Melissa Nash: Passive Rental Investor | Helping W-2 Professionals Buy Out-of-State
Jul 14, 2026 · 20 min · 10 segments
I recently reread *The Richest Man in Babylon* and started wondering: if Arkad were alive today, would he still teach the same principles... or would he be buying rental properties too?…
Melissa NashHost
If you've never read The Richest Man in Babylon, here is the quick cliff notes version.
It was written almost 100 years ago by George S. Klassen, and the stories themselves are set thousands of years earlier in ancient Babylon.
The book follows a fictional man named Arkad, who goes from being a poor scribe to becoming the richest man in Babylon.
And these five, actually seven principles are pay yourself first, control your spending, make your money multiply, protect your wealth, create future income, and increase your ability to earn.
Now, honestly, almost every modern personal finance book is built on some version of these same ideas, which got me thinking.
If our cat were sitting across from me in 2026 with access to everything that we have today, online investing, property managers, out-of-state investing, would he still give the same advice? And more specifically, would he tell us to buy rental properties? Now, of course, I think the answer is yes, but I also think that there is one area that he might have gotten wrong.
It doesn't mean buy the designer purse, book the vacation, reward yourself because you had a hard week.
I paid the bills, the groceries, the kids' sports, the school stuff, birthdays, Christmas, you name it.
And if there's anything left over at the end of the month, maybe I'd save some of that.
And because of that, well, and many other reasons, I didn't know what I was doing or I didn't know how, but I didn't buy my first rental property till I was almost 40.
And now those properties deposit money into my bank account, whether I decide to get out of bed or not.
If you've never read The Richest Man in Babylon, here is the quick cliff notes version.
It was written almost 100 years ago by George S. Klassen, and the stories themselves are set thousands of years earlier in ancient Babylon.
The book follows a fictional man named Arkad, who goes from being a poor scribe to becoming the richest man in Babylon.
And these five, actually seven principles are pay yourself first, control your spending, make your money multiply, protect your wealth, create future income, and increase your ability to earn.
Now, honestly, almost every modern personal finance book is built on some version of these same ideas, which got me thinking.
If our cat were sitting across from me in 2026 with access to everything that we have today, online investing, property managers, out-of-state investing, would he still give the same advice? And more specifically, would he tell us to buy rental properties? Now, of course, I think the answer is yes, but I also think that there is one area that he might have gotten wrong.
It doesn't mean buy the designer purse, book the vacation, reward yourself because you had a hard week.
I paid the bills, the groceries, the kids' sports, the school stuff, birthdays, Christmas, you name it.
And if there's anything left over at the end of the month, maybe I'd save some of that.
And because of that, well, and many other reasons, I didn't know what I was doing or I didn't know how, but I didn't buy my first rental property till I was almost 40.
And now those properties deposit money into my bank account, whether I decide to get out of bed or not.
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