All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

I have a BS in construction management and am just about to finish my MBA. 5 years into my career and the pay is pretty good but if I were to do it all over again (assuming amassing cash to invest is my goal) i'd skip college and find a lucrative career like being a lineman. The best paid lineman make up to 200k per year and have all of their travel and living expenses paid. Going to college means paying back 75 to 100k in loans before you ever keep any money unless you are lucky enough to have someone else pay for it (parents, government). Live on the road and pile all of that cash into Realestate then retire in ten years.

Then don't become a MD, don't become a programmer, don't become a slick salesman of houses, and don't invest in real estate; you don't really want to do any of them, and therefore won't be very good at any of them and none of them will make you happy or wealthy. Find something that will; it is going to be something that you will need to develop some serious aptitude for and work your tail off at for an extended period of time, so you better love it. You've found a bunch of things that you can't/won't/don't want to do ... what will you do? That's a rhetorical question, because with that I'm fresh out of advise for you my friend. Good luck.

Richard, Richard Bronshtein

I'm doing it with a BS from a crappy state school and no connections. Look at being an insurance agent, a registered rep, a stock broker or something in sales. It yields a high commission rate but you prospect for your own clients and be motivated to generate sales.

Look at companies that are always recruiting like New York Life, Mass Mutual and Northwestern Mutual. Also retail banks are always looking for personal bankers and chase private bankers make good money too.

Not impossible and you'll make 60,000+

Ummm, Medicine is NOT a fast way to make money, nor is it a lucrative career at this point.

First, it takes 12 - 20 YEARS to become a doctor.  That's 12-20 years the rest of you get to spend accumulating and investing, enjoying holidays and weekends, starting a family, etc, while your doctor friend is working for free or minimum wage as a med student or resident 80-100hrs a week.  Eventually, they'll come out of training with several HUNDRED thousand in student loan debt in a job market that no longer allows you to "hang a shingle" and make your fortune.  No, you're an employee, just like everyone else AND you're in the highest tax bracket in the nation while get ZERO tax writeoffs because of it.

Trust me, medicine is NOT the easy road to wealth....and this point in history, it's a quick road to insolvency, if you're not careful.

Saying those engineering fields are "dying" is patently ridiculous. Im guessing by the fact that you are arguing with older and more successful investors that your pretty young and inexperienced.

I completed my degree in 3 years and was in the top 5 of the graduating senior class... as a junior. Trust me, I could code. I just hated coding. Sitting in a cubicle all day listening to the geeks around me talking incessantly about World of Warcraft. Why did I enter programming? Because that was, "Where all the money is."  

It doesn't matter what career choice you make. It only matters what you do with that choice, but you obviously are too brilliant to realize that. You think there is some magic job out there where you show up and checks start filling up your mailbox just because you signed up. You want "Employability, money, and demand?" Maybe you should sell water.

Here's an idea; stand out on the street and asking every person driving $100K+ car, "What do you do for a living that allows you to buy that car?" What do you think you'll learn? I bet nothing. I also bet you'll talk to a lot of people who all have entirely different jobs. It is because you're approaching this subject matter in entirely the wrong way. You don't ask "What job do you have that brings in that kind of money?" You should be asking, "How do you do what you do that it brings in that kind of money?" The way I went about selling windows and the way my coworker went about doing the exact same job was very different. At my peak I was making more than the vice president of the company. So much so that the owner told me he had to give him a very large bonus at the end of the year just to make it up to him. It isn't the job. It is the work ethic. It is the ideas and implementation. Same exact job, very different incomes. 

The book Think & Grow Rich doesn't tell you which job to get, but I'm guess you haven't bothered to pick that book up yet. Much easier to come to a public forum looking for the secret sauce. This is also the type of attitude that falls prey to the "make a million in real estate this weekend" seminars. There's probably quite a few gurus that are writing down your contact info already. You're an easy mark.

This entire conversation is why someone once said, "Youth is wasted on the young."

Richard,

I really hope to get through to you with this post.  I'm not too far ahead of you in the game.  I graduated from my MBA just back in 2012.

I can say with certainty that most of the things you've been led to believe about wealth and happiness are complete fabrications.  You will find neither wealth nor happiness chasing that high income salary.  Lawyer?  Doctor?  Programmer?  It really does not matter.  None of these careers make you truly wealthy.  Investing in real estate does not even truly making you wealthy.

If you truly want to become wealthy, go out there, create a business that solves complicated problems or provides solutions that people need.  If you take on a high paying job just because it is high paying and "tolerable" you will look back on yourself five or ten years down the line and regret it.

Find a problem that you are passionate about solving.  I'm not talking about stupid nebulous stuff like "world hunger".  I'm talking about problems like how expensive helicopter/aerial footage of commercial real estate projects is and provide a solution to that problem (drones!).

You are young now.  You think that money is worth tolerating a not-terrible-but-ok job.  It really isn't.  You say you wouldn't work a job that you hate, but I'm arguing that you shouldn't waste your time working some job you just "tolerate" just for the sake of a high salary.  Life is too short for that ********.

Find passion in life and chase it.  Look for opportunity to monetize that passion.  No one that I know with significant wealth does anything except utterly love what they do.

 "pretty equally dry and boring ... but tolerable" will quickly turn to miserable far quicker than the position is temporary. Ask me how I know this.

If you are passionate about real estate, then I'd complete your finance degree and work as a real estate agent to earn while you learn. It is not a W2 gig, but good ones make good money, love what they do, and after 2 years of income to show can get a mortgage. Otherwise, the happiest high W2 earners I've seen are MDs and software engineers, since they have jobs where they help people and create cool stuff, but the happy ones I've come across were all passionate about it ... they would never describe what they do as "dry and boring, but tolerable". All the wall streeters and lawyers I know went into it chasing dollars, and are all without exception f'ing miserable and broke to boot.

Every lender is different, there's no way to tell who will do what unfortunately.. Also, I would think the PT or FT designation has a big part to do with the decision as well, but ultimately they care about how much you make each month after all your expenses.. I guess if you had a job working 15 hrs a week making as much as I do working 40 hrs a week that might not matter about the amount of hours.. I know for a fact they want to see long term stability (2yrs +) at your current job.. I'm guessing if you worked somewhere under two years and went directly into a "better" job in the same field they may be ok with you not being at one specific place over 2 years.. Young credit history is an issue as well for lenders, I'm kind of in the same boat, according to Experian I don't have lengthy positive credit history yet.. I've been rebuilding my credit the past almost two years, I have 4 credit cards, never missed a payment, never pay the minimum and I'm still considered not having lengthy history, I'm not sure how many years qualifies but it's not 2! My credit score has gone up about 80 points in the past 13 months so I'm very happy about that, it's a slow and steady process.. I know for a fact that you can get a 3.5% FHA loan with not so great credit, I think for a 3.5% down payment they want to see a 600+ or maybe it's 620+ (please double check all my info, I could very easily be wrong about any and all of it)

I've got to agree with Aaron on this one ... the line of thinking you are pursuing is a surefire recipe for a miserable life IMO, and to add insult to injury it is also not likely to be as lucrative as you hope since you will not throw your heart into and be good at something you hate. I'm not saying drop out and follow your passion to become a painter in a hippie commune, nor am I saying become a drug dealer to get rich quick, but there has to be a happy medium between the two and money alone is not the best consideration for finding that happy medium.

Also, gotta take you to task a bit for asking a question and then arguing with experienced people who answer it and give you good advice that you don't want to hear. Sometimes a closed mouth and open ears and mind can serve well, especially when the advice you get is not what you want to hear.