Very young and very interested in real estate!

[Benjamin Z.]

I'm typing this off of my smartphone so I apologize now for any spelling and grammatical errors. I got hired to work for a friend of mine for a week out in the middle of nowhere and forgot my laptop.

Anyway,

I would like to start by saying that I am 18 years old and will be starting school.at a local community college in about a month (I wanted to save some cash and not get thousands of dollars into debt immediately). My parents want me to go to a four-year university after this year. However, I do not. My parents want me to get a degree and would like me to be a journalist, a career I no longer have interest in.

Personally, I want to begin my career in real estate ASAP. A degree in my opinion is just a $100,000 piece of paper that really won't help me as much as actual experience would.

This brings me to my first question: is college worth it?

My parents certainly believe it is but a few people I've spoken to have given me a very different opinion.

Moving on,

My dream is to become a landlord and own several properties as well as possibly buy out or invest in several different companies in the future. To start, I've been wanting to buy a cheap $20, 000 home and rent it for $1000 a month or so. Paying for the mortgage with the rent and saving the rest of it up for a second investment.

I've begun to debate how good of a plan that is after reading around a bit here on BP and would like to hear some advice from many of the succesful people on here.

[Mike Nelson]

I think you already know the answer to your question, @Benjamin Z. . As much as people, esp your parents will give you advises, sensible ones, in the end...you're the only one who knows what's best for you.

If you think that's really your dream, then honestly I don't think you need college to get it. But you'll need to still learn a lot and work really hard.

We are very blessed to have been existing in this particular period in human history, The Information Age. Knowledge has never been this easy to access. Today, you just go to Google and type practically anything and you'll get your answers. What I'm saying is, most of the things we used to pay for can now be accessed faster, for free.

This recent post http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/517/topics/98680-great-guest-post-on-justaskbenwhy-blog-by-doug-dowell has a link to an article that talks about coursera.org. Check it out.