BiggerPockets

Hi Justin,

Congratulations on your decision to enter the real estate investing world. I too am new. In my personal opinion, I would not recommend dropping out of school. Although I plan to do real estate full time, I still attend college studying accounting.

I think it's great that your uncle has already been doing this for a while. You have someone you can turn to for advice and guide you along the way. If your family is anything like mine, I would think the reason they reacted the way they did is because you were talking about dropping out of school altogether. Sometimes parents, especially if they are old fashioned, have that same old-fashioned mentality. "Go to school, get a good job, get married, buy a house, retire; rinse and repeat with your children."

If I were in your situation, I would talk to my family and try to make a deal with them. As long as you stay in school working toward graduation and don't fall behind on your grades, your uncle will act as your mentor. Sort of like you being a football player and your uncle the coach. As long as you keep up your grades, you won't have to sit the bench. By the time you graduate, while your classmates are busy trying to get interviews, you'll be making enough money from real estate not to be bothered with submitting resumes.

A degree is not required to be successful at real estate. Some of the most successful business people, whether in real estate or not, do not have college degrees. However, I would still pursue a degree in accounting even if I closed a million dollar deal tomorrow. That's just me. :-)

Hello Justin,

When I was about 21 I started making some $$ with internet businesses. I thought I was hot stuff and school was in my way. I was a Junior at that point and just couldn't figure out how it made sense to go to school when I was earning more than my professors. What could these teachers teach me, when all they knew was what was in a book. They had no real world experience. Now unfortunately this was Really The Truth, in regards to the University I was at. I ended up dropping all my classes and I will never forget how upset my parents were. After that semester I went ahead and went back to school, footed the bill, and graduated. I did this mainly to appease the parentals, however I also did it for myself as I wanted that piece of paper as a fall back option.

I would recommend you consider the same thing. It is nice to know that you have an option, that piece of paper, to unlock the doors of a future employer just in case you find being self employed is not, as you put it, your cup of tea.

In the meantime if engineering is not for you, just switch it up and get a straight Business Degree or something.

Fast forward 12 years, and possibly a dozen businesses later and I am still self employed. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the leisurely pursuit of life. Waking up when you want, vacationing when you want, spending hours on the patio at lunch, etc. By all means it is no 24 hour party though, at times it requires work that you would never do in a corporate setting. Working 7 days a week, 60-80 hour weeks, etc. Of course add to that the constant stress of having your personal money constantly at play, never knowing when, or if, it will ever return to your bank account. You also never know when your next paycheck will come in, and you will never know how much it will be for. One year you make 50k the next you make 180k.

My recommendations to you:

1. Stay in school but change majors. You are just in your second year so you have plenty of options to change majors. It probably won't affect you at all since most of your schooling up to this point has been the basics.

2. If you truly think real estate is your calling then go ahead and get your real estate license. You can do this in your spare time, anyone with half a brain can pass the test with ease. Since you made it to your second year of college I know you have the mental capacity to do this. IMO any investor without their license is throwing Thousands of dollars down the drain. My bank account would have at least $100,000 less dollars in it if I didn't have my license.

3. I don't know your local market but maybe you have enough $$ to partner on a small single family residential deal with your Uncle. You each throw in 30k and find a property. This will be the absolute best way for you to learn. You will learn more on your first deal then any book, seminar, BS, forum, ANYTHING. Even if you lose some money who cares, the knowledge is powerful and will make you more down the road. Be smart, study, show your uncle what you have learned, make him want to invest with you. Maybe he puts 70k into the deal and you put 30k, I don't know.

4. Immerse yourself into everything you can find on the internet regarding real estate investing. I know for a fact before I did a deal I spent at least 1000 hours online reading everything I could find. *One of the perks of being self employed you have tons of free time if you choose* You don't need to waste your money buying material, good, great material is all over for free.

5. At your age any future loss is easily mitigated with time. Even if you lost your 30k it is not the end of the world. I remember losing 20k in the stock market when I was about your age in one weekend. It sucked but I just chalked it up to learning and moved on. It is easy to bounce back when you are that young and have very little in the way of responsibility. I am not saying just jump in and go nuts, I am just saying take some chances while you are young.

Goodluck