Service Business or Real Estate?

[Dain Herrala]

I'm planning to keep working my W2 for the foreseeable future. I enjoy it and the earnings potential is quite good. There is quite a bit of opportunity to pick up extra work for overtime pay.

Currently, I am house hacking and making it work to renovate it at the same time.

I also own a small service based business with a partner. It's seasonal and eats a large chunk of time during the warm months of the north. I've been learning that I'm not particularly passionate about this work and it takes a lot of my time while I'm not at the W2, preventing me from picking up well paying overtime and keeping up with general life requirements/interests.

I am interested in FI, but also have been realizing how I like my W2 and don't mind continuing to work! The debate in my mind has been such that I'm wondering if I should get out of the business and focus on working my W2, increasing my income there, and then slowly acquire property over the next decade or two.

Maybe I just answered my own thoughts, but if anyone has similar experiences or has thoughts on service business vs acquiring real estate, I'd love to hear them!

[Owen Dashner]

Whether or not you want to be a full-time investor, or just do it while working a job that you enjoy is a highly personal decision. I invested on the side for about 12 years before I left my career to do real estate full time. You can always do the same thing until you get to a point where you either don't enjoy your job anymore, or you feel like your job has become an opportunity cost and is holding you back.

It's a beautiful thing to enjoy what you do for a living and also have the opportunity to invest in real estate. You are in a good spot, congrats!