Shu Matsuo Post, 38, built a $2 million real estate portfolio, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.
Courtesy of Shu Matsuo Post
The idea of financial independence can mean different things to different people, but a common way to define it is having enough money that you no longer need to rely on a job, a salary, or someone else to maintain your lifestyle .
While the road to financial independence can be daunting, there has been a tried and true method for success: live below your means and invest what you save.
This is exactly what Shu Matsuo Post did to achieve the freedom he has today. Over the course of about seven years, the 38-year-old consistently poured more than 50% of his and his wife’s dual income into real estate investments.
Matsuo Post now owns a $2 million real estate portfolio consisting of six rental properties located in the U.S. and three in Japan, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.
“I’m very lucky to be able to say this, but I don’t have to work for money,” Matsuo Post told CNBC Make It. “I like making money, but I can focus on what I want to do… it’s completely the other way around.”
Today, Matsuo Post lives in Japan with his wife and two children. In addition to managing his investments, he also creates online educational content about real estate investing and has his own consulting business Post FI, which helps foreigners buy real estate in Japan.
Start your real estate investment journey
Matsuo Post’s journey to financial independence was not a simple one. Diversifying his career several times, he worked in industries such as journalism, retail and technology before entering real estate.
Born and raised in Japan, he moved to the US at the age of 15 and ended up staying for about eight years to study and start his career. After his time in the US, Matsuo Post also worked in Hong Kong for several years before settling back in Japan with his wife, Christina, seven years ago.
After getting married in 2017, Matsuo Post and his wife decided to combine their finances. When they started investing, they focused mostly on index funds and ETFs, but eventually decided they wanted to be more active with their investments instead of waiting for stock market returns.
“We found real estate and kept talking about it, and then decided we could live on one income,” Matsuo told Post. They chose to live off Christina’s income from teaching and saved all of Shu’s salary for their first fortune.
“For us, we were extremely lucky to be able to do this by having relatively high-paying jobs at the time and just saving enough,” Matsuo Post said. The couple ended up saving more than $250,000 before investing in their first property, he said.
In 2018, Matsuo Post and his wife bought their first property — a duplex in Minnesota — for a total of $216,500, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It. Just a year later, he bought three more rental properties in Minnesota and New York.
Leaving the corporate world
In September 2022, Matsuo Post was fired after his company shut down the business division he worked for. But after assessing his finances, he realized that it was no longer necessary to find another office job.
“So after they let me go from the startup, I had the choice to go back to the corporate world or start something [of my own],” said Matsuo Post. Eventually, he decided he wanted to spend more time with family, so he opted to leave the corporate world for good.
Shortly after the dismissal, Matsuo Post started his YouTube channel, which has gathered more than 100,000 subscribers, and in 2023, he started the real estate consulting business Post FI or Post “Financial Independence”.
“I will never go back,” Matsuo Post said. “Achieving that financial independence is absolutely important, but retirement and never having to work — I realized that’s not something I wanted. I wanted a job that I didn’t have to retire from.”
“If it generates money, that’s great, and if it doesn’t, that’s okay too, because you have other forms of income to support your lifestyle,” he said.
3 tips for achieving financial independence
When asked about the guiding principles he used to achieve financial independence, Post said:
- Invest in yourself first. Read books, attend seminars, and learn from others who have already achieved goals similar to yours.
- Increase your earning potential. Saving won’t make you rich, but it allows you to have money, which helps you take bigger risks with higher potential payouts.
- Be frugal. Save more than 50% of your income.
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