If early retirement seems out of reach right now, try semi-retirement. Once you get there, you’ll only be halfway to early retirement, just like today’s guest, Jessie Dillion. At only thirty years old, she is semi-retired and has scaled her real estate portfolio to almost two million dollars in nine months, with five properties total!

When people think about high returns, they often think about a high unit count—but why have a lot when you can do the same with a few? Jessie is strategic about each property purchase she makes and has made a goal to make one smart investment each quarter. She currently has a single-family home and two duplexes. One of her duplexes is a house hack, and her portfolio sports a mix of long-term, short-term, and mid-term tenants.

Jessie’s success is due to how responsible she is with her finances. To finance her first property, she built up her savings to ensure she had enough to cover any surprises. As Jessie continues to scale, she has gotten more creative with her financing. She has formed great relationships with her lenders because of her ability to ask questions and carefully choose where and how she gets her funding. Now she is semi-retired at thirty years old and pays a measly fifty dollars a month towards her mortgage!