Retire Early With Real Estate: How Smart Investing Can Help You Escape the 9-5 Grind and Do More of What Matters

by Chad Carson

Proven real estate strategies to retire early, escape the 9-to-5 work grind, and do more with your life!

Are you stuck in the rut of a 9-to-5 job? Would you like to do more with your life than just work to pay the bills?

Retire Early With Real Estate provides practical, proven methods to quickly and safely build wealth using the time-tested vehicle of real estate rentals. Experienced real estate investor and early retiree, Chad Carson, shares his tried-and-true investment strategies to create enough passive income to retire at 37 years old.

Packed with specific strategies, tips, and techniques you may have never learned before, this book will help you forge a new path toward your retirement. Learn from more than twenty real estate investors and early retirees profiled in this book—retiring early is possible with a step-by-step strategy at hand!

Whether you’re brand new or already real estate investing, you can apply these lessons to retire early and live the life you want.

Inside you’ll discover:
• Step-by-step methods to use rental properties to retire in 10-15 years
• Detailed case studies of ordinary investors who used real estate to retire early
• How to produce rental income to pay all your bills (and never run out)
• 4 practical, easy-to-follow strategies especially for brand new investors
• Creative backup plans to stay flexible and help you sleep well at night
• A 5-step process to create your customized real estate early retirement plan
• And much more!

Genres: Finance, Personal Finance, Business, Nonfiction, Money, Self Help, Economics

330 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 23, 2018

About the author

Chad Carson is an active real estate investor and entrepreneur from Clemson, South Carolina. When not investing, you’ll find Chad traveling with his wife and 2 young kids, playing pick-up basketball, hiking, learning something new, and helping build trails in his local community. He also writes and teaches at coachcarson.com about using real estate investing to retire early and do what matters.

Reviews

[Bailey Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mom works as a property manager and she got this for me for Christmas. This book teaches you the different ways that you can use real estate to gain wealth/not be reliant on traditional means of income.

[Stefan Shirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

To some, early retirement is a lofty goal however Coach Carson paves the path to show how any hard-working individual can reach financial independence and retire early with the main vehicle being real estate.

Reader be forewarned, this is not just a book about real estate investing. Carson quickly begins by asking the reader “what does it mean to live a life that matters?” That is, if you could do anything you want, what would it be? From here the takes us on the hike up the real estate mountain.

The book is broken out into seven (7) parts starting with “Why real estate investing” and ending with “Your turn to climb.” Each part with multiple chapters provide actionable steps the reader can take in order to achieve their own real estate success story.

Throughout the book and after each chapter, Carson provides a short, self-written profile of a real estate early retiree (starting with himself). These are great cheaper closers that helps to solidify or highlight some of the ideas he discusses throughout each chapter.

I will say that this book really spoke to me. I’ve purchased three (3) properties (the third just two days ago) and I learned valuable tools to get me going toward my fourth property (looking for a duplex, triplex, or quadplex!). In the end, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ready to roll up their sleeves and start to invest in their financial independence and to retire early (FIRE)!

[Jay Pruitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retire Early provides a very good high level overview of the benefits of real estate investment as it relates to retirement: steady cash flow that is uncorrelated with the whimsical stock market, benefits of modest leverage in times of inflation, tax advantages of depreciation, capital gains, 1031 exchanges, etc, and comparatively better overall returns than other asset classes. A substantial part of the book is devoted to interviews with people who have relied upon real estate as a retirement strategy; while some may find this approach (citing examples) informative, I tended to skip over these discussions, making the content less helpful to me, on the whole.

[Al Knife · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent book. Nothing ground breaking and some good ideas on how to get going in real estate investing. Most value for me was the anecdotes of how "normal" people got started with it and the strategies they used.

[Alexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meant for a US audience. A lot of the info is very specific for Americans, and can't necessarily be applied elsewhere due to taxation differences, etc.
The book also seems to just be an amalgamation of advice from other people. It's like none of the ideas are his own. He quotes Mr Money Mustache, Paula Pant, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and more. These were all things I have read before, and didn't get anything new out of this. He just quotes them word for word.
There is also no substance to the book. There are broad strategies identified, but no real structure or advice on how to step by step perform these strategies. He does give an umbrella statement that he can't give specific advice because everyone's situation is different, and I get that, but this is all too fluffy for me. Give me concrete information, not an idea.

Only read if you are American, and if you need a general primer on FIRE and rental income.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chad Carson provides an overview of real estate as it relates to personal finance. He uses his own and other real estate investors' experiences to show how it can help lead to financial independence. I appreciate his straightforward approach that teaches the basics of various real estate strategies, why a person might use one over the other, and how none are necessarily better simply different with their pros and cons. In many ways Carson's book is like many other real estate books, it provides a large strategic view of how to do it but misses the nuts and bolts of the day-to-day aspect of getting started. There's nothing about the specifics of lending, terms, real estate contracts, interviewing property managers and what to look for, how to handle evictions, or any of the stuff that is necessary for owning and operating rental properties. Those aren't the point of his book. Rather, it's to show that through the use of real estate you can create enough passive income to provide a level of cash flow necessary to meet your current expenses. In that aspect this is a great introductory book. For all the other stuff, we'll just have to go elsewhere.

[Michael Vu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chad Carson puts together a great runway for those who want to find an alternative life path from the traditional 9-5 and then retire at 67 career. The book uses the analogy of climbing a mountain to brainstorm the process to early retirement. Before jumping into strategies to reach the peak, one needs to have an idea of where they are right now, and what the end goal peak will be like. Compared to many other early retirement/real estate investing books, I thought this really set up your "why" and a clear path to financial independence. Chad explains the many strategies that one can use through real estate investing to reach this goal. My biggest takeaway was that the ideal path to FI is likely a combination of strategies depending on where one is currently at in life and the state of the economy/real estate market. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to use real estate investing to achieve financial independence as Chad provides a great step-by-step guide to do so.

[Nicholas vehr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book here by Chad. I have read just about everything BiggerPockets has published and this fits very well in their collection. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a book on using real estate as a retirement vehicle.

[Darin Shreves · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great introduction to achieving financial independence through real estate investing, with lots of equally great discussion of other related personal finance and life topics.

[Matt Gooding · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book if you are new to the idea of FI, if you are aware of FI and want to dive more into the real estate side of the coin you should probably choose a more real estate focused book

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't bother with this book. It's too high level. It's written for people already determined to use real estate for everything no matter what.

It's also written really weird. He breaks up his advice with case studies from people that use real estate as income. Unfortunately he asks everyone the same questions. He should have asked more questions to these people on the tactics they used to buy good real estate versus just canned questions with no substance.

This book has no substance. He provides no insights on how to select real estate, find tenants, fix real estate up, save money when buying a house, etc. He just provides a few "strategies" that people use to make money from real estate. The strategies include ground breaking ideas such as "buy and hold" and "rent out a house."

Additionally, you can't use any of these strategies to retire early because you have to save enough money to buy the house (usually ten years). After your done saving, you have to wait at least 10 years for your real estate to generate any real income. I'm totally confused by this book's title versus the content inside.

[Deon Ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book taught me many lessons about getting started, taxes, researching, and then going for it.

Carson's writing style is humble, encouraging, and pleasant to read.

Highly recommended!

[Tyler Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so this book got my absolutely hyped with regards to my future real estate investing plans. To be honest, I think I learned more about personal finance and money from the 5 days of reading this book than I did throughout my entire college career (sad but true!)

Not only has this book shifted my perspective of money and financial independence, but it has also provided me with key terminology/ideas/recommendations that help me verbalize my plans to other people, which has actually helped me secure two key partners in the coming years.

Basically what this comes down to is the fact that I don’t want to be working into my 50s and 60s. I want to have the bulk of my life to do what matters to ME. This book gave me the confidence to commit to a plan (one that is actually provided within the confines of this book in fact!) that I know will help me reach my financial independence target!

10/10 would recommend :)

[Janani Kalpathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will probably be one of my top 3 fav books on real estate. The author, Chad Carson, does a great job on explaining investing concepts in a simple, easy to understand manner yet keeping it pragmatic throughout. The only caveat I'd have is the numbers used in this book to illustrate the different plans don't really work in most markets today, especially given inflation and rising interest rates. That said, if you're all into the FIRE movement, living simply and retiring early to focus on things you love to do, this one is for you!

[Keaton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very good stuff in here, and I think the best information had nothing to do with real estate but rather "changing how you look at money" in the beginning of the book. The interview profiles actually disrupt the flow of the book and become very annoying, and the numbers used in the examples are incredibly gracious and make real estate seem risk-free. However, the strategies he goes over are very valuable and helpful.

[Morganjason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exploring the property market is an exciting venture! Whether you’re interested in residential or commercial properties, finding a platform with a diverse range of listings is crucial. A great place to start is https://global.properties/ where you can discover options that suit various needs and preferences. Connecting with a trusted service ensures you find the property that best aligns with your vision and future plans.

[Everson Azevedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty good book

Great book for reference on important topics related to real estate investment and financial freedom.
It's a guide, the entry door i would say,for the subjects.
It's also full of important links from websites that Will complete your library. I recommend. Thank you Chad Carson

[Ed Barton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid Framework

Looking to make real estate a key to your retirement? This book will introduce you yo a number of ways to leverage real estate as a major driver for wealth building and income generation. Easy to read, there are plenty of examples, stories and guidance to help formulate your first plan. A good read.

[Harry Lee Tinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

Highly recommend this book. It really breaks down so much information that other books leave out. Also, the real life examples at the end of each chapters show that it can be done.

[Raphael Collazo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very actionable book that you can use to retire from your job by investing in real estate. I especially loved the snowball strategy where you pay off your houses using the cash flow from your other properties. Highly recommended!

[Taylor Rodger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the variety of options presented. He didn't disregard stocks but covered them briefly and then continued on with the purpose of the book. All in all, a great look at real estate options at different stages of your journey.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so clearly written - it’s the only book you need about real estate. This plus Paula Pant’s blog will get you far. Chad is super down to earth unlike other real estate maniacs. Super grateful he put this book out.

[Shiri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is this high literature? No. Is it repetitive and slow at times? Yes. Did it give me actionable insights that I can immediately put into practice on my real estate journey? Absolutely. Should you read it? Most definitely.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book was well thought out with steps that seemed approachable. I wish the book was more applicable to my situation but none of them seemed realistic for me. Also seemed like all of the examples in the book were of people who worked in real estate or had a lot of money/property to begin with.

[Lala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of info! This would be a good book to refer to from time to time. I enjoyed the profiles at the end of each chapter. Overall a good starter book for anyone interested in making money through real estate. I hope the book is updated occasionally to keep up with tax law.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Coach provides so many real estate insights throughout the book - cover different stages of early retirement (including the withdrawal phase). Loved it and would recommend it to anyone interested in real estate.

[Mandy Wultsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a get rich qucik book, but a get rich (or at least comfortable) through smart investing and hard work. Discusses various strategies for small and beginning real estate investors and how to retire smart with them. Great book for figuring out your long term plans.

[Josh Bastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find myself reading this book continually. It plainly lays out many of the key strategies possible with rental property investing. Would recommend to anyone interested in buying property to build wealth.

[Brad Birky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chad's down to earth explanations of real estate investing terms were super helpful to me. As a novice investor, the world of RE can be intimidating as hell. I am very grateful to folks like Coach Carson for sharing their experiences - good and bad - with the rest of us!

[Kewal Pasad · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best real estate books I have read. The author gives you all the options available explains each of them in detail and gives real life examples of other investors. The author lays down step by step process and action steps to get started.