Welcome to The Deal Pen, a podcast that digs into the details of untold stories from crafty real estate investors. And now here's your host Avi Rosowski.

Hey there, Mandy. How you doing?

Avi Rasowsky

Great. How are you?

Mandy Drysdale

Good. Uh, we are very pleased to have Mandy Drysdale join us today for this episode of the deal pen podcast. Uh, Mandy, thank you so much for doing this. Mandy is with IRA club and we'll get into that, uh, business and, and why and how real estate investors can use it. But, uh, thank you so much for joining and look forward to the conversation with you today.

Avi Rasowsky

Yeah, me as well. My pleasure.

So Mandy, I always like to start out just kind of how you and I met. And then we'll go back a little bit back into your, to your background, if that's okay. I was introduced to you and specifically to IRA club by a good friend of ours, Travis Howard. And Travis, I think has been using you guys for a long time for, for self-directed retirement accounts. But if you could, before we get into some of the kind of details and some of the ins and outs of retirement accounts, can you tell us a little bit about sort of what you do with IRA Club and in general, what IRA Club does as a business model? And that would help people who listen to this understand a little bit where we're going with the conversation.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I was just a little bit of background on myself. was a financial advisor back in the day before I had kids. And so it's really helped in this role. And then I became a math teacher so I could raise those kids. And now the kids are out. I kind of put those two fields together here at the IRA club, helping people with their retirement accounts. So it's kind of fun. But at the IRA club, yeah, we deal with anything that is retirement dollars. So we can help establish new accounts. We can help rollover accounts. We can do anything retirement dollars, we can help with that. And what we are is a self-directed custodian. And I kind of like to give, I kind of like to give a background because when the IRA was established back in 1974, the government said, You can invest in anything but three things and the three things that you cannot invest in our collectibles like cars or wine or stamps you can't invest in life insurance and you can't invest in escort everything else is fair game, and so what happened was. Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, the big ones, decided this is a great model for them to make money as well as to, I think, help their clients as well. But they were the ones to restrict the IRAs to stocks and mutual funds and things like that. And so really, people think IRA, stock market, and that they're synonymous. And they're really not. That was a restriction that the big companies and their marketing dollars put on the IRA. An IRA can invest in anything like real estate, syndications, private loans, silver, gold, precious metals, those kinds of things. And so it's great in that now people can move their money into a self-directed IRA and invest in alternatives. And our job is to not tell people what to invest in because we're not financial advisors, Our job is to make sure that they're compliant. So if you bring a deal to us, we're just gonna double check that it meets the IRS regulations. We're gonna be your bookkeeper for the money going in and out of the IRA. And then we help you file the tax forms at the end of the year.

Okay, perfect. Thank you for the context because yes, it was, I didn't really know anything about the self-directed world of retirement accounts until I became a real estate investor. And, and now, and then the more and more I dig into it, the more and more it's a very long and winding and adventurous rabbit hole, uh, to dig into. So, and I still go ahead.

That's the number one comment I get from people that I work with is I wish I would have heard about this earlier. Why didn't I know about this?

Yeah, absolutely. So just to make sure, cause I didn't hear it exactly that the three things not allowed collectibles, life insurance and S corporations. Correct. So I don't understand the S-Corp part of it. You can't invest in someone else's S-Corp?

Because it's a pass-through entity.

Got it.

So the taxes don't work that way.

So anything other than an S-Corp. Okay, perfect. But collectible, yeah. I'm sorry, precious metals, real estate, any other type of investment you can imagine. You could go buy a piece of someone's air conditioning business, right? Yep. Okay. Private equity, yep. Interesting. I don't know why this is. It's probably because Wall Street does what Wall Street wants to do. I was an employee for a number of years before I started my own business. Then all I ever knew about was the traditional advisor-guided retirement account. What's the correct terminology for not a self-directed, but an advisor-guided?

Yeah, that would work. Somebody with a financial advisor or somebody with a big company that kind of, their definition of diversity is mutual funds. And being a former financial advisor, that's what I would tell people. It's like, if you want diversity, go into mutual funds, whereas And it is guided. They're telling you, hey, this fund is where it's at. This is what's going on there. They're giving you advice, which isn't bad, you know, because it's important that you put money away for retirement. So if you're going to put money away for your retirement, and the only way to do that is with a financial advisor, there's nothing wrong with that. It's when people want to take control of their own accounts, and have the ability to invest in alternatives that maybe have some higher returns. And then not only that, I mean, think about our stock market. We always go through recessions and it's an up and down stock market. So a couple of years ago, a lot of people lost 50 percent of their retirement accounts. And that's devastating especially if you're getting close to that retirement age. And so if you get true diversity, that means, and if you look at the Harvard, there's a Harvard model, that's like a 30, 30, 30, 10. And they say, get 30% in the stock market, get 30% in private equity, 30% in real estate and 10% in cash or something else. And so that's just one model. It's not necessarily the model you have to follow. But if you think about that, if I've got 30% of my money in real estate, the real estate market also goes up and down.

30% in the stock market, the stock market goes up and down.

Now I have a little bit more diversity. And so I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. So it gets kind of The challenge becomes in finding the investment deals. And what I tell people is it's interesting once you start jumping in, because the deals will almost find you once you're aware of what's out there and you start talking to people, you get to know different communities. Then you're like, oh, you know, that's what happened to me. My brother and I invested in a Airbnb and it kind of just it was like once I was open to this world, we jumped in on an Airbnb deal and it's been pretty awesome. So, you know, it's, it's interesting that way.

That's awesome. Okay. You mentioned something about 1974 and I think it was maybe that that's when IRA became, can you, can you provide a little bit of context, at least whatever you're able to share on that? And then we can kind of springboard into where we're at now.

Sure. So in 94 was when pensions, um, started dropping like the, the, um, you know, you could go work for a company and they provide a pension. And the pension is when you retire, they provide money for you for the rest of your life. Well, in 94, people started living longer. And so companies realized that was not feasible, or they didn't want to provide that lifelong benefit to to their employees. So they started dropping off pensions and became more of a 401k option. And that's where they're still contributing and then the employee contributes, but there's not this, I will pay you for the rest of your life. It's, I'm going to put money into a fund when that fund's empty, good luck. And so at that point, when pensions started dropping off, the government said, what can we do for our country that allows them to put away money for their retirements? And that's where the IRA came involved. So now anyone with a income at all can invest in an IRA. So, you know, my 17 year old daughter has a job and so it's not making a very lot of money, right? She's 17, but she can invest in an IRA. So long as you have a social security number and some form of income, anyone can put money away into that. And then you can self-direct that into anything that you're interested in. Now you have control over what's going to happen when you retire.

Okay. So even if it's a, like you said, a younger, a younger adult, let's say someone under 18, that's just cutting grass for the summer. Is that an income? Yes, it is.

And let me tell you this, this is mind blowing. So our youngest IRA club member was 27 days old. And you're thinking, how does a 27 year old or 27 day old infant have income? Well, what you do is you create some kind of business for yourself. And then your child is a model. So you put their little cute picture on your business card or your website. And guess what? You pay them $7,000 a year. It's amazing. Why would you pay them $7,000 a year? Because that's how much money you can put into their IRA. So that little 27 day old child, his name is Henry. He's the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life. He is a model for, um, a friend of mine's business. And now he makes $7,000 a year. The 7,000 goes into his IRA account in a Roth youth account, and she's got it invested. And so by the time he's ready to retire, he will be a multimillionaire.

Oh, that is so cool. So interesting. So the income can be, yeah, you don't have to be. I guess. Yeah. You don't have to be an adult yet. You can just be the recipient of the income. That's very cool. Okay. So you can get pretty creative with it. It sounds like.

Yes, absolutely.

So in terms of the IRA, obviously that's the name of the, of your firm is IRA club. The, but there's so many more vehicles other than IRAs. Can we dive into that a little bit in terms of the spectrum of different retirement accounts?

Absolutely. I kind of think of it as I'm super visual and I used to be a math teacher. So for me, it's layers and anything retirement. So if you think about anything that the money is set aside for after fifty nine and a half is what we work with under that layer. You kind of have two different types of tax structures. One is a traditional and that's going to be where it's tax deferred. So any type of traditional account, you're putting money in, you get a tax deduction on your taxes for that money, and then it is going to be when you retire and you pull money out, you will get taxed at your tax rate at that point. You'll pay taxes on the entire account at your tax rate after 59 and a half. The other structure is the Roth IRA and that is, or not Roth IRA, just Roth structure. And that is where it is post-tax. So I'm putting money into my Roth IRA after I paid taxes on it. I don't get a tax deduction for it, but all of the growth of that Roth is going to be tax-free.

Okay.

And so we kind of call that liquid gold because there are not a whole lot of ways to get tax free money in this country, right? It's just a couple of different ways. The reason people will be traditional is because they need the tax break. They need the tax deduction. So it really is independent. Every situation is a little bit different. And that's kind of what my role is at the IRA club is to talk to individuals about, well, do you need the tax deduction or do you want the tax free growth? Sometimes it's a combination. We'll do both. Um, so then after that layer, the two distinguishing traditional and Roth, you have a ton of different options. So now you can do a solo 401k. If you're your own business owner, you can do a solo 401k. Those have higher contribution limits. The contribution limits of a solo 401k is $69,000 a year.

Um, no matter what the age anywhere up to 15 and a half. Okay.

Yep. If even after 59 and a half, you can contribute into a solo 401k up to that 69,000, then there are some exceptions depending on your situation. Sometimes you can get back. Anyway, it gets over that 69, but that's the general rule of it. Okay. And in your solo 401k, you can do the traditional pretax dollars or Roth post-tax dollars. Okay. Um, Then you have a SEP IRA and a Simple IRA. Those are for self-employed individuals as well. Simple IRA is typically done with a small firm, like they just have a couple of employees, they'll set it up that way. Same kind of thing, the SEP and the Simple IRA has a higher contribution limit. So the SEP has $69,000 as well. I think the SIMPLE is at $15,000. So those are for people who are employed, self-employed and want to contribute. And it really just depends on what your business is doing and what you're looking to invest and whether or not you should open a SEP or a solo 401k. But again, SEP IRAs can be Roth or traditional. SIMPLE can be Roth or traditional. So it's just a matter of figuring out what you're wanting to do in your individual situation. And then after that, you have your youth Roth accounts. So anybody under the age of 18, we do separate that a little bit because we give a discount for those kids. We don't charge an asset fee for kids to be able to invest, kind of helps them out as they are getting there as they're growing. And then we just opened up a new branch and that is for small businesses. So we actually will help a small business set up a self-directed plan for their employees. And that's pretty new. There's not, I don't think anybody else is really doing that yet.

I've never heard that. Yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah. So, so what that does is really great for self-employed individuals who have two or three or four, 200 employees and they want to self-direct their 401k. So what it does is it'll set up a small business plan for you. the owner can self-direct and the like the employer can self-direct, the employees can self-direct as well. Although what we found is most employees want to set it and forget it. So we have a model into the stock market for them. They don't have to self-direct if they don't want to. And what we found is it's the employer that's savvy and wants to invest, and the employee just hasn't learned about it yet. So we try and educate them, and then they can choose whether they want to just put it in the stock market, set it, forget it, or if they do want to try and get into some real estate, we help them with that as well.

Oh, very cool. Or anything, not just real estate. Yeah, real estate just happens to be a common asset, I guess. Okay, that makes sense. Very cool. So, and then HSA is another one. Is it one of those buckets? Okay. Yes. That's another vehicle?

Yes. So an HSA, thank you, thank you. HSA is a health savings account. And so if you have a high deductible insurance policy, that's the caveat. People always ask me, well, what's a high deductible? Is there a certain dollar amount? You know, is it 1500? Is it 5000? And it's really funny because it's based on the company that you get the health insurance plan from. So On the top of your plan, it will say high deductible plan. If it says high deductible plan, you qualify for an HSA. So once you have the high deductible plan, you can open an HSA, you can do your contributions into it, and then you can self-direct that. So any money you put into your HSA, you can put that into real estate or precious metals or private equity. Same with your Roth or solo 401k that you open. So an HSA is definitely another vehicle. And then kind of where I usually take people after what kind of accounts is this idea of partnerships. Okay. Um, partnering is pretty powerful because let's just for easy numbers, let's say that there's a house I want to buy for a hundred thousand dollars and I have 70 in my Roth IRA. So that's not enough to pay for the house, but you can partner with anything. So I put $70,000 up from my IRA, and then I can partner with a spouse, I can partner with cash, I can partner with somebody else's IRA, I can partner with an HSA. So now we can start to put pool money together to purchase that house. And that makes it a really powerful vehicle because not everybody has enough money in their one account to invest in something that they're interested in.

Yeah, that's great. So you guys have helped me with that as well. So just to make sure I understand it, cause I always have to check with, with your compliance team. If let's say you only have 7,000 in a self-directed Roth IRA and you want to buy same house, a hundred thousand dollars. Can, can you partner with your own company for 93% and then 7% from the IRA and still be clean? Yes. Okay. All right. As long as it's shown going in what the percentages are.

Correct. And then it's going to be percent in percent out. So when you start to get rental income or returns or dividends off of that, it's going to be 93% back to your business, 7% back to your Roth IRA.

Okay, perfect. So I'm trying to think where to go from here because I have a couple of questions. Let me just stick on that topic for a second. Let's say you do rent that house. It's a $100,000 house. You're renting it for just pretend it's $1,000 a month. If you have, whatever the math is, $930, even though we know there's taxes, insurance, and all that, let's just pretend the profit's 1,000 and you've got 93% going to your 93% partner, and then 7% coming back to your retirement account, you can't actually touch the money yourself, right? You have to have a third... Can you talk a little bit about what you can and can't touch, things like that?

So what it would be is the seven... $70 going into the Roth IRA, that's what you have a custodian for. So that's gonna come back to the IRA club account and we're gonna put it into your Roth IRA. The 930 bucks is gonna go to you and your checking account or whatever account you've got that set up for. Tax wise, you're not gonna pay taxes on the $70, but you will pay capital gains on the $930. So that's kind of, and you can touch that, that's your money. And any restrictions you have on that $930 or whatever account, then those are just yours to do anything you'd like with. If you partner with, so a lot of people will partner with a spouse. spouse's IRA, so two IRAs. Now, neither one of you can touch the money. They're both just going to go into each other's accounts. So in that scenario, $930 would go into your IRA. The $70 would go into your spouse's IRA. The same thing is going to happen. Now, neither one of you can touch the money. So it just depends on where the money is coming from. And think of that percent in, percent out. And I think that kind of leads into the next conversation as well. If I'm doing rental income, what responsibilities as an owner can I have with an IRA? And so we call that arms length. So you have to stay an arm's distance away. So let's use my Airbnb as an example. So my Airbnb is 50% owned by me, 50% owned by my brother, both in our Roth IRAs. So we actually cannot go clean the house. We can't replace the water heater that blew up a week ago. Boy, that was fun.

It actually happened.

It actually worked out. Okay. It happened to be right at the end of one guest stay. So we were able to clean it up, but I can't actually go. Well, thank goodness. Cause I did not want to go down, you know, the flights of stairs and hollow water heater out. But what you do is you have to hire it done. That's what's considered the arms length. So we have a housekeeper. And we have a maintenance guy. And so those monies to pay them has to come out of the IRA, 50% from my IRA, 50% from my brother's IRA. And it's just done super easy with our, our, the IRA club becomes the bookkeeper. Okay. So with the water heater, that's kind of an emergency. So we actually went to home Depot, purchased the water heater, um, and got it installed in the house with our handyman. Then I just took that receipt and I was reimbursed by our IRAs because that one you can do that on an emergency. It's not recommended. So, um, you don't want to be doing that with. things that have a little more long term planning. So on my housekeeper, my housekeeper gets paid from my IRA or our IRA. So we we interact that way, because I know that's kind of a more planned situation. I can tell, you know, Emily over at the IRA club is like, hey, you know, she needs to be issued 100 bucks. $50 out of this account, $50 out of that account. And so it's a little bit more planned. But for emergencies, you can get reimbursed in those situations.

Yeah, you can't just start calling everything an emergency though. Exactly. I see where you're going. It has to be a true emergency. And then if I can go back for a second to, let's just pretend you have everything's great, running smoothly, people are paying, they pay, where do they send the payment to?

IRA Club.

Okay, so you're never actually touching incoming and then sending it. It goes directly to IRA or I assume you can have a property manager or payment collection company.

Yes, and that works easier. It definitely works better to have a property manager take care of all of it for you because they'll kind of balance the balance sheet. So like $1,000 coming in for rent, I'm going to pay the housekeeper this, I'm going to pay the maintenance guy this, rather than money coming in and out of the IRA club that fast, they'll kind of balance it and just send the overall profit back to the IRA. So it does work better.

Okay. Got it. So yeah. So you can have that in between person collecting. And if you have like in some of those examples, a percentage owned by the IRA and then a percentage owned by non-retirement account, the management company then sends the disbursement. Okay. I think I understand that now. So can I ask you, can I test a theory that I think I've heard some things, right? You get around investors and you hear things all the time. Uh, but then you run it back by, you know, the true professional like yourself. I just want to share this concept that I've been hearing and I want to, I want to get your reaction to it if you don't mind.

Absolutely.

Okay. So. A lot of times investors will borrow money from private lenders that have IRAs and that's all good and fine. And it's a great situation, especially when the lender is comfortable, they've done it before and they understand what they're doing and they know how to vet the borrower. What I've then heard is if you're going to be an active investor yourself, that it's sometimes better to use a solo 401k when your solo 401k is buying the house, like a Roth 401k. The reasons that I've heard are a couple of things. Number one is if you potentially do something out of compliance, the 401k that one transaction can be untangled if you do something wrong. Whereas if you do something wrong in your IRA, the whole account can get jeopardized. Let me test that one first. Is that true or is that sort of how it works?

Yes, but that's what we're here for. We're not going to let that initial Mistake happen, everything we do goes through a strict compliance piece. So whether it's a solo 401k or whether it's a Roth IRA or we're going to make sure that doesn't happen. Um, and then there is a little leeway in both accounts to undo mistakes. Um, it's when, so you do have some time to. For example, I had a client that put money into their own checking account on accident. We were able to undo that and put it back into the right account without any penalties. So you have a little bit of wiggle room for both the 401k and the IRA accounts.

Okay. So it's, yeah, it can be nerve wracking. Obviously you think, all right, well, I don't want to screw anything up, but you guys, that's what you guys are there for is you're making sure everything's done properly. And I know, I mean, I know you guys have a very keen eye on compliance. You're always checking my documents to make sure they're right. The other, the other aspect, and I think there's a couple of layers to it, but I've heard that you cannot borrow. Let's say my IRA wants to go buy a house, but it needs private money or bank money. My IRA can't borrow money or can it?

It can, it can. And this is where the power of the solo 401k comes in. Um, so if I want to use, so there's partnering that's different, but if there's borrowing then from a bank, so if you do, you can partner with somebody's private money as a loan and you're going to be okay. But if you borrow from a bank, two things need to happen. The first thing is you have to have a non-recourse loan. And a non-recourse loan is just what it sounds like. The bank has no recourse other than the asset if somebody defaults on the loan. So some are willing to do it, some are not, some banks, but they're going to get their money. So it's typically 1% to 2% higher than the standard interest rate. So whatever our going rate is, add 1% or 2%, that's typically what you can get the loan as. So if you use it with a solo 401k and you're going to borrow money you're gonna have to use a non-recourse loan. If you do it with an IRA, you have to use a non-recourse loan. Both of those types of vehicles have to use the non-recourse loan. The second step is, where are they different? The government says, wait a minute here, you're gonna use your retirement, which we're giving a tax break on, to borrow money, we're gonna get our taxes anyway. And they actually charge what's called a UBIT or a UDFI tax. And that is you get taxed on the profit of the money that comes from the loan. And so when our interest rates were in 2%, you could still find some pretty good profitable deals doing non-recourse loans and borrowing with your IRA, paying those taxes. Now it's a little trickier because our interest rates are higher. So it really is just a cost benefit analysis. We don't recommend borrowing with an IRA because of those extra costs. The solo 401k escapes the UBIT tax. So if you do it with a solo 401k, you still have to use the non-recourse loan, but you do not pay those UDFI or UBIT taxes. They give that privilege to the 401k and the private or the business owners that are using that.

Okay, perfect. So, and for the purposes of this conversation, well, UBIT and UDFI, I think was the other one you said. We can, I'm sure we can Google that later, but those are taxes. If you borrow, what are they for? If you're borrowing money and running it as a business?

Yes. If it's, if you're borrowing, if you use an IRA or if you use any retirement dollars to borrow money. Now it's kind of funny because if you, It stands for unrelated business income tax. Okay. F I stands for unrelated finance income. So it just kind of depends on what you're borrowing the money for, but they're pretty synonymous, synonymous in terms of those two titles. They are just taxes. If you use your retirement dollars to borrow money.

But if you use a solo 401k Roth, for example, you're not subject to either one of those. Correct. That sounds pretty good. Yeah. And then the other thing that I've heard, and I just recently learned this, is that you have to have a salary from your business in order to open a solo 401k. Is that right?

Correct. Yep. The solo 401k is pretty powerful because it allows you to contribute in two ways. You can do a contribution as the employer and as the employee. So the way that works is first, you have to have income. So when you set up a business, people will kind of choose how much money they want to make, you know, because you have to pay taxes on the income, right? So sometimes they'll set their income really low. So again, it's that cost benefit analysis. But in order to contribute to a solo 401k, you have to have income from the business. So let's say that we do a hundred thousand dollars. I pay myself a hundred thousand dollars in my business. As the employee of my own business, I can contribute $23,000 just right off the bat. Then as the employer, I can contribute 25% of the a hundred thousand. So 25% of the a hundred thousand is 25,000 plus the 23,000. And I'm at 48. $1,000 of the 100,000 can be put into my solo 401k. And again, that can be Roth or traditional or a combination.

Okay. So just to make sure I'm understood, thank you for explaining that 25% of what you're saying you made as income, does it have to be W-2 or you can just be your own, you just pay yourself when you pay yourself?

It's pay yourself when you pay yourself, but we always recommend working with a CPA because however they set up your business, we don't look at that. If you tell us that this is 48,000 that we're going to contribute into my solo 401k, we just accept that on faith. So we always say talk to a CPA, set up your business structure appropriately so the amount of money that you're doing is correct.

Okay. And then basically it lines up with whatever your tax return showed. If you, if you made a hundred grand, you could put up to 25,000 and then the 23,000 was what was that number? The employee can contribute 23.

As an employee, I can contribute 23. Yep. Okay. And so the, and so a SEP IRA is for the, um, uh, self-employed individuals as well, but The difference between the solo 401k and the SEP IRA is the SEP only allows you to contribute as an employer. So you only get the 25%. So if I had a SEP IRA making a hundred thousand dollars, I'd be able to contribute 25,000. As a solo 401k, I'd be able to contribute the 48,000. So it really is just what do you need that the solo 401k is more expensive. Right? So it's just, again, Do am I going to be borrowing money? I usually ask people, are you borrowing money? If you're borrowing money, you want to go the solo 401k route, no matter what.

Okay.

Look at your income. How much money are you making as you're a business owner? And is it going to be beneficial? Can you, I mean, just because you can put 48,000, you might not be able to afford 48,000, right? You might need that to live on. So it's, can you afford the maximum contributions from a solo 401k? Or is it going to be beneficial just to do the 25% for a while? Okay. And so that's just this, you know, what's going to be in your best interest. Um, the solo 401k is a little bit more expensive, but it has more benefits. The SEP IRA is less expensive, but it doesn't quite have as many benefits.

Okay. So yeah, that makes perfect sense. Um, are you okay for a couple more minutes and then we wrap, I know you got meetings coming up. Thank you. So. One quick question to look at the math. So I'm just going to use 69,000 as the max, I think you talked about in the beginning for a solo 401k, 69,000 per year. So if I'm thinking about this right, take away 23,000 from the employee, and then 46,000 is the max that the employer can put in if they make four times that, basically. Okay. All right. I understand. One thing that I think would be fun for people to hear is what are some ways that you've seen people grow their retirement accounts the fastest? You're just like, wow, look at how fast they grew that. What are some really nice case studies or examples that you can think of, whatever you're able to share?

That's a good one because Let me see. Let me think about that because we don't keep track of that, right? We're the custodian. So we're not, we are not as concerned with the returns on the investment as we are with the compliance piece. I would say real estate is typically where you see some of those higher returns. Private lending can be a really good market. Um, But again, I, and I have to always preface this, I'm no longer a financial advisor, so I can never tell people where to invest their money. It really is a matter of getting into different communities, like, you know, meeting and talking to people and looking at their returns and looking at the kinds of deals they've done. I, my brother and I are making quite a bit of money on our Airbnb. you know, we really are. And so that's been very successful. I think our returns are in the double digits. But we have a good house in a good location and, you know, we're able to do that. So it really is a matter of we always tell people, invest in something you're interested in. If you're not interested in real estate, don't invest in it because you won't be as keen to hearing the deals that are out there. If you're wanting to do private lending, you know, get become kind of an expert, get into those communities and learn about them in terms of that. But, um, you know, we've seen everything from, you know, 30% returns to 8% returns. And it's, it really is up to the individual to find the deals and, and us to keep them safe and protected.

Yeah. And like you talked about getting, once you get into it, you sort of build the network of people that are already doing it and you can kind of learn more as you go. So that's, that's very cool.

And then, you know, I take, when you meet with me, I, you know, I kind of hear, what are you interested in? And if you are interested in a real estate, I can kind of direct you to introduce you to some of those networks. If you're interested in private equity, I can introduce you to some of those people. Again, I'm never recommending investments, but we can help you find those network of people so that you're not quite so lost.

Very cool. And I noticed that you guys have webinar, I think regularly scheduled webinars. I just joined part of one the other day. Um, well, very cool. I mean, the tons and tons of educational resources that you guys put out. So it's really awesome.

Yeah. Cause we know that it is hard. I mean, if you just say you can invest in anything, if I put into Google alternative investments, it's going to be over a billion hits, you know, what do you do? Um, and that's why you work with somebody like me or listen to podcasts like yours and try and figure out, okay, which direction do I want to go? And. We actually put together, we're one of the only IRA firms to put together what's called Investors Row, which is an educational platform and it's got different investment options for people. So if I go to Investors Row and I'm interested in real estate, I can click real estate and it's gonna show me different companies that work in real estate, or I can click private lending and it'll show me different companies. And what's great about it is once I click on that, I can go and research that company. I can look at, well, what deals are they offering? What are the returns? What's the background on this company? What's the, and then I'll schedule an actual call with them. It's really important that you, you know, you meet, this is, you meet the people and you talk to them and you look at the team. And so, you know, you can schedule a call right from our website and say, you know, what are you offering? Why should I invest with you? What have you got? And then we do, like you said, those webinars, with different companies so that they can educate our clients on options.

Nice. And, and just for, cause I don't think I really knew much about investors row. Where do you find that you have to be a client or you can go on the website or.

It's just our website, iraclub.com. It's kind of the middle button says investors row.

Okay.

I'll check that out. Yeah. You don't, you don't have to be a client to be, to go check it out. Um, if you are a client, you can actually invest into those companies directly with our system. which makes it just a little bit more convenient for, for clients. Um, but yeah, you don't have to be a client to see, check it out and learn, learn all the information.

Amazing. Well, I don't want to keep you too long, but if what's the best way to, if someone is listening to this and they say, I didn't really know about this and they just want to get kind of like, like I just learned a few weeks ago, how to get involved with a company like yours. What's the best way website contact info? How do they, how do they get into the game?

Absolutely. So our website is iraclub.com and right at the top, it'll say schedule a call and my face pops up. And so you can just schedule with me. Yeah. And so you can, uh, schedule a call and it's free, you know, we're not targeting anything for the consultation to kind of figure out what are the options and what is it going to look like for your specific situation? Um, We are the only, like one of the last companies to not have a call center. So if you call the number that's all over our website, you're actually going to get a person and you can ask them directly questions. And then we have a ton of educational resources right on that website. It's just iraclub.com.

That's awesome. And I will say just from a personal standpoint, you guys have been amazing. I'm sometimes not easy to deal with because I have so many questions and so many just things I'm curious about. What if I do that? And you're like, you guys have been patient with me and, uh, and everything's been smooth with a couple of transactions so far. So thank you for your help, getting me started and everybody else that I've been involved with working through each of the deals.

Oh, we enjoy it. And we, it's like, bring on the challenges. We love it when people say, well, can I do this and then this and then We call Carlos, who's kind of a walking encyclopedia.

Okay.

Carlos, what can we do?

And it's very cool. Well, anything else that you care to share before we wrap this one up?

No, I just tell people just jump in. You got to say yes and figure it out later. Jump in, get educated, look at some different options and, and you'll be amazed at how far you can get these accounts to grow.

Amazing. Well, Mandy, I really appreciate your time today. And, um, and I look forward to listening back to this cause I'm sure there's several things I probably didn't get fully, but I appreciate you doing the interview with us today. And, um, and I'm sure people will get a ton of value out of it.

Great. Great. Well, I'm happy to help anybody who's looking to move forward.

Amazing. Thank you so much again.

Thank you.

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