From Salary to Rentals: A Real Estate Wealth Strategy in 2026

Wealth Beyond the Clock: Engineering Your Financial Freedom

Most people think that building wealth financial requires a rich family, a high-flyer job, or working for several decades to build up savings until they’re 50. But that mindset is completely wrong. Han and the author are in their 30s and own over $5 million in assets without any of those advantages. They don’t need to trade their time for a job anymore. They can spend more time with their families and go on long holidays. Neither of them were born rich. Han grew up eating leftover rice from the canteen auntie and worked as a dishwasher in Pizza Hut after school on weekends.

Our Real Story: From Average Jobs to 26 US Rentals

The author grew up like any normal Singaporean, giving tuition on weekends during school days to build up some savings and working part-time jobs during school holidays, like selling cameras at Mustafa. After graduation, both worked normal engineering 9 to 5 jobs. They were not high flyers and never got A’s in their performance appraisals, but while in their 30s they worked hard to build up a portfolio of over 25 cash flowing properties in the US. With their average income jobs, it would be impossible to scale a portfolio of cash flowing Rentals in Singapore.

That is why they explored out of country and ended up choosing the US. The truth is, you’re not too early, you’re not too late, and you’re definitely not doomed to work your 9 to 5 until you’re 65. You just need the right mindset and the right plan. The author didn’t start super early either, only starting in their 30s.

What to Do in Your 20s

Reflecting upon the last two decades with what is known now, here’s what should be done whether you’re in your 20s, 30s, or 40s. The biggest advantage of being in your 20s is time and energy. If you’re in a job, you’re probably still in a junior position and don’t need to report 24/7 to higher management. Unfortunately, a lot of youths waste their time doing things like chasing social media trends, hanging out at shake bars, talking about new bags and new shoes. That’s perfectly fine if you want to do that, but you need to be very cognizant. Does spending time and money on these things get you closer to your life goal? Your goal in your 20s should be to build up your financial education and your financial discipline.

Building Financial Education and Discipline

Read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Learn what is an asset, what is a liability, and learn how money works because this is not something they teach you in school. When the author was in their 20s, every pay raise meant a nicer branded bag or nicer shoes or nicer clothes. Looking back on that now, it was a big mistake. You need to build your saving habit in your 20s, your financial discipline. Set aside an amount that you want to save every month.

Very importantly, track your expenses. Know how much on average you spend in a year because that will be your financial freedom number. That is the amount of money you need to upkeep or sustain your current lifestyle. Discipline is the foundation you want to build in your 20s. Of course, this doesn’t mean being obsessive like telling all your friends you’re not going to go out anymore because you need to have financial discipline. Everything in moderation.

The Power of Asking & Building the Right Network

In your 20s, you need to learn how to be super curious. The Singapore education system has taught us to put our heads down and not say anything unless you know the correct answer. You should totally scrap that. If you want to ask everything. You want to learn as much as possible because what could be the worst thing that happens? At most, whoever it is doesn’t want to reply to you. That’s fine. You don’t get an answer. But if you don’t ask, you are setting yourself 100% up to never get an answer. Picture this scenario: there are two kids in a conversation of rich and wealthy people. The rich people start talking about things they never heard of like cash out refinance, mortgage, principal, and interest. One kid stays shy, doesn’t dare to admit that he doesn’t know what’s going on and keeps quiet.

Learning from the Wealthy

The other kid starts asking a lot of questions. What is a cash out refinance? How do you take it? What is a loan? Why do you take a loan after you buy a property versus before you buy a property? The more he asks, the more he learns. Whereas the quiet kid, if nobody asks anything, never learns anything and walks away from the conversation wasting 20 minutes sitting with a bunch of rich people that he could have learned something from that could change his entire life. The more you ask, your energy reaches the wealthy people, and you start expanding your social circle to the wealthy people. These are people that have went through hardship, picked themselves up, solved problems and eventually attained wealth. You get to hear their stories, how they built their multi-million dollar businesses from scratch, how they talk, how they think.

Your 30s & 40s: The Awakening (and What Most People Get Wrong)

To summarize the rule of thumb in your 20s: build up your financial education, financial discipline, and be curious to keep learning ferociously. Build the habits and the network that is going to serve your life. Now into your 30s or your 40s, you probably have some savings. Your income is growing, but you’re feeling stuck. You’ve got a 9 to 5, maybe a home loan. You see your parents aging and realize your best years are spent in meetings. This is the awakening or the midlife crisis. You start thinking, is this it? Is this what I’m going to do for the next few decades? Is this all there is to life? So you start exploring investment vehicles. You look at stocks, you look at properties, and ultimately it depends on your personal life goals.

Determining Your Financial Freedom Strategy

Do you prefer something passive but with lower yields like bonds, or do you want to hustle hard to build something with higher yields but requires more effort that will get you out of your 9 to 5 sooner than later? Remember in your 20s you have to calculate your spending and know how much you spend a year because that is your financial freedom number. So now, how much money do you need to invest to obtain that financial freedom number in passive income?

For example, if you were to put your money in a 5% yielding stock and want to have passive income of $5,000 a month, that means you actually need 1.2 million invested in the stock. Is this an amount that you can save up or generate? It’s definitely not possible for those coming from very average salary jobs. That’s why the couple looked at US real estate where they could get much higher yields for every dollar.

Overcoming the Fear of Foreign Markets

Obviously it was not an easy decision because US real estate is something so foreign and people were saying things like, “Oh, it’s very scammy. It’s very risky. I don’t think you can do it. Are you sure foreigners can buy properties in the US? You’re not there. What if you get scammed?” But as mentioned, use your 20s to be very curious and learn as much as you can. If you learn from people who have been there and done that, then why listen to naysayers who have never spent a minute of their lives researching about investing in US real estate? Change your mindset from I cannot do it to how can I do it. You are in your 30s or 40s. You have everything worked out. You’ve done your research.

Execution Beats Perfection: How We Started with $51K

Now, what is stopping you from executing your plan? This is where most people stop. They procrastinate because they are worried. There’s inertia to change how they have been living. The couple was also really scared when they bought their first US property from their bedroom in Singapore. It was $51,000 USD. But if they didn’t take that step after spending two or three years to research, they would have never started their journey towards where they are now 5 years later with 26 properties, collecting over $30,000 of rent a month and having left their 9 to 5. Obviously, they didn’t just jump in blindly. Did they make mistakes? Of course they did. They overspent on renovations and trusted the wrong property managers and the wrong realtors.

Executing Your Plan and Overcoming Obstacles

That’s the whole point of your 30s and 40s. Execute relentlessly. Learn and adjust. Build systems, manage your risk, but you don’t need to wait for perfection before you start. So start, execute, learn, and repeat over and over again. You can only go one way: better. To summarize, in your 20s, build up your financial education and your financial discipline. When you’re in your 30s or 40s, execute, build systems, learn, and repeat. Every time you’re met with an obstacle, don’t say, “Oh, I cannot do this anymore.” Ask, “How can I do this? How can I overcome this?” And you will only get better.

Resources for Your Financial Journey

For those interested in learning more about building a US property portfolio, there are resources available to help guide the journey toward financial freedom.