Former Naval Nuclear Officer Jason Sharon On Renting, Home Loans, & Building Wealth

In this episode, of Couple O' Nukes, it's actually a couple of nukes!

I sit down with Jason Sharon, a retired Navy nuclear operator, mortgage expert, real estate investor, hotel owner, author, husband, and father. Mr. Sharon shares his journey from growing up in a small Alabama town to joining the Navy at 17, working through the nuclear pipeline, serving 20 years active duty, and eventually transitioning into the world of finance, mortgages, homeownership, and real estate investing.

We talk about Navy life, nuclear operations, carrier duty, prototype, naval reactors, leadership, port calls, and the classic military experience of loving the people while not always loving the system. Mr. Sharon also shares how his life after the military took unexpected turns, including owning rental properties, running a mortgage company, and even accidentally becoming a hotel owner in Phuket, Thailand after originally looking for a retirement property for his family.

A major focus of this conversation is homeownership, VA loans, mortgages, and the financial habits that hold people back from buying their first home. Mr. Sharon explains why down payment fears stop many renters before they even start, how food delivery and eating out quietly destroy savings, and why rent can be viewed as paying 100% interest with no ownership return. I also share my own reflections on spending, travel, food costs, and how easy it is to let convenience drain money that could be used for long-term stability.

We also discuss Mr. Sharon’s books, including VA Mortgages Declassified, I Hate Renting, The Loan Officer Success Manual, and Renters Make You Rich. Mr. Sharon breaks down the “three Cs” of mortgage qualification: character, capacity, and collateral, while explaining how veterans, first-time homebuyers, renters, and future real estate investors can begin building their path toward homeownership. He also emphasizes that even if someone is not ready today, the right guidance can help them create a plan to become ready.

https://jasonsharon.com/

https://www.homeloansinc.com/

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today is actually a Couple of Nukes. It is very, very far and few in between hundreds of episodes that I actually have two nuclear operators on the show. They are just, I don't know, they just disappear. Maybe they don't even exist. I don't know. It's hard to find them. But we're here with one, and I'm super excited to nuke things out today, just a little bit, not too much. But we'll definitely be touching on that. And then getting into one of the most important parts of your life, a milestone really, which is getting your first home, or maybe it's your third home, or nowadays I know people who have 32 homes 'cause real estate is huge. So we're gonna get into some of the difficulties, some of the hardships, and some of the benefits and secret tricks you maybe did not know. So I'm excited for this conversation. Mr. Jason Shearin, so great to have you here, and could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. Well, I appreciate the kind words and the opportunity to be here. I mean, so as you mentioned, I'm a retired nuke. I spent 20 years active duty. After I got out, delved into the, finance world. I wanted nothing to do with, engineering anymore, so got into finance and, now I'm doing mortgages. Married, got a couple kids, couple houses, and, just enjoy life. Blessed beyond measure. That's the theme of the show. Couple of Nukes, couple of kids, couple of houses. We got a couple of everything here. So of course I gotta ask you the question which is, why did you join? When did you join? And, you know, the, the classic questions we get every time we go to a new command or meet someone- Sure new in the military, it seems. Yeah. So I grew up in Podunk, Alabama. I had 26 kids in my graduating class. There was- Mm ... nothing worthwhile in that town to do except for work at the peanut mill, and I was not gonna work at the peanut mill for rest of my life. Not judging people working at peanut mills. I love peanuts more than anybody else. That just was not gonna be my future. So I joined right out of high school. I actually went to boot camp at 17 years old. I turned 18 in boot camp. That was not a fun day. Yeah ... and, you know, finished up that. A school power school down in Orlando, prototype up here in Charleston where I'm sitting now. And then did a couple carrier tours, couple more prototype tours. Something that if nukes listen, they'll understand. Nobody else will. I did 10 years as NRO, naval reactors- was my stick Mm That was my career progression. One of the bad guys. Yeah. As, as, as we jokingly say. Yeah. We joke a lot on the podcast about, you know, officers are pencil pushers. Don't call me a sir, I work for a living. Yeah. True ... unless you were, as we call it, one of the cool officers, meaning you were formerly enlisted and then you, transferred over to be an officer, then you're one of the cool guys 'cause you know what it's like out in the field. But now we have- I must not have been too bad because one of the guys that worked for me on Enterprise, so I was the RADCON officer on Enterprise, one of my ELTs, now works for me in civilian world, so I must not have been too bad. Right. You know, I was gonna say, I got along with most of the officers. It's like any one of the rates or ranks, you know. You have someone who's gonna be a terrible person in, in that position and someone who's not. We had certain officers that they were walking down the P way, you just knew to get out of sight, uh, do something. Yes. This particular officer I'm referencing, I remember it's after working hours and I'm out on the the fantail, so we're, you know, we're outside 'cause my buddy needed to take a phone call for setting up something with one of his lawyers. And an officer entered out there and, you know, I was on the other side. My buddy hadn't saluted him because he was facing away and on the phone. And the officer walks between him and the rail and gets in his face and says, "You're not gonna salute me when I came outside?" And we were like, "Come on." Most officers try to avoid getting saluted just because- Yes ... 'cause it's a tedious task and a lot of lower enlisted guys will just mess around and go out of their way to salute you on purpose. This officer was the opposite. "I demand to be saluted. I earn this respect. I don't care if you're out here on the phone call. You know, I'm gonna get in your face and you're gonna salute me." And it's like, come on, man. But like I said, there's, there's one in every division, in every place, right? Right. Same with the MAs, CSs, whatever it is, so. Yep, yep, yep. What inspired you, though, to go the officer route rather than enlisted? It was really just getting out of going to sea. So I had the opportunity to get picked up for NRO. I got asked to interview, and not something I ever thought about doing, but then I started asking questions. And once you become naval reactors, then you're never attached to a sea-going vessel again. So I was like, "That sounds pretty good to me." Um, so it, it really it was solely just to get out of going to sea All right. Land lubber. Uh, no, actually I would have done the same thing, so I mean, I totally agree. Overall, how would you rate your experience? Did you... Obviously, like every military experience, you had some toxic leadership, you had some great leadership. You have some friends for life, you have some enemies for life. Overall, though, looking at all that together, how did you feel about it? Yeah, I like to say I miss the clowns, I don't miss the circus. Mm. Mm. It's probably my favorite thing to say about that. Right. Yeah, obviously there are good commanders. There are bad commanders. You work for good chiefs, you work for bad chiefs. I had good chiefs that worked for me, I had bad chiefs that worked for me. So it's, it's a mixed bag just like anybody else. Yeah, I totally get that. And is there anything-- I know you talked about not wanting to be nuclear operating anymore, but was there anything that really drew you to it to begin with that you really liked more than any other subject? Because, you could be in the military for a number of different things. So what kinda drew you to nuclear operations? Was it just the ASVAB score or was it a personal choice? So the Navy recruiter was the best out of the recruiters that, that were talking to me, so whenever I was, you know, thinking about joining. The Air Force guy might as well not even existed. The Marine just talked about tattoos and going to bars. I don't remember much about the Army recruiter, but the Navy recruiter was, was pretty slick. He wasn't a nuke. I don't remember what rate he was, but, you know, he said like, "Hey, if you want the most challenging thing, the most challenging academic thing , in the military, this is it." I'm like, "Ooh, I, I could... That sounds like a, a challenge. I'll, I'll take you up on that." And, so yeah, I made chief in-- I enlisted in '93. I made chief in '01, and then got commissioned in 2002, and then retired in 2013 Nice. Yeah, so you spent, you know, a long time there obviously. And throughout that, what was your port call experience kind of like? Did you have any port calls that kind of stood out more than any others, or ones that kind of changed your course of life at all? So I remember getting in trouble. I was at Nimitz. We were pulling into Dubai or Abu Dhabi over and over and over, and I dropped a special request ship for BEH for Abu Dhabi because we were pulling in there so much. And I got in trouble for being a smart ass, for that. But, you know, obviously the Middle East was a lot of fun. I still communicate with some of the people that I met, you know, some of the civilians there. Japan, where you are right now, was a lot of fun when we pulled into Yokosuka. I got in trouble there as well. Hong Kong was a lot of fun. Obviously all over Europe. I was blessed with a lot of good port calls, and then I've traveled significantly after that. And like I said, I'm going to Thailand tomorrow. I go to Thailand a lot. My wife is there. My son is there right now. We own two hotels in Thai. So a couple, you know, talking about couples, I own, two hotels in Phuket, Thailand. Wow. Yeah. So basically for any civilians listening, your joke is that you basically told the military, "Hey, I'd like to get a place to live 'cause we're stopping at this port call so much," correct? Yes. It's essentially that. Right. That's, that's funny actually. ... In my opinion, you can never have too many port calls. I mean, it's nice to have a little diversity among them, but, uh, the, the more the merrier. I think now, I don't know if it existed when you came here to Yokosuka, but they have a nuke bar for just the nuclear operators that is all nuke themed. Oh, wow. Yeah. I haven't been to it 'cause I don't wanna see any of those people. But I might stop by and, uh, take a look. But there's a whole area- And I, I had that idea about opening up a nuke bar here just outside the weapons station in Goose Creek, and I was g- I was gonna name it 90 PM just for the fun of it. You know- And, uh- ... me, me and the buddies talked about that as well, only we said, "Let's start a speakeasy on the ship inside the reactor compartment." And we made all these... We, you know, you gotta like knock and say the password, and the password was gonna be like an equation that, you know, most top siders wouldn't know or anything like that. And, uh- Right It's so bad. We made some drinks that I, I shouldn't repeat, but, they were all Navy themed. Um- Yeah ... a lot of them maybe are probably confidential jokes, but just different chemical formulas or radioactive stuff. Sure. Like, we were like, "This has gotta be something." And one of the things was when I went through, the bar on base was shut down, and so a lot of nukes were pretty bummed out about that. I think it's called the Dive Bar or something, right now. And, yeah, so since there was no bar, everyone just went to the Waffle House right off of base on the tracks there, and, the waitress got asked out 20 times a week, you know? And, uh, yeah, so here in Yokosuka, there's just, like, a certain area that ha- they call it, like, the haunch, and it's just a bunch of really overpriced English-speaking. And it's so bad that they have Navy guys in uniform patrolling it to make sure no one's getting in trouble- ... when they bring guys home. And, yeah, I don't wanna go drinking or eating anywhere where they got military guys patrolling, you know? Yes. We've talked about this before on the podcast when it comes to safety. My ex-fiancee took me to a club once, and they had six armed guards stationed inside of it. I was like, "Listen, I ain't, I'm not trying to be here." She's like, "It's so safe. They have so many armed guards." I was like, "That means that there was a reason and a need for them." "I don't wanna be here. I'd rather be somewhere where there's no..." When there's more security and police, I'm like, "Listen, this is a bad time." But yeah, there's a lot of nuke jokes that, from opening bars to a lot of people have made... I found, by chance, just scattered around the ship, I found different little nuke theme poems, all these odes to Rickover, and all kinds of stuff. Sure. And there's all kinds of underway shenanigans as well that are nuke specific. I'm sure you've had your fair share of- Oh, for sure ... runs for that. You know, it's always fun until it's not I remember a story. Someone brought onto the submarine, like, 1,000 rubber ducks, and it was all fun finding them around until one went into a piece of gear that it shouldn't have and caused an issue. Now people are not having fun. Someone bought a box of, um... They bought it online, a box of, like, 1,000 live ladybugs, and put it in someone's barracks room, you know? There's just stupid stuff like that, people making little RC cars from leftover parts they find in the submarine and stuff like that. Did you ever go submarine, or you were aircraft only? So I was only deployed on the carriers. I've been inside every probably every pre-Seawolf class submarine, as an inspector, but never, never underway on, on a- and then you mentioned Thailand, what drew you in particular to that area, so much so that, you know, you got a wife, you got two hotels? I mean, That's not something that people just say in everyday conversation, "By the way, I own two hotels in Thailand." And, you know, especially that's like, wow. So how does that all kind of unfold in your life? Yeah, my life has been one circuitous path of randomness. So I met her here in America. She was working here. Oh, okay. That's a whole nother story, but I met... She, so she was Thai, not a Thai, not dual citizen yet. She was working here on a cruise ship, actually. She was working. So we had kind of had that- Oh ... connection. I was Navy, she was working on a cruise ship is how we, we met, connected. Civilian Navy. Correct, yes. So we dated for a while, got married. I started traveling over there to see where she was from and that kind of stuff. We ended up having a kid five years ago, and we were just gonna buy... We wanted to buy someplace to retire to in Thailand, and we, I just- Oh ... wanted something, I wanted something kind of cheap but nice on the beach. I mean, that's what everybody wants, right? So one of her friends knew that we were looking for some beachfront property there and came across this hotel, 40 rooms, and this is in Phuket, which is an island, down in the south of Thailand, and said, "Hey, I know you're looking for beachfront. This is beachfront, but this is a really, really good deal on this hotel. You might be interested in." And it was one of those deals that's too good to be true, too good to be true. Could not pass it up. So sold a bunch of stuff here. Sold two condos. Had two restaurants at the time, sold two restaurants. Sold a really nice exotic vehicle and used all that to pay cash for a 40-room hotel in Phuket. I started running that, and after about a year, we're like, "Man, this is going really good. We should buy another one." So we started looking, and my wife found another one, that was completely abandoned. So we spent a couple years getting that thing fixed up and operating. It's operating now, and it's only, like, two miles away from the first hotel, very close, but that's 60 rooms. Rooftop bar, restaurant, that kind of stuff. So it's fun. Wow. So it's just, like, accidental hotel ownership. Yes. Looking for a retirement property. Oh, here's a hotel for sale. Well, I- Yeah, here's- There's a bed. There's a, a sink- ... a bathroom. I mean, it'll work. Yep, it'll work ... and then of course all the money you make with that as well. It's actually a better retirement deal than just getting a place for yourself, to be honest, so. So I do feel comfortable, like I- I'm an old guy, I'm 50. I, I've got, you know, some years left but not too many, and, and I feel comfortable that, hey, if I kick the bucket tomorrow, my wife and kid have a place to stay. Yeah. That's paid off. A way to make money. you know, without me, so it's a good feeling. I hope those hotels offer military discount. You can stay for free. I'm gonna call you out if they don't. Yeah, if you come out here, you can stay for free. Thank you. But yeah, I think that's amazing. I guess it was ironic, 'cause I definitely assumed... Actually, I joked on stage. So my recent stand-up comedy performance was talking about how if you see a white guy with an Asian woman, he's military. That's his military ID, right? I joke about that- ... 'cause a lot of military guys end up with Asian women. Sure. And one of the jokes I made was, my fiance is from Florida, but she's Filipina, and everyone always assumes that I picked her up at a port call in the Philippines. Yeah. And I am now the own stereotype that I joked about, 'cause I assumed that your wife was from Thailand, and you picked her up- Yeah ... at a port call. So I'm just kind of laughing at the irony of you're like, "No, I met her in the States." And, I had two guys come up to me, and one of them met a Filipina before the Navy, and one of them met afterward, but everyone just assumed that they met them while in the service, 'cause it's a frequent occurrence. And, about the cruise ship thing, what's funny is I jokingly called my friends who stayed in, they re-enlisted and stuff and they were going out on deployment. And I called them, I said, "Hey, I actually got a deployment too." And they're like, "But you got out." And I was like, "I know. It's called Carnival Cruise. It's a huge ship. Uh, it's, it's not nuclear side. You know, I'm gonna have to use my electrical skills from the electrical side, uh, you know, to help operate it. But yeah, we're going on this deployment to Mexico." "And it's gonna... It's just a week-long. It's like a, it's like a, you know, mock trials. It's like fast trials, sea trials, you know. We're just going out, doing some maneuvers, and coming back." And, they're just steaming mad, 'cause they had just come back from, like, a nine-month deployment, and then they were getting called back out again. And I was like, "I'm going on one too, guys. I'm there with you." And, uh, yeah, it's Carnival Cruise Line. Yes. Uh, USS Carnival. But, um, yeah, so that's funny. You could actually s- you could actually make that joke about my wife, that she picked me up at a port call Well, that's, that's true, right? That's funny. That, that's funny actually. It's the, how the, how the tables turn kind of situation. For sure. And, , that's just for me, that's a lot of traveling. I assume it's what? Almost a 20-hour flight, 16-hour flight every time you go to Thailand, or- Oh, yes ... how much of that is layover? Yeah, so yeah, I'm, like I said, flying out tomorrow. Got a layover in Seattle. I got a layover in Seoul, then a layover in Bangkok, in order to get to... And with layovers, it's probably about 30 hours. Wow. That's, yeah, that's a lot. But it's plenty of time to do something like maybe write a book. Have you ever thought about doing that or maybe- It's a pretty shameless plug. Yes. Uh, before AI, I wrote some books. Now books, writing books is different. So in 2019, I wrote VA Mortgages Declassified. So now I own a mortgage company, I got out of engineering, got out of Navy and that kind of stuff, and wanted to get into something different. Ended up landing in finance and mortgages. Because I'm a veteran and because I'm the nerdiest nerd you're gonna meet in the mortgage industry, I got really smart on VNAs. And I started actually another nuke that... Actually, maybe I'll introduce you to him, another nuke named, Kirk Taylor, who's a retired master chief. He writes books on taxes, so he wrote the quick cheap textbook series, whatever it is. But he wanted me to write a chapter on mortgages for his textbook series. So I did. He said, "Jason, this is pretty good. You should write a book." I'm like, "Uh, I'm, I'm not a book writer." He's like, no, he goes, "Jason, you've already written your book, you just don't know it." I said, "What are you talking about, Kirk?" Mm-hmm. He said, "All the emails that you send, you answer the same thing over and over and over, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." He said that, " each one of those emails is a chapter. So write down the thing that you said over and over and over, that's a chapter. Something else you said over and over and over, that's a chapter." So I took his advice and then wrote VA Mortgages Declassified, and that's how not to get screwed by the lender. So, there's all kinds of ways that the banks will get you, you know, screw you in the drive-through. So I wrote a book written by a veteran for veterans to read and understand. It's 30, 50 pages, I don't remember. It's not terribly large. I sell it on Amazon. You can download it from my website. It's just, hey, here's what you need to understand whenever you get a VA loan. If you got a cosigner, I call it, you know, not your typical buddy system. I talk about math, in there. Talk about how to read a loan estimate, talk about condos, all the different intricacies of, getting a VA mortgage. After that I wrote I Hate Renting, which is more for a civilian's, first time home buyer type book. The content really is probably 50% shared between the two, so it's not much different. Then I was like, these real estate agents ask me the same crap over and over and over again, so I wrote a book for real estate agents, what they need to understand about mortgages. I was doing really good as a loan officer, so I wrote the Loan Officer Success Manual. How not to be Christopher Columbus is what the tagline on that. And I joke that Christopher Columbus was probably one of the best salespeople ever. Right. Right? He sold Queen Isabella to fund him and you know, a bunch of people to go sail over the side of the Earth. And he went through, like, 15 different people before Queen Isabella finally agreed to that, you know? And then she signed off where she got hardly any spoils. He and his band, his group basically had almost all the rights to anything they found with a little bit of, of kickbacks to her, but it was, he really sold her. But we don't live in the United States of Columbus. We live in the United States of America. We don't have North Columbus and South Columbus, we have North America, South America. And the reason why is because Columbus failed at follow-up. He did not service the account after he sold her, after he sold America. So America, where they come from, Vespucci, Amerigo Vespucci, who after he sailed, he set up, sailing routes, he set up sailing schools, he set up map factories, and then branded his name on that, and that's how the New World became, you know, America. But that's kind of what I wrote is, you know, loan officers, almost anybody here that's used a loan officer to buy a house or even a real estate agent to buy a house probably does not get any type of follow-up from them. Probably don't even remember the loan officer's name if you've ever bought a house But you would if the loan officer kept marketing to you after closing. So that's what that book was about. And then my most recent book is Renters Make You Rich, which is based on how do you start getting into investment properties, how do you finance investment properties, that kind of stuff. Good old Christopher Con Man Columbus. Yes. I never thought of it that way. But it is a sales pitch to say, "I'm gonna go sail over the edge of the world." You know? That is- Yeah. If you give me money- That's a hard bargain. Right. Give me money- If you give me the books, give me money ... to go sail over the edge of the world, and if I don't make it back, you're not getting anything in return. And apparently if I do make it back- And if I do, if I do make it back, you get a little bit. Right, right, right. Interesting, pitch. But I wanna go on... You said, "I hate renting." Is that for the, "I'm tired of renting, of living by other people's rules," 'cause there's so many fees and rules nowadays. I've looked at apartments before and it's just a longer and longer list of made-up fees that are so expensive. Is this for people who are tired of that and they wanna get their first property? Exactly, yep. Perfect. And what would you say is the number one misconception or thing holding renters back from going and taking those first steps of getting, a home? Down payment. 100% confident in that answer. Down payment. And down payment, either they think they need to have more than they really need, or they live above their means and they don't have any savings. Uber Eats... So I've looked at, I look at at least 1,000 bank statements a year, no exaggeration. Right? So I can't tell you how much money Uber Eats, McDonald's, eating out kills American savings. It is just crazy to see. If people just got a freaking cookbook and went to Walmart to buy chicken breast or whatever and just cooked themselves, people would have so much more money. I can relate to that because Navy Federal, the mobile app now has a new feature where they tell you your top spending categories, and mine recently was like, "Hey, Mr. Whiskey, your top two categories were travel and food." And I was like, "Well, I understand travel." I, I said, "I drove to Texas and back from the East Coast, and I stayed at hotels, and before that I was in Japan, so lots of hotels, airplanes, blah, blah, blah." But I was like, "Let me look at the food." And I was like, "Oh It's a lot. And I'm like, but it's hard, you know? I go to a lot of restaurants. But I've also been, when you're traveling so much, as I have been this past year, it's hard to always cook and meal prep. But I'm excited because once I get back from Japan, I'm getting the cookbook. In my case it'll be YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. But, uh- Sure ... you know, I'll be finding those recipes that maximize price and calories in food and stuff. But, it really shocked me, and I brought it up to some people around me who checked out their statements, and was like, "Wow, we are spending so much food." And actually, I think Uber Eats and delivery services like DoorDash are the biggest secret killer because I went to a place here in Japan, and of course everything is cheaper in terms of food here. And it was like if a burger and fries and chicken nuggets were $6 at the physical location, it was like 20 bucks to get it on Uber Eats. But laziness sells. If- Yes ... if that's a saying. You know, laziness sells. The I don't wanna leave my house and stuff and all that. But man, I never realized how much of an upcharge it was. Yes ... and this is even for here in a place where my food was delivered the other night on a bicycle, like a regular bicycle. Yep. During a typho- we got hit by two typhoons. My, my burger and fries were wet and soggy. I said, "You couldn't pick-" I said, "There was so many drivers with scooters and cars. You said, 'Hey, the guy on the bicycle is closest. Let's have him pick up the food.'" I was like, I mean, I respect his dedication, but, my food's all wet and soggy. But yeah, it's just, they try to say it's the gas or it's this or that. But, uh, we've had some episodes on price gouging, and it's ridiculous. Actually, I don't wanna bash on hotels 'cause you're a hotel man, but, these conferences I go to, I'll look at the calendar and it's 70, $80 a night. The weekend of the conference, 350 a night. And I get it. You know, you have an event going on and they're gonna be doing a lot more. But you have the conference paying you certain fees already to cover those. And then if it's more than double, I think that's just evil. Going from 70 to 350, for me, that's just too much. So what's interesting about that is I didn't re- yeah, I, I had noticed that same stuff. That's generally not the hotel that's doing that. It's generally the online travel agents, the OTAs. Mm. So Expedia, Agoda, Traveloka, is where most people book. You know, I would say probably 80%, maybe almost 90% of our bookings are through one of those OTAs. Mm. And those OTAs- Or, you know, w- have that dynamic pricing engine to where, like, at one of, at, like, during most s- so in Thailand, you've got hot season and wet season. That's all you got. Right. Um, and- ... so right now, at our hotel, you can book a night for 20 bucks. Sea view, gorgeous, clean room, spectacular, 20 bucks a night New Year's, Christmas, all that kind of stuff, 300 bucks a night. So over a factor of 10 difference. During the high season, November, December, January, it'd be about 100 bucks a night, but the dynamic price will jump to 300 for New Year's, that kind of stuff. Mm. Well, that's, for me personally, I refuse to use third-party entities or software for booking hotels. I only call- Yeah ... the hotel directly. And it's nothing against those companies or even pricing. One time I booked and I got scammed, and Navy Federal had- Really? ... to do an investigation to get my money back. 'Cause it was, it was Memorial Day weekend in Myrtle Beach, okay? So it was like $800 for, you know, two nights. And, uh- Yeah. The South loves Memorial Day, I'll tell you that. Yeah. And it was some third-party company that I thought, I actually thought it was the website because, I didn't know any better. And yeah, they just scammed me. 'Cause I called the hotel to reconfirm like a day or two later, like, "I'm on my way. What time is check-in? What do I need?" And they're like, "Uh, we don't have a reservation for you," or anything like that. Wow. And I've even had some cases where the third-party company said there were rooms available. I call the hotel and the hotel says, " we have no vacancy. We're fully booked." And I've seen some upsets where people didn't call ahead of time like I did. They get to the hotel, they got their whole family ready for vacation. They just flew however many hours, drove however many hours, and the last thing you want is a hotel nightmare where you don't have a room. Now you're on the day of, if it's a holiday weekend, the holiday weekend of, every place is full. The only place you find is either in the slums or is like $1,000 a night. Yeah. So it's bad stuff. And what would you say being a hotel owner has taught you about life in general? Has it really opened your eyes to anything in the industry or to customer service or to, employer-employee relationship or anything like that? It's exposed me to a lot of other, nationalities and cultures that I wouldn't have, come across. 'Cause I do enjoy sitting in the lobby and checking people in or just interacting with people and asking how things are. And I'll even go fix things. You know, if someone's, shower's messed up, I'll go, fix the shower head or whatever. And I enjoy doing that kind of stuff whenever I'm there at the hotel. So it's really opened my eyes up to that kind of stuff. You know what I will say is by far the ... What would you guess the worst nationality to stay, at a hotel? I'd have to say that depends because in America my answer would be different than Thailand or Japan, 'cause when I'm in Japan I hate Americans, to be honest. I hate them. They're loud, they're rude, they're entitled. When I'm in America I love Americans, it's great, blah, blah, blah. I have a different answer. But here in Japan I get secondhand embarrassment. I try to pretend that I'm not them, and I can always tell right away who they are, and it's just- Yeah ... for me it's something that has bothered me since boot camp. The reason my boot camp division got in so much trouble, people could not stop talking, even for a few minutes. And our instructors were very relaxed people, and my thing is it's the same here. People just refuse to not talk on the trains or to even talk quietly. Americans are just like... And I've met- I grew up in New Jersey, so a lot of people just yell everything for no reason. And they're like- ... "Well, I'm American," or, "I'm New Jersey." And it's like using your geographical background or nationality to justify not respecting another culture just isn't right. But, uh, so it- am I... I'm right on the, on the money there? Right on the- Oh, 100% right. Absolutely. If, if I... I'd much rather see a Brit or an Aussie or a German, passport come out. American passport comes I'm like... to the point where I had this one guy that, super nice initially, wasn't happy about anything in the room. He was in a family room. Him and his son were on vacation, and I understand. And his son's probably 14 years old. He said, "Hey, somebody..." And he was- booked a family room so that way him and his son could have separate rooms. Mm. And he said, "Hey, some kid drew crayon on the wall," and he was complaining about that. I'm like, "Well, your family room." He said, "Okay, sure." I said, "I'll send someone up there, try to clean it up." Wouldn't come off. I said, "You know what? I'm gonna send someone to paint the wall." It's probably... and it wasn't a lot of crayon. I mean, it was maybe some little four-year-old tried to draw half of a dog or something is what it was. So I send my guy up there to paint, my handyman, to paint the wall. Then the guy comes down to complain that it was a different color white than the other walls Now who cares? You're on vacation in a hotel room. And at that point I said- That is just ridiculous ... at, at, yep, at that point I said, "Sir, it's probably time for you to go find another room." 'Cause I said, "I think we're just not gonna live up to your standards." He's like, "Yeah, that's right. You don't live up to my standards. Get out of here." That's so ridiculous. I mean, I, I can't even wrap my head around that. For me- Yeah ... I, the only reason I would've called it in was to document it ahead of time so that I don't get charged some kind of security deposit or fee on the way out. Yeah. Right? Anytime I go to a hotel, if there's any damage or something, I let them know ahead of time so I don't get the blame. Yeah. And if I'm going to a family room with little kids, I, I don't want no crayons in there, right? But, um, yeah, well, I mean, who... That's just so en- entitled. I've stayed at some cheap, cheap, cheap motels and hotels. I'll tell you what- Mm-hmm ... i've stayed at ones with stains all over the walls. I really don't care, you know, because... But that's ridiculous. It's not the same color white paint. That... Yeah. And I gotta ask, are you gonna buy any more, or is two hotels enough for you? So two is enough. W- uh, the second one is actually listed for sale, so if anybody that's listening to it wants to buy a hotel, it's 4.5 million US dollars for the 60-room hotel in Phuket. But no, we realized that we bit off more than we could chew. It's great- Mm ... but we're at the point where we're like, yeah, I don't wanna be... it's a job, right? It's a full-time lifestyle job and more than we wanna do, so. Right. And then at first we're like, "Yeah, let's buy, three or four more." And then we're like, "Well-" Yeah, the input of work to the output of money ratio sometimes is very important to consider, especially when you've got kids and you're trying to retire, you know. But most people who retire don't retire, they just go- Sure ... work a different place, so. Yes. And then I wanna address the mortgage more. You know, we talked about kind of what got you into that, and then still doing that, what is the big misconceptions? We talked about down payment, and then in general when it comes to mortgage, to loans, to housing and real estate, I know it's a very nerve-wracking topic, especially with the economy always in flux, you know. And I, I think one thing is people are always maybe waiting too much for the perfect time. Obviously the market changes. There have been historically better periods than others, but also sometimes people are just waiting forever and never making their opportunity. So what are some, kind of the issues that you see people struggle with the most? Yeah, I think you hit a really good point in there. People say, "Oh, I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna wait." That's a terrible idea. So the first thing I hear is, "Oh, interest rates are too high." So I ask them, "Okay, well what's the interest rate on your rent?" Rent's 100% interest, right? You get nothing out of rent. Mm. And I still, I told people like, "You're paying a mortgage. You're either paying your mortgage or you're paying a landlord's mortgage, one of the two." You wanna reap the benefits of the appreciation, the tax returns, the depreciating on your taxes, and the equity growth. If you're not doing it, you could do that for somebody else. So I have six residential rentals, and then I've got the two hotels I mentioned. And I own my office building, and I've got 11 suites in the office building, so I've got, all those people that are paying. You know, they could either pay their mortgage or they pay my mortgage, so I'm very happy to let people pay my mortgage for me. But yeah, the rent, the whole idea of waiting to buy is just silly. Unless you're in a really... I'm not saying everybody should buy right away, 'cause maybe you're just not stable. Maybe you're, maybe- Right ... either maybe you're gonna be transferring jobs. Maybe you don't like your job. Maybe you hate the city that you live in. So I'm not saying everybody needs to go buy a house today. But when you are ready to settle down and you find the place that you wanna be, absolutely. And there's a few, and there's two really good reasons, two statistics that I love discussing this. And the one's financial, one's family based. So the financial one is the net worth of the average homeowner is 44 times the net worth of the average renter. And I'm not, I didn't say 44%. I didn't say 4.4 times. 44x- Wow ... the average net worth of a homeowner versus the average net worth of a renter. That's huge. I mean, that's, you know, if you can go all your life... I'm not saying you should buy a house. Not everybody should, but if you can, it really changes your end of life financial situation. Then the other part, if you're gonna have a family, this stat I find fascinating. The average letter grade of a child in school that lives in a house that's owned is one full letter grade higher than the average grades of a kid that lives in a rented home. Wow. So if your kid's a B student and you own a house, he's gonna be an A student. If your kid's a C student, you own a house, he's gonna be a B student. I'm guessing that's based on the stability of the family, that the kid is just more comfortable in school, is able to concentrate, has a spot to do homework at night. You know, probably has some parent, help with studying and homework and that kind of stuff, tutoring and that kind of stuff, is what I would venture to say why that is. But I think that both of those things are tremendously positive reasons to go down the journey for homeownership. 100%. You're talking about renting is throwing money into a void, or a house is putting money in a safe where you don't have it, but it's there and it's building interest, right? 'Cause if you lost all your money and all you have now are your property assets, well, if you're renting, you have nothing. But if you have a home- Right ... worst case scenario, you can, you know, sell it if you have to, you know, whatever it is. But, uh, 100%, I, I love that comparison of paying 100% interest on, on renting. You're giving them all your money and you get nothing in return. And- Yeah ... in addition, you've got all these extra fees and rules. And when it comes to even, like, HOA organizations, I know some people who are paying as much in HOA fees as some people are paying rent. You know, it's absolutely ridiculous, some of the prices- Yeah ... we see across America. And I know you've got the books you've mentioned. And then for your company in general, who should really seek you out to get information or to work with you? Who would benefit the most? Yeah, so somebody that's thinking about buying a house, they want that exploratory type conversation, or someone that wants to talk about refinancing. And loan officers are only licensed per state. I'm only licensed in 10 states, so 80% of your American listeners won't be able to use me. But that doesn't mean that I'm not more than willing to bend over backwards to answer the questions, help them, teach them. And if they want a connection to a loan officer in their state, I'm happy to connect. I've developed a network in all 50 states, and we send people back and forth. And we don't make any money from that referrals. It's actually illegal for a loan officer to make money from a referral. But someone that wants to understand what they need to do to qualify or wants to just talk about numbers about refinancing, give me a holler. Yeah, and then beyond state borders lies your books obviously are available anywhere pretty much. Sure. And they can read those to get a bunch of information. Like you said, you tackle a lot of the common questions in that book. And if you wanna just... You don't have to answer all of them, right? 'Cause we'll get the book and read it for that. But could you kind of just list out some of the big topics covered in that? Sure. So, as far as getting a mortgage, there's, I call it the three Cs: character, capacity, collateral. Collateral is the house worth what you're paying for it, and is the title warrantable? Character is credit score, credit history. Do you have a high... Is your credit past indicative of that you're probably gonna pay this loan back? And then the capacity is, do you have a stable job? Do you make enough money to pay for this house and all your other debts? So I kind of go through those different aspects of qualifying in the various chapters, So if you get those three things and you don't get qualified for a house, then your loan officer sucks. Right. And then of course you understand that if you don't have those things, how you can work on building those or acquiring those to get prepared for home ownership, correct? I like to call it the path to home ownership. So if someone calls me and they're not ready, which at least half my phone calls are that way, you know, either they need to save up money for a down payment, they need to pay down some debt for debt to income ratio, they need to get their credit score up a little bit, you know, something along those lines, then I'll put on my coaching hat at that point and say, "Do this, you know, do that, do the other, and that's your path to home ownership." And then I'll set a reminder. Let's say it's gonna take them a year to do that. I'll set a reminder to call them back in six months halfway to check on them Right. Perfect. Like you mentioned, and you and I talked about, follow-up is so important. It's impacting these people's lives as well as your own, so I think that's important. I think something we've talked about today that I hadn't heard before was really the benefits of homeownership when it comes to the psychological impact on the children and to, kind of looking at... I think a lot of people say rent is just part of life. You know, the bills are the bills. But when you look at it as investment versus throwing money away, I think that's a huge perspective. Same with earlier when we mentioned the cooking versus the eating out and Yeah, it's convenient to just rent a place because you can move or you don't have to deal with certain paperwork and stuff, just like it's convenient to order food in or to go out to a restaurant. But long term, when you look at the long term stuff, and I think, like I mentioned, I was shocked by how much money I was spending, and then I thought about, "Okay, well, this was for two months. Multiply that throughout the whole year," and then you look at that amount and multiply it by however many years you're doing that. That's a lot of money that you're looking at that could have gone towards a house or towards, whatever it is that could improve your lifestyle. So, I think it's important. I know we see nowadays there are apps to help you track and there, there's basically an app for everything, whatever you're trying to do with your budget. Whether you're trying to build your credit or save money by eating out less, whatever it is, you know, there's a lot of tools to help you to analyze it, to look at it. You know, you don't have to keep every receipt and count it all up by hand now, you know? So, it's, I think it's easier now than ever, and it's more important now than ever. In a world where we're constantly bombarded and surrounded by things that are telling us to spend money, to get that instant gratification, to do less and pay more, I think it's important that we stay alert and on top of ourselves and disciplined. And then just, again, I want you to share with us those book titles and then your company as well, just so people can, reach out to you. We're gonna have a website link in the description below and, contact information so people can reach out to you, of course. But if you could- Yes, sir ... do that for us, please. So, I've got the easiest phone number in the world. Area code's 843, and then it spells low rate. 843-LOW-RATE is my phone number. Best phone number ever for a mortgage guy. Website's super easy. HomeLoansInc.com. Again, I couldn't believe that, website was available. So, all my contact information, links to books are on there. Calling me, scheduling an appointment to talk to me is on there. Applying now is on there. HomeLoansInc.com or 843-LOW-RATE. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for, you know, sharing this information. I know that a lot of people have concerns about buying a home or financial questions, or in general just don't understand stuff about it as they do. I know a lot of military members are also confused about the VA home loan or don't know how to maximize it, and getting answers from the VA themselves can be very difficult sometimes, as we all know as military members. And so, I thank you for what you're doing, guesting on the podcast, writing the books, and I hope that, this is reaching someone right now and making an impact. So everyone, if you've been waiting on buying a home and you somehow came across this episode randomly in your feed, it might be, you know, your sign or time. So I would take a look at all that. But, Mr. Sherin, thank you so much for guesting today. For sure. Absolutely. Honored to be here