How to Pay Off Your Mortgage Faster: Grant Lee Explains CMG’s All In One Loan Strategy

Peggy Beauregard (00:00)
But find while you’re there, go in and ask the AI, where can I go to a real estate meeting today? Where can I go to a business meeting? Maybe you just want to buy businesses. There’s ways to buy businesses. There’s so much education. We’re on an investor’s cruise next February, where we that’s all they talk about. There’s nobody pitching you anything. What you’re gonna do is learn. You gotta be educated and you’re gonna be educated by the people that are doing these things. Listen to the people that have the experience. You’ve gotta be a good listener. When you meet somebody, don’t ask them what they do, ask them what they know.

Issa Hanna (02:09)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have a wealth of knowledge sitting across from me. Peggy Beauregard here to share her knowledge with us. Peggy, welcome to the show.

Peggy Beauregard (02:19)
Thank you. It’s such an honor to be here. I’m really excited about this.

Issa Hanna (02:24)
It’s such an honor to have you. You’ve been in the game in our business for a long time in the commercial space. You’ve also been in single family, but you got something else cooking up. You’ve got The Nest Egg Builder. You’re a financial literacy coach. And for people at home, financial literacy, if you understand money, the way the world works, the way the finance world works, you are going to be ahead of the game, ahead of your competitors. And somebody with Peggy’s knowledge can definitely educate you on that.

You held up your book, Peggy. Can you tell us a little bit about how you actually wrote the book on financial literacy?

Peggy Beauregard (02:56)
It took me about a year to write this book because I actually wrote it. I had AI help by making sure I didn’t make any errors or spelling or any of that. But I wrote the book because I’ve been—we started this—I’ve been in real estate for a really long time, about forty years, that I started this business back in two thousand six. And we raised capital, invested, worked with syndicators in the commercial world. We—I like—

Personally, I like the commercial world because I could put the same amount of money I would put into a single family, but it goes much farther because you’re in, let’s say, a five-story office building or you’re in a self-storage or you’re in a manufacturing or you’re in—office isn’t hot right now, but it is coming back as we knew it would. And apartments, of course, which are costly because there’s so many expenses there.

But I’ve met thousands of people over the years, and all these—even older people—well, the older people mostly, but a lot of younger people tell me my parents never spoke to me about money. And I’m like, yeah, well, I had to learn it on my own. My parents didn’t teach me anything about money. My grandmother, who did very, very well, never ever spoke about money. It is a taboo.

How helpful is that for kids when we need to learn everything we can? And she did really well. She was in Suffolk, New York. I don’t know if you’re ready for a story, but she knew the owner working out of his garage and then turned—turned it into Avon. And Avon was there for over a hundred years. And she—she always bought stock and she’d give us some shares of stock, and—but she never would talk about money. Isn’t it interesting?

And her—and her husband was an entrepreneur. He ran an arbor—arborist company in New York. He had been a manager for a farm and then he started his own business during the Depression in the twenties. The backgrounds there. It’s just interesting that nobody ever talked about it. They never taught their children, and then their children never taught. And how can you teach financial literacy if you don’t understand it?

I’ve been talking to a lot of people since I wrote the book. And I have parents tell me, well, they don’t know how to explain it. And I say, well, just buy the book because it’s really simple how we explain it. And you can just read it to the kids. And no matter how—what the age of your children, it’s just—it’s written so three-year-olds can understand it and all the way through adulthood. So it took me a year to put that together because I wanted to make sure I was being clear, and I had a lot of people look at the book and

give me a lot of feedback because I had to go to people that—I used both people that didn’t understand financial literacy and people who did. How can you make corrections if you’re giving it to people that already know? We think differently. Like it’s hard to remember—it’s hard to forget what you already know. Like—so that’s about the book. And my dad was in the service, we traveled all over the country. So when I did start investing,

I was comfortable investing in different areas of the country because he was stationed in a place, and even though I was young, I still had connections wherever I lived. So my dad was in Dayton, Ohio, that area. But I know people in Ohio. I know people in Carolinas. I lived in Virginia for years, the D.C. area, like all over the U.S. And I’m in California and have been

for quite some time. I did end up growing up here. But it was just great to be able to look at a property and then be able to pick up the phone and call somebody and say, can you drive by that property and make sure it’s really there? And then out of that I created a—a checklist, which is our education protecting—we protect people. Just the last six or eight years has been

a little depressing, I guess you would say. A lot of people lost a lot of money. And even though we ran background checks and checked people out, you just—they did—you miss the question or did the answer not come or whatever it was? So we’ve—I’ve got a checklist of about 120 things on it because we think it’s important that people have a checklist to ask the right questions before they invest.

Issa Hanna (07:47)
Definitely. One hundred percent. Got to have that checklist, you’ve got to have that buyer’s net. Dayton, Ohio, great, great city. Originally I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. My rental portfolio is in Cleveland, Ohio. I live in Austin, Texas. I know, I know exactly, I can definitely relate how—how you can make those out-of-state investments if you have connections. ‘Cause I have cousins I call to drive by properties all the time. I love that.

And I love that—that you want to teach the world financial literacy. This is something they don’t teach you in school. Like you said, it’s taboo to speak about between the family and a lot of people don’t understand it. For me sometimes, calculating how much interest is on a credit card for one of my family members, and then—and then showing them what they’re paying every—every year in interest, that alone can revolutionize the way you think.

About how you spend money. Somebody like Peggy who wrote the book on it, right there, can build your nest egg just out of the little bit of money they pull out for interest if you—if you’re really careful about—about paying interest. And that’s—that’s as far as I know about it. The rest of it you’re gonna have to ask Peggy, but you’ve also got something else cooking up. You’ve got a whole video course lined up to make it even easier for people to

and it’s gonna be coming out real soon, as far as I know. Can you tell us about the video courses?

Peggy Beauregard (08:59)
It’s

a financial literacy course. I am creating it for the schools and I’m creating it for the public. Did you know eighty-five percent of Americans don’t understand financial literacy? I think there’s a world out there and there are a few schools now that require—and twenty-nine states now are requiring that—that kids to graduate must have at least one semester of financial literacy. I’ve based—actually

The story is someone came to me who—they had my book and they asked me if I would put a course together, if I would do a syllabus. And I said, sure, based on the book, because they were—they’re in Florida and they teach the underserved. And really these are the—I mean, everybody needs this, but the underserved probably need it more so that they know that there’s a future. They know they can get out of where they are and

and be better people, change the lives of their family like that. So I’m putting this course together. I’ve done two edits so far on—on 10- to 15-year-olds. And I’m thinking about changing that to 11 to 16. I don’t—I’m in the midst of ch—of building it. So it’s gonna take a while. Then I’m gonna do the—16 or 17 through college. And then that will be good for everybody because adults, when you think.

Kids on the—I have also doing three to five, and then I’m also doing six to nine, which might be six to ten, because our brains work so differently. They’re always growing. At three years old, you’re a sponge, you take everything in. The cow moos, the pig oinks, the colors, all of that. This is the time to teach them. Here’s a dollar bill, here’s a nickel, here’s a dime.

What—what they can buy, what the values are. I mean just that one little thing of giving them coins to play with the coins at the age of three and explain. And then when you go to the store, you could give them like—not a hundred pennies, but you could give them, like, some quarters and nickels and dimes and say, here’s something you could buy for a dollar, and that way.

But I have a whole thing in the book about how to handle when kids go, I want that. I don’t believe in giving your kids money. I believe in you teaching them how to earn it.

Issa Hanna (11:07)
I love that last part. And spoken like a true visionary. You’re basically gonna write the curriculum on financial literacy, different age levels. I love that. I love that. Because yeah, how’s a five-year-old gonna understand what you’re trying to tell an eleven-year-old? You can’t. You’ve got to break it down by the age. And I love that. Get them started young. I just thought it was just a main course for—for adults, but I mean, wow, all the different age groups, different stages in life. I mean

how amazing of an idea. And what a better person to—to write the book and to make these video courses. Somebody who’s—who understands it inside and out, has so many years investing. It’s just truly unbelievable. I want to get—I want to rewind a little bit, and I want to get a little background, because you said you—you were a real estate investor, you still have investments in the commercial space. A lot of us start as single-family people.

And that’s a natural ladder, natural progression. They—they go towards commercial as—as they learn the game and they know a little bit better. Like you said, you don’t own 30 toilets when you have office space. I want to kind of get the—how did you get into real estate business? Because we all have a pretty cool story of we kind of stumbled in, realized we could make some money. What’s your origin story? How’d you get in?

Peggy Beauregard (12:57)
When I was in high school, my parents—my dad was a developer. Part of that, he bought—he was in the service, but he was also side-gigging, building homes, single family. And I used to go over and clean up after school, get the broom out, clean up for the men to come back the next day so they had a clean place to work. So that, and then I got—was discouraged by my uncle.

‘Cause I wanted to start doing fixers and he’s like, no, that’s too risky. That’s too risky. So I put it off for a lot of years. But that was the place to go. I mean, I ended up in the garment industry. I was in retail. I did a lot of different things. I kept coming back to real estate. I mean, look at—look at all the tax advantages of being in real estate. You don’t get that in the stock market. Do you get cash flow? I mean, there’s some disadvantages, but overall

I see real estate, other people are paying down your mortgage. And at some point, yes, your depreciation will go away. But guess what? You’ll get all the cash flow. You won’t have a loan on the property. I mean, a lot of syndicators buy a property for five years, fix it up, and then sell it and give all the money back. But me, I want—I’m—I’m a long-term person. If I had bought a property and kept it for 30 years

and fixed it up as I went along and raised the rents, no, that’s to me. I mean, somebody, I can’t remember who it was, I’ve done so many courses, said buy 10 homes, like single family. And I did. I—we—I—we bought properties, my husband and I bought properties that were two and three on a lot. We did start off with that, but it was—we didn’t buy singles because

I want the many doors. If somebody leaves, you still need to pay the mortgage, you still need fix-up money, you still have to pay the taxes, you still have to pay the—all of that, the interest, et cetera, et cetera. I start—that’s what I just—I just ended up starting to invest. Back in the late ’90s, we were doing short sales. My first property I bought was a short sale.

And ha—happened to be a friend of my sister’s who had to get out of her property. So we did a short sale. It was three on a lot. And as we found out later, not legal three on a lot, but three on a lot. And we held that for years and then we bought two—we bought actually a property from my husband’s dad who had two on a lot.

So we kept counting doors. So we ended up with seven or eight doors. And then I exchanged—my husband passed, I exchanged the two on a lot for self-storage. And then I never looked back because I went, my God, I’m getting like three times this cash flow on the self-storage. And then we exchange—added to land and we still have the land. So we—we’re

because we went in that down cycle, the land lost its value and now it’s starting to come back up. But I’ve got land in Kentucky, self-storage in Vegas, self-storage in—in Texas, apartments in Texas. What else do I have now? I can’t think of what else I have. You have—and then I do everything in my Roth account so that I don’t have to pay taxes or worry about any of that. And

now I’m looking at doing some tax sales, working with people that are behind in their taxes and picking up properties that way and finding other people that are doing that that are buying the commercial properties. Because if all you’re doing is buying the tax, think of the cash flow you’ll have. It’s not like you’re gonna get a six percent return. You’re gonna get like a 26% return, yep.

Issa Hanna (16:17)
One hundred percent.

Peggy Beauregard (16:18)
Yep. The mortgage usually

goes away. I mean, there are some states where the mortgage doesn’t go away, but you—you have to know all the ins and outs about buying taxes or are going knocking on doors and saying, hey, look, are you gonna keep the house, because you’re gonna go to sale in another year? What do you want to do? And people are ostriches.

Issa Hanna (16:37)
100%. Yeah. A lot of people, like you said, they’ll stick their heads in the sand. They’ll ignore the problem until the tax sale happens. If you do go knocking on somebody’s door and you say, hey, do you want a remedy for this? Do you want to get out, put some money in your pocket? Those distressed properties are best way in today’s market to get a huge discount on properties. So I love that you’re going that way.

I love all the knowledge you’re just sharing with us about not just real estate, everything, the financial literacy. We touched on even interest. We—there’s so much. Your father was in the service. I love that. And it—it builds tough character. It teaches you to be a hard worker. And I want to touch on something you said earlier when we were talking before we went live. You said you’re an educator and you’re a protector.

Can you kind of enlighten us on—on what you meant by that?

Peggy Beauregard (17:21)
Well, the education is—well, we have a mentorship, a year-long mentorship. Well, so we teach you how to use the checklist. We look at all your opportunities that you’re looking at. Well, sit—let’s say you had something and we were working with a couple. So we—for the—I’m going to the end instead of the beginning. So we talk to people about what do they want their portfolio to look like. They come to me and they say,

tell us what to invest in. Well, I gotta know what your situation is. You gotta tell me what your situation is. And then you gotta start at the end, right? We’ll just say 50, and you wanna be retired by the time you’re 50 or be able to have the ability to do whatever you want. Most of us are never gonna retire, just pick a number, right? What they want, but—and then you have to look at inflation. So these are the things that we sit down and talk

about. Right now, I’m in California, right? We’re paying six—six-fifty a gallon for gas. How do you think that hurts somebody that’s still only making fifteen or eighteen dollars an hour? It’s tough for a lot of people. So you’ve got to really think about when you’re doing an investment, how are you gonna be ahead? So let’s say you need eight million dollars by the time you’re 50.

If you start now, you better have started when you were three, right? Your parents should have opened a—a what we call financial—a financial—it’s the whole life insurance policy that will cover you for your whole life and builds over time. And by the time a kid is eighteen, they’ll have about a million dollars in their account. So they could pay for their own college, they could pay for property, right? Start doing their investing then, because it can’t—

they can’t have the—they can’t have it until they’re 18. But it’s up to us as parents to teach our kids how to use that policy. So if you’re making a 5% compound interest, remember the insurance policies compound. So you have compound and you could borrow against. So let’s say you finally build up to $50,000. Now you could go borrow against, but let’s say they charge you 4%

to borrow that money. Well, that means you should probably find somebody that’s got a eight, eight or nine percent return on it, right? And depending on what it sells for five years. Now you get your money back. Let’s say you not quite doubled it, but got close to double. Now you can put that money back. You can put your amount you borrowed back. You can pay back the borrowed interest, right? But you still have to pay a capital gain

on the capital gain that you made. So we have a new theory, which I don’t think I’ve put in the book, of how to not pay. And that’s to have your Roth—you have your Roth account borrow, right? So it’s my Roth account, and I have an insurance policy, but I’m—I’m not—I don’t own it right because I’m a kid. So you go to the trustee and say, I’d like to borrow

a hundred fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand, match it with what I’ve got from my Roth, and then do that investment. Now I get all the capital gain after I paid off the—the interest that was owed, right? So that there’s no capital gain on the policy, and now the Roth account has built. And I don’t know that that’s approved by anyone yet. It’s just what I do is I create—

I have a book here that I wanted to share for your—you have so many investors that hopefully will watch this, but one of my friends wrote this book. So we met in National Council of Exchangers, 101 Recipes for Riches in Real Estate. And it—it’s—it’s a lot of stories of how to put your deals together. And it’s on Amazon, of course. And it—

what I liked about—what I like about that, now you can borrow this money, you can make your investment, you’re gonna get your 10% or whatever it is you’re in, you’re gonna get it paid back, you’re gonna pay back the insurance policy, and now your Roth is built up also. Now you have more money, you may not have to borrow again from the insurance policy. And the insurance policy, remember you’re borrowing against the policy,

so the policy’s still growing because your money, your 50,000, is still sitting there in the account earning whatever it earns, let me say five percent. So it’s building and compounding, and you’re borrowing from the company some money to do investment. I’m really as creative as I can be. That’s what I liked about National Council of Exchangers because it was all about being creative and it was 1031s and how they put their deals together, like

you’re—you’re offering on a property. Let’s just say there’s mom and pop owns an apartment complex and they now want to retire. Well, what are they used to? They’re used to getting that cash flow. So why wouldn’t they carry back? And why do you have to give them any cash? Because they’re in a 1031. They are gonna have to pay big taxes. ‘Cause when they bought that property for $39,000 and now it’s worth a million, that’s a big gap and the depreciation’s gone away.

So they owe on a hundred percent of that property. Well, what if you did an actual 1031 where you gave them lots or you gave them a note or you gave them an annuity or you gave them something that they want? Then you’re helping them not pay taxes, right? You’re helping them avoid that, and you’re moving things that you may not want anymore out of your portfolio, and now they’re getting their cash flow.

Plus they did it as a ten thirty-one. And another thing, sorry, I just—I can’t help myself. And then there’s the other where you—you could—you ask them to carry back. So this is one of my favorites. They say, I don’t want to carry back. I don’t want anything to do with this property. You s—tell them, well, look, I’ve got somebody that will buy that note. If you will create that note the way they want that note created, then you could do a carry back.

And you could sell that note in escrow and get your cash. How does that sound? And what? Nobody ever thinks about doing that. But you can. You just call the person that’s gonna buy the note and say, how do you want me to write this note that you could buy it out of escrow? And if they know you and know your reputation, they’ll work with you because they’d really like seasoned notes, right? But if

if I call Nathan, Nathan will work with me because he knows me really well. He’s been on our show many, many times. And anyway. And did we even—did I even cover about how we protect people? We have a checklist. We go through the checklist. We find out—we work on what you want, how you want to build that portfolio, and then we make sure,

the best we can, that you are doing your due diligence. And then if we happen to know the sponsors, we’ll do introductions that you can meet them and ask them all the questions. And I’ll be on the phone or the Zoom or whatever with them that they can get their questions answered. I’ve sent emails out to people asking a couple of questions and I never hear back. They’re out.

If you can’t answer these questions about where the money’s going, you’re not gonna get mine.

Issa Hanna (24:06)
One hundred percent.

Peggy Beauregard (24:07)
Still doesn’t guarantee, capital falls and like—

Issa Hanna (24:10)
Guys, golden knowledge Peggy just dropped on you. So if it was a lot, yeah, just—just pause that, rewind it. She gave you so many different strategies, just in that five minutes, that you can do to save thousands of dollars. Keep that kind of money in your pocket because long-term wealth building is how do you save as much of your income

every month, every year as possible. So when you have tax advantages, when you’re paying the lowest possible interest rates, these kind of things just compound your wealth over time. And then, having mortgages—over time, these mortgages go down, you build equity, that’s your net worth. And then borrowing against your 401(k), all this type of stuff. There’s so many different avenues you can take it,

that if you don’t know these strategies, it’s gonna actually cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. So right now I want you guys to go and check out the book, Build Your Nest Egg, check out 101 Recipes, was it?

Peggy Beauregard (25:06)
Recipes for Riches.

Issa Hanna (25:08)
Recipes for Riches in Real Estate.

Peggy Beauregard (25:14)
101 Recipes for Riches in Real Estate. And it’s very cute. And it’s all about real estate.

Issa Hanna (25:19)
I love that. I love the—I love the concept with, you got your recipes because that’s what it is. Every strategy is a recipe. I love the title. And I want to give you the floor. If somebody wanted to get involved, not just buy the book, but get involved in—in your coaching and your—in your financial literacy classes, how could they reach you?

Peggy Beauregard (25:36)
I have an email, [email protected] works. I have a phone, 804-317-2036. You can text me there. So you need to put why you’re calling me in the subject. A text is always good. I like the text. ‘Cause there’s a lot of scammers out there now, so you want to know who’s calling you these days.

Like that. I’m a great “no” person. I will—I say no all the time. ‘Cause if I don’t know you, you’re not asking for money, you’re asking for coaching or consulting is really what it is. Going over a checklist. And we will sell the checklists separate. A lot of—I mean, you’ve got a whole group of people, they already are doing their deals. So do they—what do they have? And

one of my—my mastermind leader actually, when I first met him fifteen years ago when I joined his group, he had ten things on his list. And he said, ten things don’t work. No, ten things don’t work. You’re not asking the right—you might be asking the right ten questions, but you’re missing the other fifty you should be making sure is on your checklist and get answers to that. And you end up losing money. That’s not good.

Issa Hanna (26:43)
Yeah, one of the greatest lessons you can learn in our business is to learn from others’ mistakes. Peggy’s giving you a checklist of a hundred plus items to check off before you make an investment that was built through her own experience in her own image, through her own fires that she had to personally put out. Learn that lesson, get that checklist, check her out at [email protected]. Is that correct? Shoot her an email, write Investor Fuel in the subject that way she knows you’re a real person and you’re serious. And now Peggy, I want to close out with a little advice for the younger generation, right? The younger generation, not so social, they’re not as social as the others. They don’t—they don’t like the face-to-face, they don’t like that stuff, they’re—they’re online a lot. But in our business, in any professional business,

one of the most important things is being able to build relationships with people and grow your network. So if you had to give them one piece of advice on how to establish that first relationship, what would you tell them?

Peggy Beauregard (27:39)
Go to real estate networking groups. Get out, meet people. Yeah, you’re online, you’re on your phone. That’s fine. Be on your phone.

But find while you’re there, go in and ask the AI, where can I go to a real estate meeting today? Where can I go to a business meeting? Maybe you just want to buy businesses. There’s ways to buy businesses. There’s so much education. We’re on an investor’s cruise next February, where we—that’s all they talk about.

There’s nobody pitching you anything. What you’re gonna do is learn. You gotta be educated and you’re gonna be educated by the people that are doing these things. So listen to the people that have the experience. You’ve gotta be a good listener. So when you meet somebody, don’t ask them what they do, ask them what they know.

Issa Hanna (28:25)
Definitely. Be a sponge, you guys. Soak up as much knowledge as you can. As you’ve seen, I just sat here when Peggy was talking and I soaked up as much information as I can because when somebody’s in the room, when somebody’s across from you who has that wealth of knowledge, just a little bit of that knowledge can rub off on you. And people do guard their knowledge. So when somebody’s out here sharing years of experience, years of mistakes that they made that you don’t have to make just by listening to her,

it’s truly an amazing asset. Truly. Peggy, thank you so much for coming on the show. I’d like to invite you back for a round two if you’ll have us.

Peggy Beauregard (29:00)
Really? I’d love to.

Issa Hanna (29:02)
Yes, ma’am.

Peggy Beauregard (29:02)
I think I talk more than you do.

Issa Hanna (29:04)
I would love to have you. Like I said, you dropped so much knowledge, not just about real estate, but finance as well. I think our viewers are gonna get a lot of education out of this—this show. And I wanna bring you on for a part two so you could kind of educate them a little bit more, because a lot of people know real estate, but they don’t understand the financial part of things. So if you could come bring us some more education on the show, I’d be truly grateful.

Peggy Beauregard (29:26)
I’d love to do that. What an honor.

Issa Hanna (29:29)
Thank you so much. And thank you for honoring us with your presence on the show and to our viewers at home. If you enjoyed my conversation with Peggy and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that could bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time. The Real Estate Pros are out.