08/04/2026
I am going to do a piece of work in front of you rather than tell you about it.
It takes 4 minutes to read, and you can copy it on your own numbers today or tonight.
The question. How many properties would you need before your income keeps arriving on the weeks you do not work?
Most people have never worked this out. They have a feeling about it. A feeling is not a number.
Step 1: What does one property actually clear?
Not what a listing says. What is left after everything.
I used a real building located in Ottawa, Canada, this week.
Two units, $655,000, and I have nineteen months of the seller's actual statements rather than a pro forma.
Rent collected, averaged across those 19 months: $5,718 a month. Not the best month, which was $8,100. The average, which is the honest number.
Operating costs at 46%, which is what those statements actually showed once repairs and a capital reserve go in.
Mortgage at my lender's 4.50%, 20% down, 25-year amortization, Canadian semi-annual compounding.
What is left: about $188 a month.
That is a real building that really works. And it is thin.
Step 2: Divide.
Say you want $4,000 a month arriving whether you work or not.
$4,000 divided by $188 is 22 properties.
22. At $131,000 down each. That is the arithmetic almost nobody does, and it is why people spend a decade feeling busy and getting nowhere.
Step 3: Change one input.
Same building. Same rent. Same costs. Put a 35% down payment instead of 20%.
Now it clears about $731 a month, because the mortgage is smaller.
$4,000 divided by $731 is 6 properties.
22, or 6. Same building. One assumption.
That is the whole method.
Work out what one honest property clears, divide your target by it, then find out which single input moves the answer most for you.
For some people it is the deposit or monthly cash flow after tenants pay all of the expenses.
For others it is the rent, or the rate, or which city.
You can do this on paper today or later tonight. I have just shown you how.
Here is the part you cannot do on paper.
Dividing is the easy half. The hard half is knowing which obstacle is genuinely first for you, and almost everybody guesses wrong about their own.
In 2013, I was certain mine was the deposit. I saved harder for 2 years. It was the debt, and saving harder was making it worse. I only found out when I put the whole thing on paper properly.
That is what the Wealth Gap Solution Gameplan does. Your numbers, your currency, your market. It gives you the gap, how many properties close it, how long that takes at your actual savings rate, and then it names the one obstacle that is first.
Ten minutes. Nine dollars.
https://michaelbarthur.thrivecart.com/the-wealth-gap-solution-gameplan/
I priced it so it would not be a decision you have to think about.
And if you would rather work the first two steps by hand from this email, do that today or tonight. It is the same arithmetic, and I would rather you had the number than nothing.
What number did you get?
P.S. Those figures are from one real building in one market at one moment.
Yours will be different, and that is exactly the point of running your own.
