Still kind of early, but the labor rates and materials appear to be very low.I have Office 2003 enterprise ed, and when I tried to open the bonus materials in the form of docs, xls and pdf's, I had to download the 37 MB, Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility app, in order to read them with M.S.

Business Management and Marketing are rather broad and general majors based on my experience and if you stay with them, you may end up with a $35k job out of school, or working one of the "Management Trainee" programs at say Enterprise, that have a high failure rate.My path was Accounting, and it's provided me a salary in my first 10 years that has allowed me to save up for down payments on properties, as well as easily qualify for loans w/ my steady salary. 

through real estate, royalties (including from mental enterprises, such as financial seminars), businesses, etc.  

The investment of money is in a common enterprise (This is the one most people know, a/k/a a "pooling of money")Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party (In a joint venture, or partnership your governing documents give your partner(s) some level of decision making) if it's a "security", however, it's pretty much on you to make decisions that will result in profits being made.At the end if the day, Joe, how do you want to run your deal?

I am a carpenter by trade and love what i do, and this is my story of how i have become so interested  in learning real estate investing...I am originally from New Jersey and was employed by a very big real estate company called Sackman Enterprises  based in New York. 

If everyone was a saver, or an investor, or an entrepreneur, my own enterprise would be within serious competition at best and over saturation at worst.

Our firm has never participated in this type of forum in the past and we look forward to being a useful addition to the whole.Our firm is a family owned enterprise and I bring quite a bit of financial background to the table.

But as the other posters indicate it seems to be relatively rare that a landlord would get paid anything in these circumstances.The issue of prison interfering with his rental chances is an interesting one but I think easily handled by an enterprising tenant: they could just say that they were living with friends or family, hence the gap in their rental history.

Don't value this property as a residence but as a commercial enterprise.

Your savings is $8,900, and you can probably find a good reliable vehicle for $5-6k that you would trust driving that much, maybe cheaper if you are enterprising or know how to fix cars.