Episode 131: Creating financial freedom with real estate in Botswana

In this week’s episode we talk to Khumo Nawa from Botswana. Khumo has been in the banking sector for 15 years and decided at a young age that she wanted to be out of the corporate world by the time she was 35, but she started working and forgot the dream. In 2016, she found herself feeling unfulfilled and drifting into depression and ended up leaving her job prematurely in 2017.

Luckily, she acquired her first property in 2011, a 2 bedroom house on a piece of land, when she had read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, in the same year (2011) she decided to get a 500,000 Pula loan to build a 3 bedroom house for herself to live in. She rented out the 2 bedroom to a tenant.

When she left her job in 2017, she didn’t have enough money to pay the loan because her side hustle and tenant income didn't cover her expenses. She ended up in court with the bank, in February 2019, the court granted her a settlement agreement. 

At this point she realized that she needed to plan her finances differently, in March 2019, she decided to go back into the corporate world. She was goal driven and she knew why she was working. She decided she was going back to the working world for 2.5 years.

Her first goal was to get rid of all her bad debt, she had a million Pula in mortgage and personal loans. She changed her lifestyle drastically, she went back to the village, because it was much cheaper there so she could direct her money to achieve her goals. She was able to pay off 340,000 Pula in debt in 17 months. 

After settling her debt, she ended up with 17,000 Pula free every month. She looked at the village and decided to use a 2,000 sqm plot for 85,000 Pula in the village, which she had acquired in 2013 and decided to build 1 room houses for people in the village. She built 1 block of rooms (each block had 3 rooms) for 75,000 Pula close to a technical college for students and had a waiting list for students for accommodation and rented out the unit for 1,800 Pula per unit. She had determined she needed 16,000 Pula per month to be financially free.

She had an opportunity to get a loan, because she named the project her financial security project, to a level where this project can take care of her. She decided that if she used debt, she would want it to be short debt and she could be in and out quickly 

She also started a blog and started showing everyone how she was able to use their salary to create financial freedom. She started showing people how they could use their salary differently and attracted a lot of people to the blog and she started coaching and selling products on her blog.

She decided that 50% of all her income would go towards her real estate and building her portfolio.

At the same time a mall was being built near her property; people started looking for accommodation and she built studio apartments where each block is rented out for 4,500 Pula.

She is currently looking for 540,000 Pula for 12 months to build 3 blocks of studio apartments. She is not looking for equity partners, she is looking for people who want a better return on investment than their bank or financial institution can provide them.

This is a really incredible episode.