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Financial Fortitude
Summary
In this episode, Brian and Jessilyn share how real estate investing became the foundation that carried them through job loss, burnout, the pandemic, and multiple major life transitions. They break down how couples can build financial fortitude through emergency reserves, HELOC strategies, insurance, and “what-if” scenario planning. They also discuss designing an investment portfolio that can pivot—covering diversification, liquidity, risk tolerance, market selection, and treating real estate like a true business. Finally, they highlight the importance of communication, shared vision, goal-setting rhythms, and knowing when to bring in outside help to strengthen both the relationship and the wealth plan.
Chapters
00:00 – How Real Estate Carried Them Through Crisis
07:05 – Building Financial Fortitude & Safety Nets
08:08 – Designing a Portfolio That Can Pivot
14:51 – Partnerships, Planning & Staying on the Same Page
Contact Jessilyn and Brian Persson | Weekend Wealth Investments:
- Website: weekendwealth.ca
- Instagram: weekend.wealth
- Facebook: Weekend Wealth Investments
- Linkedin: Weekend Wealth Investments
Transcript
Jessilyn Persson (00:03)
Real estate investing isn't just about ROI. It's about being ready for life's plot twists. Today we're talking about how couples can design investment plans that stand strong through illness, job loss, kids, relocations, and everything in between.
Brian Persson (00:19)s
And to start off, we'll start with our own personal story about how real estate supported us through some ups and some downs in our life. It started with ⁓ Jess being burnt out in 2019 and we ended up pivoting our career, our lives and a number of other things. And actually the world ended up pivoting shortly after that as well with the pandemic and real estate was there.
throughout all of that to support us. And we ended up going through 2020 and 2021 and somewhat rebuilding ourselves. And we couldn't have done it without real estate behind us because real estate effectively paid the bills throughout 2020 and 2021 and allowed us to really recreate who we are.
Jessilyn Persson (01:07)
Yeah, I was out of a job come, I think, mid-October 2019 and then you gave your notice, what, three days shy of the world shutting down, which we didn't plan for in terms of the pandemic. We didn't anticipate that.
Brian Persson (01:27)
Just like, how do you not anticipate a pandemic coming? We didn't really watch the news. That was one thing.
Jessilyn Persson (01:36)
It's really true. We thought it was a bit of a joke. What people were doing with toilet paper, should be very specific, not the pandemic itself. yeah, and so then you gave your notice and three days later everything shut down and we're like, okay, here we are. And while we were building a business with some of our partners, made it much harder because we were online as opposed to the events that we were supposed to be doing and all the in-person activities. And then of course, when you start any business, you usually make a lot of income off the hop. So
or real estate supported us to start building that and figuring out, what does this look like and what does it mean for our family?
Brian Persson (02:14)
Yeah, and we did a lot of personal development in that time too. So we, we both had the time freedom of no nine to five job anymore. ⁓ and we could build the business and take any extra time left over to build ourselves too. So there were, there was a lot of building in general, ⁓ across many, many different things. And that included the business and ourselves. without real estate to help us and support us and, and, ⁓ kind of, kind of carry us through that period.
we really would not have been able to do that. And it might've looked like a totally different picture over those two years.
Jessilyn Persson (02:50)
Oh, it absolutely would have. We would have had to find a job, one of us, if not both of us. But yeah, so rolling into our first takeaway here is I think financial fortitude, building safety nets into your investment plan. And I know we had that, maintaining emergency reserves specifically for, I mean, we can say property expenses, which is a...
an automatic for us, but then there's things that you can't predict like job loss, which we've had ⁓ pandemic, which we've all had illnesses, which I've had, right? These things that you don't know they're coming and, but they come and then it's like, what do you do?
Brian Persson (03:35)
Yeah. And I always look back at real estate and go like, you know, real estate really didn't pay us enough, ⁓ over the years. And then I look at like the, accounts and how much financial fortitude there is inside of the real estate. And I realized that it just looks like we're broke on paper. It, we're, really not broke. Like when, when you add up all the dollars and that, financial fortitude is what keeps us.
you know, sleeping well at night today. And it's what carried us through the 2020 period when we needed to rebuild ourselves and we needed to pivot into that new ⁓ career and that new business building opportunity.
Jessilyn Persson (04:17)
Yeah. And I mean, when we talk about emergency reserves, obviously there are options. There's straight out cash. ⁓ And then there's the HELOC, right? The Home Equity Line of Credit, which we relied on through the pandemic. ⁓ And we have it on multiple properties just because that's how we qualified. And of course they all have their benefits and disadvantages, but it worked in our favor.
in a time of need. And now of course we have them and we utilize them to buy more investments. So a little bit of a different strategy, but it's still part of our strategy and we still have HELOCs, which we will always have, whether we're carrying a balance or something is different, but we will always have them because we know we can rely on them in need.
Brian Persson (04:57)
Yeah, there's two ways to think about a HELOCs when it comes to your financial fortitude. A lot of people say, you know, save three months of income in, or, know, if anything goes wrong, then you have that three months of income and sitting in a bank account somewhere. We like to sort of supercharge that what would normally be savings and we actually put it into our HELOC or, or effectively against our mortgage. So instead of having.
let's just come up with a round number $10,000 sitting to the side in case of, you know, an emergency fund, we have $10,000 sitting on a HELOC where we put more and more money against that in, that ends up paying down the mortgage as well, saving us interest, but also creates that balance for a fund. The disadvantage to it is that you have to be very careful not to spend it. And, and as we know, ⁓
A lot of the world is in and people in the world are in great, like greatly higher levels of debt than they than it was 10 years or 20 years ago. And that's, that can be a danger for a lot of people. So you gotta, you gotta account your free personality. You know, wh...
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By Jessilyn and Brian PerssonSummary
In this episode, Brian and Jessilyn share how real estate investing became the foundation that carried them through job loss, burnout, the pandemic, and multiple major life transitions. They break down how couples can build financial fortitude through emergency reserves, HELOC strategies, insurance, and “what-if” scenario planning. They also discuss designing an investment portfolio that can pivot—covering diversification, liquidity, risk tolerance, market selection, and treating real estate like a true business. Finally, they highlight the importance of communication, shared vision, goal-setting rhythms, and knowing when to bring in outside help to strengthen both the relationship and the wealth plan.
Chapters
00:00 – How Real Estate Carried Them Through Crisis
07:05 – Building Financial Fortitude & Safety Nets
08:08 – Designing a Portfolio That Can Pivot
14:51 – Partnerships, Planning & Staying on the Same Page
Contact Jessilyn and Brian Persson | Weekend Wealth Investments:
- Website: weekendwealth.ca
- Instagram: weekend.wealth
- Facebook: Weekend Wealth Investments
- Linkedin: Weekend Wealth Investments
Transcript
Jessilyn Persson (00:03)
Real estate investing isn't just about ROI. It's about being ready for life's plot twists. Today we're talking about how couples can design investment plans that stand strong through illness, job loss, kids, relocations, and everything in between.
Brian Persson (00:19)s
And to start off, we'll start with our own personal story about how real estate supported us through some ups and some downs in our life. It started with ⁓ Jess being burnt out in 2019 and we ended up pivoting our career, our lives and a number of other things. And actually the world ended up pivoting shortly after that as well with the pandemic and real estate was there.
throughout all of that to support us. And we ended up going through 2020 and 2021 and somewhat rebuilding ourselves. And we couldn't have done it without real estate behind us because real estate effectively paid the bills throughout 2020 and 2021 and allowed us to really recreate who we are.
Jessilyn Persson (01:07)
Yeah, I was out of a job come, I think, mid-October 2019 and then you gave your notice, what, three days shy of the world shutting down, which we didn't plan for in terms of the pandemic. We didn't anticipate that.
Brian Persson (01:27)
Just like, how do you not anticipate a pandemic coming? We didn't really watch the news. That was one thing.
Jessilyn Persson (01:36)
It's really true. We thought it was a bit of a joke. What people were doing with toilet paper, should be very specific, not the pandemic itself. yeah, and so then you gave your notice and three days later everything shut down and we're like, okay, here we are. And while we were building a business with some of our partners, made it much harder because we were online as opposed to the events that we were supposed to be doing and all the in-person activities. And then of course, when you start any business, you usually make a lot of income off the hop. So
or real estate supported us to start building that and figuring out, what does this look like and what does it mean for our family?
Brian Persson (02:14)
Yeah, and we did a lot of personal development in that time too. So we, we both had the time freedom of no nine to five job anymore. ⁓ and we could build the business and take any extra time left over to build ourselves too. So there were, there was a lot of building in general, ⁓ across many, many different things. And that included the business and ourselves. without real estate to help us and support us and, and, ⁓ kind of, kind of carry us through that period.
we really would not have been able to do that. And it might've looked like a totally different picture over those two years.
Jessilyn Persson (02:50)
Oh, it absolutely would have. We would have had to find a job, one of us, if not both of us. But yeah, so rolling into our first takeaway here is I think financial fortitude, building safety nets into your investment plan. And I know we had that, maintaining emergency reserves specifically for, I mean, we can say property expenses, which is a...
an automatic for us, but then there's things that you can't predict like job loss, which we've had ⁓ pandemic, which we've all had illnesses, which I've had, right? These things that you don't know they're coming and, but they come and then it's like, what do you do?
Brian Persson (03:35)
Yeah. And I always look back at real estate and go like, you know, real estate really didn't pay us enough, ⁓ over the years. And then I look at like the, accounts and how much financial fortitude there is inside of the real estate. And I realized that it just looks like we're broke on paper. It, we're, really not broke. Like when, when you add up all the dollars and that, financial fortitude is what keeps us.
you know, sleeping well at night today. And it's what carried us through the 2020 period when we needed to rebuild ourselves and we needed to pivot into that new ⁓ career and that new business building opportunity.
Jessilyn Persson (04:17)
Yeah. And I mean, when we talk about emergency reserves, obviously there are options. There's straight out cash. ⁓ And then there's the HELOC, right? The Home Equity Line of Credit, which we relied on through the pandemic. ⁓ And we have it on multiple properties just because that's how we qualified. And of course they all have their benefits and disadvantages, but it worked in our favor.
in a time of need. And now of course we have them and we utilize them to buy more investments. So a little bit of a different strategy, but it's still part of our strategy and we still have HELOCs, which we will always have, whether we're carrying a balance or something is different, but we will always have them because we know we can rely on them in need.
Brian Persson (04:57)
Yeah, there's two ways to think about a HELOCs when it comes to your financial fortitude. A lot of people say, you know, save three months of income in, or, know, if anything goes wrong, then you have that three months of income and sitting in a bank account somewhere. We like to sort of supercharge that what would normally be savings and we actually put it into our HELOC or, or effectively against our mortgage. So instead of having.
let's just come up with a round number $10,000 sitting to the side in case of, you know, an emergency fund, we have $10,000 sitting on a HELOC where we put more and more money against that in, that ends up paying down the mortgage as well, saving us interest, but also creates that balance for a fund. The disadvantage to it is that you have to be very careful not to spend it. And, and as we know, ⁓
A lot of the world is in and people in the world are in great, like greatly higher levels of debt than they than it was 10 years or 20 years ago. And that's, that can be a danger for a lot of people. So you gotta, you gotta account your free personality. You know, wh...