Using real estate to escape the rat race?

[Jacob Casarez]

I just enrolled in my companie's 403B tax deferered retirement "match" program. I don't plan to wait that long to retire. I am serious about using real estate as a tool to escape the life of being a paid slave. I just turned 23 and I am currently 15 months into my first live and flip property. I am learning a lot about being a hands on landlord. But these 2 year live and flip deals are too slow for me. Canceling out my mortgage is nice but I need cashflow! -- Buy forever and sell by the month. I need guidance and some off the record advice from experienced investors. Please help, BP!! Thanks

- Jacob

[Aaron Knoll]

It's really amazing how unpleasant it is to be an employee this day and age, even if you have a solid 9-5 job and a growing "career". The fact that employers require you to check your cell phone at all times, and vacation is considered a quaint relic of the past. And this is the reality pretty much at every rung of the ladder, in corporate america, academia, or in  government. Data Scientist? Product Manager? Senior Vice President? Distinguished named Professor? I say "Wage Slave."

If I could re-live the last 15 years of my live (i.e. from age 20 onward), tThe best advice I could give is:

- never have kids

- buy a $3,000 used boat and live on it

- put all your savings into RE, maybe the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund just to diversify a bit. 

If I'd done all that, I have retired by now. Instead I was a dumb f%$#, got married, had kids, and am solely responsible for supporting my family while my wife complains she has to take the kids to the beach. 

That said, it is not too late. I do not plan on sitting quietly and assuming everything will all work out, the way my parents did.