Craig Curelop is an author and the co-founder of The FI Team, a group that focuses on helping people attain financial independence through real estate investing. In 2017, Craig took a 50% pay cut to move to Denver to work with bigger Pockets and begin his house-hacking journey. Craig achieved financial independence in about 2 years, climbing over a mountain of student debt on the way. When it comes to house hacking Craig is the guy you want to learn from. 

In this episode, we cover what house hacking is, how to do it, and what it takes -- Just enough to inspire to jump into this powerful investment strategy.   

Check out Craig's book here: https://store.biggerpockets.com/products/the-house-hacking-strategy

Craig is @thefiguy on Instagram and Tic-Tok

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Transcript

Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.

 

Michael:

What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum. And today with us I have with me Craig Curelop who is an author, real estate investor, former BiggerPockets employee, and Craig's gonna be talking to us today about House hacking, how he did it, how you can do it too. And all the benefits it's afforded him over time. So let's get into it.

 

Craig Curelop, thanks so much for taking the time and joining me today. Man, I really appreciate you hanging out.

 

Craig:

Yeah. Thanks, Michael, so much for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here.

 

Michael:

Awesome. So today, I want to talk to you about House hacking. And I think you are one of the best versed people in the subject. And so for anyone who doesn't know you your story, can you give us a little bit of background on who you are? And kind of what you've done with your house hacks?

 

Craig:

Yeah, for sure. So let's see, we can go back to I guess, 2016 When I absolutely hated my job, right? So.

 

Michael:

Like so many

 

Craig:

Like, Yeah, I think if you're listening to this podcast, you probably hated your job. At some point. If you're on the track toward financial independence, you felt some sort of pain from your job, right? Well, I felt a ton of pain. And I was like, Okay, how the heck do I get out of this? And I kind of fell into the financial independence community. But really, I found real estate investing first. I found it through. I found the idea of passive income through Tim Ferriss book. And then I found the idea of real estate investing through a friend who then introduced me to bigger pockets. And then I went down the rabbit hole of bigger pockets.

 

Michael:

It's such a deep rabbit hole,

 

Craig:

Oh its…  and you can't climb back out of it. Right. Yeah. And so you know, for months and months, I would be like listening to webinars, watching the podcasts and reading the books and all that stuff, just educated myself. And then in 2017, is when I actually moved from Silicon Valley to Denver to work at bigger pockets, which was like a dream come true. But then also start my real estate investing career.

 

Michael:

Okay, that's awesome. So you moved. Were you? Did you give up a California Silicon Valley salary to take a pay cut to move to Denver?

 

Craig:

Yeah. So all in, you know, if you include like the 401k match and all that stuff, I was making about 115-$120,000 a year in Silicon Valley. I accepted a job at bigger pockets for $65,000 a year.

 

Michael:

Wow.

 

Craig:

Almost a half a pay cut.

 

Michael:

Okay. And then so then bring us up to speed. So you're working at bigger pockets, you got introduced to real estate investing. What next?

 

Craig:

Yeah, so 2017. You know, i