Should I let my real estate goals influence my job search?

[Alex Gunya]

Hi BP,

I am graduating from university at the end of this month and am interviewing for jobs all over the country. My current goal is to generate enough cashflow through MFP to be able to "retire" by the time I am 30, and am looking for a job purely so I can fund deals. General consensus seems to be that especially when starting out you should invest where you know/local to where you live, so my question is: How much should I let my interest in REI influence where I am looking for jobs? Thanks.

Gunya

[JD Martin]

Well, if you are going to invest locally then it probably plays pretty heavily into where you accept a job. A better question, though, that I would ask is this: why is someone so young, just starting out in life, already so disillusioned with what they do that they want to quit in a few years? 

If you do something you like doing, you never really work. That's probably a better use of focus than focusing on not working any more. Even owning rental property is work to some extent. Surely your goal is not to sit on the couch all day and eat Cheetos, so why not get started from the beginning in a rich career? 

If your problem is you hate what you got your degree in (and if you do, I hope you realized that at the end), why not get a decent job in that field, and proceed to work on doing what you love in the meantime? If what you love is real estate, then great, but there's other options - go back and get a different degree; apprentice in some field; start your own business; etc.