[ad_1] Way back in the olden days, people used to be amazed at my life story. I was “The Man Who Retired at 30”, and it was so unusual that it would show up in news headlines all over the place. Thankfully, this is no longer such a surprising story. The idea of financial independence has spread far and wide with the rise of the FIRE movement, and people now realize it’s not such a big deal after all. And in fact, people are doing more innovative things than I did, and getting themselves to financial independence in less time. My story was a nine-year working career, and retirement at 30. This was achieved by earning an engineer’s salary, not spending all of it, and investing the surplus in very standard index funds and fixing up my own house. Today we will to learn about a guy who did it in about three years, and is now financially free at age 27. And this was accomplished on a lower salary, without the cooperation of the badass and high-earning partner that helped me, and without my own honey badger dedication to bike transportation and DIY home renovation. His secret was simply buying houses in an area with solid demand and renting them out. But with an interesting twist: by partitioning larger houses into smaller, more affordable units, he was able to make a small initial investment go much further, and grow much more quickly. This is an age-old business model, but it has come back in a newer, better form and today it sometimes goes by the name House Hacking. And my goal with this article is to get you to consider the practice, because it is often the highest hourly wage and most flexible job you can possibly create for yourself. And, if you do it right, you are improving your city by providing a useful service, making housing more affordable and increasing density in a place where it is needed. What is House Hacking? At its most basic level, this is just a trendy name for “renting out part of your house as an apartment.” You can go further and add layers of complexity (and profit), for example moving yourself into that apartment and renting out the bigger part of your house, a move which I call the “Mustachian Inversion.” Or go even further and live in a tinyhouse in your own back yard. But at the core, we are still talking about renting aparments. While it may sound a bit daunting and/or inconvenient if you’ve never done it, the reality is that becoming a landlord is usually surprisingly easy, and also ridiculously profitable. Seriously – almost every one of my friends these days has some form of rental property, and is financially independent. And these two life conditions are usually related. So if you currently live somewhere with extra space – or if you plan to shop for a house at any point in your future – and you have any use at all for more money, you should consider it seriously. There are two fundamental reasons that house hacking works so well: 1 ) Rents are Non-linear. Or in plainer English, people pay a lot for their first bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. But they only pay a little bit more for each additional bedroom. So as the homeowner you can sacrifice just a little bit of your space, but get a larger portion of the rent that you would have collected from renting out your entire house. 2) Borrowed Money is Ridiculously Cheap. We are living in unprecedented times, where banks are willing to lend out huge amounts of money at just about zero cost after you adjust for inflation. This effectively makes houses cheaper to own, because you lock in the purchase price today, but pay it off super slowly with dollars that are worth a bit less with each passing year. With those big puzzle pieces in hand, let’s put the rubber to the road with a real-world example. In fact I can use myself as a case study because I currently own a house all to myself, with a bit more space than I need. Case Study: Should Mr. Money Mustache Hack his Own House? Dear Self, I currently have a small house in Longmont, Colorado, which is a fairly expensive market because it is right next to the stratospheric wealth engine of Boulder. The current value is about $390,000 which includes some renovations I have done since I bought it. The total house size is about 1800 square feet: 900 sf main floor 500 sf finished basement which includes bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchen/living area 400 SF finished 2-car garage which could become living space if I wanted. I don’t have a mortgage on this place, because I am overly conservative and bought it with cash. But if I did, it would have the following monthly stats: Outstanding balance: $312,000 (assuming a 20% downpayment) Monthly payment: $1600 (includes principal, interest, taxes+insurance at local rates) Note: This is assuming today’s 30-year interest rate* of about 3.08% … a couple of additional details: Amount of this that is Principal Repayment (a form of savings): $520 Actual carrying cost of the house after you account for that principal repayment: About $1080 First of all, wow, isn’t it amazing that you can own a $390,000 house for only a thousand bucks a month of actual cash outlay? That’s the cheap money at work. But that’s just the beginning of the amazement. Because my house happens to be in a row of townhouse-like identical detached houses located along the side of a small hill. The fronts of these houses have a few steps down to the sidewalk, and street parking. The backs of the houses are accessed by an alley, where we each have a two car driveway, two-car garage, and a ground-level entrance which leads to the sorta-walk-out basement. This setup is just ripe for creating