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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.

 

Help us reach new listeners on iTunes by leaving us a rating and review! It takes just 30 seconds and instructions can be found here. Thanks! We really appreciate it!

Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected].

PYX Resources delays 2025 annual report, shares suspended




PYX Resources delays 2025 annual report, shares suspended

Metro by T-Mobile, Moto g stylus 128 GB (2025) and 1-Month Service for $65


Metro by T-Mobile, Moto g stylus 128 GB (2025) and 1-Month Service for $65

Metro by T-Mobile is once again offering select smartphones for free via instant rebate when you open a new account on a prepaid plan of at least $65 per month. You only need to pay for at least one month to get the phone for free. Activation is also free online.

You may cancel at any time or change to a different plan option at any time. There’s no service contract. Only the initial $65 is required to get the device for free after instant rebate. The device will also be unlocked 360 days after you activate the service. The best option for this deal is the Moto g stylus 5G – 2025, which is listed at $259.99 full price. 

You should also be able to unlock the device after 14 days of service and $100 in refills (excluding the first months).

How It Works

  • Visit the promotion page.
  • Just pay $65 (no tax for most people) for 1 month prepaid service and receive the phone 100% free.
  • You MUST activate and use the phone after receiving to start 360 day countdown to unlock.
  • If you don’t turn on auto pay, the service will disconnect after 30 days and you will not be billed for future months on prepaid plan.

You can use your current number, or just get a new phone number from Metro by T-Mobile. You will only be charged $65, which covers the first month of service. Autopay is not enabled. SIM and phone will ship together.

Specs:

  • 6.7″ pOLED Super HD display + Dolby Atmos
  • 50MP Rear Camera with OIS + 13MP Ultrawide & Macro Vision
  • 32MP Front Camera
  • 30 Hours Talk Time, 21.9 Days Standby Time
  • Other features
  • Premium built-in stylus
  • Vegan leather finish plus outstanding water and drop protection.
  • 50MP Sony – LYTIA camera with OIS
  • 128GB storage and RAM Boost

Claiming Social Security in 2026? One Overlooked Factor Could Make or Break Your Checks.


A lot of people get excited when they realize that after years of paying taxes on their wages, they’re finally eligible to sign up for Social Security.

You can claim Social Security benefits as long as you’re at least 62 years old and have accumulated enough work credits to qualify. But before you rush to take benefits this year, there’s one factor you need to pay attention to.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why full retirement age changes everything

Although you can claim Social Security once you turn 62, you don’t get your benefits without a reduction until you reach full retirement age. If you were born in 1960 or later, that age is 67.

Now you may be willing to accept reduced monthly benefits if it means getting your money sooner. But over time, that’s a decision you might end up regretting.

Social Security may end up being your one income source that’s guaranteed for life. If you have savings — even a lot — that money could run out if market conditions are poor for many years, or if your investments fail to keep pace with inflation.

Social Security, on the other hand, is guaranteed to pay you a benefit every month. And it’s also protected against inflation. Benefits are eligible for a cost-of-living adjustment automatically each year.

If you file for Social Security before reaching full retirement age and slash your monthly benefits in the process, you could end up in a cash crunch if your savings run out.

Plus, once you reach full retirement age, you can work and earn any amount of money from a job without risking withheld benefits. If you file sooner and work, you’ll be subject to an earnings limit — or withheld benefits for exceeding it.

Patience can truly pay off

Tempting as it may be to claim Social Security as soon as you can, waiting for full retirement age is, in many cases, the smarter move. If you’re planning to claim Social Security this year, see if you’ve reached full retirement age. If you haven’t, make sure to run the numbers so you understand exactly how much of a reduced benefit you may be looking at for life.

And remember, waiting on Social Security doesn’t necessarily have to mean waiting to retire. You may be able to cobble together an income that consists of freelance work and retirement plan withdrawals. That, coupled with reduced spending, could make it possible to retire in 2026 without necessarily having to claim Social Security in 2026.

What’s Going to Move Mortgage Rates Again?


It’s been an eerily quiet week or so for mortgage rates.

Almost too quiet, as if you think something’s lurking around the corner.

After a very volatile March (when they surged higher) and much of April (when they surprisingly recovered), they’ve done basically nothing.

It makes you wonder what comes next and what the catalyst could be, if anything at all.

Mortgage Rates Have Been Strangely Flat Lately

It’s been a very uneventful week or so for mortgage rates after they experienced major volatility for two straight months.

They jumped from sub-6% levels in early March all the way up to around 6.625%.

Then recovered nicely to around 6.30% in the month of April, which isn’t bad considering the war in the Middle East still very much hangs in the balance.

And oil remains at over $100 per barrel, if not even higher. But have since done very little, as evidenced above from MND’s daily rate index.

The latest development on that front was the UAE leaving OPEC, a signal that the Strait of Hormuz issue likely won’t be resolved quickly.

So countries are taking matters into their own hands, and in the UAE’s case, it was an opportunity to break free and play by their own rules.

But it could also mean even more tension in the region and greater uncertainty for energy markets moving forward.

That could eventually mean increased production and lower prices, but more geopolitical unknowns in a region now feeling much less stable.

Jobs Report Next Friday Is the Biggie

The Middle East situation will continue to be the wildcard, though 10-year bond yields haven’t done much for about a month.

It seems to be a wait-and-see approach there, which would explain why the 30-year fixed simply drifted lower thanks to tighter spreads.

But that could change next Friday, May 8th, when we get the April jobs report.

The Fed has been more focused on labor than inflation and with Powell set to lead his last meeting as Fed chair this week, it might be an important data point for incoming chair Kevin Warsh.

Everyone expects Warsh to be more dovish and push for cutting rates and if he gets a soft jobs report, it gives him a stronger argument to cut sooner.

If that jobs report comes in hot, then he’ll have a tougher time convincing his fellow Fed members to resume cutting.

So arguably this jobs report comes at a crucial time for the changing of the guards, with Warsh expected to take over in mid-May.

The Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates, but they rely on economic data and if it’s weak, bond yields will react to Fed rate cut expectations.

If you’re rooting for lower mortgage rates, you’ll want a cold jobs report with fewer jobs created and higher unemployment.

Yes, that’s cynical, but that’s the only way to get mortgage rates lower right now outside of a major positive development in the Middle East.

Lock or Float Right Mortgage Rates Right Now?

I spoke about locking vs. floating a mortgage rate the other week and basically my stance hasn’t changed too much.

Given rates are still pretty low if we zoom out, just above 6.25% for a 30-year fixed, it’s hard to see a ton of downside potential.

Remember that a sub-6% rate was basically the best we had seen in 3.5 years, right before mortgage rates doubled from 3% to 6% in early 2022.

So they’ve made a ton of progress since then, especially since we had near-8% rates in late 2023.

And with $110-barrel oil and lots of unknowns regarding the Middle East, one could argue that rates about .25% higher than these lows aren’t too shabby.

Sure, they could improve further, but how much further? Another .125%? It would be hard to imagine they return to sub-6% with the current state of affairs.

I continue to think we’re pretty lucky they’re as low as they are all things considered.

Conversely, if things sour they could re-test recent levels of 6.50% to 6.75% or higher, especially since mortgage rates are historically highest in spring!

Colin Robertson
Latest posts by Colin Robertson (see all)

Best certification courses you must do as Business Analyst



Here are the Best free certification courses for Business Analysts-

1. Business Analysis Fundamentals –

2. Hands on introduction – SQL-

3. Level up SQL –

4. Busines Analyst & Project Manager collab –

5. Requirements Elicitation for Business Analysts: Interviews –

Just learn and add to your Resume.

Dr. Aditi Gupta
Analytics Mentor
@techtip24

#businessanalyst #onlinelearning #freecourses #analytics #sql

source

BMG+Concord is the music industry’s biggest bet in years. What’s the plan?


Want to know what an industry is really worth? Look at what private capital will pay for it when public markets won’t.

In music, right now, that gap is wide.

Warner Music Group, the world’s third-largest music major, has a market cap of approximately USD $14.9 billion on the NASDAQ right now – despite posting $6.71 billion of revenue and $1.44 billion in adjusted OIBDA for FY 2025.

Meanwhile…over in Germany.

Bertelsmann and Great Mountain Partners (GMP) today (April 28) confirmed a merger of BMG and Concord that — per MBW sources — values the combined entity in the region of USD $15 billion.

That’s the same headline number Wall Street currently affords WMG, for a business roughly a third of Warner’s size by revenue, and which projects to generate around half of WMG’s annual profit this year.

BMG and Concord’s investors, however — not to mention each company’s leadership — have no doubt about the future growth potential of what is now comfortably the world’s fourth-largest music company.

For starters, they announced today that they expect to nearly double the combined company’s annual EBITDA, from $730 million in 2026 to $1.2 billion in the “mid-term”.

Why such confidence? Partly because of a belief in what new technologies – yes, including the artificially intelligent ones – are about to mean for the owners of premium catalog.

That belief is apparent in the words of Bob Valentine, currently Concord’s boss, who will become CEO of the newly merged entity, and Thomas Coesfeld, currently BMG’s CEO (and soon to be Bertelsmann’s), who will become its Chairman.

Here, MBW catches up with Coesfeld and Valentine on the day that their respective companies bet big, both on themselves – and music’s journey ahead…

LET’S START WITH THE STRATEGIC RATIONALE. WHY IS THIS THE RIGHT DEAL FOR BOTH BMG AND CONCORD — AND WHY NOW?

Thomas Coesfeld: We’re looking at a fundamentally attractive market — driven by streaming and with AI as the next frontier, which has a lot to offer in terms of services, in terms of improvements for artists’ rights, and most importantly, in terms of growth.

This is something that both Bertelsmann and, evidently, GMP deeply believe in. We’re fundamentally committed to this market.

We’ve developed this value-creation hypothesis [for the merger], based on significant synergies, creating value through technology and operating on one platform, and on a clear proposition to artists, songwriters, and creators – the leading independent platform in the market.

Bob Valentine: I was struck by a lot of the same themes that BMG and Concord had built our respective businesses around: catalog-focused music companies with complementary, important frontline businesses; seeking operational excellence for our recording artists and songwriters; and global scale.

Our respective shareholders see music as a place for long-term investment and growth, and as we continued the conversations, we found many similarities in how we view the business and how to build a new version of a global music company.


ONE OF THE THINGS THAT JUMPS OUT ABOUT THIS DEAL IS THE MARGIN PROFILE. BMG IS ALREADY AT AN EBITDA MARGIN OF 32%, AND I HEAR CONCORD IS SIMILARLY SIZED AND SIMILARLY PROFITABLE.

Thomas Coesfeld: This company will lead [the industry] in terms of relative profitability and absolute profitability.

With a very compelling cash profile, we have the means and the intent to invest into creative talent and into technology for years to come.

“We have the means and the intent to invest into creative talent and into technology for years to come.”

Thomas Coesfeld

Bob Valentine: A focus on margin has been a driver of strategic decision-making for as long as I’ve been at Concord – how to maintain healthy margins, healthy cash flow generation, and to grow the business at the same time.

Thomas has done a phenomenal job getting BMG’s margin to that competitive level.

The most important takeaway here is what these [combined] margins enable: more cash flow for investment in new creative talent, in new technologies, and in opportunities for our songwriters and recording artists.

This merger should super-size our ability to make investments, not to mention take advantage of accretive M&A opportunities when they come up.


On the subject of M&A, does the newly-combined entity have the firepower to compete with sovereign wealth funds and the big catalog buyers of today? AND IS THERE STILL ENOUGH OPPORTUNITY IN THE CATALOG SPACE FOR BIG SWINGS?

Thomas Coesfeld: There are broadly three strategic positioning options in the music industry: You have distribution plays; you have pure investment plays; and then you have integrated music companies.

This ‘new BMG’ is committed to being an integrated music company that combines rights ownership with monetization capabilities — increasingly so.

We have learned how important access to primary data and metadata is for informing everyday decisions – including marketing decisions and investment decisions.

“Both Concord and BMG have proven we can generate incremental revenue and cash flow from what we’ve acquired. That continues — and then some — with this combination.”

Bob Valentine

Bob Valentine: We’re not seeing any shortage [in M&A] opportunities. If anything, the number of opportunities is growing.

Artists are getting reversions of their rights back in greater numbers — a combination of US copyright law, plus contracts from 15-30 years ago that allowed artists to get their rights back.

We’re now in a window where more and more of those rights are coming back into [play]. So I don’t see any slowdown in availability.

I also believe an operating platform [in music] has a distinct advantage as an acquirer over third-party funds or sovereign wealth funds. When you’re putting your own money to work to buy rights you’ll operate and monetize yourself, it just means more than having someone else operate them.

Both Concord and BMG have proven we can generate incremental revenue and cash flow from what we’ve acquired. That continues — and then some — with this combination.

IS IT AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION TO SAY CONCORD BRINGS A STRONGer US business, and BMG BRINGS A STRONGer INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS?

Thomas Coesfeld: These businesses are very complementary. There are, of course, opportunities in [removing] duplicate structure, but there are also opportunities in tech spend, which I think is much more exciting.

If you combine the two companies’ tech spend volumes today, it’s quite impressive — and it allows us to build a platform that is quite unique.

“jointly investing in new technologies requires scale, conviction, and a mindset for innovation.”

Thomas Coesfeld

Think of rights management and the role of AI in its [future]. Rights protection [against AI platform infringement] obviously comes first and foremost.

But jointly investing in new technologies requires scale, conviction, and a mindset for innovation. Both companies have that.

That is the biggest synergy – it’s additive. And that’s reflected in our very ambitious financial plan.


ONE SPECIFIC AREA WHERE YOU’VE TALKED ABOUT DRIVING MARGINS, THOMAS, IS YOUR DECISION to GO DIRECT WITH SPOTIFY AND other services on digital distribution. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU INTEND TO LEVERAGE NOW CONCORD IS IN THE BUILDING?

Thomas Coesfeld: We’ve had very good experiences on our side in building this commercial infrastructure, and it works.


YOU’RE TARGETING $1.2 BILLION IN ANNUAL EBITDA, WHICH ISN’T FAR FROM DOUBLE WHAT YOU’RE PROJECTING IN 2026. HOW DO YOU BRIDGE THAT GAP?

Bob Valentine: It’s a combination of three things.

The first is organic growth. The industry is still growing very healthily. We’re not in the double-digit growth rates of three, four, or five years ago, but we’re still seeing very healthy growth, especially in streaming and emerging markets.

“A meaningful component of that [forecast] EBITDA jump will be driven by acquisitions.”

Bob Valentine

The second is M&A. We’ll continue to be aggressive and nimble in our M&A growth strategy. A meaningful component of that [forecast] EBITDA jump will be driven by acquisitions.

The third — and this is an inevitability of a transaction this size — is cost savings and synergies. It’s not a simple task, but it’s one we’ve set ourselves to, and I think it’s achievable in the mid-term.

PICKING UP ON SOMETHING YOU SAID EARLIER, BOB, ABOUT THE PUBLIC MARKETS AND AI: THIS DEAL IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST IN LIVING MEMORY IN MUSIC. WHAT GIVES BOTH COMPANIES THE CONFIDENCE IN THE VALUE OF MUSIC RIGHTS AT A MOMENT WHEN PUBLIC MARKET INVESTORS HAVE BEEN SO SPOOKED, PARTICULARLY BY AI?

Bob Valentine: I think the public [markets] have got it wrong; they’re afraid for the wrong reasons.

[UMG‘s] Michael Nash has been quoted in the press saying that the notion that AI is a negative overall for the music ecosystem is incorrect, and I agree.

Our shareholders and Bertelsmann are essentially saying the same thing: AI is, in the long run, accretive to the value of music rights, not detrimental.

It’s also going to improve our operational efficiency. Our industry has never been great at maximizing technology, but AI tools — for identifying ISRCs, royalties, collections across the world — can help us with all of that.

Protecting our rights is essential. We’re in the middle of multiple lawsuits doing exactly that — and we’re willing to fight for an ecosystem I believe can be created, where we get paid for training, and for the use of our rights in new consumer technologies.

The most important point is: we serve our songwriters and our artists, and they cannot be left behind in this.

I’ve seen firsthand that AI gives consumers the ability to interact with music in new and interesting ways, and it has the potential to create a massive amount of incremental income for existing rights – especially for owners of catalog – that doesn’t exist today.

It’s the same pattern we saw with streaming: a bit of fear, then a step-change in the value of music.

“I think the public [markets] have got it wrong on music and AI; they’re afraid for the wrong reasons.

Bob Valentine

Thomas Coesfeld: AI is, without doubt, changing the value chain. The question becomes: are you best positioned for that change?

If you scale up the business [like BMG is with this merger], you are. That’s why this step is so consequential for both companies and shareholders.

There are already concrete changes to the value chain happening at BMG, through AI. Agentic workflows for sync music are already a reality at BMG. So is fully automated marketing of catalog on certain channels, with AI-generated marketing assets and ad-buying.

AI is already a reality, and we already see the benefits. That’s why we’re convinced AI — done right — provides opportunity, and can be a net positive for this industry.


MOST OF THE VALUE OF THIS DEAL SEEMS WRAPPED UP IN A STOCK SWAP, WITH BERTELSMANN EFFECTIVELY INVITING ANOTHER SHAREHOLDER INTO ITS MUSIC BUSINESS. What gave Bertelsmann the comfort to do that?

Thomas Coesfeld: When you enter a long-term partnership of this size, what really matters is how you value each other — not just on a deal-by-deal basis, but on where you are headed.

Bertelsmann has multiple examples of long-term partnerships that have stood the test of time. Think of Penguin/Random House in the books business, for example.

In GMP and their investors, we have found phenomenal partners with a similar long-term conviction, patient capital, and a prudent approach. Most importantly: strategic alignment and a shared vision of what this new BMG will become.


THERE’S A LOT OF TALK IN THIS MARKET ABOUT WHO’S THIRD, WHO’S FOURTH, AND THE COMMERCIAL GAP BETWEEN THE ‘MAJORS’ AND THE ‘INDIES’. WITH $1.2 BILLION OF EBITDA ON THE HORIZON, DO YOU HAVE ANY EXPLICIT AMBITION OF EVER BECOMING THE THIRD-BIGGEST MUSIC COMPANY IN THE MARKETPLACE?

Bob Valentine: Our goal is to become the best leading independent music company in the world — and everything that entails.

By various different metrics, we’ll be the fourth-largest music company in the world [via this deal]. But I just want to be the best; I want to win; I want artists and songwriters to want to be with us for all the reasons we’ve mentioned in this conversation.

And I want it to be the most profitable music company in the world, which is not the same as saying the biggest.

I think we can create something different from other companies. Whether that makes us the third, fourth or whatever, I want it to be a place people look at and think, ‘That’s where I want to work. That’s where I want my career supported.’

“This is a modern, fully-integrated, global-first platform – without legacy systems, without fragmented structures.”

Thomas Coesfeld

Thomas Coesfeld: It’s about building a modern, fully-integrated, global-first platform — designed for how music is created and distributed today.

Music has always come in different forms and shapes, and it always will. This new BMG is ready for that, without legacy systems, without fragmented structures. Embracing technology and AI in the artists’ and songwriters’ best interests. That’s here to stay.Music Business Worldwide

Borrowers Report Parents Loans Showing Up on Their Student Aid Accounts After Weekend Update


Federal student loan borrowers are reporting that their parents’ Parent PLUS Loans (including loans already forgiven) are now showing up under their personal accounts on StudentAid.gov following a system update over the weekend of April 25-26, 2026.

The reports, surfacing on Reddit and TikTok, point to a possible database error tying parental loans to the children they were borrowed for, rather than to the parent borrowers who legally owe them. One borrower showed The College Investor team a Parent PLUS that was already forgiven for the parent, now showing up in their own account.

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Why it matters: Parent PLUS Loans are the legal obligation of the parent who took them out, not the student who’s education they paid for. If the loans now appear under the student’s StudentAid account, it could:

  • Inflate a borrower’s total federal loan balance
  • Wrongly flag a borrower as being in default
  • Create complications for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and other repayment plans
  • Trigger collection activity against the wrong person

While some of these take time to happen (such as collections), depending on how much automation has been built into the system, it could create a slippery slope.

State of play: Borrowers are sharing similar accounts across multiple platforms.

A Reddit user reported that their mother’s Parent PLUS loans are showing up, after they were forgiven since she passed away. The user submitted a death certificate to Aidvantage and the discharge was being processed. Within the past week, those Parent PLUS Loans appeared in the “My Loans” section of the user’s own StudentAid account. According to the post, both StudentAid and Aidvantage representatives told the user this was “normal” — even though the user was never previously listed as a borrower on those loans.

Another borrower with 10-plus years of qualifying PSLF employment said two of their consolidated loans recently received green PSLF tracking banners. After the weekend FSA update, a defaulted Parent PLUS Loan taken out by an estranged parent appeared on the borrower’s account, increasing the total balance and flagging the account as in default.

FSA added my parent’s defaulted parent plus loan to my account after 15 years
by
u/boopieshaboopie in
PSLF

What officials are saying: As of Monday, the U.S. Department of Education and Federal Student Aid (FSA) have not issued a public statement about the reports. 

Is this a privacy violation? Possibly. The Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. § 552a) requires federal agencies (including the Department of Education and FSA) to keep records accurate and to avoid disclosing one person’s records to another without consent. Showing a parent’s loan inside the child’s StudentAid account could be an unauthorized disclosure of records. If inaccurate default data flows to the credit bureaus, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) could also come into play.

But this is not a path to loan forgiveness. A glitch from a weekend system update is not a basis to demand cancellation of legitimate federal student loan debt. Privacy Act claims require the violation to be “intentional or willful” — a high bar that a quickly-patched bug typically does not meet.

Borrowers also have to show actual damages, and most who simply saw a misattributed loan briefly appear in their account (without credit reporting impact, denied benefits, or out-of-pocket loss) likely have no quantifiable harm to recover. 

The realistic remedies are administrative: fix the record with FSA, dispute any inaccurate credit reporting, and file complaints with the FSA Ombudsman or CFPB. Class action lawsuits could be filed if the misreporting persists after notice, but individual borrowers should not expect anything from this glitch.

How this connects: More than 3.7 million parents owe $112 billion in Parent PLUS loans, according to the latest student loan statistics.

The timing of these reports, immediately following a weekend system update, points to a likely data issue rather than a policy change.

It will be important to watch whether FSA acknowledges the issue publicly, whether credit bureaus receive the inaccurate default data, and how quickly the system can be corrected before borrowers see bigger impacts.

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The post Borrowers Report Parents Loans Showing Up on Their Student Aid Accounts After Weekend Update appeared first on The College Investor.

Why Do We Close Referral Threads After A Period Of Time?


Readers will often ask why a specific referral thread is closed and if we can reopen it so they can share their referral. The reason we allow referrals is to reward regular readers that provide helpful comments (this is why you should always take the time to find a link from a reader that provides helpful information).

As time goes on the amount of regular readers sharing their links dramatically decreases and people breaking the rules dramatically increases. This means we spend more time moderating these threads and less regular readers are sharing their links. To combat that we normally close comments after a period of 24-48 hours as that allows the highest amount of useful contributors to share their links and lowest amount of moderation time.

If every referral thread was left open one of two things would happen:

  • Threads would become overrun with rule breakers, meaning useful contributors wouldn’t get any referrals defeating the purpose of allowing them in the first place
  • I would spend every waking moment of my life moderating referral threads

Hopefully the introduction of user accounts and requiring these for referral threads will allow us to keep them open for longer, but we will still be closing them after a period of time. 

As a reminder a lot of regular contributors have links in their username that you can click so if you don’t see a link from somebody that you think provides value and you’re searching for a referral you can always click their name and hopefully find it. 

 

Meta is paying top executives to hit a $9.5 trillion valuation—and no one’s ever done it before



Meta Platforms is set to report first quarter of 2026 earnings on Wednesday, and investors will have a gimlet eye on capital expenditures. Capex is expected to rise to between $115 billion and $135 billion this year as Meta focuses on its Superintelligence Labs. However, a batch of SEC filings also indicate Meta is betting on moonshot growth for a cohort of executives—and none of them are named Mark Zuckerberg. 

The $1.7 trillion social media giant disclosed a sweeping round of executive compensation awards to five of Meta’s most-senior executives last month. Each exec got seven tranches of stock options with exercise prices ranging from $1,116 to $3,727 per share. With Meta’s stock currently trading at $671.34, the stock price would have to climb 66% to hit even the lowest level. To get to the highest rung, at which the final tranche of options would become profitable, Meta would need to reach a market capitalization of $9.46 trillion. No company in history has ever hit that market cap, which is nearly twice the size of $5.3 trillion Nvidia, currently the world’s most valuable company. 

The Meta board, chaired by CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, granted the options to a select group including chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, chief product officer Christopher Cox, chief financial officer Susan Li, chief legal officer Curtis Mahoney, and president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick. If the stock price reaches the uppermost ceiling in the award, the options would be worth $625,592,443, according to Equilar figures cited by The New York Times. Including restricted stock unit grants that went to some of the executives, the combined payouts would range from $787 million to $921 million.

The board granted the awards to a deliberately selective group that Meta believes is critical to its AI ambitions. The aggressive strike prices on the options signal that Meta sees AI as a massive opportunity and that the market for talent in AI has intensified to the point Meta needed to level up its compensation plan. 

Zuckerberg collects a $1 salary at Meta, although the company pays his personal security expenses, which were $25.1 million last year. He holds a stake in the company valued at roughly $230 billion. Zuckerberg was not included in the most recent grants of awards. 

Ken Mahoney, CEO of retirement planning and investment firm Mahoney Asset Management, said in a note that the stock option awards are linked to “extreme upside scenarios into the future, such as if Meta were to become the most valuable company of all time, which would have to surpass some of the other tech giants.” 

“These are good moves for talent retention, and they cost nothing upfront,” wrote Mahoney. “It is a good way to align some incentives with moonshot outcomes, but we have to remember this $9.46 trillion number is more than a 5x of current valuations, and realistically, it’s not something that would play out any time soon. Of course, they know this too.”

Meta’s lofty ambitions in AI come as the company continues to play catch up to rivals Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, all of whom currently have AI models available that are considered more advanced than Meta’s offerings. Last year Meta went on a high-profile and high-priced hiring spree, paying $14.3 billion to invest in ScaleAI and bring cofounder Alexandr Wang in-house, but the effort has yet to pay off.

Meta is also contending with an order this week to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Chinese-founded AI startup that had relocated to Singapore. The move will be a logistical headache, given that Manus employees have already joined Meta’s AI team and early investors have all cashed out.

Meta Q1 Earnings

When Meta reports earnings on Wednesday, along with Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, their performances will offer a read on consumer health and “the extent to which the Middle East conflict has impacted advertising budgets,” wrote John Belton, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, in a note. If the Iran conflict continues, it risks “derailing” the strong growth the ad platforms have been reporting as AI has improved engagement. 

Mahoney said that ongoing uncertainty over Meta’s return on investment from its massive capital expenditures will be top of mind for some investors.

“This is what the market keeps getting hung up on, and we think if they guide capex higher than what is estimated, then it could be an issue for the stock’s reaction,” Mahoney wrote.

Analysts expect Meta to report Q1 revenue near $55.5 billion, up roughly 31% year-over-year, and in the middle of the $53.5 billion to $56.5 billion range that the company guided to. Analyst expect earnings of $6.68 per share, according to AlphaSense Visible Alpha.