GIS Networking systems

IT Technical Support Manager

GPARENCY

Broker

states

Business Secretary

Zyshe Kolodny

I never expected to be laid off from a big tech company—but when it happened, I learned firsthand how fragile W-2 income and stock-heavy wealth can be without reliable cash flow.

At the time, my ~$3M residential rental portfolio was covering my living expenses. That income stability allowed me to stay calm, avoid forced decisions, and focus on building what came next without needing to dip into my savings or prematurely sell any of my RSUs to stay afloat.

Today, I help high-income tech professionals build layoff-resilient cash flow by investing in short-duration fix-and-flip residential real estate loans—designed to generate consistent income without relying on small dividends from stocks and bonds or drawing down principal by selling equities during market downturns.

Before real estate, I was a software engineer at Meta. I approach investing the same way I approached engineering: data-driven underwriting, risk decomposition, and repeatable systems.

At Bozeman Capital Partners, we manage ~$69M AUM in private debt focused primarily on 1–4 unit residential properties nationwide; this is intentionally different from most credit funds that concentrate on large multifamily. Our strategy centers on investor-purpose bridge loans secured by real assets, with an emphasis on capital preservation, diversification, and predictable income.

If you’re a high-income tech professional looking to diversify beyond stocks and build reliable income, learn more about our investment opportunities at:
https://www.bozemanpartners.com/

If you’re an active real estate investor looking for fix-and-flip, DSCR, construction, or bank statement financing, request a quote at:
https://www.bcpfinancing.com/

Kunaal Kumar

Here's an unpopular opinion: I hate retirement accounts. Here's why I cashed out my entire 401k last year, despite the 10% penalty. 

Before you tell me I’m crazy, here’s the logic.

For high earners, retirement accounts are the default move:
	•	reduce taxable income today
	•	invest in markets for decades
	•	defer taxes until later

Sounds clean.

But there’s one variable almost nobody explicitly prices in:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆. 

$100 today isn't worth the same as $100 when you're 60. All else being equal, you'd always want that $100 earlier vs later.

Different people have different discount rates. Most people would be totally fine giving up an extra $5k today for an extra $15k in their 401k when they're 60.

My personal discount rate is very high.

I’m not optimizing for “retire comfortably at 60.” I’m optimizing for:
	•	flexibility
	•	compounding faster today
	•	deploying capital into opportunities I control

To me, an extra $15k at 60 is worth close to $0.

This, combined with the fact that you can get tax free returns with real estate without locking up your capital until you're 60, makes retirement accounts even less appealing to me personally.

𝗧𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿: 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲, 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲, so don't go and cash out your accounts immediately. 

In fact, they're particularly useful if you get employer match (which is why I had a 401k in the first place).

But if you’re entrepreneurial, capital-constrained, or you just have a high discount rate like me, it’s worth asking:

Is the retirement account optimizing your wealth, or restricting your options?

Principal of a $69M Debt Fund Distributing ~20% Annualized | Investor Loans on 1-20 unit Residential Properties | Ex SWE @ Meta

Here's what it actually means to lose 90% in a private investment—and why you should respect Warren Buffett's first rule of investing.

For the uninitiated, Buffett's first two rules of investing are:

1. Never lose money.
2. Never forget Rule No. 1. 

It's not just a cute saying, though. There's a very straightforward way to think through this mathematically that makes this the obvious primary consideration when you're investing.

When most people think about investment loss, most people have experience with it in the context of stocks, and more specifically their 401ks, which are mainly invested in indices.

If your stocks go down 3% one year, it doesn't really matter since they can easily rise 5% or more the next year and more than make up for it.

However, the thing about losses is that they're 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 to recover from the greater they are. 

If you lose 3%, you only need to make 3.1% to break even.
If you lose 10%, you need to make 11%.
If you lose 25%, you need to make 33%.
And if you lose 𝟵𝟬%, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝟭𝟬𝘅 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻.

If you're used to index investing in stocks, you 𝘵𝘺𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 don't need to worry about losses greater than 10%.

But when you're investing in an illiquid, leveraged alternative investment like multifamily? It's a real consideration.

Based on the things I've read on LinkedIn over the past few years, some multifamily LPs have already been burned (whether they know it yet or not), and will likely be turned off from investing in multifamily for the next few years.

Ironically, if the practice of widespread extending and pretending by lenders ends in 2026, the later part of this year might be one of the best times to buy multifamily.

If protecting your downside isn't your first consideration when investing in alternatives, you might want to rethink your approach.

Here's a statistic so insane that I literally didn't believe it at first: 𝟰𝟬% of people earning > 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗳 𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀 live 𝗽𝗮𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸.

And the even crazier part is that this is higher than the $200k-$300k income band...according to the chart below, only 16% of those earners live paycheck to paycheck.

There are a lot of surface-level explanations for this: 
- higher taxes
- different expenses (like private school for the kids)
- illiquidity
- and more

But here's another very important component that doesn't really get talked about, along with an important lesson that we can take away from it.

Most people tend to spend most of their time with people in a similar socioeconomic situation as them. 

If you're an upper middle class tech worker, most of your friends and coworkers are also upper middle class tech workers.

If you're a retail worker at a department store, most of your peers are likely working similar jobs and making roughly the same amount as you.

However, if you're making more than $500k/year, this breaks down. 

Let's consider an imaginary hedge fund: 
- A junior quant might earn $600k.
- Their portfolio manager might earn $4M.
- The founder might earn $30M+ in a good year.
- And that founder is raising from LPs with more than a $2B net worth.

If you think upper middle class lifestyle creep is bad, imagine how much worse it would be if your peers made 10x what you do. 

Lifestyle creep is deadly because it converts a 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 into 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘧𝘪𝘹𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘴.

I think an easy strategy to make sure this doesn't happen to you is to build up cash flow from investments and constrain your non-essential spending to your investment income, not your earned income.

Of course, that's way easier said than done, but if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Any other ideas on how to mitigate lifestyle creep?

Retiring on stocks sounds insane to me. What am I missing?

To be clear: I’m not anti-stocks. I think stocks are a great way to build wealth, and they obviously belong in most portfolios.

I’m talking about the default retirement playbook:
1. Build a stock/bond portfolio with some predetermined split
2. Retire
3. Sell off principal every year to cover expenses

If you follow personal finance content, you’ve definitely heard of the 4% rule—the idea that you can withdraw ~4% of your portfolio annually and be “fine.”

This rule is touted by personal finance gurus like it's a law of physics when it's really just a historical backtest with some assumptions (that don't always hold):

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲
The Trinity Study (where the 4% rule comes from) assumes a ~30 year retirement. 

People are living longer, and many want the option to retire earlier. The longer the time horizon, the higher the probability of a bad outcome.

𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
The Trinity Study assumes your expenses rise with CPI. In the real world, expenses aren’t that clean. As you get older, healthcare costs will almost certainly grow faster than inflation.

𝗦𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸
If the market rips upward right after you retire, this strategy works beautifully. But if you retire into a crash, you can end up selling meaningful chunks of your portfolio at the bottom—which can permanently reduce what your portfolio is capable of sustaining, even if markets eventually recover.

So here’s my genuine question:

Why is the default retirement advice still so centered on “sell principal from stocks + bonds”…
when there are other asset classes that can generate cash flow without systematically liquidating principal?

As another disclaimer, this isn’t a “stocks are bad and you should invest in real estate instead” post.

I’m genuinely trying to understand why mainstream personal finance rarely discusses retirement models based on cash-flowing assets (real estate, private credit, energy, etc.) instead of treating them like niche or optional.

If someone has another perspective on this I'd love to hear it.

taplio

The Battle

Zyshe Kolodny

Kunaal Kumar

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreKunaal Kumar's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Zyshe Kolodny

Kunaal Kumar

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kunaal Kumar's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreKunaal Kumar's LinkedIn Performance