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The “Boring” (But Proven) Path to Financial Freedom


Financial freedom with three rental properties? It almost sounds too easy, but it’s reality for today’s guest, who went from making roughly $11 an hour to having more than enough cash flow to live on.

With a little hard work and discipline, Lucas Teague saved $10,000 to buy his very first rental property. He made several offers and heard plenty of “nos.” But he only needed one “yes.” And that first yes changed everything.

Lucas repeated the process: buy a “cheap” property, live in it, fix it up, and make tens of thousands of dollars. But instead of racing to build a massive real estate portfolio, Lucas settled on three rentals and started paying them off.

Now he’s almost completely debt-free and earns enough rental income to cover his family’s expenses and then some. Lucas has all that he needs. Now, he’s focused on a new objective: giving back. In this episode, he’s sharing an unconventional but proven path to financial freedom so YOU can do the same.

Henry:
Financial freedom with just three rental properties? It almost sounds too easy, but it’s reality for today’s guest who went from making roughly $11 an hour to having more than enough cashflow to live on. With a little hard work and discipline, Lucas Teague saved $10,000 to buy his very first rental property. He made several offers and heard several nos, but he only needed that one yes. And that first yes changed everything. Lucas repeated this process, buy a cheap property, live in it, fix it up, and make tens of thousands of dollars. But instead of racing to build some massive portfolio, Lucas settled on just three rentals and started paying them off. Now, he’s almost completely debt-free, living in his dream home, and he earns enough rental income to cover his family’s expenses and then some. Lucas has all that he needs. Now he’s focused on a new objective, giving back.
In this episode, he’s sharing his unconventional but proven path to financial freedom so you can do the same. What’s going on everybody? I am Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And today we have an investor story with Lucas Teague from Indiana, so let’s bring him on. Lucas Teague, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast, my friend.

Lucas:
Yeah, thanks Anneria. I’ve been watching this show for probably 10 years now and it’s an honor to be here.

Henry:
Why don’t you give us a little bit of background. What got you into real estate in the first place and when did you get started?

Lucas:
I’m in my early 30s now. I’ve been investing in real estate for about 14 years. And really, I think it boils down to financial freedom. As a kid, I had a parent who lost their job after working for a place for about 30 years and just all of a sudden they came home one day and didn’t have a job. I was probably 15 or 16 and after that I made the decision I’ve got to prevent that if at all possible.

Henry:
How did that turn into real estate being the source for that extra income?

Lucas:
Yeah, so I’ve always had the mathematical lens. And so I looked at, “Hey, can I buy a business?” And this is at 18 years old, so it’s zero capital at the time. Well, with no money, it’s a little bit difficult to buy a business. So then I turned to, okay, what if I invest in some stocks? Well, once I get to $2 million in stocks, maybe I can make 60 to $80,000 a year, but it’s going to take me about a hundred years to get to two million at the money I was making at 18. So I moved on to the next thing, which was real estate. And in my area at the time, there were houses selling for 20 or $30,000 and you could rent those out for three or $400 a month. And I’m crunching the numbers and man, I could do something within a decade probably or five to 10 years and get the tax benefits and all of the other benefits that come with real estate investing.
And it seemed like a no-brainer.

Henry:
So what year was this when you’ve had this epiphany?

Lucas:
Yeah, this was probably 2012. So I graduated high school in May of 2012, and I worked in the pharmaceutical industry at the time, and I still do today. I work for Eli Lilly, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. So I do that. And then I’m also a real estate agent, but at the time I made about 11.95 an hour. And so my first year was essentially just saving up $10,000 for that either down payment or that first house that I purchased later in 2013.

Henry:
Okay. Well, that’s some good bit of background. You bought that first property in 2013. What’d that deal look like?

Lucas:
Yeah, so this was a HUD foreclosure and it was listed on hud.gov on an auction website for about $50,000. And my poor realtor friend, we spent probably a month, we’d submit our offer on the auction website, we’d wait a week, it would get declined. And so it was listed at 50,000. We started at 6,000, then 7,000, then 8,000. And after about a month of doing that, the bank or whoever owned the house on the auction website, they finally accepted the offer of $8,000. So at the time I had about $10,000 in cash and I went for it. So I figured, hey, for $8,000, what could go wrong?

Henry:
That’s an uncomfortable offer. They’re asking 50, you’re offering a couple grand to start out. What helped you just start making uncomfortable offers? Because that’s a big hill to climb for a lot of investors.

Lucas:
I try to look at it with a non-emotional lens. In this instance, it was a bank that owned the property. I’m probably not going to hurt anybody’s feelings if I submit a low offer. Even if it’s a person who owns the property, really, you shouldn’t hurt their feelings if you’re offering something low. We deal with this, especially now being a real estate agent, an offer is better than no offer at all. They can say no and then move along and that’s better than not hearing anything.

Henry:
If you’re listening to this and you’re like, “I don’t know what to do to get my next deal,” go open the MLS and find a bunch of houses that are for sale that are in your buy box. Who cares what they’re listed for? And make an offer that makes sense to you. Worst case scenario is they say no. Best case scenario is they say, “I don’t want that offer, but let’s talk about it.” That’s why an offer is better than no offer, no matter what it is, because you’re basically saying, “Hey, I’m willing to have a conversation about this.” So you did that first deal in 2013, you bought a house for $8,000. That sounds to me like you didn’t buy much house, so tell us about it. What’d you do with it? Do you still have it? How did it work out?

Lucas:
No, so I sold that after about a year of owning it. I put about $2,600 into that house, did all of the work myself, watching YouTube videos and the bones of the house were good. It was really cosmetic. It needed paint, it needed some flooring, some kitchen stuff. And so I worked on that for about a year and sold that in early 2014 for about 60,000. So I had about a $50,000 profit on that place.

Henry:
What goes through your mind after that? Because I think a lot of investors get to this point where it’s like, “All right, I did a deal, but what do I do now?”

Lucas:
Well, I think I said earlier at the time I made 11.95 an hour, which I thought was a ton of money and I was hourly. And within a year I had just made 50,000. And if I worked on that full-time for a year, that’s $25 an hour, which was double what I was making for my W-2 job at the time. And my mind was completely blown that you could do this and make… It was essentially part-time, a few hours a week. I worked on that property for a year and I could make double what I made at my W-2 job. So thankfully I had a good experience on the first property and yeah, I think that I got the bug after that and I kept looking and quickly transacted again shortly after that.

Henry:
So what did the next one look like? How’d you find that one?

Lucas:
The next one was probably 30 minutes northwest of where I live, and it was a triplex that was for sale for about $45,000. I had enough work experience at the time to actually apply for financing and get financing on this place. Unfortunately, this is where I learned a lot of lessons. The house was about 150 years old. It had two vacant units in it. It had one unit where somebody was living there, but they weren’t paying any rent in there. So I had to go through an eviction and get those folks out of that apartment. Essentially, I just moved into each one of the apartments. I’d lived there for three to four months. I would renovate everything. I’d move into the next unit that’s available, get that previous unit rented out and did that for about a year as well and sold that in 2015.

Henry:
Okay. So you paid about $45,000. How much money do you think you spent fixing up the entire property?

Lucas:
I would say between five and 6,000. Structurally, the house was in good shape. It was more of a cosmetic rehab, flooring, paint, that kind of stuff. So probably 5,500, I would say.

Henry:
Okay. And what were you renting the units out for?

Lucas:
Previously, they were rented for probably 400 before I had to do the eviction. Once I remodeled everything, I moved those up to about 700. So once it was completely turned over, the property brought in about 2,100 a month.

Henry:
2,100 a month on a note of where you’re only paying 45,000. That’s a crap ton of cash flow. That’s amazing. But then you said you sold it, so why sell instead of keep the cash flow? I

Lucas:
Was still 19 or 20 at the time, and it was not in the best location. So the area had some extracurricular activities kind of going on in the area and not the type of tenants that I wanted to have long term. And so it was quite a bit of headache and stuff, but I was doing the math. So I listed the property for 100,000. I got a full price offer on it. And so at the time, having the capital at 19 or 20 years old meant a lot more to me than making the $2,100 a month.

Henry:
I know people are listening to this and going, “This was so long ago. The numbers don’t work like that anymore.” Now you can’t pay the same price points you were paying then, but there are deals that you can still get at a discount and you can still rent and get current cash flow. And what I want people to focus on is not necessarily what the dollars were for the purchase price, but look at the spreads and understand the concepts of what Lucas was doing. This stuff still works. You can absolutely still go buy a single family home, live in it while you renovate it, and then sell it for a profit when you’re done and not have to pay capital gains taxes because you lived in the property, especially if you lived there for two years. If you lived there less than two years, you’re going to pay some capital gains, right?
You can absolutely go and find yourself a triplex and live in a unit, renovate it while you’re living in it, move to the next one, renovate it while you’re living in it, rent it out and then sell it when you’re done or keep it as a rental when you’re done. Those strategies worked then. They still work now. The dollar signs are bigger now, yes. But also the purchase prices are bigger, but so are the rents and so are the sale prices, right? So these strategies still work and the way you use to find these deals still works. There are bank-owned properties again, guys. That died off for a while, but a lot of them are back. People are getting foreclosed on and banks are sitting on some properties. You can absolutely go bid on foreclosures. There are opportunities on the market if you’re willing to make offers that make sense to you.
You’ll have to make a lot of them, but conceptually what Lucas did is very much still possible in today’s environment. Is it going to be a little more challenging? Yes. Will it be more expensive? Yes. But it can also be more profitable if you do it properly. So thank you so much for sharing some of those lessons and being transparent with it. I want to learn more about what you continued to do after that second deal, because now you’ve done a live-in flip as a single, you’ve done a live-in flip technically as a triplex. You’ve gotten a taste of that. I’m curious, did you continue down the same path or did you transition to something different? But we’ll get into that right after the break.

Speaker 3:
Before we go to break, if you’re someone who’s bought a couple of deals and you’re looking to scale up your portfolio into something bigger, I have a really exciting announcement for you. BiggerPockets is hosting its first ever conference focused just on scaling up. It’s this December. It’s coming up soon, this December, 5th through 7th in Phoenix, Arizona. We’re going to have a full day of programming with speakers like myself, James Daynard, Kathy Fecke, and Devon Kinard talking about how to scale up and build a sustainable business. Tickets are on sale now, but there are only 100 tickets, so go to biggerpockets.com/conferences now and get your ticket today.

Henry:
Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I am here with investor Lucas Teague, and he has been sharing his real estate investment journey. He started back in 2013, bought a single family, lived in it, renovated it, sold it, moved on to a triplex, and the concepts for the way he did this are absolutely still possible today. So I’m curious, Lucas, what did you transition to after that? Did you stay the course on what you were doing, live in flips, or is there some other strategy you tried?

Lucas:
Now to some extent, yes. I took a two-pronged approach at this point. So I needed a place to live, obviously. I had sold the place that I was living. So I bought a primary residence for myself and same pattern as the first two. The house had good bones. It was a cosmetic flip where I didn’t want my family to come over for Christmas, but it was very livable. And so I did that on nights and weekends as I was working my W-2 job. And at the same time, I started looking for… I wanted to be in the long-term rental business, which is what I’m in today. So in my area, I’m shooting for a 15% cash on cash return. So I’m starting to look for these properties, and maybe that’s once a year, maybe that’s one property every three years. And so probably around 2017, 2018, I began to buy these 15% cash-on-cash return long-term rentals and simultaneously working on the house that I was living in, shooting for that two-year turnaround time, that way I could avoid capital gains taxes and do both simultaneously.

Henry:
What I like about your strategy is what makes it possible is you said you had a goal of 15% cash on cash return. That was the goal. So that was the thing that was important. Not volume of deals, but deals that meet your very specific criteria. And whether that meant one deal a year or one deal every three years, that wasn’t what was important. What was important was that the deal met your criteria. That discipline is exactly what makes investors successful in a down market like we’re in now. And what makes that kind of strategy possible is because you had a day job, right? You had active income from going to work every day. And so I know a lot of people are listening to this podcast because they want to retire from their day job. There’s absolutely a path to do that. It takes longer now than it used to, but yes, you can do that.
But there’s also still a path that builds wealth. If you have a job you like or a job that you enjoy, you don’t have to focus on quitting your job, but the benefit of not having to quit your job allows you to have the discipline to have a strategy like this, to be able to say, “Hey, I want 15% cash on cash return. Maybe that sounds wild, but the deals are out there and if I got to buy one deal every three years to get it, then that’s what I’ll do because I have a job that’s bringing in the income.” So you were looking for this 15% cash on cash return type deals. How long did it take you to find one?

Lucas:
Really not long. Again, I’m a mathematical focused person, and so I found ways to export the entire MLS into an Excel spreadsheet, use Excel to calculate cash on cash return for thousands of properties simultaneously. That’s still something today that I do as a real estate agent, just make analyzing properties so much faster. And so maybe took me a year and the first one was a house listed at 150. I offered 110 thinking we would negotiate and hey, they accepted 110. We still have that property today and it’s way under rented. It’s 1350 a month, but still off 110,000, it’s well above the 1% rule.

Henry:
That’s super cool too. So you basically made a spreadsheet that told you what price to offer for all these properties in order for it to hit your number. Did you just go down the list, pick your favorites and start making offers?

Lucas:
Yeah. I would just sort the column by, “Hey, what’s the highest cash on cash return that’s on the market currently?” And of course some are going to come up 20, 25% cash on cash return. You look at the pictures and it needs a complete gut. But it gives you a list to look at where you’re not looking at thousands of properties, you’re looking at five or 10 and spending your time focusing on the ones that are most likely to work for

Henry:
You.This strategy’s so much easier now with AI. Literally anyone can do this now. You can scrape the MLS or have your agent send you a bunch of listings and then you can just have AI put it into a spreadsheet, use some basic rental knowledge on what you think the rents would be and calculate cash on cash return for all the deals that are on the market and have it literally tell you this is the price you would need to pay for this to work and you could just start submitting offers. You can do this today.

Lucas:
Yeah. So speaking of AI, I’ve built a tool as well that will analyze the micro environment of your specific town and neighborhood. I live in a city with 5,000 people and you can even specifically target neighborhoods and everything like that now with AI.

Henry:
Okay. Tell me what that means though for normal people talk. What does the tool do?

Lucas:
That means now you can analyze news articles, anything that would affect the market value in your specific town, and then maybe there’s specific news where something, a new business is going to go in close to a specific neighborhood. And so you know over the next five years it’s going to increase 15% or 20% in that neighborhood. Now you can find those 15% cash on cash returns in that neighborhood and get the appreciation simultaneously.

Henry:
That’s really cool. Let’s put a pin in it because I want to get back to the story, but that’s super cool. And of course you did something like that because why wouldn’t you? All right, so you did that first 15% cash on cash return deal. What year was that?

Lucas:
That was 2019.

Henry:
That wasn’t that long ago. And so did you just ramp up continuing to do that or how did you go from there to where you’re at today?

Lucas:
So I attempted to. This was in rates were under 3%. So I found another one in 2020. I bought that property for 120,000. It rents out for 1,525 per month per day. I continued to look through 2021 until about 2026 earlier this year and just honestly could not find anything that was worth my time to look at. I asked myself, what else can I do if I’m building up this cash pile to buy these 15% cash on cash returns, but there’s none out there, what can I do to hit financial freedom faster so I can pay down debt and deleverage myself? And so for the past four years, I would have a cash pile enough to purchase a house, but if that started to grow and grow, I would use the additional to pay down leverage.

Henry:
I love this conversation. If you are a real estate investor, buying a new property isn’t the only way to help yourself achieve financial freedom. You have a couple of options and I love that you explored this option. You can look inwardly at your portfolio and say, “Yes, I have this property. It cash flows great leveraged if I pay it off. So if I take this $50,000 and I pay off my loan on this asset, what kind of cash on cash return do I get now? What kind of return do I get? And is it better than going and buying a new one?” Because if you’ve got cash flow of, let’s call it $300 a month and you can pay that asset off and now you’ve got unleveraged cash flow of $1,200 a month, that’s a substantial increase. And is that return higher than if you just go buy another leveraged house and add it to your portfolio?
That’s the math you get to do. Another option is maybe you can pivot a strategy, take a long term and make it a short term if it makes sense. I guess the point I’m trying to make is you don’t have to go buy another property, consider your current portfolio. Can you pay for something either paying down the asset, remodeling a kitchen, adding a bedroom? Can you add money to your current asset to increase the rents and will that produce a higher cash on cash return than buying a new asset or just paying something down? Because paying something down not only gives you more cashflow, but it gives you less stress. So that’s my favorite part about it. So then what do you do? Are you just going to focus on paying off deals now or is there something else you’re working on?

Lucas:
No. So probably three years ago, my poor wife was so patient with me for the past 10 years, moving her into a different place, having half the house under construction. And so I told her, “Hey, at some point we’re going to have to buy the house that we want to live in for a longer period of time.” And this is your seasoning as you go through your investor life cycle, right? In the beginning, you’re looking for anything that you can do. You’re willing to live right next to tenants. And once you’ve done that five or six times, you’ve got to be making some progress within yourself and within your family as well. So we found 66 acres out in the country where we live here and we decided, hey, we were going to clear a small section and build our dream house on there. So it took me about a year to clear about four acres, get all my permits and stuff, and that’s where I’m here now.

Henry:
Oh, wow. So you found wooded acreage.

Lucas:
Exactly.

Henry:
What did 66 acres cost?

Lucas:
378.

Henry:
378. How long ago did you start that purchase?

Lucas:
So that was in 2022 is when I purchased that property. And throughout 2022, I cleared the… It was about four acres of smaller trees that I had to clear for the house and continued to save up to have enough for a down payment to actually build the house that we wanted to live in for the rest of our life.

Henry:
I’ve got tons of questions because I’m doing something very similar, and I’m going to ask you some of those questions right after this break. All right, we’re back on the BiggerPockets podcast. I am with investor Lucas Teague, and he has been sharing his investor journey starting at a young age back in 2013, and now he has told us he purchased 66 acres, cleared out about four to five acres, and has built a home on that land. I have lots of questions because this is kind of a popular concept right now. I just bought 20 acres. I’m going to build a house on it. I’m excited about it. So how did you purchase this land? Because there’s several ways to do this. I know some people buy the land and get a loan for the land and building the house all as one, but you had to buy land, clear land, there’s site work, there’s utility work.
What did you have to research, and then how long did the process take between finding the property and then being able to start a build?

Lucas:
So it probably took us two or three years to actually find the property. And the reason we signed up for this one was it was right next to where my parents lived at the time. And my father was sick at the time and didn’t have much time left, and so I wanted to be close to family when that time were to come. And so my parents owned 68 acres to the north, and this property came up just to the south of that at 66 acres. I mean, it came up for sale. I did a little bit of research. Thankfully, it’s not overly difficult to get permits in our area. It’s not easy, but we’re probably right there in the middle. So there’s some utility work that you’ve got to do. There’s some elevation profile. There’s floodplains you’ve got to look at. Mistake that I made, there’s no internet access out where I live, there’s no fiber.
So I’m calling in from Starlink here, which saved me. So there’s a little bit of homework that you need to do before you purchase something like that.

Henry:
And did you use one loan for all of it or did you have to do this all separately?

Lucas:
No. I stayed pretty conservative. I put probably 50% down payments on the land. I did a specific land loan on a 15-year fixed at 3.7%, and that was back in 2022. And then I waited about another year. I got a construction loan to build the primary residence, which we finished construction of that in June of 2023. Since then, I’ve spent three years of just paying that property off. So now essentially, we’re debt free with our primary residence and our land, and so our monthly basis of what we need to make is fairly low.

Henry:
That’s really cool, because there’s a lot of different ways to A, purchase land and to B, build on that land. Not only are there combined loans like I talked about, so for those that are listening, you can get one loan that will allow you to purchase the land and build the house. Now you have to have done a lot of research on the front side because you need to know who your builder are. You got to have your plans, right? But a bank can loan you everything to do this, or you can go the route like I went and like Lucas went, which is to go buy the land first, and then a lot of banks will let you leverage the land once you own it as your down payment so you don’t have to put money down for the construction loan. So talk to the banks and find out what products they have that can help you do something like this.
I also hear that there’s all kinds of grants and programs to help people take raw land and develop something on that land. It just depends on what it is that you want to develop on what programs that are available to you. Did you look into anything like that?

Lucas:
I did, and that’s something that I’ve hardly ever heard discussed anywhere on any real estate podcast. So if you own raw land in most of the United States, we have an issue where invasive species like bush honeysuckle, espediza, automolive, those invasive species seeds are coming in from, it could be China or Russia or Australia, things that are not native here to the United States. So our government has funding where they create a pool of funds to give to landowners to eradicate those invasive species on the property,
Which was something I have never heard anywhere. And so I’m doing some research, “Hey, I’ve got these 66 acres. Do I want to timber this? No, not really. I don’t want them destroying the forest. Well, what else can I do?” And so I stumbled across this. It’s United States Department of Agriculture and then the subdivision Natural Resource Conservation Service, and they will essentially come out and look at your land, see the level of invasive species that you have on the property, and then assign a budget for your property to get those invasive species removed. It’s a one-time grant that you’ll get usually over three to five years, depending on how invasive the species are at your property. In my specific case, they gave us about a thousand dollars an acre over the course of three years, so about 66,000. We just finished that contract about three months ago or so, and yeah, super, super easy.

Henry:
So they just gave you a thousand dollars an acre. Now, you had to go do the work to eradicate the invasive species of plant. What does it cost you to do that versus what they’re giving you?

Lucas:
In my specific situation, the levels were so high where I subcontracted it out to a group of folks, they would come out here, do the work for me, and so we basically split the money fifty fifty. I paid them, and then I kept the rest as well.

Henry:
That’s so cool. I am absolutely researching this the second we got off this podcast. That’s really cool. So how did you even stumble across that?

Lucas:
Just researching. I mean, I have the 66 acres and I wanted it to produce some cash flow just like a rental property would. And really, am I going to raise farm animals? Probably not. That’s not my skillset. I could do a timber harvest. Can I let somebody else use the land maybe for hunting? I wasn’t really comfortable with any of those things. So I just kept researching, “Hey, you can use AI now too. Hey, I’ve got 66 acres. What kind of ideas do you have for me to make money from this where it’s not too disruptive to my lifestyle?” I mean, sure enough, there it was. And honestly, it’s a great program. Three years later, our forest is so much healthier. We have 99% native species out here. The birds, the turkeys, all of the deer, the wildlife are happier because there’s more calorically dense food out there, and so it’s really a good program.

Henry:
Well, Lucas, this has been really fun. What a cool story of how to use real estate to supplement your lifestyle, right? Not everybody needs to start investing and retire in a few years, but you can still build a pretty cool life and a pretty cool lifestyle using real estate and keeping your job. I love that you’ve kind of talked us through how you did that. So before we get out of here, a couple of things. Can you tell us a little bit about where you stand today as an investor, what’s your portfolio look like?

Lucas:
So today we have three rental properties and we’ve got our primary residence on the 66 acres, which is paid off. And so complexity started to enter my life at some point, and I decided to simplify. And so we have a very simple portfolio that covers all of our family’s basic needs. I still continue to work my W-2 job for different reasons than what I did 12 years ago, but now I’ve shifted into a different phase of it’s not as much about me and my family. It’s about what I can give back to my community, what I can give back to other families. So I’ve been able to donate very large sums of money to local charities and families and things like that. I’m giving a house away to a family member that needs it as well, and so I’m moving into an all new chapter of life here.

Henry:
I love that. I love that more than anything. I’m just truly a believer in that. We are chosen to be stewards of wealth. When I hear stories all the time of people who’ve amassed wealth and lost it, I always see people who were selfish with it, but people who have philanthropic ambitions or who are using it in good ways always seem to continue to find more, and I don’t think that that’s a coincidence. So that’s really cool that you’re doing that, and it’s really cool that you’re able to do that all through buying a couple of properties back in 2013. That’s really, really fun. All right. So earlier in the show, you were talking about this tool you built with AI to help you analyze neighborhoods. Can you give us a little more detail on that?

Lucas:
We’re now in the generation of AI, and it is such a powerful tool. Hey, 10 years ago, prices were significantly lower than what they are now, but there was not tools like this that existed and made it so easy for the average person, and you don’t even have to be an expert. You can type into ChatGPT or Claude or Grok or whichever app that you’re using, and you can ask any series of questions and will make your life so much easier. But one specific thing that I do for my real estate clients and from an investing lens is in my specific market, there’s maybe 100,000 people, and there’s businesses going in, there’s new neighborhoods going in, there’s so much stuff that’s going on just in my micro economic circle and something you can use AI for, you can have it analyze all of the local news that’s going on in your specific area, have it overlay those news articles with a specific map of your area, and then chart out what’s the next five years going to look like?
What’s the next 10 years going to look like? If a new business goes in that’s hires 5,000 people, what that’s going to do to the property values? There’s some news that happens to neighborhoods where the prices are probably going to go down 10%, maybe a new neighborhood’s going in and prices are going to raise Based off that new neighborhood or shrink. If a business is going in, there’s going to be more jobs most likely. And so probably property values in that area are going to increase. And you can use AI to analyze that massive data set, overlay it with the map of your area. And now you can even target specific neighborhoods that have a higher probability of having more appreciation than what the normal house would in your town.

Henry:
That’s pretty cool. How long have you been using this tool?

Lucas:
Probably a year now. And I just purchased my first property almost using exclusively AI. I trended the neighborhood. I found a specific area that’s probably going to appreciate 20% in value over the next five years. Then I overlaid that with my 15% cash on cash return AI tool. And sure enough, hey, a property came up. I went and looked at it in pretty good shape. So yeah, we’re already seeing results in roughly six months.

Henry:
Have you seen results that match the research?

Lucas:
Probably not on the appreciation side yet. I would say on the cash on cash return side, yes, but I’d say too soon to tell on the appreciation aspect.

Henry:
It is rare to find great cashflow and great appreciation. And you’re using technology to help you be more strategic to where you have a higher probability of getting both, which is super smart. Thank you for sharing that. All right, Lucas, thank you so much for joining us on the BiggerPockets Podcast. Is there a place where people can find out more about you or find you?

Lucas:
Yeah, you can find me on biggerpockets.com or you can find me on Facebook, Lucas T.

Henry:
Awesome. And thank you everyone for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. This was super cool. I’ve got some homework I’m going to go do based on what I learned from Lucas. Hopefully you do too. As always, we’ll see everybody on the next episode.

 

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This Agency CEO Says the ‘Spice Girls’ Strategy Is How You Win Influencer Marketing



According to Whaler co-CEO Jo Cronk, diversifying your marketing portfolio with multiple personalities is the ultimate defense against algorithm changes and influencer risk.

10% Off Visa eGiftcards (Code VISATREAT)


Update 10/18/26: VISATREAT working again, doesn’t show on portals though.

Update 10/14/26: New code: VISATREAT for 10% off virtual Visa gift cards. Limit 2. Valid through 10/15/26. This code is showing on Rakuten, and should stack with portals. (ht reader bonusvault) Code OKTOBERFUN is now expired.

Update 10/5/26: Working again but not currently showing on portals.

Update 10/1/26: Working again. 

The Offer

Direct link to offer (our affiliate link)

  • Giftcards.com is offering 10% off Virtual Visa Giftcards with promo code OKTOBERFUN (code doesn’t show on landing page but still works).

Our Verdict

Shows up on Rakuten as well so can get an additional 4x back there. You can also get 5% back via Chase Offer. Other promotions still live:

Hat tip to reader MrCredit

‘They may think that they can escape scrutiny’: Singapore cracks down on Indonesian company smog



Singapore will issue preventive notices to three more Indonesian companies to tackle and prevent forest fires in Kalimantan province that may have sent smoke across the border, the National Environment Agency said Monday.

This brings to 10 the number of Indonesian companies that Singapore is targeting under its Transboundary Haze Pollution Act.

The National Environment Agency said in a statement that it sent preventive measure notices last Friday to seven Indonesian agroforestry companies linked to fires in Sumatra province. Since then, it said that there were indications that smoke from fires in the Kalimantan province on lands held via concessions under three additional companies in Indonesia could also have moved to Singapore.

As such, it said it would also send preventive measure notices to the three companies in Kalimantan: PT Buana Megatama Jaya, PT Mananjung Hayak and PT Baratama Putra Perkasa.

The notices require the companies to deploy firefighting personnel to extinguish fires or prevent them from spreading on land they own or occupy, the agency said in a statement. They must also stop any ongoing burning activities, refrain from starting new ones and submit action plans detailing measures to put out fires and prevent them from recurring.

The earlier seven companies are pulpwood supplier PT Bumi Andalas Permai, PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, PT Paramitra Mulia Langgeng, PT Sumatera Alam Anugerah, PT SBA Wood Industries, PT Hutan Lestari Raya and PT Bangkanesia.

The notices don’t amount to a finding that the companies are legally responsible for the haze in Singapore. But they allow prosecution and financial penalties if the legal requirements for an offense are met.

Forest and land fires in Indonesia have sent thick haze across neighbouring Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia, pushing air pollution to unhealthy and hazardous levels in some areas, disrupting daily life and prompting school closures and public health measures. The smoke has also turned skies orange in parts of Kalimantan.

Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry has recorded more than 2,020 square kilometers (780 square miles) of burned land between January and July, while the Nusantara Atlas project estimated that nearly 8,960 square kilometers (3,460 square miles) had burned by the end of August.

Singapore Coordinating Minister for National Security K. Shanmugam said that the Singapore Exchange has also sought information from seven Singapore-listed agricultural companies about their operations and possible links to fires in Indonesia that have caused haze in the country.

He said that the smog was “entirely preventable” and warned companies linked to the fires that they shouldn’t think that they can get away from taking responsibility. He reiterated that the problem was “not simply an act of nature,” but one driven by companies pursuing profits.

“They may think that it is hard to get evidence, and that they may think that they can escape scrutiny. But they should not underestimate the Singapore government’s determination to act,” he said in remarks carried by Singapore broadcaster CNA.

“If companies refuse to cooperate, regardless of whether they have a presence in Singapore or do not have a presence in Singapore, we will use every legal and regulatory lever at our disposal to exert pressure where it matters, including on their bottom lines, including on their access to financing, and including on their standing with investors.”

Shanmugam said that it was “disappointing” that an Indonesian official had belittled the crisis by saying Singapore gets oxygen from Indonesian forests where there is no haze. He said that such comments were inappropriate when people across the region are suffering from the haze because of the “bad behavior” of companies breaching regulations in Indonesia.

He welcomed the efforts of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto to tackle the fires, including accepting foreign assistance to put out the flames. He noted that Prabowo has replaced the head of the agency responsible for firefighting and disaster relief, put in place directives against slash-and-burn practices on peatland, and prioritized fire prevention as a long-term solution.

Indonesia’s top security minister, Dudung Abdurachman, said on Monday that the government wouldn’t declare the forest fires a national disaster for now, insisting that the country remained capable of handling the crisis, despite mounting haze concerns in neighboring countries.

Paid Physician Surveys: What They Actually Pay, and Where They Fit



This post is sponsored by InCrowd. The framing and opinions are ours, as always. Links marked as partner links support PIMD at no cost to you.


A while back a physician friend of mine forwarded me an email and asked, “Is this legit or not?”

It was an invitation to a paid physician survey. Fifteen minutes, a few hundred dollars, questions about how he chooses between two medications for a condition he treats every day.

He wasn’t asking whether he could spare fifteen minutes. He was asking whether it was worth his attention, and whether there was a catch.

That’s the right question. So let’s think it through.

I’ll tell you up front: this is not passive income. It won’t replace a shift. But it is one of the lowest-friction ways I know for a physician to earn something from judgment they already have, in time they already have. For some of you that’s exactly the point. For others, it’s a first, low-risk step into earning outside the hospital.

Here’s how it works, what it pays, and where it fits.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Any investment involves risk, and you should consult your financial advisor, attorney, or CPA before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author and associated entities disclaim any liability for loss incurred as a result of the use of this material or its content.

If time is what’s stopping you from building income beyond medicine, the Leverage & Growth Accelerator Community was built for you.

It’s a physician-only community with monthly expert sessions, real peer discussions, and on-demand access that fits your schedule.

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What paid healthcare market research actually is

Pharmaceutical, device, and life sciences companies spend heavily to understand how clinicians think. Which drug you reach for first and why. What makes you abandon a device. What a new diagnostic would need to do before you’d trust it.

They can’t get that from a chart review. They need a physician to tell them. So they pay for it.

Market research firms like InCrowd sit in the middle. They recruit a panel of verified physicians, send out surveys when a study matches your specialty and practice setting, and pay an honorarium for each one you complete.

Your responses are anonymized. The company asking the questions gets your answers, not your name, and your personal information is never shared with them. You’re answering as a clinician, not as a spokesperson.

This isn’t new. Physicians have been doing paid market research for decades. What’s changed is that it moved online and got short enough to do between patients.

What it pays and how long it takes

This is the part the typical vendor post leaves vague, so let’s not.

Most InCrowd surveys are what they call micro-surveys: 5 to 10 minutes, built to be done on your phone. Some run as short as 2 to 5 minutes. Publicly reported honoraria for the short ones land around 10 to 20 dollars, with longer surveys paying 25 to 200 dollars or more depending on length and specialty. InCrowd also runs 15 to 60 minute interviews, which pay more and happen at a time you pick.

One thing people get wrong: this is taxable income whether or not a 1099 shows up at year end.

How often you get invited depends on your specialty. Oncology, rheumatology, dermatology, and psychiatry get the most InCrowd surveys, because that’s where pharma is spending. Family medicine, hospital medicine, radiology, NPs, and PAs qualify too, but expect fewer invitations. That’s not a flaw in the platform. It’s where the research dollars are.

What does that add up to? Physicians who treat surveys as a routine, across several panels, report 1,000 to 2,000 dollars a month. On InCrowd alone, in a well-studied specialty, a few hundred a month is a fair expectation. In primary care, less. Nobody is retiring on this. But it’s real money for real expertise, and it compounds with the next section.

Where this fits

I’ve spent years telling physicians the goal is income that doesn’t depend on your hands. Surveys are the opposite of that. Every dollar requires your time.

So why write about it at all?

Because not every physician reading this is ready to buy a rental or write a check into a fund. Some of you are still in the stage of proving to yourself that money can come from somewhere other than an employer’s paycheck. That first dollar earned on your own terms changes something. It did for me.

The other reason is the math. Run it the way you’d run any opportunity.

If a survey pays 20 dollars for 5 minutes, that’s an effective rate of 240 dollars an hour. Most physicians don’t earn that in clinic. If it pays 20 dollars for 25 minutes, that’s under 50 an hour, and you should probably pass.

That’s the discipline. Set a floor for what your time is worth. Take the surveys that clear it. Decline the ones that don’t. The platform lets you see the honorarium and the estimated time before you commit, so the decision takes five seconds.

Done that way, surveys are not a side hustle. They’re a filter you apply to your inbox a few times a week.

And here’s the part I keep coming back to. The best kind of extra income is the kind that doesn’t cost you any extra time.

I’ve talked about this before with real estate and with investing in general. You want money working while you’re doing something else. Surveys are a smaller version of the same idea. A 5 minute survey fits in time that was already going to disappear. Waiting in line for coffee. Sitting in the barber’s chair. The last twenty minutes of your kid’s soccer practice. The dog’s third stop on the same bush.

That’s the test I’d apply. If a survey would pull you away from your kids or a shift to do it, skip it. If it fits inside time you were already going to spend waiting, it’s close to free money, and it never shows up on your calendar.

The part nobody mentions: it’s 1099 income

Here’s what I think most survey posts miss, and it’s the reason I’d take this more seriously than the dollar amounts suggest.

Survey honoraria are paid to you as an independent contractor. That’s 1099 income, not W-2.

If you’re an employed physician with no other self-employment income, this may be the first self-employment income you’ve ever had. That matters, because self-employment income is what opens the door to a solo 401(k) or SEP-IRA.

The contribution limits scale with the income, so a few thousand dollars of survey money won’t let you shelter a huge amount. But the account itself, once open, is the same account you’ll use when the consulting work, the expert witness fees, or the speaking income shows up later. Opening it early means it’s ready.

Two caveats. First, self-employment income also means self-employment tax, so the net is smaller than the gross. Second, the rules here have edges, and your situation may have more of them. Confirm with your CPA before you count on any of this.

But the principle holds. Small 1099 income can unlock accounts that W-2 income can’t. That’s a lever most employed physicians never pull.

What to know before you sign up

A few things I’d want to know before putting my name on a panel.

You will get screened out. Many surveys open with qualifying questions. If your practice doesn’t match what the study needs, you’re out. InCrowd pays a dollar for a screen-out, which is more than most panels do, but it’s not the honorarium you clicked for. It’s normal. Budget for it mentally and it stops being annoying.

Invitations are uneven. Some weeks bring several. Some bring none. Volume tracks your specialty and whatever studies are in the field that month. Don’t build a budget around it.

Check your employment contract. Most outside-activity clauses allow this, but some academic and health system contracts require you to report outside income or get approval first. Read the clause before you register, not after.

Academic physicians: check your COI policy. Market research honoraria are typically paid by a research firm, not a manufacturer, and blinded studies are generally not reported under the Sunshine Act. But your institution may still want it disclosed. Ask.

Keep patient information out of it. You’re asked about your practice patterns and opinions. Never about a specific patient. If a survey ever drifts that way, close it.

None of these are reasons not to do it. They’re the things I’d want a friend to tell me before I started.


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How to get started

If you want to try it, InCrowd is the platform we’ve partnered with for this post. It’s part of Konovo, one of the larger healthcare market research groups, and the panel is big enough that invitations actually show up. It’s open to physicians, NPs, PAs, and pharmacists in the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU.

Registration takes a few minutes. You’ll verify your credentials, describe your specialty and practice setting, and then invitations arrive by email as studies match your profile. You see the honorarium and the estimated time before you open each one.

My suggestion: register, set your hourly floor, and give it 60 days. Take what clears the bar. Then decide whether it earns a permanent place in your routine or whether it was a useful experiment that pointed you toward something bigger.

Either answer is fine. The point was never the surveys. It was finding out what your judgment is worth outside the exam room, and what you’d do with the first dollars that proved it.

What would you do with yours?

P.S. If you’re curious whether this is worth your time, the fastest way to find out is to register with InCrowd (partner link) and take one survey. Ten minutes will tell you more than this post did.


Were these helpful in any way? Make sure to sign up for the newsletter and join the Passive Income Docs Facebook Group for more physician-tailored content.

Peter Kim, MD is the founder of Passive Income MD, the creator of Passive Real Estate Academy, and offers weekly education through his Monday podcast, the Passive Income MD Podcast. Join our community at the Passive Income Doc Facebook Group.


Disclaimer: I am not a CPA, attorney, or financial advisor. The information in this post is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as tax, legal, or financial advice. Please consult a qualified professional about your specific situation before making any decisions.

Further Reading



Mortgage Rate Relief Lasts All of One Day


Well that didn’t take long.

One day after mortgage rates finally caught a much-needed break, bond yields are right back at new 52-week highs.

The bellwether 10-year yield briefly touched 5.35% this morning, the highest level since 2002.

That means 30-year fixed mortgage rates will probably give back yesterday’s gains and possibly more.

I expect rates to climb back to around 7.60% today, which puts us back at the high end of the recent range.

Oil Is Back Above $100 (And Everyone’s Bonds Keep Selling Off)

Yesterday, I pointed to easing oil prices as the reason for the rare down day in mortgage rates.

Well, that was yesterday. Oil is back up today. Brent crude is trading above $100 a barrel again after Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and more incidents in the Strait of Hormuz.

There’s also a tropical storm headed for the Gulf Coast, and Chevron is reportedly pulling some nonessential workers off its offshore platforms.

None of this is great for inflation, which means none of it is helpful for bonds or mortgage rates.

But oil is just one part of the story.

Bond yields are climbing all over the world, with the UK 10-year gilt back above 5.4% and French yields climbing higher again too.

Meanwhile, the 10-year here briefly jumped above 5.36% to a new 52-week high.

Stocks are hurting too. The Dow was down more than 500 points this morning, a day after the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed at record highs.

The 10-Year Auction and Fed Minutes Could Make Things Even Worse

There are two big events this afternoon that could push bond yields even higher.

First, the Treasury is selling $39 billion in 10-year notes at 1pm EST.

Investors have already been nervous about demand for U.S. debt, so a weak showing here would signal they demand an even larger premium to hold it.

Then later at 2pm EST the Fed releases the minutes from its September meeting.

That’s when it raised its own rate a quarter point to a range of 3.75%-4.00%, the first hike since 2023.

What everyone wants to know is whether that was a one-and-done move or the first of what could be several.

Fed chair Kevin Warsh came off hawkish in September, though the data since has been softer, with a weak jobs report and a cooler-than-expected PCE reading last week.

At last glance, traders see ~20% chance of another hike this month.

Keep in mind the Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates. But the expectation of more hikes can push bond yields higher, and mortgage rates often front-run those expectations.

Home Sellers Are Cutting Prices, But Higher Mortgage Rates Offset the Benefit

Redfin recently said that the share of sellers cutting their asking prices hit a new record for this time of year.

That sounds like a sliver of good news for prospective home buyers. And obviously it is to some degree.

But the 30-year fixed averaged 7.28% in last week’s Freddie Mac survey, the highest average since November 2023 and well above the 6.34% seen a year earlier.

And as I always say, it takes about an 11% drop in home prices to match a 1% drop in mortgage rates.

So while prices might be lower in the face of higher rates, the math probably still works against the buyer unless the price drop is massive.

In addition, I’ve argued we’re just seeing another round of mortgage rate lock-in as sellers simply decide not to list. Or de-list if they’re already on the market.

Mortgage applications have now fallen five weeks in a row, and I don’t see that changing unless bond yields stop climbing.

We’ve gone from sub-6% in early March to 7.60% in about seven months. That’s painful.

If today’s bond auction goes badly and 5.35% breaks, a re-test of 8% mortgage rates in the next month or two isn’t off the table.

Colin Robertson
Latest posts by Colin Robertson (see all)

Market Crash: Indian Equity OVER? 😱



This is the RIGHT time to exit from the Indian stock market?

The equity market has fallen 13% so far this year. In fact, it has been continuously underperforming for the past 2 years now, leading to heavy losses for investors. But, does it mean that it is only the asset which is at fault?

See, all assets, be it equity, gold, real estate, go through cycles.
For example, in CY 2021 Gold gave a negative return of 2.1%, however the same asset rose to as high as 75.9% in CY 2025 and has given a YTD return of about 13%.
Does this move make Gold a good or bad asset?

The cyclicity holds true for Equity as well.
As a prudent Investor your job should be to create a diversified portfolio, which can handle the pressure when one asset class goes through a bad time.
And that is the whole point of diversification.

Link for the full report:

source

California Test Scores Rise Again, But Only 38% Of Students Are Proficient In Math


Key Points

  • California’s 2025-26 test results show 49.3% of students proficient in English and 38.4% in math, both still below 2018-19 levels.
  • Only 31.9% of high school juniors scored proficient in math, and Cal State uses those junior-year scores to place admitted freshmen.
  • Black and Latino students posted the largest gains, but only 21.5% of Black students and 27% of Latino students are proficient in math.

California released its 2025-26 statewide test results on October 15, 2026, and the gains were small again. Just 49.3% of students scored proficient or advanced in English language arts, up 0.5 percentage points from last year. Math proficiency rose 1.1 points to 38.4%, a pace that tracks the national picture after U.S. teens ranked 23rd in math on a 2026 global exam.

Both scores still trail pre-pandemic results. In 2018-19, 50.87% of California students met the English standard and 39.73% met the math standard. The state now sits 1.6% below that English mark and 1.4% below it in math.

Those gaps matter more because grade inflation has made report cards a weaker signal of readiness.

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Why It Matters

Math is the weak spot, and the statewide CAASPP results database shows how wide the gap is. About 38.2% of California students scored at the lowest “minimal” level in math, nearly the same share that reached proficient or advanced.

That gap shows up on campus, where UC San Diego’s remedial math class filled up for fall 2026 with 175 students on waitlists.

Weak math skills carry a large price tag for families. That UC San Diego course costs about $1,762 in tuition and fees and earns no credit toward a degree. Each delayed quarter at UC San Diego adds about $6,608 in tuition and fees, and those costs feed the average student loan debt graduates carry.

When you push that into real life, it’s not a shock why so many young adults don’t understand how a lot of the basics of personal finance work in their own lives.

How Did California Students Score By Grade In 2026?

Third graders made no progress in reading, and high school juniors are still behind in math. The table below compares 2025-26 results with last year and with 2018-19. Those 2018-19 scores were the last ones posted before COVID-19 and before the University of California went test-optional.

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California Students Scoring Proficient Or Advanced, 2018-19 Vs. 2025-26
Test 2018-19 2024-25 2025-26
All Grades: English 50.9% 48.8% 49.3%
All Grades: Math 39.7% 37.3% 38.4%
Grade 3: English 48.5% 44.2% 44.1%
Grade 3: Math 50.2% 46.3% 47.0%
Grade 11: English 57.3% 57.0% 57.4%
Grade 11: Math 32.2% 30.5% 31.9%
Source: California Department of Education. The College Investor.

Third-grade English proficiency held at 44.1%, compared with 44.2% last year and 48.5% in 2018-19. Third-grade math rose to 47.0% but remains more than 3 points below its pre-pandemic level. Math builds on itself, and the high school math sequence colleges prefer depends on skills students master during elementary school.

The 11th-grade results matter most for college costs. Only 31.9% of juniors scored proficient or advanced in math, below the 32.2% posted in 2018-19. Junior English scores reached 57.4% and edged past their pre-pandemic level, according to the state’s grade 11 results.

Cal State uses these junior-year scores to place admitted freshmen across the 22 campuses that now offer three-year bachelor’s degrees.

Under the state’s Early Assessment Program, juniors who score “advanced” can start in college-level English or math at a CSU campus. Students who score “developing” or “minimal” go into supported college-level courses unless SAT, ACT, or other measures exempt them.

Roughly 68% of California juniors fell short of proficient in math. Since an SAT score can exempt students from supported courses, SAT prep gives those juniors a second route into standard college-level math.

Which Student Groups Gained The Most?

Black and Latino students posted the largest gains, but wide gaps remain. EdSource reported that 21.5% of Black students and 27% of Latino students scored proficient in math, compared with 51.4% of white students and 70.5% of Asian students.

About 36% of UC San Diego freshmen are first-generation college students. Most of the school’s remedial math students come from high schools that serve large numbers of low-income and minority families.

Black students gained 1.5% in math and 0.9% in English, reaching 33.7% proficiency in English. Among socioeconomically disadvantaged students, 72.6% did not meet the math standard.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said in the Department of Education release that “our work is far from finished.” Troy Flint of the California School Boards Association went further, telling EdSource the pace of growth is “unacceptable.”

Neither reaction addresses college readiness directly, and we’re seeing how high GPAs and test-optional admissions can mask weak math skills.

What Should College-Bound Families Do Now?

Juniors in California should release their 11th-grade scores to Cal State. The Early Assessment Program requires students to authorize the release of their English and math results separately, and the scores are used only for placement after admission.

Juniors who score “proficient” must still pass an approved year-long senior English or math course with a C- or better. Put the score release on your college application checklist for junior year.

Seniors who scored “developing” or “minimal” can still avoid a catch-up course with strong SAT or ACT results or high school coursework. Families can use the College Investor ROI calculator to see how an extra term of tuition changes the payoff of a degree.

Parents of younger students can look up their own school and district results in the state database, then compare them with the statewide figures above.

How This Connects

California’s scores land in the middle of a fight over college admissions testing. The University of California went test-optional in 2020, and a group of 1,427 faculty members has since pushed UC to restore the SAT for STEM applicants. The 2026 scores continue to give that push more data, since fewer than one in three juniors can show math proficiency on the state test.

Families of high achieving students are already adjusting. Students are sending SAT scores again even though most colleges don’t require them, and a growing list of schools has brought back SAT and ACT requirements for 2027.

What’s Next

This year’s score reports use new labels: “proficient” and “advanced” replace “standard met” and “standard exceeded.” The state says only the reporting labels and descriptions changed, so the 2026 scores compare directly with past years.

The 2026-27 tests will be the first taken by students who went through California’s new K-2 reading screening, according to EdSource. Separately, the UC faculty push to restore the SAT heads to an Academic Senate recommendation due by June 2027.

Editor: Colin Graves

The post California Test Scores Rise Again, But Only 38% Of Students Are Proficient In Math appeared first on The College Investor.

It is time for a state to take Congress to court



It is time for a state to take Congress to court | Fortune