Zach Winner can’t make the school system teach financial literacy, but he can at least make a difference in his own home — starting with his daughter’s allowance.
“When I gave her the allowance,” Winner, founder of Prosperity CRE and Cornerstone Investments, told Ricci Truong of the CamaPlan Podcast, “I said, ‘Here’s your weekly allowance. You could spend it however you want, but if you put it in the bank and say that at the end of each month, we’ll call it the Bank of Dad. I’ll give you 10% interest every month on whatever the balance.”
10% a month. Think of that. Much better than the fraction of a point of interest most of us got with our first bank accounts. If only we all could have saved into the Bank of Dad, we’d all be rich.
Winner intimately knows the power of passive cash flow. He started his career as an attorney, where he learned that even at a high wage, there were still considerable downsides to trading time for money.
“The more I billed, the more money I made my law firm,” Winner said, “and that creates an incentive to work as many hours as possible to maximize your profits. So as a young attorney, I was spending long hours at nights and on weekends in the law office.”
Winner began investing in real estate with his surplus income to break the cycle and achieve financial freedom himself. Like many investors, he started with single-family homes, but today Winner’s weapon of choice is Class B commercial property.
These apartment complexes, office buildings, hotels, and industrial flex buildings are slightly outdated, but still in good condition. With some capital investment, he can attract high-quality tenants and create an asset that is minimally management-intensive and dramatically higher in value.
The best part — you don’t need to be a multimillionaire to participate. Winner’s deals are syndications — cooperative partnerships where multiple investors pool their money to buy a large piece of real estate.
“The big benefit of investing alongside a company like ours,” Winner said, “is you can invest in a multimillion-dollar, high-quality commercial real estate asset without having to have millions of dollars. Typically, the minimum investment for us is $50,000.”
