Did You Get Into Real Estate to Work Less, But Find You're Working More?

“What in the world? Where is all of my money?! I just had over $100,000 in my bank account yesterday, and now I’m down to $1.50.”

If I had a nickel for every time I heard a real estate investor say something to that effect, I’d have several dollars and could buy (maybe) one scoop of Cold Stone ice cream.

At some point or another, you have probably read Rich Dad Poor Dad. (This book is pretty much a prerequisite to being a real estate investor, so I highly recommend reading it.) And if you’ve read and really enjoyed it, you have probably played the board game Cashflow 101, also by Rich Dad author Robert Kiyosaki.

In his penultimate book and board game, Kiyosaki talks about the rat race. The whole point of the board game is to get out of the rat race. The rat race he references at a high level is getting up, going to work, trading your time for money, and then doing it all over again the next day—forever and ever and ever.

I’m guessing that you probably got into real estate, too, because at some level, you wanted to get out of the proverbial rat race. So, you started a real estate investing company and began doing deals since that was one way to escape.

Or so you were told…

I will be very honest with you. This was one reason I started doing real estate deals. The idea of working every day and doing the same thing over and over again was really depressing to me. The whole idea of the rat race still makes me shudder and want to cry in a corner. I jumped into real estate to escape all of that.

The Same Rat Race—Only Different

Let’s talk about where you are now.

Are you working full-time in your real estate company? Are you working 50, 60, 70, 80+ hours a week in your real estate company? Are you dreading every single phone call because it may be another contractor, tenant, seller, who is going to just eat your time without gaining anything in return?

Are you living in the real estate rat race? Are you living deal to deal and day to day? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Are you paying everyone else in the entire world except yourself?

So, you got started in real estate to escape the rat race, yet you have now found a different rat race—that’s killing you in the exact same way.

Where’s the financial freedom everyone is talking about? Where is the money that is supposed to pour in from your deals and let you live the life you’ve always wanted to live?

Just like a 9-5, real estate can drag you down, making you want to quit and give up. If you’re more stressed financially than you ever have been, working more hours than you ever have, and running and running and running but just can’t seem to get ahead, you’re not alone.

The real estate rat race is real. It’s something early investors struggle with constantly and even seasoned investors can get bogged down in. You are not alone in feeling like you are spinning in circles and thinking that there has to be a better way to make money.

The Way Out of the Rat Race—for Good

Every investor loves talking about marketing and sales and has some sort of system to market and sell properties. Same with the operational side of the business. A lot of investors have the makings of a system to rehab a house or at least know that it is very important to have a system and process for rehabbing a house.

Yet most investors have no system for their finances.

The way out of the real estate rat race is to systemize your finances. Without it, you keep pouring deals and money into the “bucket” of your business but your bucket has a huge hole in the bottom. The money keeps pouring out of the bucket (and out of your business) just as quickly as it’s poured in.

That system also needs to work with you as an investor. Whether you do not have time to always be looking at your financial statements or it gives you ulcers just thinking about it, this is necessary.

You are, however, probably looking at your bank accounts every day—or at least a lot more frequently than your financial statements. So, you need a way to manage your finances from your bank accounts.

A Powerful Action Step

Here’s how to make your way out of the real estate rat race. Open one new bank account and call it “Profit.” From every single deal that closes from now on, take 1% and move it into that account. If you’ve been living on 100%, you can live on 99% of the profit.

If this sounds familiar to you, then you’ve read the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. (I am a huge fan.) Systems such as this are how the best investors work toward working less. If you take the action step described above, you will be well on your way to getting out of the deal-to-deal cycle.

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.