3 Key Steps To Quitting Your Job Through Investing In Real Estate

Over the last ten years, I’ve had nine jobs. Believe me, I didn’t set out to switch jobs so many times, but I’m a dreamer, what can I say.

Through my experiences with all those employers, I’ve come to know well the nerves and optimism that come with the recruitment process, as well as the adrenaline and jitters that come with the onboarding process. When it comes to leaving a job, there can sometimes be pain, guilt, and sleepless nights. Or, vice versa, the thought of leaving a job can bring eager excitement and a sense of relief.

Wherever you are on that spectrum, leaving a job is a big transition. And in order to make the transition as smooth as possible, you might consider building up some financial assurance to help ease that transition.

In this article, I’ll lay out three key steps you can take to enable you to build that financial confidence to switch to part-time work or leave your job altogether, so you can spend more time with your family and pursue the things you love. These three steps include:

• Finding your freedom number
• Building passive income
• Tracking your progress

Why Leave Your Job

In this day and age, unlike with previous generations, it’s exceedingly rare for anyone to stay with a single company, or even in a single industry, throughout the course of their career. Career mobility allows people to continually experiment, grow, and pursue their passions.

As I write this, I am sitting in a neighborhood play space, watching my 2-year-old son build a Mega Bloks tower (and occasionally hit other kids over the head in the process). And even cooler than that, I’m sitting amid multiple other moms with laptops, each running their own small businesses. Now, more than ever, women are stepping up, taking control, and making an impact through the businesses and platforms they’re building, and they’re able to do so while spending time with their families.

As a working mom, entrepreneur, and business owner myself, I’m extremely proud to be part of this movement, and I hope to inspire and empower as many other working moms as I can to build passive income for their families, so they can have the freedom to pursue their passions and spend more time with their families.

However, it can be difficult as a working mom to take that leap into working less or staying at home. For one, there’s the guilt. Every aspect of being a mom just comes with guilt, amirite? When contemplating leaving a job, particularly a lucrative one, and particularly when you live in an area where the cost of living is high, there can be a lot of guilt and fear that comes along with that.

How will the change in income affect your family? How will you be able to continue contributing financially to your family? And alternatively, what if you stay at your job for the money, but your kids grow up without you having spent the time you wanted with them? See what I mean? Guilt.

When it comes to making major life decisions like leaving a job, everyone approaches it differently. Some people just go for it, sort of the sink or swim approach. Others want more of a safety net. For many of the moms we talk to, they want some financial assurance before they feel comfortable leaving their jobs. And often, this financial assurance comes in the form of passive income.

So without further ado, let’s dive into the three steps that will enable you to build that financial assurance, so you can leave your job with as little guilt and fear as possible.

Step 1 – Find Your Freedom Number

The first step in building the financial assurance you might need to feel comfortable leaving your job is to find your freedom number. What’s a freedom number, you ask? Great question. I was hoping you’d ask.

Your freedom number is the amount of passive income you would need in order to cover the expenses that come with your current lifestyle, and then some. Once you’ve reached your freedom number, you will officially be financially free. That is, you can maintain your current lifestyle while not having to work.

In order to find your freedom number, start by looking at the last six months of your expenses. Take out any large seasonal expenses, like holiday gifts or travel.

Take the average of your expenses over those six months. Then, add a 10% buffer. This is your freedom number.

For example, let’s say your expenses over the last six months were:

• Month 1 - $9,500
• Month 2 - $12,300
• Month 3 - $8,700
• Month 4 - $10,800
• Month 5 - $9,100
• Month 6 - $9,600

The average of these six months’ worth of expenses is $10,000. Add 10% of that, and you get $11,000. So your freedom number in this example would be $11,000.

Once you have this freedom number in mind, decide whether you would need to reach this entire number in passive income, or a certain portion of it, in order to build that financial assurance you need to step down to part-time work or leave your job altogether.

Step 2 – Build Passive Income

This is the fun part. At least, I think so. But I’m a total #moneynerd, so…there’s that.

Once you have your freedom number in mind, you have a target to build toward. Now your goal is to build multiple streams of passive income so that you can reach and sustain that freedom number each month without having to work.

There are many ways to build additional streams of income. If you’ve got some mad skillz, you might consider writing a book, creating an online course, or designing products to sell online. Sitting right in front of me right now is a mom who is designing onesies for her online shop (while her toddler is hanging off her arm and whining for snacks, of course). Each additional product represents an additional stream of potential income.

Of course, these side hustles all take additional time and energy and hence may not be as passive as you’re hoping.

Which brings me to, real estate investing. There are more people who become millionaires through investing in real estate than through any other path. Why? Partly because, you don’t have to have those mad skillz I mentioned above in order to invest in real estate. As long as you have some money to invest, you can put it into cash-flowing real estate and build pretty solid streams of passive income.

With each additional investment, you are building an additional stream of passive income. And, just like building a house, you can lay those streams of passive income down brick by brick until you’ve reached your freedom number.

This is one of the things we love talking to other working moms about – leveraging passive real estate investments to build passive income, enabling them to have more flexibility in their work schedules and to be able to spend more time with their families. #investlikeamother

Regardless of the path you choose, the main goal of this step is to build multiple streams of passive income, whether that’s investing in multiple pieces of real estate, creating and selling products for residual income, or some combination of the two.

Step 3 – Track Your Progress

This is the part I struggle with a bit, I must admit. I’m a big ideas person, not much of a details person.

However, in order to track your progress toward your freedom number, you must be able to track how much passive income you’re bringing in each month.

For one, as you build each stream of passive income, it’s just plain fun to watch that passive income number grow each month. And also, as you see how doable it is to build those passive income streams, you can start to plan for the future.

For example, if you choose to invest passively in real estate syndications, you might see that every $50,000 investment will give you roughly $350 per month in passive income. So, for example, by moving the $200,000 you currently have invested in the stock market to real estate syndications, you might generate $1,400 in passive income per month.

While $1,400 might still be a long way from your ultimate freedom number, it could be enough to cover your groceries each month. So, that’s one fewer thing you have to worry about financially.

Each additional passive income stream will further help you defray your living expenses, until at some point, you reach the tipping point and feel comfortable moving to part-time work or leaving your job altogether while still maintaining that income.

Recap

The thought of making a job change and possibly taking on a reduction in income can stir up feelings of guilt and fear in many working moms. However, whether your goal is to leave so that you can spend more time with your kids while they’re little, to pursue a passion project, or to start a business to change the world, you CAN do this. Countless other women have done it, and so can you.

By following the three steps outlined above, you can start to take control of your financial future and plan for your early retirement. Start by finding your freedom number, then build passive income streams to reach part or all of that freedom number, and remember to track your progress along the way.

The journey to building up the financial assurance you need to leave your job won’t always be easy, but when the path is rooted in your big Why, you’ll get there. Slowly, but surely. And when you do, I’ll save the spot next to me at the play space, so we can watch our kids play together.