a tropical paradise, live on passive income. But they just haven’t been nudged out the door hard enough. It sounds like you were nudged hard enough that you’re like, “You know what? We’re making this decision and we’re going.” Some people are just kind of stuck in their comfort and they’re so stuck in their consistent of their work life, work life, busy, busy lifestyle that they don’t really execute on what they really want. So, how did that happen for you?

 

Becca Hintergardt: You know, that’s such a good question because I think one of the hardest things to do is leave when things are okay, things are good enough, things are comfortable. It’s easy to leave when things are falling apart and you’re very uncomfortable. But when things are status quo, it’s hard to make such a bold move and take off. My husband and I were medical device sales reps. He’s now in healthcare tech, was in the Bay Area and we just needed a change. We needed to pursue a second language for the children. And as international citizens, it’s very important to live abroad, at least for a little while. His health was he had a lot of ailments, just kind of stress-induced things like asthma and strange allergies, food allergies, all kinds of stuff that didn’t make sense. In three months here, Josh, gone. This biome, the tropical biome, the healthy living, all that medication that they gave him, he doesn’t even need. The guy looks 10 years younger in just a matter of eight months. And that happened in the first probably two months, he looked 10 years younger.

 

Josh Cantwell: He still has gray hair? Just curious.

 

Becca Hintergardt: He still has gray hair.

 

Josh Cantwell: Oh, darn it, because I’ve got plenty I’d like to get rid of. You know, they make dye for that.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Make dye for that. Yeah, you don’t need to move abroad to do that.

 

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. So, the lifestyle was, okay, not necessarily you guys were comfortable living in the Bay Area, obviously, have to make a good income to have that kind of lifestyle. Very expensive city. But it sounds like the pandemic and your kids’ wellness of school and basic learning school on Zoom, which is very, very difficult, was kind of a turning point. It was probably the linchpin that made it all. When the linchpin got pulled, you guys moved and decided to start over.

 

Becca Hintergardt: We did. Yeah. And then just the prospect of something better. What terrifies me is not the risk of moving overseas and something going wrong or things not working. You plan on that. That’s the ex-pat journey. The first three to six months, it’s the ex-pat journey. It’s not easy. That doesn’t scare me. But what scares me was to be there for another year in the San Francisco Bay Area with the schools minimized, the sports programs halfway closed. Things being exactly the same, I find, is more frightening than the prospect of something new.

 

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Wow. You know, I think from a medical, I should say a mental health perspective, I look at my own kids. You know, my daughter Juliana is in eighth grade, my older son is in sixth, and my Dominick’s in fourth. And I was talking to my eighth-grader. I said, “You know, by the time I was in sixth or seventh grade, I had like a little childhood girlfriend and we would hang out and we would go to dances and we would go over to my buddy Freddie’s house and a bunch of girls were there and a bunch of the guys were there and we were doing a birthday party. Or a Friday night, and the girls would leave and the guys would sleep over at our friend’s house and we would laugh. We would goof off,” and all of that’s been ripped away from them. Right? And now my daughter’s going to go into high school. She’s had almost none of that experience that we had. And you wonder about their mental health and their socialization and being able to do that with all that being pulled away.

 

Now, thank God this year of her eighth grade has been fairly normal, and she’s kind of working into some of those things. But maybe a year-and-a-half to two years delayed from what we did when we were kids but critically important to just be outside and to be doing things for your own personal health and the socialization and playing outdoors, getting away from technology, so critical to the development of young kids. And the lockdowns, I guess, we all thought it made sense when it was happening but now that it’s kind of all over, it’s like just, we’ve got to get these kids outside as fast as possible. Go have fun as fast as possible. Socialize with your friends as fast as possible. I don’t know if you have any more comments on that about maybe even how they adjusted from the busy San Francisco life to Costa Rica.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Yeah. Well, I agree with everything you’re saying in that it was very hard on the kids and, in general, they’re saying it was about a two-year learning loss from most of the kids. And then you wonder, what is the social loss there? So, we left all that and came into full social swing of things here. School is open. It’s an outdoor school. The kids attended International Baccalaureate School in between the jungle and the sea. It’s outdoor classrooms but a quality education. So, it was a tremendous life gain. But all of it comes down to can you do this? Can you work? Can you set up the passive income to make this possible? And what I really want to get out there with people is to let them know you can, and you’d be so surprised it’s not as hard as you think.

 

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Let’s talk about this for a minute. You wrote this book, right, the seven steps to put your income on autopilot and move overseas. So, we were talking before we hit the record button. My wife and I have a plan to move to Florida four years from now. It’s not overseas but it’s South Florida, Naples, tropical area. And you wrote this. Can you execute it on this, these 6 steps? And so, let’s just talk about this for a high level. Step us through if somebody read the book, what are they going to get from it? Because I think everybody wants that, right? Who doesn’t have a dream of having passive income from a business or from real estate or from multifamily apartments and being able to just go, whether it’s Italy, whether it’s Europe, whether it’s South America, Hawaii, you name it, you’ve actually done it. So, where do they start? Like, where did you start to make this a reality?

 

Becca Hintergardt: That is a great question. Well, first, you have to look at your life. Take inventory of your life. What assets do you have? Do you have a home like what we did that we bought a home 10 years ago? We’re real estate people, so we bought the worst home in the best area knowing we could change the home, not the area, and take inventory of all your assets, such as your retirement accounts. Could these be working a little bit more for you? Are you of age to take distributions? Can you move some retirement accounts into solo 401(k)s, self-directed IRAs like we did? Look at your stock accounts. Are those really serving you once you look at what you could be doing in multifamily with those, considering the tax deductions and so forth? So, first, you kind of gather everything up, figure out where you could rearrange things, and squeak out a little income. What many people overlook is the value of their primary residence becoming a rental property. And this is a huge one because no longer, as we all read Rich Dad Poor Dad, no longer is it a liability if you’re not living there. Once you move out and it’s generating income, it’s an asset.

 

And you can deduct many of the repairs up to a year before your departure overseas and sometimes even up to two years. So, ladies, you want a kitchen remodeled? You got it. Do it a year before. Do your bathrooms. Do everything to command the very highest rent. And all of that is deductible because it’s a rental property. Also, if you move overseas, coming back home to visit for the holidays where you have to visit your rental property, which is your primary residence in your area where all your family is, so that’s deductible. So, another chunk of this is much of your life becomes tax-deductible. They are key.

 

Josh Cantwell: Love it. So, taking inventory of what you have is hugely important, right? You were smart enough to think ahead and start investing in multifamily that allowed this also to become a reality. So, do we want to move on to step number two? Or do you want to talk more about how multifamily was part of you taking inventory to be able to execute this?

 

Becca Hintergardt: Well, we could go either way, I would say the folks could go through a quick e-book. You’ll get through the 6 steps. But I would say as we were talking about children before, assess if you have children and you’re thinking of doing this, don’t worry. You can do it. You can pick up a family of four but you want to start with the school and then back it into the area from there. Don’t make my mistake. First, I said, exactly where I want to be is a very remote beach town living in a grass hut and, well, there’s no schools around there. And then you’re back to homeschooling.

 

Josh Cantwell: Right.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Okay. Let’s start with the school and then we back it up into there.

 

Josh Cantwell: That’s fantastic.

 

Becca Hintergardt: And then the book will go into some other ways to assess the cost of living index in certain areas. It profiles the best places to live in 2022, the most affordable, the most popular amongst ex-pats. So, lots of resources and links within that book. It goes into talking about retirement accounts, how to restructure that, and then it will go into which is our personal favorite, multifamily investing and the passive income and tax benefits you get from that.

 

Josh Cantwell: Now, where kind of folks get the book? I want it like right now. I want the book.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Super easy read too.

 

Josh Cantwell: Where can we get the book?

 

Becca Hintergardt: You go to www.HintInvestments.com.

 

Josh Cantwell: Got it. HintInvestments.com. That’s your main website and your brand, your multifamily brand. So, go there, guys, and download the book as soon as possible because I want to move and be neighbors with Becca.

 

Becca Hintergardt: I just love it.

 

Josh Cantwell: So, let’s talk about multifamily. So, what part did multifamily play in your taking inventory and how did you kind of set things up? And kind of how long did that take for you to buy some assets, own some cash flow? And then when you took inventory of your assets and income to be able to make the move, how long? I guess what I’m asking is how long do people need to plan to try to pull this off?

 

Becca Hintergardt: Right. In timeline in talking to other ex-pat friends, most people take about six months to plan the whole journey and so much of that’s just getting rid of all your things at home, like garage sales every week and just putting out everything on next door, packing up your kids’ 10,000 pieces of Legos and Barbies and all of that. And much of it’s the elimination of things in that six-month timeline. On the passive income front, this has been a bit of a life journey. I’ve been in real estate for about 18 years and one of my first purchases was a duplex in San Francisco, a 120-year-old Victorian building that it was only myself and a contractor bidding on it, which was a very bad sign like this was going to end poorly. But it worked out and did lots of work there, lifted up the building, put a garage underneath, charged another $500 for rent to do a garage, blew out the backside, condo converted it. Everything got it where I want and that’s a good appreciation play. So, I believe in having an appreciation play in these kind of tough markets where you can’t really cash flow a Seattle, a San Francisco, a Los Angeles, a New York.

 

So, that was a set it and forget it appreciation play that has proved very valuable in our strategy of moving overseas because once you build up the equity there, then you can pull the equity out and have a little flexibility in what you want to do next. So, that’s one prong of my strategy, a good appreciation play. The second is multifamily that the benefits of multifamily investing and passive income and a tax deduction. That’s the second prong of, I feel, a very diversified portfolio. And we’ve done a couple of deals. We have a deal in Arizona. We’re still working on and this was a hotel conversion. It was a 100-unit quality and motel that we’re converting to 65 units of multifamily. We bought this for $0.30 on the dollar in the hotel apocalypse. So, the beginning.

 

Josh Cantwell: COVID, right, where nobody was traveling. So, hotels just got demolished and, guys, we have another podcast that we released maybe three or four months ago about hotel to multifamily conversions. So, make sure you guys look that up on the website. Check that out. But so, you have this deal that you’re still in the middle of, still in the conversion process?

 

Becca Hintergardt: Still in the conversion process. So, we have that deal moving and I have several passive investments too of income that just helps this. And we’re about 80% there on just stitching different things together. And a big chunk of it from our single-family home where we used to live, that’s now an asset, not a liability. So, it’s a lot of things stitched together.

 

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. And at the end of the day, do you guys come up with an income number and say, “This is the number that we need,” and then, “Okay, what do we got?” You said take inventory of what you got, whether it was your term in accounts, single-family residence, or multifamily investments, maybe some limited partnership investments, maybe some active operator income, all these things stitched together. I love that word, stitched together. Kind of Frankenstein it together.

 

Becca Hintergardt: It is.

 

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. And then all of a sudden it’s like, “Okay. Bam. We’ve got 80% of what we need.” So, if what we need is X, your 80% of X, and you’re kind of still building towards that versus so many people that are like, “Oh yeah, I would move overseas but I could never do it. I got my day job.” You know how many I hear this W-2 and almost should be a two-letter word that so many people should not be using? Then they get so trapped by a W-2 income, golden handcuffs, retirement account, pension bonuses, whatever. And people end up just never really fulfilling the ultimate life that they wanted when they were 18 or 25 or 29 freshly married. We’re going to do all these amazing things. Now it’s like, “Oh, W-2, I’m handcuffed, I’m home, I’ve got my kids. They are in school. And hopefully we’ll do this when we’re 65 or 70 years old.”

 

Becca Hintergardt: Yeah. Don’t live the deferred life plan. You never regret it. You’d never regret bringing your children and your family overseas and having a different experience for all of them. I had even mentioned and this little side note, one day I was getting a little bit of fear and I said, “Maybe am I going to screw up my kids doing this?” And I knew I wouldn’t. One of my girlfriends said, “You know what? You can screw up more, staying in the same place for 18 years of their life.” And it’s very true. So, there’s a way to do this if people want to. You can find a way. And another thing is 80% of our income, it needs to be less here. It’s not the pressure cooker of the Bay Area and what we needed to make there. It’s a bit of lifestyle arbitrage. You can make money in the U.S. and it goes a lot farther here.

 

Josh Cantwell: Help us understand that. You know, we’ve heard that many times if you go to the hotspot, the tourist, I mean, if you’re going to go to Rome, Italy, it’s going to be more expensive, right? But if you’re going to go to Honolulu, it’s going to be more expensive, not less. So, we’re not talking about that. What you’re talking about is finding a place that is truly not off the beaten path but – now it looks like someone’s getting in a pool. Man, that is the lifestyle.

 

Becca Hintergardt: My husband just got home from a walk on the beach. Now, he’s in the pool. Sorry.

 

Josh Cantwell: Put some clothes on. Geez. That’s fantastic. Look at him.

 

Becca Hintergardt: He covered him up. This is the real deal.

 

Josh Cantwell: I want to jump in and share a beer with you, guys. Look at him. That’s so fantastic. But, yeah, so to talk a little bit. You mentioned it in the book again, the 6 steps to getting this income and then moving overseas. You identified and said there was affordable areas, right? So, help people who don’t understand that movement, that there are places that are coastal cities where there is very much a local culture and how they would even consider people to be, like really overwhelming, even trying to figure that out or it’s almost scary or they think it’s not safe. How did you guys rectify that in your own mind to make the move?

 

Becca Hintergardt: Well, to our defense, we’d been here several times.

 

Josh Cantwell: Before people would go, that’s part of the plan, right? Go visit.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Yeah, go visit. Yeah. We have a couple of ex-pat friends that had never been here and they just bought a lot and built here. They bought a lot for 300, built for 500, their house is now worth 1.4. So, it’s a huge real estate potential here as well. But for the most part, people that have come here have made one or two trips. They’ve gone to different parts of the country. And then you could do it in five days, drive around, see different towns that you like that are a good fit. Start with the schools if you have a family, as I said, but it’s surprisingly not that difficult. And that’s where you start first. Kind of narrow it down to your continent. Pick your country. Pick a few areas within that country and then pay a visit. We have other friends that we’re going to move to Panama, and then they had it all planned out, practically the house bought then they visited Panama and came to Costa Rica on their way back and decided to stay in Costa Rica. So, that site visit makes a big difference. I highly encourage anybody to do it.

 

Josh Cantwell: And, Becca, guys, you got to download this book. It’s the first thing I’m going to do when I’m done with this recording is download this book and get myself ready for four years from now. Maybe we’ll switch from Naples to Costa Rica or something.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Oh, yeah, Costa Rica. Ecuador is amazing also.

 

Josh Cantwell: I’ve heard, I have heard. So, how long do you think once somebody takes inventory and let’s say they have some investments, they’ve kind of like you said, they’re starting to piece it together, they’re Frankenstein, they’re pulling it together, but let’s say they’re missing some pieces based on your real estate experience, how long do you think it might take? And I know there could be a thousand answers to this but just in your plan. What do you think how long would it take for someone to start to buy the assets, buy some multifamily buildings, some apartments, do some conversions to create some passive income and then make this a reality? Are you talking two to four years? What are your just thoughts on if they don’t have the whole thing put together and they’re kind of, I guess, some of it’s going to start from scratch, how long could it be until they can execute this and make the move?

 

Becca Hintergardt: I think you could realistically do it in a year. Just going back, looking at your assets, taking some things out of stock, putting them into multifamily assets, looking where you may have other equity plays that you can take some money out and put into multifamily and start setting up that income with multifamily. And that’s the easiest way to start because these deals will cash flow pretty much from the start. A lot of them are value-add plays but you can find cash flow deals from the start or you could get into a deal in the next couple of months and have the value-add in place and then start cash flowing a year down the road. But, yeah, I figure about six months to just get rid of your stuff, get your house, trying to figure out where to go. During that one year, set up your assets, determine the price it is to live in where you want to go. I have a cost of living index linked in that book as well. So, you could back into that. How much will you need? And then enter into several multifamily deals within that year. It’d be very doable. Very, very doable.

 

What I do in my business, Josh, my business model is a co-GP model. I combine my money with investor money. I vet the deals. We choose the best sponsors in the best markets, emerging markets with good value-add plays. We employ three levels of underwriting on the last step an institutional underwriter to make sure the deal is rock solid. And then we go into deals with our investors.

 

Josh Cantwell: Nice.

 

Becca Hintergardt: That really shortens the learning curve for a lot of folks that might even be considering this, that reach out to me and invest side by side with us because that’s what we do.

 

Josh Cantwell: And, guys, listen, my brain is just on fire right now, Becca, so I want to thank you for that, to jump on with me because I’m getting so much out of this. My mind is really spinning but one of the things that’s going through my mind is all the levers that you’re intentionally moving to make this a reality. And I think so many people are just floating through like a speck of dust that’s getting pushed around by the currents of the air, and they’re letting the world and their life just get pushed wherever the world wants to take them versus you, you’re standing like a statue and exactly where you want to be, very firm on a firm foundation, and you pulled all these levers. So, I just want to recognize some of these levers. First of all, number one, you took six months to actually plan it. So, you pulled that lever, wrote it down, talk to your husband, talk to your kids, pulled the lever. Number two, you decided to downsize your expenses. You got rid of a bunch of stuff. You held the garage sales. You put things on next door. You sold off things. You took that income. Number three, the next lever, you moved some stuff out of stock investments, put them into multifamily that would cash flow. Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. Number four, you moved to a more affordable part of the world where you could have just as much of a luxurious lifestyle but just flat out cost less. Number five, you looked at schooling and said, “Well, do I want my kids to be stuck on Zoom for the next couple of years or do I want them to be in a real school”? So, you actually vetted out and looked at the school systems, the areas, the blue zone, right?

 

So, I think at the end of the day, guys, my audience needs to realize that what Becca did was not a mistake. She didn’t just land in Costa Rica living this unbelievable life on accident. She was super intentional about it. She pulled all kinds of levers to make it happen. And Becca would probably tell you, and she’ll tell you in the book, “This is not over and above everybody else’s head. This is so doable but you have to think.” It was called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Love that book.

 

Josh Cantwell: Float through the air like everybody else and grow rich. It was called Think and Grow Rich.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Think and Grow Rich. Don’t follow the line in what everybody else is doing. How about lifestyle by design? Think for yourself and grow rich.

 

Josh Cantwell: That’s right. Lifestyle by design. That sounds like a great…

 

Becca Hintergardt: Location, independence, and lifestyle by design.

 

Josh Cantwell: I love it. Well, Becca, listen, I’m going to tell my audience again to go get this book and I’ll be downloading it in about five seconds. So, HintInvestments.com. Make sure all of you go download Becca’s book. Connect with Becca. She’s got investment opportunities, I’m sure. If you guys are passive investors and want to invest, she’s building her community. And for those of you that really have a desire to live this international lifestyle and to be able to do ultimately what we all thought about what we do, we would retire early and drink Mai Tais on the beach. Becca’s one of the very few who pulled all the levers to make it happen. So, Becca, I just want to congratulate you on thinking like so many people don’t do. Congratulations on that and being such a strategist around making this happen for your family, and for your kids. I’m in awe of you. I love it.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Oh, thank you, Josh. And what a great summary and thank you so much for having me on your show. Please any of your listeners reach out. I would love to help and guide you in this journey. It’s truly a transformational one.

 

Josh Cantwell: I love it, Becca. Thanks so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor.

 

Becca Hintergardt: Thank you, Josh. It’s been a pleasure.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Josh Cantwell: Oh, man. Guys, there you have it. I mentioned the book already multiple times. You better be downloading that at HintInvestments.com. I already downloaded it myself. Make sure you check that out. If you enjoyed this interview, which I just thoroughly loved, you need to go leave us a five-star review. If you have any interest in retiring early, moving to a luxurious location living on a beach, you finally have the blueprint on exactly how to do it. You can pull it off, I promise you, you’re going to love it. And so, if you enjoyed the interview, leave us a rating. Leave us a review. Share this all over social media. I would be so grateful if you would do that for me and for Becca. Thanks so much for being here today on Accelerated Investor.

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