Day: October 19, 2025

• Nicole Shirvani is a full-time psychiatrist who invests in real estate on the side.
• She used a 1031 exchange to avoid capital gains tax and scale her portfolio.
• Her investment properties help boost her savings, support travel, and secure her daughter’s future.

Nicole Shirvani experimented with rental real estate in her 20s — buying a condo in Toronto, where she’s from, and filling it with a long-term tenant — before taking a step back to focus on medical school.

“As a student, you’re not really making a lot of money, so I kind of put that to the side,” the psychiatrist told Business Insider. “After I finished training, my job gave me an opportunity to save some money, and I thought, ‘How can I invest in something that would appreciate and grow, and also allow me to save more for the future?'”

Real estate checked both boxes, providing both monthly cash flow and price appreciation.

Shirvani started looking for investment properties in southern Oregon, where she moved after getting her degree. In 2018, she closed on a duplex close to the hospital where she was working.

One of the units was already rented to a traveling nurse, while the other had just been vacated. She spent about six weeks upgrading the vacant unit before finding a new tenant. Once both units were filled, she said the cash-on-cash return was between 15% and 20%.

Using a 1031 exchange to sidestep capital gains taxes and scale her portfolio

In 2022, Shirvani accepted a job in Florida and decided to sell the Oregon duplex. Typically, when you sell an investment property for more than you paid for it, you’ll owe tax on the difference: either short-term capital-gains tax (if you held the property for a year or less) or long-term capital-gains tax (if you held the property for more than a year).

However, a 1031 exchange, also known as a “like-kind exchange,” is a strategy that allows investors to defer capital gains taxes on the sale by reinvesting the proceeds into a new, similar property that is of equal or greater value than the relinquished one.

There are a few rules to consider: 1031 exchanges are intended for investment properties, not primary homes; you need to hire a qualified intermediary to handle the transaction; and you have a limited amount of time to complete the exchange.

As soon as you sell, the clock starts: You must identify your replacement property or properties (you can identify as many as three like-kind properties) in writing within 45 days of selling the first property.

Then, you must close on the replacement property within 180 days of your initial property sale.

Shirvani, who traded in her duplex for two properties in Florida — a beachside condo and a single-family home — said the timeline was “a little bit stressful, but the market was still fairly busy.”

She also started looking at exchange properties before listing the duplex to give herself plenty of time.

“Before you sell, try to have the replacement properties identified and line everything up,” she advised. “You don’t want to sell a house, not be able to find suitable properties, and be stuck, unable to invest that money into something.”

Shirvani, who has since added two short-term rentals in the Shenandoah Valley and a triplex in Lakeland, Florida, to her portfolio, plans to use the same strategy as she continues scaling.

While she doesn’t plan on fully retiring early, she’s using the rental income to boost her nest egg so she can eventually scale back at work. She’s also using the income stream to save for future expenses.

“It’s allowed me to save more money, be able to travel, and put money toward my daughter’s future,” she said. “And then, eventually, I’ll be able to leave that real estate for her.”

• Zach Yadegari cofounded Cal AI, an AI-powered nutrition app, generating around $30 million annually.
• Yadegari sold his first app at 16, using the proceeds to fund Cal AI’s development.
• He said he used Google, the internet, and YouTube to learn more about building games and apps.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Zach Yadegari, an 18-year-old cofounder and CEO at Cal AI, an AI-powered nutrition and food tracking app, based in Miami. Business Insider has verified the financial claims mentioned in this article. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I sold my first app at 16 years old for almost $100,000. It was called Totally Science, an unblocked gaming website that allowed students to play games in school. It earned me thousands a year for two years through Google AdSense before I sold it.

Every app or game I’ve built has been to solve a problem in my own life. I was a skinny kid growing up and tried going to the gym to put on weight, but learned very quickly that most results come from diet. My cofounders and I set out to build a calorie-tracking app that integrates AI technology.

I moved to San Francisco a couple of months after launching with one of the other cofounders, and we spent the summer of our junior year in high school there alone, just the two of us, 17-year-olds, building out the team from scratch.

Our app really took off over the next year and a half, bringing us to now, where we are a 30-person team and generating around $30 million in annual revenue.

I’ve been coding since I went to coding camp at 7 years old

My parents put me in a coding camp when I was 7. I didn’t learn that much, but it sparked my interest and showed me what was possible. YouTube taught me the rest. I would spend hours a day watching people program different video games.

I attempted to recreate some of the most complex video games with my own small tweaks. This didn’t quite pan out as a 10-year-old trying to replicate what a team of 100 people had accomplished, but I learned a great deal. After watching “The Social Network,” Mark Zuckerberg became a massive inspiration. He was the main reason I pursued programming past making video games.

I wasn’t that different from other kids. I got really good grades in school and had a social life with my friends. However, I spent multiple hours a day outside of school working on various projects. Even in class, I would always be building projects.

I put the money I made from the app I sold into Cal AI because I knew we had all the pieces for success

My cofounder, Henry, and I started building apps in the summer of 2023. It was just the two of us trying to figure things out from scratch, learning on our own. I messaged some people who built very successful apps to find mentors, and one of our other cofounders was one of the people I messaged. He had previously scaled a couple of apps to a few million downloads, and I had reached out to him for advice. He joined the team.

After that, we started working with a few influencers on videos, and the new app took off faster than any of us could have ever imagined. I quickly became aware that we had all the pieces for success to a much greater extent than any other project I had worked on, and I put the money from my previous app sale into it.

Henry and I spent July in San Francisco working on it, and that’s when Cal AI became more established. We realized this wasn’t just a flash in the pan, but something we could actually scale up.

The most beautiful and proudest moments in my life so far have probably been meeting people in person who show me Cal AI on their phone. It’s awesome to see that something I built is being used by people every single day.

My best advice for starting an app is very simple

My advice to anyone would be to get started. Ignore the noise, ignore the people telling you that it’s impossible to do it at a young age, and ignore the people trying to push you down a specific path to accomplish your goals.

It’s becoming easier and easier to be a founder. There’s a reason the age of these entrepreneurial kids making the headlines is getting younger. I had Google, the internet, and YouTube as my tools, but for the next generation of founders, it’s ChatGPT that they can use to teach themselves. Which is so much easier than watching YouTube videos, where I was limited to the content library that people have posted.

I’m still finding the balance between being a college student and a founder

I just enrolled as a student at the University of Miami, but I’m taking a pretty light course load right now. I’m still working on Cal AI, but I’m no longer needed in the day-to-day operations as much. We’ve put a lot of systems in place over the last year and a half, where I now just have to oversee the vision and guide us in the right direction.

The aspect of college that consumes a lot of time is the social life. The primary reason I’m enrolled in college right now is to meet and socialize with people my age and make friends. This definitely takes up a significant amount of time and mental space. So fun in the short term, but not super productive.

The biggest challenge is finding other like-minded people to relate to. I don’t want to talk about random classes. I want to talk about real-world problems, solutions, business models, and other things that most kids my age aren’t interested in.

Do you have a founder’s story to share? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

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• For Love & Money is a column from Business Insider answering your relationship and money questions.
• This week, a reader is suspicious of whether her husband’s inheritance is being dispersed fairly.
• Our columnist suggests her husband hold off on hiring a lawyer and first talk to his siblings without their spouses present.
• Have a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.

Dear For Love & Money,

My husband had a maiden aunt who lived to 89. He has three sisters, and all of our families were involved in their aunt’s life; we helped with errands and appointments, and my husband often did repairs for her.

As his aunt got older, his eldest sister’s husband began helping her with her finances — paying her bills and handling any administrative tasks. In the last few years of her life, she expressed concern that our brother-in-law was the only one with access to her finances and wasn’t answering her financial questions clearly. She asked me, an accountant, to look into it.

She’s always been a little paranoid, so I told her I was sure there was no issue, but to ease her mind, I asked my brother-in-law for access to her accounts and told him I could help him with the work he was doing for her. He refused, saying that it would be inconvenient for me and that he would take care of it since he was retired.

Later, when my husband’s aunt became ill, she drafted a will leaving 25% of her estate — a total of over $1 million in assets — to each sibling. I witnessed my husband sign the will, and we were told we’d get a copy of the signed documents, but we never did.

After she passed, our brother-in-law, as executor, told us each sibling would receive about $195,000 in total — $100,000 from an inherited IRA and about $95,000 worth of CDs, an insurance policy, and other investments. As the money has been disbursed over time, I’ve asked to see documents on the accounts, but our brother-in-law has refused.

Recently, the last CD matured, and we were expecting the last payment to be about $37,500. However, we were told it will be around $25,000. When I asked our brother-in-law what was going on, he said that it all adds up to the $195,000 he originally told us about. The IRA’s rollover value ended up being higher than expected — about $113,000 per sibling — and I strongly believe that because of that, he believes that he can keep the cash difference.

I talked to my husband’s youngest sister and found out she wasn’t even paid as much as we were, and was given even less information. We also noticed that the funds came from the personal account of my husband’s eldest sister and her husband, not the bank where the investments were held. My husband feels conflicted about questioning our brother-in-law — he doesn’t want to be seen as not trusting his beloved sister, but he also feels gaslit by her husband. Am I right to feel this is fishy? Should we hire a lawyer?

Sincerely,

Suspicious Sister-in-Law

Dear Suspicious,

In case your husband’s reluctance to hire a lawyer has you second-guessing yourself, let me say it: “suspicious” is a mild word for your brother-in-law’s shady behavior.

That said, I understand your husband’s reticence to get involved in an inheritance squabble. Based on your use of the word “beloved” to describe his eldest sister and the fact that all of the siblings pitched in to support their aunt, your husband and his family seem to have a decently strong relationship. Plus, inheritance can feel like an unexpected blessing your husband didn’t directly “earn”, and therefore shouldn’t make too much of a fuss over.

This is the delicate balance of inheritance disputes: weighing the pursuit of justice and honoring the wishes of a recently passed loved one against potentially destroying a family over something as trivial as unearned money.

I’m sure you would agree, though, that the love your husband, you, and his siblings poured into their aunt was never about the cash, but about affection and care. And her will simply reflected this love right back to her nephews and nieces. Your husband’s aunt wanted them to have the money, had plenty to give, and at one point even asked you directly to make sure it was being managed correctly. In light of her concerns, your own are certainly valid. The question is how to go about addressing the concerns without shattering his relationships with his siblings.

My immediate thought after reading your letter was, “You should absolutely hire a lawyer.” But on further reflection, that seems like a premature jump to the nuclear option and will almost certainly damage your family’s relationships. The situation may devolve to the point that you have to hire a lawyer down the line, but until then, I would try a more sensitive approach first.

I understand your husband’s worry that questioning his sister’s spouse might seem like he doesn’t trust her. However, it’s unclear how much she really knows. You mentioned that the money you’ve received so far came out of her and her husband’s shared account, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she knows anything about it. Or maybe she does. Perhaps her husband has already explained the numbers in a way that makes it all feel fair and correct to her. Or maybe he didn’t, and she just trusts him.

Also, your husband and his eldest sister aren’t the only ones to consider in these choices. It seems the younger sister may be getting the worst deal of all. She may want to take action as well. To this end, I suggest your husband and his sisters have a conversation with no spouses present. Without outside voices to accuse or excuse the inconsistencies you’ve observed, your husband and his sisters can ask their older sister what’s going on. Maybe she has the answers, or will recognize the validity of their questions.

One of the oddest parts of your brother-in-law’s behavior is his flat refusal to share information with anyone else. Perhaps your sister-in-law will recognize this as the root of the issue and push him toward transparency. However, there’s always a chance that she’ll back up her husband no matter what. Your husband should be prepared for that.

Challenging your brother-in-law’s suspicious behavior while maintaining your husband’s family bonds will require delicacy and discretion. This means avoiding a chain of private conversations that escalate until they end in toxic alliances and broken relationships. Be careful not to lose yourself in the weeds of the situation. Remember that the best outcome is one where everyone receives their fair share and remains close. Don’t get distracted by small grievances, like if your brother-in-law has a smug attitude because he’s the executor, or if your oldest sister-in-law communicates defensively. Not every battle is worth fighting.

You should also accept that your husband and his younger sister may want to avoid all of this by choosing family harmony over justice. As long as they can make that decision without holding resentment, it might be the best choice in accordance with their values. As galling as that may feel to you, take comfort in the fact that this is their decision to make.

At the end of the day, your husband will need to weigh what’s most important to him. Financially, is it crucial that he gets his fair share of his aunt’s inheritance? Will he be able to continue a loving relationship with his sister and her husband if he doesn’t get to the bottom of his brother-in-law’s refusal to be financially transparent? Or does he value the strong relationship he has with his sisters more than any amount of money?

For you, it’ll be important to remember that this is your husband’s family. Don’t risk becoming like your sister-in-law’s husband, creating turmoil among the siblings. The best thing you can do is to support your husband, whatever he decides.

Rooting for you,

For Love & Money

Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.