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$418,000 Of Debt To "Flee Trumps America" | Financial Audit



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3 Best Consumer Staples Stocks to Buy and Hold for Decades


Investors tend not to think of consumer stocks as growth names. These companies often have conservative management, rarely matching the returns of higher-flying growth stocks, and in many cases, pay dividends.

Fortunately, some of these names have a track record of delivering long-term returns and will likely continue to do so. Knowing that, investors can buy these three consumer staples stocks and should earn significant returns by holding them for decades.

Image source: Getty Images.

Constellation Brands

Constellation Brands (STZ 2.56%) is a leading alcohol company that has dealt with internal and external threats. Sales have suffered as consumers across generations have reduced alcohol consumption.

Also, while it distributes America’s No. 1 beer, Modelo, the beer’s ties to Mexico stoked worries about tariff threats. Internally, the company did not foresee the falling consumption patterns and relied too heavily on wine and spirit brands that did not perform well.

However, investors have priced these challenges into the stock, perhaps overly so. That prompted Warren Buffett to invest some of Berkshire Hathaway‘s cash into the stock before he retired, and this was likely a wise decision. Moreover, Constellation has divested some of its underperforming wine and spirit brands.

The divestiture was partially responsible for an 11% sales decline in fiscal 2026 (ended Feb. 28). Nonetheless, it generated $1.8 billion in free cash flow in that fiscal year. That allowed it to repurchase shares and fund its dividend. That payout, which has risen every year since 2015, pays investors $4.12 per share annually, a 2.6% cash return.

Constellation Brands Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-2.56%) $-3.96

Current Price

$150.40

Furthermore, in fiscal 2027, the company forecasts net sales will remain steady at the midpoint. The stock has also risen 15% since the beginning of the year. Considering its P/E ratio of just 16, one could argue that this Warren Buffett stock is absurdly cheap right now.

PepsiCo

Like Constellation, PepsiCo (PEP 0.64%) provides a unique opportunity to investors as it adapts to evolving consumer tastes. Aside from its flagship cola, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Doritos, and Quaker Oats are among the products under its umbrella.

In recent years, consumers have become increasingly leery of sugary drinks and processed foods, leading to a reduction in sales. PepsiCo has responded by changing the ingredients in many of its products and buying some brands associated with healthier offerings, such as Siete Foods.

Its recovery is showing some promising signs. In its fiscal first quarter (ended March 21), net revenue grew by nearly 9%, well above the 2% in fiscal 2025. Also, even though free cash flow was negative $406 million in fiscal Q1, it improved from year-ago levels. Investors should note that the free cash flow was nearly $7.7 billion in fiscal 2025.

That cash repurchased shares and supported its dividend, which has increased for 54 straight years. At $4.69 per share annually, it yields almost 3.7%.

PepsiCo Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.64%) $-1.00

Current Price

$155.29

Analysts forecast a 5% revenue increase in fiscal 2026, indicating its market pivot is working. Furthermore, its stock has risen by almost 10% this year, and at a P/E ratio of 24, it is likely not too late to invest in a probable recovery in PepsiCo stock.

Kimberly-Clark

Similar to PepsiCo, Kimberly-Clark (KMB 2.38%) has built its business around trusted brands. It owns Kleenex, Huggies, Cottonelle, and others. Also, its upcoming acquisition of Kenvue, which was once the consumer health division of Johnson & Johnson, will place more familiar brands like Tylenol and Listerine under its umbrella.

Over the last year, the stock has suffered amid rising input costs, expenses related to a company restructuring, and the $48.7 billion cost of acquiring Kenvue. In that time, the stock lost more than one-fourth of its value.

Kimberly-Clark Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-2.38%) $-2.34

Current Price

$96.10

However, these moves could spark the beginnings of a recovery. In 2025, its net sales fell by 2%. Also, it generated $1.6 billion in free cash flow in that year, down by 35% amid the restructuring.

Share levels remained steady, though it is on track to continue funding the dividend that has risen for 54 consecutive years. At $5.12 per share annually, it yields about 5.1%, enough to pay investors while they wait for a recovery.

Analysts anticipate net sales growth of around 3%. Moreover, its P/E ratio has fallen to 16, a level near multiyear lows. Between that valuation and its high-paying, growing dividend, any positive news could spark a recovery in the stock.

What the Market Knows That WACC Doesn’t


Valuation sits at the heart of strategic decision-making. At its core, it is the trade-off between today’s capital and uncertain future cash flows. Traditionally, companies forecast cash flows and discount them using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), derived from the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). While widely accepted, this framework often fails to reflect the return investors are actually pricing into a company’s shares.

Enter the market implied discount rate (MIDR) — the discount rate that equates expected future cash flows, based on consensus forecasts, to the current stock price. Unlike WACC, MIDR reflects the return investors are implicitly demanding, embedding their assessment of risk, credibility, and future performance.

Deploying MIDR at scale requires solving practical challenges such as filling gaps in analyst models, validating assumptions, extending forecasts, and automating large volumes of inputs. Once addressed, however, MIDR becomes a reliable valuation metric that can be applied consistently across companies and timeframes.

We examine where MIDR and WACC diverge, why intra-sector dispersion is substantial, and how management can use these insights to create value.

Using S&P Capital IQ data, we analyzed every company in the S&P 500 over the last three years. The results show meaningful divergence between MIDR and WACC across sectors.

Starbucks is winning customers back after investing $500 million in workers and stores



Starbucks on Tuesday reported quarterly sales growth in the U.S. that blew past Wall Street’s expectations, and its operations chief credited more staffing in its stores and enhanced employee benefits for the coffee chain’s quickly improving fortunes.

“It really comes from the coffee houses and the partners who empower them, which has been a focal point of this turnaround all along,” Starbucks chief operating officer Mike Grams told Fortune in an exclusive interview after the earnings release. “It’s all led to our coffee houses just simply running more consistently.”

The company said that comparable sales, a metric that strips out the impact of recently opened or closed stores, rose 7.1% in the United States last quarter, the second quarterly increase in a row and well above the 4.5% increase analysts were expecting, according to Consensus Metrix. (Companywide, comparable sales rose 6.1%, while total revenue increased 9% to $9.5 billion.)

Most encouragingly for the company, U.S. store traffic was up again, rising 4.4%, meaning Starbucks continues to win back customers it had lost in recent years because of myriad problems such as long lines for order pickups, inconsistent quality of the items ordered and stores that had eliminated seating or were simply inadequately maintained and uninviting.

To address those in-store problems, under Brian Niccol, the former Chipotle CEO who took Starbucks’ reins in 2024, Starbucks has increased staffing at peak hours, raised wages, and enhanced parental, leave, healthcare and education benefits among other steps.

Some of Starbucks’ moves seem to address complaints the Starbucks Workers United union, which represents about 600 of the company’s 10,000 U.S. stores, has made regarding scheduling and wages. The union and Starbucks agreed last month to return to the bargaining table, with negotiations expected to start soon, the Journal reported. Grams told Fortune that stores, whether unionized or not, are all getting the same treatment regarding scheduling. In a statement to Fortune, union spokesperson Michelle Eisen said there are still workplace problems to solve at the corporation: “The reality of working at Starbucks is that stores are understaffed, and workers struggling to get by, and lack critical on-the-job protections.”

Starbucks said its baristas currently average $30 an hour in total pay and benefits. And that in turn has helped Starbucks execute a turnaround that is gathering steam, according to its executives. Starbucks’ investments had pinched profits in recent quarter, but this last quarter saw profit and sales rise simultaneously for the first time in two years, easing Wall Street’s nerves and sending shares up.

In all, Starbucks has spent $500 million on moves like adding staffing at peak hours to speed up service and make it more accurate. The company has also spent money on increased training for baristas and store upgrades.

Grams said that more staff during the rush periods helps it give green apron partners, as Starbucks calls its employees, more time to correctly read labels on an order, reducing the risk of mistakes. He also said that 95% of employees are getting their preferred schedules and that 98% of available shifts are filled, allowing the coffee store to operate more consistently. The extra staffing has meant more capacity for measures such as having an additional employee taking orders at the register, or more people around to make complicated beverages, or another person around to hand items off to the customer.

In many ways, this focus on staffing is reminiscent of the pay increases Walmart and Target announced starting a decade ago to improve customer service as those retailers reinvented, and the increased staffing we are now seeing at Macy’s that is fueling its comeback. It turns out happier employees who have bought into a transformation or turnaround are good for business.

Another focus of the Starbucks investment has been incentives to retain talent and reduce churn at the store manager level. “Our highest performing coffee houses are far more likely to have leaders who’ve been in the role over a year,” said Grams.

The Seattle-based company also plans to provide bonuses to baristas whose stores meet performance goals, such as sales targets and customer satisfaction. They can earn as much as $300 as a quarterly bonus, or $1,200 for a full year, the company said. 

Also boosting Starbucks’ sales have been menu innovations such as protein-boosted drinks and energy refreshers. Starbucks’ comeback has been anchored by a focus on better service, upgraded stores and new beverages, instead of discounts to restore Starbucks’ standing with customers.

“This isn’t just a turnaround, but a reawakening of what’s made Starbucks exceptional in the first place,” said Grams.  

Ripple Expands Partnership With Bullish


Bullish (NYSE: BLSH), an institutionally focused global digital asset platform and exchange, and Ripple are building upon their existing long time partnership. According to a statement from the two firms, the agreement means extending Bullish’s options markets to Ripple Prime users.

On another note, Ripple and OKX have announced a strategic partnership to bring Ripple USD (RLUSD) to eligible markets on OKX.

The company adds that the integration provides Ripple Prime’s institutional customers direct access to Bullish’s regulated BTC options markets said to be the second-largest by open interest for crypto-settled Bitcoin options. This complements existing connectivity to Bullish’s spot, perpetuals, and dated futures.

Stablecoins such as Ripple USD (RLUSD) can be used to trade options on Bullish.

Chris Tyrer, President of Bullish Exchange, said institutional demand is on the rise and superior tools are required.

Ripple Prime is one of the largest global non-bank prime brokers, offering multi-asset brokerage, clearing, and financing services, clearing over $3 trillion in 2025.

 



Mortgage applications dip as spring buyers push ahead despite higher rates


Purchase applications rose 1% on a seasonally adjusted basis and 2% unadjusted, leaving purchase demand 21% above year-ago levels.

“Mortgage rates increased slightly last week, with the 30-year fixed rate rising to 6.37 percent. The increase in rates led to a 4 percent decline in refinance application volume. However, purchase activity for conventional loans picked up almost 2 percent for the week,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA senior vice president and chief economist.

“More notably, purchase application activity was more than 20 percent above last year’s pace. After a brief pause, in part because of the elevated geopolitical uncertainties, potential homebuyers certainly appear to be moving forward this spring and taking advantage of the more favorable inventory conditions in most parts of the country,” he said.

Refis cool, purchase loans carry the market

The latest figures extended a bumpy spring pattern. Earlier in April, MBA data showed a sharper 10.4% weekly drop in applications as the 30‑year rate touched 6.57%, its highest level since last August, before easing slightly in recent weeks.

Refinances accounted for 42.5% of total applications, down from 44.2% the prior week, while adjustable‑rate mortgages made up 8.3% of activity.

I spent 20 years learning to navigate an industry. Then I built a campaign for the man who’s dismantling it



Late last month, we put up a sign. Thirty feet tall, 230 feet wide, with white letters on a hillside along the 101 in Los Angeles. We built it to film a project. Nobody knew that. All Angelenos saw were enormous letters appearing on a ridge overlooking the freeway, and the city lost its mind. Commuters slowed down to film it. TikTok and Reddit filled up with people trying to figure out what it was. Local TV ran segments. Tom Sandoval from Vanderpump Rules posted on Instagram, worried it would block his Hollywood Hills view. We hadn’t announced a thing.

When we unveiled the campaign that the sign was for, I felt what you’d expect. Elation. Relief. The specific satisfaction of a project landing the way you designed it to land. And then, within hours, something I hadn’t planned on. A thought that sat in my stomach like a stone: I may have just spent months building the most compelling argument for why my own role is about to be fundamentally rewritten.

The sign spelled out the name Billy Boman. Boman is an AI video director based in Stockholm. His clients include Google and Klarna. He works largely alone with AI tools and delivers commercials and videos that compete with those produced by the largest advertising agencies. No massive crews. No seven-figure budgets. No months of work for a 30-second ad.

I spent 20 years building a career around knowing how complex, expensive things get made. At Nestlé and SodaStream, I was the one unlocking the budgets. I knew the agencies, the producers, the line items. I knew what a shoot in Buenos Aires would run versus Cape Town, which editing house in London would deliver on deadline, how to get a project approved before the window closed.

That knowledge — the ability to operate a system built on expensive access and insider relationships — was a big part of what made me valuable.

Watching those letters go up on that hillside, I understood something uncomfortable: the system I spent two decades learning to navigate is being disassembled. Not by a competitor. Not by a market correction. By a guy in Stockholm with a laptop and a point of view.

The anxiety underneath most conversations about AI isn’t really about job titles or org charts. It’s more personal than that. It’s the realization that skills you spent years accumulating — skills that felt like hard-won expertise — can now be approximated by systems that are faster, cheaper, and increasingly good enough. That’s a disorienting thing to reckon with, whether you’re a chief marketing officer, an architect, a journalist, or anyone whose career was built on knowing things that used to be hard to know.

I don’t have a clean answer to what comes next. Anyone who tells you they’ve figured out what their role will be in five years is either lying or selling something. But I find myself more curious than I expected. The question is worth sitting with honestly rather than rushing to some reassuring conclusion that “AI is just a tool.”

Here’s what I keep coming back to. Boman is not valuable because he uses AI. Plenty of people use AI. He’s valuable because he brings a visual sensibility, a creative instinct, and a point of view that no prompt can generate. The technology expands what he can execute. It doesn’t do the thinking for him. The gap between someone who can operate AI tools and someone with genuine judgment is the one that will define who thrives and who gets replaced. That’s true for directors. It’s true for executives. It’s true for the analyst, the copywriter, the paralegal, the consultant. It’s probably true for anyone reading this.

Which is also why we built a real sign. We could have rendered it in AI. A photorealistic hillside, indistinguishable from the real thing. Nobody would have known the difference. But it never would have stopped traffic. It never would have ended up on the evening news. The organic chaos that made this project work required something that existed in the physical world — commuters pulling over, Reddit threads multiplying, news crews showing up. Something people could drive past and wonder about. Knowing when the real thing still matters is judgment too.

The most Hollywood thing you can do right now is convince yourself the old playbook still applies. And it’s not just Hollywood. Across industries — creative, legal, financial, technical — the systems people like myself spent careers mastering are being rewritten. I spent months building a sign to promote someone who represents the end of the world that made my career possible. And yet, something is shifting. Curiosity is no longer just a counterweight to vertigo. It’s beginning to quiet it.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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He Bought 50 Rentals, Then Stopped to Do This (Makes $5,000/Month Per Deal)


Struggling to find cash flow these days? You’re not the only one. Today’s guest built a portfolio of 50 rental properties before margins started getting thin, but one giant pivot changed everything—a pure cash flow play to complement the appreciation and tax benefits from his rentals. If you want cash flow, he’ll show you exactly where to find it!

Today, Devon Kennard makes 12%-14% returns with an investing strategy that doesn’t involve tenants or toilets: private money lending. Better yet, he’s often able to recycle the same capital multiple times per year for even faster returns. And yes, this is real, passive income. Despite scaling to over $12 million in assets under management (AUM), his tech stack allows him to spend just 25 hours a week on his real estate business.

It sounds too good to be true, but with some capital and a few tools, you could start doing private money deals that give you the monthly income you’re unlikely to find with normal rental properties. Devon shows you how to get started with as little as $10,000 and even breaks down a standard deal where he makes $5,000 in monthly cash flow—plus fees upfront!

Jefferson:
At 20 years old, Jefferson Simmons was kicked out of his frat house. The entire property was getting remodeled, and so he and 47 other college kids needed a place to live. After being discouraged by the rentals he saw in his area, he switched his Zillow tab from rent to buy and saw a $250,000 house for sale. But he was a sophomore in college. Could he really buy his first house? Thankfully, he’d been saving up since high school. He pitched his parents to co-sign, and next thing you know, he was renovating a basement to put as many frat friends in there as possible. Suddenly, he was cash flowing $300 a month as a college kid. And now, just nine years later, Jefferson is financially free with a rental portfolio of 17 properties cash flowing $20,000 a month. He even ditched law school to go all in on rentals.
He built partnerships on a low salary and he did everything he could to scale. Today, we’re going to get the full story with exact numbers, strategies, and techniques that Jefferson used to become a rental millionaire before 30 years old, and he’s not done yet. Jefferson, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. Thanks so much for being here.
Dave, thanks for having me. This has been a longtime dream of mine.

Dave:
Well, we’re excited to hear about your story. This should be a lot of fun. So start by just telling us a little bit about yourself. How’d you get involved in real estate in the first place?

Jefferson:
Yeah, I’m a 29-year-old Manhattan, Kansas-based real estate investor. I got involved in real estate kind of just by accident in college. When I was 20 years old, I was in a fraternity here and we had a really generous donor that came in and did a nice renovation through our whole house, but everyone had to move out while that was being done. And so started looking around town for some places for my buddies and I to live because we had to figure it out for one year.

Dave:
And let me guess, no landlord wanted to rent to a bunch of frat guys.

Jefferson:
It was slim pickings out there. And then the ones that were excited to rent to us, I’m not a high maintenance guy, but they were not great options. Okay. So I don’t know what prompted me to do it, but one day I was looking for rentals on Zillow and for whatever reason, I just switched that little toggle from for rent to buy. And I found this house that I could see it was being mismarketed. It was listed as a three bed, three bath, but it was like 2,700 square feet. And I was like, “That doesn’t really make sense.” And saw that it had three non-conforming bedrooms in the basement. And I was like, “Well, I could get a lot of guys in there.” And the extent of my underwriting at the time was the little Zillow estimated payment versus I knew what landlords were trying to charge us in rent.
And I was like, “Well, I can make a lot of money if I got a bunch of my buddies in here.” And so launched into my real estate career with that one, which it was pretty unconventional.

Dave:
Well, the numbers must have been pretty compelling. How much did it say the estimated payment was on this house and what was the purchase price?

Jefferson:
We ended up going back and forth countering seven times and I put the house under contract at $178,000.

Dave:
Wow. Had it been sitting for a while?

Jefferson:
Yeah, about 60 days. And the thing is, so many times realtors will tell you way too much information. And the listing agent told me, she was like, “Yeah, this guy bought this house for his son. They live out of state. The son was on the baseball team here. Now he’s gone. They just need to get rid of it. ” So I knew it was a highly motivated seller. I negotiated so aggressively, largely out of necessity as well, because I had little to no money. It was, this is literally what I can afford to pay for it and there’s no working me up because there was no more money.

Dave:
Well, I mean, I was going to ask you that because very admirable that you decided to do this in college, but even if I had had that thought, I did not have any money when I was in college working for minimum wage. Did you have money or was this kind of like, I’ll find a deal and hopefully figure it out later?

Jefferson:
I had a small nest egg. So I had planned to, my deal with my parents was to pay for half of my education on my own. And so through high school, I cut and sold firewood. I was heavy into 4H and FFA. I did livestock projects up on the farm. And then April, right before I graduated high school, I got a letter in the mail that I was going to get a full academic scholarship to K State.

Dave:
Oh my God, good for you. That’s awesome.

Jefferson:
And so that was a blessing. And then I ended up going to school with a little bit of money in my pocket and it was enough to cover a down payment, but I was working at a restaurant in college and so no bank was going to loan me or give me a mortgage when I was making 200 bucks a week.

Dave:
Yeah, I can imagine that.

Jefferson:
And I went home and I just full disclosure, I pitched it to mom and dad. I was like, “Hey, I made my Excel spreadsheet and a little pro forma for the next 10 years.” I was like, “If I raise rents,” and it’s actually amazing now nine years later how accurate that first document has been. Was it? It’s been a great asset.

Dave:
That’s awesome. Good for you. Well, I guess an econ major got you something there. That’s great.

Jefferson:
That’s right.

Dave:
What were you planning to charge for rent to your buddies?

Jefferson:
My payment’s still the same. So my mortgage every month is about 1,300 bucks.

Dave:
That’s with everything, insurance

Jefferson:
And

Dave:
Taxes too.

Jefferson:
Yep. It’s been a great house. Still own it today. And that first year I rented it for 1,600 and just been steadily increasing that rent over the years. And I have it rented right now through July of 2027 at 3,100 a month now.

Dave:
Wow. That’s awesome. Man, must be making serious cashflow there. Do you do it with a master lease or are you doing the co-living model where you’re signing a bunch of leases right now?

Jefferson:
I do one group and they all put their names on the lease and then it’s followed by a provision that says jointly and severally liable.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jefferson:
Perfect. If one of them leaves, the roommates are on the hook for the rent. I found that they don’t care if they bounce in the middle of the night, if I’m mad at them, but if their buddies are irritated at them and saying, “We got to cover your rent,” they’re a lot more likely to get current.

Dave:
Well, that’s a great way to do it. And congrats. I love the just hustle spirit, just figuring it out because you had to, you had nowhere to live. So did you do anything else while you were in college real estate-wise?

Jefferson:
Yeah. So I closed on that house in May. I immediately took off and had an internship in Washington DC that summer. And that’s when I stumbled on the BiggerPockets podcast. I was sitting there in my office and everyone was at their desks with headphones in. I was like, “What are you guys listening to at work?” And they were like, “Oh, you got to listen to podcasts.” And I had never listened to anything. And I was like, “Well, what are they about? ” And they’re like, “Anything that you’re interested in? ” I’m like, “Well, I just bought a house.” And so I searched real estate podcasts and I’ve been listening to the show for a long time.

Dave:
And at that point, were you thinking about wanting to be in real estate full-time or what were your intentions to do with your econ degree?

Jefferson:
So I was econ and I was pre-law here at K-State. That’s where I was headed. And then I came home and then that junior year, actually the house right next door to the one that I bought, I was over there working on some stuff and I lived on that street as well. The rental that I was renting was there. And there was a sign that went in the yard and it was a duplex and it was going to go on a bank foreclosure auction. And I got very, very excited when I saw that, but I had no money. Absolutely nothing at that point. I mean, I was as broke as you could be. And so that’s where this uncle comes into play. He had a bunch of C class homes in a different city and he was an attorney. He was a big mentor of mine growing up.
He was selling his portfolio at the time, really looking at retirement. And so I hit him up. I said, “Hey, there’s this property that’s right next door to mine. It’s going to go on an auction. I have no money. What do you think if we partnered on it? ” And he was really receptive. He was like, “Hey, I’m trying to get out of the business, but if you need a money partner, we can work something out. ” Yeah, for sure. He came into town, we looked at it together. We couldn’t go in the house. So we’re peeking in the window, best we can see, and it was in pretty rough shape. We went to coffee, we sat down, we were doing as much underwriting as we could. This is what a kitchen’s going to cost. It needs a new roof. And he was going to go on an international trip during the time that it was going to sell.
And so he told me, he’s like, “Hey, you’re not going to be able to talk to me. I think we can afford to spend up to $140,000 on this after we finished our underwriting.” And he’s like, “But it’s up to you. I’m not going to be reachable.”

Dave:
It’s a lot of trust.

Jefferson:
Yeah. So I will not ever forget it. I remember I had a little 125 CC motorcycle in college. So I get done with class, I’m riding home on my motorcycle and I open up my laptop and it’s time to try to buy a house. And I ran that thing up to about a hundred thousand. And the listing agent reached out to me a few days later and said, “Hey, even though it did not meet the bank’s reserve,

Dave:
They

Jefferson:
Wanted to get rid of it.

Dave:
” Really? It sounds like both of these deals, first one you did was kind of opportunistic. You just kind of born out of necessity. Second one, you just saw a sign and did that. But you were also listening to the podcast at that point. Did you have a goal of what you were trying to accomplish with real estate or at this point were you just kind of taking things as they came?

Jefferson:
Yeah. At that point, listening to BiggerPockets, I realized that this could be an avenue to really have a different type of lifestyle. And so yeah, I was really inspired early on. And then also at the time, those deals were cash flowing. And so I was like, okay, what are my bottlenecks? Deals, then money. And so I was really trying to learn as much as I could and then grow as fast as I could after that.

Dave:
Jefferson, want to hear about the second deal and how you’ve grown since then, but we do have to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. As a host, the last thing I want to do or have time for is play accountant and banker, but that’s what I was doing every weekend, flipping between a bunch of apps, bank statements and receipts, trying to sort it all out by property and figuring out if I was actually making any money. Then I found Baselane and it takes all of that off my plate. It’s BiggerPocket’s official banking platform that automatically sorts my transactions, matches receipts, and shows me cashflow for every property. My tax prep is done and my weekends are mine again. Plus, I’m saving a ton of money on banking fees and apps that I don’t need anymore. Get a $100 bonus when you sign up today at baselane.com/bp.
BiggerPockets Pro members also get a free upgrade to Baselane Smart that’s packed with advanced automations and features to save you even more time. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m Dave Meyer here with investor Jefferson Simmons, talking about how he fell into his first property, started to scale with a partnership. How’d that second deal go for you?

Jefferson:
It went well. We did a full renovation on this duplex and it turned out beautiful. We scraped it down to the studs and really had a blank canvas to put this thing back together. And it was a real learning experience for me because I did a light rehab on my first one, but to go all in and do a full scale renovation on my second deal just grew me up really quickly. I found there was a building materials liquidation auction, and so went to an auction- You’re like, “I

Dave:
Won one auction. I’m just going to keep bidding

Jefferson:
That stuff.” Yeah. Well, a new set of cabinets at Home Depot was 15 grand. And so I went to this place and it was a whole set, it wasn’t custom cabinets, but they were brand new, never used. And so I bought two sets of cabinets there for three grand each and little things like that, just always trying to find an edge to save some money and that property turned out beautifully.

Dave:
Renovating a duplex, probably one of the best ways to make cashflow right now.

Jefferson:
Find

Dave:
Something that’s not great or buy a single family, turn it into a duplex, but it can be intimidating, especially if you’ve never done this before. So maybe share with us some things you learned or some things you’d do differently if you were just doing this for the first time.

Jefferson:
Yeah. We hired a general contractor for this project and it was good that he was there because I did not know what I was doing, but I was there every day trying to save money where I could, putting door handles on or if I could paint something, but I got to know a lot of the subcontractors through that project and that was a turning point. I’ve done several rehabs since then and never used a general contractor since just-

Dave:
Really? Okay.

Jefferson:
Yeah. So I just GC all my own projects, but Manhattan’s a town of 50,000 people. There’s three different companies that do tile. There’s a handful of different painters. I know everyone by on a first name basis. And so that was really the biggest turning point of that and allowed me to do large rehabs for a lot better price moving forward.

Dave:
Absolutely. Yeah. Running your own subs is going to save you money if you’re good at it. There’s like a big caveat there. If you’re not, just pay the GC. But yeah, if you’re going to commit yourself to this and know how to do it, it’s a great way to save some money on a rehab. And I assume it worked, you cash flowed it?

Jefferson:
It cashflowed. And same thing on that one, I was renting it for about 2,800 a month and now it rents for like 35, 3,600 a month.

Dave:
That’s awesome.

Jefferson:
Yeah.

Dave:
So at this point, were you like, screw law school, I’m not going to law school? Or what were you thinking that?

Jefferson:
Yeah, that’s this part of the story. So shortly thereafter, I graduate my undergrad and I do take off for law school. And I was fortunate to graduate with my scholarship. I had no student loan debt coming out. That’s awesome. And I remember sitting in my first class down there in law school and they were talking about the bell curve of law school graduates, where you graduated would determine what you’re making. And I started thinking, I was like, “I am not the smartest guy in this room and I’m going to leave here with a hundred thousand plus of student loan debt. I’d much rather have another mortgage that’s going to be paying me back.”

Dave:
Yeah,

Jefferson:
At least

Dave:
It’s

Jefferson:
Good debt. Yeah, that was a big decision and a big pride pill to swallow because everyone in my orbit thought I flunked out, but I was like, “I’m going to go home and chase this real estate dream.” And so I left after one semester. Wow. I was pretty confident. I had done two deals. I had the proof of concept. I was sure the path that I wanted to go down at that point.

Dave:
What was your plan for living though? Because cashflow, great, right? But it sounds like you’re making a couple hundred bucks at most, right? Probably not enough to cover your living expenses. So were you going to wholesale or flip or how did you plan to survive?

Jefferson:
I did graduate my undergrad, so I had a bachelor’s degree. And so I was like, “You know what? Now I’m done with school. It’s time to go get a job.” So I worked as an underwriter at an insurance company for a couple years. But when I was doing that though, I was always looking at deals and decided to go ahead and get my real estate license at the same time. Nice.

Dave:
Okay.

Jefferson:
And so during my second year there, I was showing houses on nights and weekends as well. And so at my insurance job, I was only making $42,000 a year. So two sides of that coin, wasn’t a lot of money to deploy into real estate, but at the same time, it didn’t take that many deals to replace my income.

Dave:
What kind of deals were you looking for at that point for yourself, for your personal portfolio?

Jefferson:
I had big dreams. I would see apartment complexes that were six-plex or 12-plex come up for sale. And that was bigger than anything even my mentor, my uncle had done at that point. And so I really didn’t have anyone to lean on for something like that. So really just drilled into the single family homes. And that’s what I did for several years and got to be really good at that. I had been walking up and down that street all the time doing that second rehab. And one day, the woman that lived across the street from me just knocked on my door and said, “Hey, my husband and I are moving to California to be closer to our kids. Do you fix up houses?” And I was like, “Yeah, I do. I do. I’m a real estate investor now. I will.” And so she goes, “Why don’t you come over and tell me what you give me for my house?” So I walked over there, I looked at it and I offered her 150 and she said, “I have a friend that’s a realtor and they told me it’s worth at least 200.” So they listed it for I think 210 and it sat there for six months.
They dropped the price, dropped the price. And I remember I would come home from work and I would sit in my living room. I had big windows right there and I would just pull the curtains and look to see if people were coming to do showings. And finally they lowered the price down to like 168 and I could see we’re starting to get more traffic on that street. So I approached her again. And if you think, they’ve been sitting on it for six months, still paying the property taxes. They weren’t there anymore. So I reached out to her. I just said, “Hey, my offer of 150 is still good as is. ” And they took that.

Dave:
Nice. That’s great. Well, I think this is a really good example and lesson about how to operate in the market today because we’re going to see more and more of this. They might not take that deal right away. No one who thinks their house is worth 210 is going to accept the 150 at day one. It’s just not going to happen. Sometimes a dose of reality is required because it sounds like you were pretty close on with your first underwriting of what it’s worth. Sellers aren’t always going to be there right away. And it takes a little time of the things sitting on the market. And so if you make these kind of offers and you feel confident that you’re not trying to take advantage of someone, but you’re offering a fair price for what you need to buy it for, you’re going to have to be patient, but things will come around.That’s the benefit of making these offers now because you might not get one for three months or four months, but six months from now you might get a call and then nine months from now you might get another call.
And I just think that this is a really important skill for everyone who wants to be buying right now in 2026 to be working on. So how’d that one work out?

Jefferson:
That one, when I look back, everyone likes to romanticize how hard they worked and everything, but that one, I was doing a lot of it myself and the rehab took me a little over six months. And so at that point when I was still early in my career, it wasn’t like I was rolling in cashflow. I remember every single paycheck I got was just going towards funding the mortgage for an empty house or my rehab because I funded that with my own cash. And so looking back, that one is really sweet. Now it rents great. I have 200,000 all into it and it rents for 2,600 a month now.

Dave:
Amazing.

Jefferson:
So yeah.

Dave:
And it sounds like it sort of became a template for you. Is that right? Something you’re like, “I can do this. I can repeat this model.”

Jefferson:
I fell into what I think a lot of investors do, which is I was like, “I’m going to buy one house every single year and just keep saving up for the next down payment, next down payment.” Then I realized that’s really a limiting belief. I ended up finding a private money partner down the road, which really allowed me to exponentially expand my portfolio after that.

Dave:
Well, good for you, Jefferson. Sounds like you positioned yourself where you can start to scale and really start to go after your bigger real estate goals. We’re going to hear about that right after this quick break. Stick with us. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast here with Jefferson Simmons talking about how he went from sort of accidental landlord into someone with big ambitions in the real estate space. So where we left off, Jefferson, you were talking about how you sort of figured out a model that was working for you and how you might be able to scale up. So tell us how you went from one deal a year, partnering, doing a lot of things yourself into scaling a bigger portfolio.

Jefferson:
So I mentioned I was working two jobs, being a realtor and working at the insurance company, as well as I was doing these projects on my own and then I started to help my uncle with some of his portfolio. He, in 2019, bought a 12 unit. It was our first venture into multiplexes together and he let me sweat in. I got to sweat in 10%. I helped him renovate the entire thing. We went in and did new kitchens and everything, new floors, new paint, and that was a big deal and really allowed me to start making a little bit more money without coming up with a lot of my own money. And that was a three-year rehab. But at that point, I was starting to make a little bit of money and get into 2020, COVID, the stock market crashed and I was realizing, “Hey, I love this real estate angle, but there’s an opportunity to make some good money in the market right now.” And so at that point, changed course for several months and started funneling some cash into the market.

Dave:
Were you buying individual stocks?

Jefferson:
Yeah. I have a high risk tolerance. So I was buying a lot of individual stocks. You’re

Dave:
Trading

Jefferson:
Options? Yeah, I was very speculative. So that was actually when Elon was going to buy Twitter, I think Tesla fell down to $105 a share and I thought that was absolutely ridiculous. I bought a bunch of Tesla call options and the stock doubled in the next six weeks. But I had ridden that wave a little bit at that point and I was like, “Those numbers on the screen can just disappear.” And so right after that trade, I took all my profits out on that and I bought two single family houses cash with those proceeds.

Dave:
Yeah. Yeah. I invested in the stock market. It’s great, but you’re right. It’s just so volatile. I love the idea of just taking profit when you know you had a big win and then

Jefferson:
Putting it

Dave:
Into something a little bit more stable. And were you still working at that time?

Jefferson:
I left the insurance company and I was all in on building my real estate portfolio there for a little while because I was doing a couple active rehabs. I was trying to still source deals and it was a lot at once. And I took maybe about a 10-month hiatus and then I ended up going back to work at the university. I was raising money for the local university here for a few years.

Dave:
Oh, cool. Nice.

Jefferson:
Yeah. And

Dave:
You’re still doing that?

Jefferson:
No, I just left that at the end of last year and now am running my portfolio again full-time.

Dave:
Back full-time, calls you back.

Jefferson:
That’s right. Yeah.

Dave:
So what does your portfolio look like today?

Jefferson:
Yeah, I have now 17 different properties or 17 parcels that’s 39 doors. I own 100% of that except for I’m a minority partner on a 15 unit with a few buddies and all in all, it’s around $20,000 a month of cashflow.

Dave:
That’s amazing. So when you got a goal and you started thinking, “I want to live this life of abundance,” how close are you to reaching that or are you just going to keep scaling?

Jefferson:
Well, I’m a single guy. I have enough for myself right now. I hope that my life situation will change at some point, but I’m also, I’m an ambitious person. I don’t want to just sit around and lay on the couch all day either. I love being out in the community, meeting neighbors, potential future deals, talking to people about maybe funding future deals. I’m a very social person. I’m an ambitious person and I see no reason to stop.

Dave:
Yeah, good for you. That’s great. I mean, you just seem to love it. I think everyone has different goals. That’s what we talk about on the show all the time. You want to do real estate to buy two properties to supplement your income? Great. You want to go into it full-time because you really enjoy it? Awesome. That’s what’s so cool about it is that there’s just so much flexibility. What are the deals that get you excited right now? What are you really looking forward to doing in the next year?

Jefferson:
One thing that I ought to mention really helped me accelerate. After that one summer that I bought a lot, I just had a lot more confidence as an investor. I had done several rehabs. I was managing a lot of tenants and I really got the confidence where I was like, “I feel like I can ask people for money now.” So I was an agent, I was helping a client in Texas that he wanted a house for football games here in the fall. And it was when the market was so hot, I remember opening Zillow, thinking Zillow was broken because every single listing you’d click on said pending.

Dave:
So already gone, yeah.

Jefferson:
Yeah. Things were selling over market same day. It was absolute craziness. And this client, he wanted me to basically walk a property that might come up and vet it for him. And then he wanted to get on a plane and come see it if it was a good option. And things were just moving way too fast for that to work. And so we went through this for a few months and I could sense he was getting frustrated. And just the way things ended up, I had a house that I had just purchased 10 months before with those stock proceeds that I felt like I had gotten a great deal on. And I had a young couple that I had put in there and they reached out to me and they said, “Hey, we just found our forever home. Is there any chance you’d let us out of our lease early and we can go buy this house?” And I mean, this is a small town, your reputation’s worth a lot.
I didn’t want to hold them hostage in a house they didn’t want to be in. So I just told them, I’m like, “Yeah, hey, you guys covered the utilities till I find a new tenant?” Absolutely, that’s fine. So I have this now vacant house and I knew my client was going to be a cash buyer. And so I just had this idea and asked him, I said, “Hey, when’s the next time you’re coming to town?” We set up a meeting when he was there and I took him to dinner and I said, “Hey, I want to pitch you on something kind of unconventional. I have this house that I feel like I got a great deal on 10 months ago. I think it would fit basically exactly what you’re looking for in your price point. I’m trying to be in growth mode right now, not sell mode, but I have this idea.
I will either sell it to you for $25,000 more than I bought it for and say that’s a great 10 months, the rent I collected or that, but this is also less than a year. I’m going to have short-term capital gains on that. ” Or I said, “I’ll sell it to you for exactly what I bought it for and not make any money on you, but would you consider writing me a $200,000 line of credit?” Whoa,

Dave:
I

Jefferson:
Like that. Yeah. So he kind of chuckled, he goes, “Wow, you’re very direct.” And he said, “Why don’t we get coffee in the morning and go look at the house and I’ll call my wife.” We went and got coffee. He FaceTimed his wife. They walked through the house and I just waited outside on the driveway and he came outside and he shook my hand. He’s like, “Hey, we’ll do it. ” So that was great.

Dave:
I love that.

Jefferson:
That was incredible.

Dave:
That’s such a creative, awesome way of creating, again, a win-win situation, right?

Jefferson:
Exactly.

Dave:
Didn’t try and get both. You weren’t trying to get a profit and the line of credit. You figured out something that your client wanted, asked for something you wanted in return and it works for both of you.

Jefferson:
It’s been a great partnership. So three months later, I found this little house for $171,000 and he wired the entire balance- Amazing. … the day of closing. So no appraisals, no all those bank fees and things like that. And I do pay him seven and a quarter, but that’s great. It’s more than he’s getting on T-bills. It’s less than I’d probably be paying at the bank. And at that point I was like, okay, I bought $171,000 house. I had the $200,000 line of credit. Is that done? And about a year went by and he called me one day and he said, “Hey, you seeing anything in Manhattan?” I’m like, “Yeah, I got two houses that I’m looking at right now.” He said, “If you need any help on those, holler at me. ” And so we’ve done a few more deals together since then. Oh, that’s great.

Dave:
That’s

Jefferson:
Awesome. Yeah, that’s been a great partnership and we’re friends as well.

Dave:
I love the way that you’re approaching partnerships and just trying to find these win-win things. Not only does it get you what you want, but it’s fun. It’s fun working with people, I think, and just figuring out these ways to get creative and help not just yourself, but someone else reach their financial goals at the same time. That’s just one of the more rewarding things that you can do in this industry.

Jefferson:
Right.

Dave:
Well, thank you so much for being here, Jefferson. This has been a lot of fun. Last question for you. How would you say BiggerPockets has contributed to your growth if it has at all?

Jefferson:
It’s been extremely instrumental. I was so oblivious when I first started out. I remember as I had a few houses, I was writing leases for full 365 days. And so I was at nine o’clock on July 31st, I had to go in there and clean, do paint touch-ups for my August 1st move-ins the very next day. And so just little things like knowing to get tenants out three days in advance or making sure that they hire a professional cleaning company so that way I don’t have to be in there recruiting my mom and my cousins and little things like that. I was using a cozy at the time, was bought by apartments.com, do all my rent collection online now, no more arguing back and forth with tenants, “Hey, the check was in the mail. I don’t have to pay the late fee.” It either was or wasn’t there on the online portal on the fourth.
So those just little tips and tricks there have been incredible and yeah.

Dave:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for Jefferson for being here. Congratulations on all your success and best of luck to you. We really appreciate your time.

Jefferson:
Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it.

Dave:
And thank you all so much for watching this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We’ll see you all next time.

 

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PYX Resources delays 2025 annual report, shares suspended




PYX Resources delays 2025 annual report, shares suspended