In need of some advice

[Jose Varnadoe]

Hey guys, I haven’t been on here much lately but I was hoping that you guys could give me some opinions. So I really hate my job, I’m not even sure what my question is, but k want to get my real quick state journey start as soon as possible. I just don’t have enough capital at the moment to start. I was thinking about doing the brrrrrr method. I’m not sure though. I assume if I go that route I’d need a year of job history and a pretty decent credit score along with my down payment of course. The thing is I don’t want to wait a year to get started because I REALLLLLLLY REEEAALLYYYY HATE MY JOB!!!!!! So that has lead me to wanting to use hard money just to get things moving and then rock with the brrr method. I drive a concrete mixer for a living right now and in this industry there is no specified clock out time. I’m legally only allowed to drive 11 hours a day and work 14, so those other 3 hours I’d have to be doing something that isn’t driving. The thing is the company I work for does not care. They will work you over 14 hours a day everyday. So say I get to work at 4am that means 6pm would be my 14 hour day but they will wait till 4 or 5pm to send me on a load, and the average time it takes to do a load is 3 hours. That’s conservative time wise. Sometimes it takes longer but if I’m sent on a load at 5pm and it takes me an hour to get to the job and another hour to unload it then another hour back to the plant. So I’d get back around 8pm. That’s two hours passed my 14 that I’m legally allowed to work. I just don’t know what to do here, I could keep the job and put all that money up to get a hard money loan and pick up a foreclosure or I could find another job with set hours. The only reason I haven’t quit yet is because if I choose to do the brrrrr method and I actually do need that year of job history to get the loan from the bank, I feel like I’m all over the place in this post I just don’t really know how to explain what I’m thinking. But if I go rhe hard money route all I need is my capital for the deal. And if I can make a decent amount of profit on my first flip I could pay my bills for let’s just say 6months in advance and then put all of my time into fixing and flipping, my bills aren’t very much so I wouldn’t need a whole lot to pay up for 6 months. Or even a year. 

[Tim Deimer]

@Jose Varnadoe

The first thing you need to do is find a different job. I've been a truck driver for 36 years and I've worked for 13 different companies in that time. There are companies that follow the law, even concrete companies. I've been driving bulker for a concrete company for the last 5 years for a company and people that I really like, and I'd get in trouble with them if I tried to work the hours that you're working. Your description of the company you work for makes them sound worse than average, but almost all of them will push you to run over hours if you don't push back. I've found that most drivers are afraid to tell the boss that they're not going to drive illegally, but most bosses will not insist that you do, IF YOU TELL THEM YOU WON'T. The ones who do insist need to be punished with a high turnover rate. I'm not sure where you are, but I am sure there's different colored trucks around, and everybody is looking for drivers, especially mixer drivers. My company has been offering referral bonuses and signing bonuses for mixer drivers for the last 4 years even though they have the highest pay rates in the area. If you can drive mixer, you can probably drive just about anything, go find a different truck!

The 2nd part of your problem is that real estate isn't a quick way out. You may get lucky once in awhile, but in this market you don't have enough free time to get lucky. (Getting lucky is a lot of work) I'm in Wisconsin and I just don't spend much time looking for real estate deals in the summer when I'm working 60 - 70 hours a week. Work slows down, and sometimes stops here for 3 or 4 months in the winter though, so I put money away until then. I know what I read on this forum, but I'd guess there are more people who are doing like we are than just quitting their job and becoming a full-time real estate investor. We started in earnest in 2003 and we just got to the point this year where the rents would pay most of our bills. And we had 2009 - 2014 to get some deals of a lifetime.

To sum up,

1) Please do yourself a favor and stop doing illegal things (that you hate doing anyway) for money. There are enough trucks that need drivers that we don't have to work for people who expect us to be criminals. Also, a boss who asks you to do something illegal won't think twice about throwing you under the bus when there's an accident.

2) The next guy I meet who goes from hanging onto a steering wheel one day to full-time real estate investor the next day will be the first one. I'd never say never, but it would be tough even in a buyer's market and this isn't a buyer's market.

To do the job you're doing, you have the most important ingredient to be successful - you know how to work. Just take care of the most important stuff first. Don't be so desperate to make a deal that you end up making a mistake. A bad real estate deal could make you just as miserable as a bad job.