When to give up the 9-5 job?

[Account Closed]

I don't know if this is in the right place or not. My question is when were you able to give up your job and just take care of your properties full time? Is there some rule of thumb to use in determining when you should be able to call it quits?

[Jon Holdman]

Sorry, but IMHO, this "Just Over Broke" is guru BS to entice people to buy their courses. They try to make it sound like there is something shameful to being employed by someone else and that wholesaling, doing short sales, fix and flipping or whatever is somehow "better" than having a job.

Here's my view - you're trading one job for another. Really, there are two routes to "quitting your job". One is to have enough investments that the returns give you enough money to live off of. "Enough" is a very personal number. By investments, I mean totally passive - dividends from stocks, coupon payments from bonds, interest from CD's, rental income. Achiving that truly does give you freedom because there's no effort involved in making that money come in.

The other route is to be self employed. Guess what - you're still employed and still have a Just Over Broke. In fact, its almost has some big downsides over working for someone else.
1) You're almost always on commissioned sales. Turn the crank and do deals and money comes out. Stop turning and the money stops.
2) You rarely have any benefits. Medical in particular can be a real issue if you're truly self-employeed.
3) You have to make all the decisions. A few bad choices and your toast.

A lot of what we're told is "real estate investing" is just being self employed. Wholesaling, fix and flips, property management, developing, doing short sales -- all area JUST JOBS.

Getting to the first goal of having the money just come in is the real goal here, IMHO. Its actually the one we're beat into every day by lots of different people. Like the "retirement planner" every brokerage house has on their web site. Swapping you job working for someone else to being self employed is a very different sort of decision. It may well be the right one, and lots of people are very successful with that choice or are much happier or both. But its still a job.