I need.... Change.

[Account Closed]

Hello All,

My name is David I'm 24 and I'm new to investing. Looking for a little advice on what my next couple of moves should be. I have a couple of things in mind but I still would like others opinions.

First off, I went to school for architecture and now I'm working a 9-5 as an estimator for a local construction company. I dislike the 9-5 life, the rat race, and it's something important to me to get out of. The kicker is I have my real estate license, however am not doing much with it because this job I have now came out of the blue and honestly is consuming a lot of my ways of living.

I've decided I want to flip renovate and sell, for now anyways. With passive investing once I get some capital. I think it's a good fit. However, my dilemma is that I currently want to get into a house with my mother (hopefully). I also would love for this house to have possible rental income to help us afford getting back into a house (renter problems, I miss having a backyard lol).

It looks like my biggest struggle is balancing the full time job and finding funding to begin flipping (cliche is it not?) I would love to leave my job, however the security is something that is needed right now, unless I know there is a way I could leave and still make money to pay bills.

I've been reading, I've been analyzing, and I've been trying to get my life in order and finally get into the life I want to live. What beginning strategies or paths would you take, given my information to get to where I want to be?

Thank you, I'm curious to hear some responses. lol

[Ryan Pyle]

The good news is you are only 24. You have loads of time ahead of you! Based on what you've said here I can think of two immediate options:

1. Keep your job as a cost estimator and use it to learn as much as you can about the construction industry and running a construction company. Try to work your way up in the company and use your eventual "construction company executive" position as a platform to start your own real estate development company.

2. Can you find a way to transition over to some other real estate-related job such as real estate agent, appraiser, loan officer, architect for a large REIT, or anything else that interests you? Networking and knowing a lot of people is very, very valuable in real estate. Being employed in the industry will give you access to lots of people in lots of different areas and functions of the industry. I often think it would be cool to be a business banker or CPA and get to see the ins and outs of successful and unsuccessful businesses.

My background is accounting. I got my start by doing the books for free for a large fix-and-flipper. I got to see the exact numbers of every single deal he did. It was incredibly valuable to be armed with that information before doing my first deal.

Good luck!