I noticed a lot of you asking how we paid off debt and managed to afford investments like properties.

My husband and I have a very humble beginning. Being young parents and fresh graduates when we married, we literally had nothing on our names. I remember my husband having to fill out his SALN and the only property we’d write there were his computer and our wedding rings. Even worse, our liabilities outweighed our assets.

Fast forward to almost ten years later, we now have three real estate properties and two cars under our name.

The route we took to make that happen is not the traditional save-until-you-have-the-money-to-buy-things route. Instead of saving, we spent money on things that can provide a return of investment.

You see, us Filipinos have always been told to save, save, save. I mean, if saving is your thing, go for it. My husband and I, though, we’re quite aggressive when it comes to leveraging our income.

When my husband had minimum wage due to his loans, we spent our last money to buy me a new laptop and invest on software that I can use in my business.

The business started slow, but because I knew that was the last of our money, I made sure the business will bring in income that will replace what we invested – and more.

And it did.

With hard work and dedication, I started making a full-time income from my home-based business. A few months later, I leveled it up and I started making 6 figures monthly.

My income sustained our needs the whole time we were paying off my husband’s loans. Three years later, we renewed one of his loans and invested on a property in a prime location and, at the same time, use part of the money to bring my business to a whole new level. Today, that property is worth 2x what we paid back then. We don’t plan to sell it, though, since that’s where we plan to build our home.

As for my business, it’s now making 6 figures monthly and we’re planning to make it hit 7 figures in the next year!

Back to our money story…

During this time, we were renting an apartment for P6,000 a month. We decided to move from the apartment to a rent-to-own condo unit instead, which only cost P7,000 a month via a PAGIBIG Housing Loan. Today, we are renting that condo out and we’re making passive income from it.

A few years later, we decided to purchase a third property in a rural area. It’s our investment property so we can either sell it if we feel we won’t need it anymore or we can build a rest house in it that we can rent out.

You’re probably wondering how we paid off debt and managed to make this investments, right? Here are some tips you can try if you want to start growing your assets as well:

Create Multiple Sources Of Income

The problem with savings accounts is that the interest you earn isn’t that big so by the time you go in and get your money, you won’t have that much saved up and prices will have already blown up. It’s like you let your money sleep, which is such a waste.

Although we do built an emergency savings account, we also set aside money for our stock market investments as well as business investments. I also took care of this blog as it brings in passive income.

We never put our eggs in one basket and we make sure all our baskets are taken care of so they’re producing more eggs every single day.

Make Your Money Work For You

Don’t just create multiple sources of income. Create sources of income that will work for you. That being said, aside from your earned income, you also need to create leveraged income and passive income. This way, you don’t burn yourself out trying to generate more income to sustain your needs, investments, and wants.

Don’t be scared to invest! You need to spend money (wisely, of course) to make more money. If you know something will benefit one or more of your income sources, go for it and make sure you will really put it to work.

Calculate Everything

Don’t make investments just because you want to. You have to be smart about it if you don’t want to end up with zero money in your bank account.

If you’re going to make an investment that you will pay in installments, make sure your income can cover those installments. In our case, we use a monthly calculator to see whether we can sustain the monthly installments of our investment or not.

Be Willing To Make Sacrifices

If, in case, things don’t go well and you find yourself in a cashflow crisis, be willing to make sacrifices. In our case, when income was tight, we’d sacrifice eat outs and movie nights so we can focus our income on the more important areas of our budget.

My husband even went as far as using the bike to work so we can reduce our gas expenses. As a result, we were able to save P90,000 in three months. Imagine that!

Eyes On The Prize

Finally, keep your eyes on the prize! It’s easy to get distracted by shiny objects, to want to just give it all up. However, if you have your big WHY for this journey of financial freedom, you’ll stay on your path no matter what.