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Cody Berman, 26, is a real estate investor and entrepreneur who became a millionaire last year.
Berman said that digital products are great for passive income and are ‘infinitely scalable.’
He said real estate has been lucrative but it is much more work than digital products.
When Cody Berman, 26, graduated from college four years ago, he got a high-paying job in commercial real estate lending. He only stayed in that role for seven months before he decided to try working for himself, selling digital products — including ebooks, digital downloads for things like planners and calendars that are also printable, and online courses about how to create passive streams of income.
At the time he quit his job, Berman was only making between $1,200 and $1,500 per month from his digital products side hustle and other freelance work.
“People thought I was crazy,” Berman said. “They told me I would be scrambling to go back.”
It ended up paying off: According to documents reviewed by Insider, Berman has made over $1.3 million in net revenue from his digital products year-to-date.
This revenue has provided him the flexibility to branch out into other directions, and Berman has since invested in real estate in both Massachusetts and Connecticut. He currently owns 13 properties: 11 of which are used as long-term rentals and two properties he has listed as short-term rentals on Airbnb, according to documents reviewed by Insider.
As of last year, Berman is a millionaire. In addition to the equity in his properties, Berman also has over $550,000 invested in the stock market, according to documents reviewed by Insider.
Berman said that he isn’t sharing his story because he wants to brag about his success — he just wants other young people to understand that what he’s been able to do is not impossible or outlandish.
“Once you learn about this and realize that people are actually doing it, you can’t unlearn it,” Berman said. “It almost makes you resent your job more than you would have if you didn’t know that people were hitting financial independence before 30.”
He said that the thing that really pushed him over the edge was learning about other people’s success stories at CampFI in 2018, an annual retreat for adherents of the FIRE movement who are looking to connect with other like-minded professionals.
“I met real people — normal humans — who had hit financial independence before 30,” adding that this personal experience opened him up to the idea and realization that it was possible to obtain this lifestyle. “That just lit a fire up under me.”
After that, he said that he believed that there was no reason why he couldn’t make this happen, and resolved to hit financial independence as quickly as possible.
In addition to finding community and encouragement with other people within the FIRE movement, Berman said that there are 3 factors that helped him achieve the financial success that he currently has today. He saved up a $50,000 nest egg before quitting his job
The amount of cash on-hand one should have saved up before they decide to quit their job is going to depend almost entirely on individual needs, Berman says. Having committed to living a relatively frugal life in order to achieve financial independence, Berman only needed to save up about $50,000 before he felt comfortable enough to quit his job four years ago.
However, he acknowledges that this is no small sum of money for a recent college graduate. Berman had a couple of factors that helped him achieve this: he had no student loans, he lived at home while he worked full-time, he got a signing bonus at his corporate job, and his base salary was relatively high for a recent college graduate.
One of the reasons why Berman didn’t have to take out student loans is because he applied for many, many little scholarships that added up over time.”I made like five to six template essays that I would slightly adapt for whatever scholarship it was,” Berman said. “I ended up applying to between 100 and 150 scholarships in total, and ended up getting eight of them.”With those eight scholarships, Berman was able to reduce his college bill to a monthly $1,000 payment, which he split with his parents. Working while he was in school also contributed to the beginning of Berman’s nest egg.”And I went to a school that cost $30,000 per year,” Berman said. […]
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