Real Estate Riches: How to Create Passive Income & Build Wealth with Whitney Elkins-Hutten

Is your 9–5 job keeping you on the hamster wheel while inflation quietly eats away at your income? In today’s episode of the Manifestation & Money Podcast, I sit down with real estate wealth strategist Whitney Elkins-Hutten to discuss how real estate investing can be a vehicle for financial freedom — without needing a finance degree or a ton of time.

Whitney shares how she turned a failed relationship into a real estate win and used it as a springboard into a multi-million dollar portfolio. We explore the difference between active and passive investing, the real reason budgeting is dead, and how to build a resilient wealth strategy (even if you’re short on time).

If you're curious about creating generational wealth, gamifying financial education for your kids, or learning the investor mindset used by high-income earners, this one’s for you.

🎧 In this episode, we cover:

• How Whitney went from public health to a real estate empire

• Why your time is your most valuable asset

• Active vs. passive investing: what's best for you?

• The three-tier approach to wealth building (reserves → cashflow → equity)

• Playing the long game vs. chasing quick wins

• Why women especially benefit from creating leveraged income

• Kid-friendly ways to teach financial literacy (Cashflow for Kids, Thrive Time, and more!)

• How to start investing — even if you’re not "accredited"

Whitney Elkins-Hutten is the Director of Investor Education at PassiveInvesting.com, founder of Ash Wealth, and author of Money for Tomorrow. She’s a partner in $800M+ worth of real estate, including 6,500+ residential units, 15 express car washes, and 2,200+ self-storage units. Her mission? To help busy professionals build true wealth and reclaim their time.

📘 Get her book: Money for Tomorrow on Amazon or BiggerPockets
🌐 Connect with Whitney: Passive Investing with Whitney
📧 [e-mail]
📸 Instagram: @whitneyhutten

✨ Connect with Me (Jenni):
📲 Instagram: @manifestationandmoneypodcast

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Roommates, . I completed the rehab on the property and then I sold it within 11 months. And mind you, I had actually kind of started reading the book, rich Dad, poor Dad. , so I was like, okay, I understand that you can make money in real estate, but I just didn't know how I skimmed the last. It's 10 chapters.
, because here I was able to make. Almost as much money as I did at my day job that had me in public health, that had me working, , 60, 70, 80 hours a week sometimes, and traveling a ton and not able to see , my family I had an alien father. And so that, that's really what jumpstarted me on this , journey towards financial independence, financial freedom, but really like to understand how money works and how you can build wealth and, true passive income that helps pay the bills on a monthly basis, , alongside what you're doing for your day job.
, money is to help. It's a tool to help you get. You, , your five freedoms in life. Like time freedom, choice, freedom, location freedom, freedom to create an impact. But in order to get those other four freedoms, you kind of , have to have some sort of financial freedom. And when we are working our day job, , unless you're in a high powered sales position, you know you're earning like, , commissions, you're.
I was like, I didn't have to go to school for that. Mm-hmm. I could do this on nights and weekends, and that's really where like the just light bulbs just started popping all over the place. I'm like, , there is a path for me where I don't have to trade all my time 40 hours a week in a cubicle or traveling in order to, in saving scrimping and saving , to fund a life later, I can actually figure out how to fund that life.
So for you, do you consider real estate passive investing? Oh, because I know there's a
I get paid thousands of dollars an hour. Because I'm no longer doing the work. Mm-hmm. , I think a lot of people when they look at real estate and they ask if it's passive, you might need to start off in a very active manner where you are spending your nights and weekends in order to build up the capital, in order to kind of get that snowball going.
You are in the self-employed category. Right, you're getting tax breaks, but you're in a silently, in a self-employed category. We need to figure out how to scale you you know how you use your time into the business category or pivot you your whole portfolio from the active real estate investing into actually investing in other people's deals.
We also have to think about how it's taxed. And so when we say passive, a lot of people are, it's, are we talking about your time or are we talking about the taxation of the money? , so you can actually be very active in your portfolio, but be taxed passively. And I always wanna bring the context back to time, right?

Whitney (00:09):
yeah, so you know, at passive investing.com we largely work with accredited investors. We actually do have a regulation, a fund in the works, meaning we can work with sophisticated investors, , here rolling out momentarily. But long story short, , most of the people that I work with. , they have a higher and better use of their time.
Once I had that skill, I could translate that into buying rentals. Once I had multiple rentals, I could translate that into buying. Single family property. Or multi-family property, I can skip over all that and like just learn how to invest. There's no degree needed.
And one of the best ways to leverage your money. Is to buy cash flowing assets like real estate or create a business where your fees and your services, the things you're charging for are moving in tandem with the inflationary rates, right? So , what are some good starter, passive investing ideas that you have for people?
You can't get it back for a time period, so you need to have a pile of cash. Set aside, maybe that's three months, six months, nine months, 12 months of reserves. Right? I always encourage people think in terms of, if you lost your job, how long would it take for you to replace your income with another job?
, expecting it to provide equity and cash flow for us. Okay. That is what I got. A lot of investors, , here in the United States in trouble between 2021 and 2023, they went into value add multifamily deals that. In theory, would cashflow and provide equity growth? Well, it just took a couple of, , taxes being raised, insurance going up, and then also interest rates going up.
That's great. And a lot of people will check me on this and they're like, Whitney, but there's no equity growth there. And I'm like. , only if you're consuming the cash flow. If we take in the cash flow and we continue to compound it in and allow time work for us, we are getting equity growth. , and then once we have enough cash flow coming to maybe replace some basic expenses, now we get permission to start going into larger equity deals and then we can kind of flip flop back and forth depending on what the market's giving us.
Actually, , I have played the adult version of the game. It's been a really long time. , but we actually, my daughter, she's 13 now. You know her growing up. We started her off, , playing cashflow for kids when she was like. Three and a half and my whole goal was for her to learn the words asset and liability.
It's called Thrive Time. Oh. So Sharon Lecter, , partnered with Robert Kiyosaki to create the Cashflow Games. Mm-hmm. Um, and then she has another, , like I said, an intermediate game called Thrive Time.
Right? Kind of like we're talking about , how do people learn , to pay attention to market metrics, right? Mm-hmm. And , it's like Catan, where you learn how to utilize resources as they come up, as opposed to like. , waiting, until the end , in deciding like, oh, well for sure if I'm gonna build this one city, you know, I just need to have X, Y, and Z in place.
It's coming to you in, in and outta your bank account, right? You just can't hang on to money. That's just, it's not gonna go anywhere. It's not gonna do anything for you. , so I see it as a currency and then I see it as a tool and how can you use it as a resource to help better your life. , I, I love the two pieces of how they're coming together here. I would love for you, to share what your biggest piece of advice would be to go out and create a life of financial independence.
The next easy way to, to outsource, , our time so we can get more of it back. So we can go , make more money. But really, let's put it back and. , bring it back to , strategy. That is one of the reasons why I book wrote the book Money for Tomorrow I kind of systematized all those lessons and learnings over 20 years of my investing career.
And now real estate's a little out of vo, we gotta figure out something else. I don't see that happening. But anyways, long story short, , what are those actual core strategies that you need to understand, , about investing? And so when we talk about what does somebody need to know for, to achieve financial independence is,
Definitely. So my book is available on amazon.com. You can snag it there. It's also available on BiggerPockets um.com. As far as connecting with me, you can reach out to me at passive investing with whitney.com. It's a great place for us to start the conversation on what your investing goals are.