Younger Dentist on disability $56k/yr RE or dental Practice owner

[Lance Gordon]

Hi BP family,

Full disclosure: I'm a single 40yr old dentist, have no home, and have $100k to my name (half in an IRA) and make $56,000/yr passively through long term disability income.

I enjoyed the freedom of not having to work for a few years now, as I worked on reducing my back issues.  However, I am ready for the next moves.  I need to make more money to set myself up for myself and a potential family.

The complicating factor is that if I go back to work and make over $1,300/month through work income, I will lose my $56k in disability income.  Hence, my interest in investing as it is not considered work income. 

Now for the actual question:

With all this free time, I have immersed myself in learning all about REI for the past 3 months and find it exciting.

I am currently deciding between RE investing and dental practice investing (I have never owned/run a practice) as a way to creat more passive cash flow.  I’m looking at house hacking a Tri or quadplex, flipping, and the other 10,000 ways to invest.

Could anyone, especially experienced investors or people with dental office investment knowledge share their insight and guidance?

Should I pursue REI or dental investing? More specifically, which could provide more passive cash flow, which is faster/less difficult to scale?

If I do REI what would be the best way to do it considering I have a lot of time and my financial situation?

Thank you for hearing me out.

Lance 

[Lawrence Potts]

Hi @Lance Gordon, you are in a very unique situation.

The easy route is to find a W2 job and forgo your disability so you are traditional financeable again. But if you are adamant about not working, you have some options. These are just a few ideas trying to look at in your shoes:

1. You have what most dentist do not have: time. So you can become the "real estate investing" dentist, or the bridge between dentist that have money and want to invest but do not have the time or energy to learn and find the right deal. Partner with them, leverage their income and you have the free time to manage the deal, run the numbers, etc., and grow a portfolio.

2. Maybe you can create a franchise model for new dentists coming out of school that they can buy into and you provide them with the equipment, facility, network, team, etc., but it's similar to a McDonald's franchise model where you own the real estate and collect the passive income of rent and royalties? (Check out the movie The Founder).

3. You can partner with Dentists to pull money together to buy large apartment complexes. Similar to the first idea but instead of lending based off of their income, you go the DSCR route and pull their money together to create the down payment and then find apartment complexes. Definitely find an attorney that would be familiar with this model and figure out how to structure this appropriately.

Just some ideas shooting from the hip, but you have time which is very valuable to most people that have money. Use the time to teach yourself and become the expert to a target audience that need an expert and have money and want to invest. Hope that helps!