About Us
Our Founders
John & Rashel Stanczak founded Equity Shield in 2020 with a vision to help servicemembers and veterans build financial independence through real estate ownership. They have partnered with multiple veterans across the globe with a growing portfolio of 26x doors and over $1.25M in assets under management. Equity Shield now provides education, pathways, and opportunities for veterans and servicemembers to invest in their local communities.
John & Rashel’s journey to financial independence began with over $50,000 of debt as college students. They worked part time through college, collecting food stamps, high-interest credit card debt and student loans. With no financial education, they regularly bounced checks, kept no budget, and lost track of bills. With no financial priorities, they ate out often, kept subscriptions to entertainment services, and partied weekly. They lived the way they thought everyone else lived, and no one ever told them different. After graduating ROTC, John carried his family into the Army with over $75k in debt.
In 2011 John and Rashel discovered the Dave Ramsey program through their local church. It was categorically life changing. With great sacrifice and commitment, they slowly clawed their way out of debt and into a new perspective of how money is supposed to work. They saved and budgeted deliberately with a focus on making their money work for them and eliminated their unsecured debt in less than three years.
Over the next eight years, John & Rashel bought two single-family homes with the VA loan that they later converted to rentals. They learned about ‘the rat race’ from Robert Kiyosaki, and decided to spend on assets and experiences, not liabilities and possessions. Most importantly, they recognized an enormous lack of investment education in the military. They recognized a lack of service initiatives to build financial literacy and long-term financial independence for servicemembers or their families.
Seeing this need, John and Rashel are now on a journey to inspire, educate, and partner with other servicemembers and veterans to help them gain financial independence and build generational wealth through local real estate investing and asset management.