Set for Life by Scott Trench: An Honest Review

📖 What is Set for Life about?🔗

Set for Life (2017) was written by Scott Trench, CEO of BiggerPockets, the US real estate investing platform and community. It's a practical guide for a median-income earner (Trench targets someone on around US$50,000 a year) to reach financial freedom in roughly a decade, starting from scratch, structured around three stages:

• Stage 1: Build your first $25,000. The hardest part. Slash the "big three" expenses (housing, transport and food) while saving aggressively, aiming for a solid emergency cushion that gives you options.
• Stage 2: House hack your way to $100,000. The book's centrepiece. House hacking means buying a multi-unit property or a home with spare rooms, living in part of it, and renting the rest out so tenants effectively cover your mortgage, combined with career advancement and side income.
• Stage 3: Invest the surplus into index funds and real estate. Once you have real runway, build passive income through low-cost index funds and further property until your portfolio replaces your salary.

The BiggerPockets connection matters: Trench used these strategies himself in Denver, and the book draws heavily on the community's real-world experience with house hacking and real estate investing.

⚖️ Strengths and weaknesses🔗

👤 Who should read it, and who should skip it?🔗

🔍 What do critics say?🔗

Critical reception has been positive. Respected review outlets have recommended it as well-suited to career starters who aren't put off by financial risk, praising Trench's clearly articulated, practically grounded approach, while acknowledging some readers will find the plan too bold. US personal finance publications rate it highly, singling out Trench's honesty about the realities facing average earners and the book's application-oriented approach, and noting it's most valuable for readers starting with little or no net worth. The consensus: a strong, practical book for the right reader, but one that requires some self-awareness about whether you're actually that reader.

💬 What do readers say? Goodreads and Reddit🔗

On Goodreads it holds around 4.2 out of 5 from thousands of ratings, with the majority giving it four or five stars. Across Reddit's financial independence communities the picture is similarly positive: r/financialindependence recommends it as a practical, no-fluff, staged entry point to FIRE, r/realestateinvesting cites it as a solid foundation for building the capital base to start investing, and r/fiaustralia acknowledges the US-centric limits but recommends it for its expense-reduction and income-growth mindset, which travels well.

🇦🇺 The Australian angle🔗

The core principles (spend less than you earn, grow your income aggressively, invest the surplus in income-producing assets) are universal and translate perfectly. But the specifics need work:

• House hacking in Australia is a different story. It works in the US partly because low-deposit loans allow buyers to purchase multi-unit properties with a small deposit, and median prices in many US cities are a fraction of Sydney or Melbourne. Here you're looking at strict lending, a much higher deposit, and prices that make Trench's numbers look quaint. Not impossible, but significantly harder and more capital-intensive.
• The closer Australian equivalent is rentvesting: renting where you want to live while buying an investment property in a more affordable market. Not identical to house hacking, but the same underlying logic of separating where you live from where you invest.
• Then there's super. A large chunk of your retirement savings is locked in super until preservation age (currently 60 for most people). Aiming for FI in your 30s or 40s means you need a separate, accessible portfolio to bridge the gap, something Trench's plan doesn't account for, because it doesn't need to in the US.
• On investing, the local equivalents are well-established: ASX ETFs like VAS (Australian shares) and VGS (international shares) are the commonly cited options, offering broad diversification at low cost.

And a reminder: property carries real risk. Trench (and the BiggerPockets community) are bullish on real estate, but Australian markets have their own dynamics, including high prices, concentration risk and the possibility of corrections. For genuinely Australian FIRE mechanics, our Money School review and, on the rentvesting side, our Positively Geared review are strong companions.

💰 The verdict🔗

Set for Life is a genuinely good book for the right reader. Scott Trench has built a clear, honest and motivating framework for reaching financial independence faster than average, and the income-growth mindset he promotes is something more personal finance books should include. For Australians, though, it's best treated as a mindset and framework book rather than a literal how-to: the house-hacking strategy needs significant adaptation for our market, the tax and lending sections don't apply, and the super system adds a layer of complexity the book doesn't address. Read it for the philosophy, the three-stage structure, and to get fired up about what's possible, then do the work of translating it to the Australian context. Our rating: 3.5 out of 5, recommended with caveats.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗