Advice for future investor

Colorado Springs, CO · Member since 2026 · 9 posts · 7 votes

My name is Josiah, I am 17 years old and am deeply interested and passionate about the world of real estate, personal finance, and general investing. I am pretty new to learning about real estate investing and recently started reading "The Book On Rental Property Investing" and I came here to ask for any simple and basic advice that you could give to a young investor who wants to retire (or be work-optional) by 40 years old.

3 Reply

487 views

Most Popular Reply

Divin KanyamaBusiness Member

Accountant · Seattle, WA · Member since 2025 · 311 posts · 104 votes

@Josiah Shipp , starting at 17 is a bigger advantage than finding the perfect deal. Focus first on building strong financial habits: avoid high-interest debt, save consistently, learn basic investing, and develop a skill or career that increases your income. Real estate becomes much easier when you have cash reserves, dependable income, and good credit rather than feeling pressured to force a deal.

Use the next few years to learn how deals actually work: analyze listings, attend local investor meetups, speak with lenders and property managers, and offer to help a trustworthy investor with research, bookkeeping, or property visits. When you are legally able and financially ready to buy, start with a manageable property and conservative numbers—not a deal that depends on perfect rent, appreciation, or expensive debt. Becoming work-optional by 40 is possible, but the better early goal is to steadily grow your skills, income, investments, and options. Keep learning, stay patient, and do not underestimate how far nearly two decades of consistent decisions can take you.

[email protected]

WEMBO CPA532 Reviews

Website View Page

1 Reply

See this reply in the discussion

11 Replies

Jump to latestLatest

Sort by

Divin KanyamaBusiness Member
Accountant · Seattle, WA · Member since 2025 · 311 posts · 104 votes
1w
@Josiah Shipp , starting at 17 is a bigger advantage than finding the perfect deal. Focus first on building strong financial habits: avoid high-interest debt, save consistently, learn basic investing, and develop a skill or career that increases your income. Real estate becomes much easier when you have cash reserves, dependable income, and good credit rather than feeling pressured to force a deal.
Use the next few years to learn how deals actually work: analyze listings, attend local investor meetups, speak with lenders and property managers, and offer to help a trustworthy investor with research, bookkeeping, or property visits. When you are legally able and financially ready to buy, start with a manageable property and conservative numbers—not a deal that depends on perfect rent, appreciation, or expensive debt. Becoming work-optional by 40 is possible, but the better early goal is to steadily grow your skills, income, investments, and options. Keep learning, stay patient, and do not underestimate how far nearly two decades of consistent decisions can take you.
[email protected]
WEMBO CPA532 Reviews
Website View Page
1 Reply
- Josiah Shipp
  OP
  Colorado Springs, CO · Member since 2026 · 9 posts · 7 votes
  1w
  Divin, thank you for your advice! I will definitely be spending the next few years learning as much as i possibly can and developing my skills. Thank you!
  0 Reply
Stacy RaskinBusiness Member
Lender · Member since 2022 · 1k+ posts · 503 votes
1w
Developing both your income and your knowledge are key. Working on pursuing a career that will pay you enough money to save while learning more about real estate investing through experienced professionals and actual hands on experience such as analyzing listings will help you in reaching your goal.

If you are truly looking to make work optional before a standard retirement age, starting early makes everything easier due to properties in general appreciating and rents generally going up over time. Investors at different ages can be successful but having the passage of time to do the work of compounding returns is helpful.
[email protected]818-770-0340
Bright Skyline518 Reviews
Website View Page
1 Reply
- Josiah Shipp
  OP
  Colorado Springs, CO · Member since 2026 · 9 posts · 7 votes
  1w
  Stacy, I will absolutely be making sure i have a job that can supplement my real estate goals well and i will learn as much as possible over the next years. Thank you!
  0 Reply
Shiloh LundahlPro Member
Rental Property Investor · Gilbert, AZ · Member since 2016 · 3k+ posts · 4k+ votes
1w
@Josiah Shipp have you gone to any REIA meetings in your area. Google Colorado Springs REIA meetings. Or go onto Facebook and look for Real Estate Investor Meetups or go onto Meetup.com and search for real estate meetups. Attend some of those meetups and at those meetups state that you are looking to work for a real estate investor in what ever capacity they need. Proximity is extremely valuable. Then, while you work for them and add value to their company, learn their systems and processes. This will teach you more than any book can. Make sure the person you work for is credible and has integrity.
480-206-1209 Podcast Guest on Show #287
1 Reply
Jaron WallingPro Member
Rental Property Investor · Indianapolis, IN · Member since 2018 · 4k+ posts · 4k+ votes
1w
It's always great to see young people getting into REI. I remember when I was 24 and booked my first vacation rental. I was making big moves!! haha. The idea of actually owning a property, generating CF, and using for family was beyond me. It's eaaasssyyy to let your mid 20's fly right past financially speaking. A good education and establishing a career is #1 but buying assets and then leveraging them should #2. Reading, listening to podcasts/videos, networking, and growing is #3.
At 18 y/o you have the entire world in front of you. Go to a trades school or community college to cut costs on education. Don't go into student loan debt unless your absolutely have too. Take some savings and put them into your first property. Do this locally, build your network, and buy more properties from 18-28 y/o. You'll have a 9-5 career established, investing experience, and properties propelling your financial picture up and to the right. Hold those assets for another 10 years and dang... you're probably "work-optional" at 38. It depends on how leveraged you are and where the economy is at 2047! Nobody can predict the future.
Life gets in the way and sometimes it's for the better. At 17 y/o you will not understand that statement. Scaling a rental portfolio isn't everything but investing in your 20's is massive head start. Best of luck man.
1 Reply
Michael Eskenasy
Investor · Pacific Northwest · Member since 2026 · 538 posts · 304 votes
1w
Josiah — if I were 17 again, I’d spend the next couple years building a scar tissue library before I ever worried about buying something.
Pick one market and start tracking actual properties.
Not just “analyze” them once.
Save what they listed for. What you thought they would rent for. Taxes. Insurance. Repairs. Financing. What you thought the deal was worth.
Then keep watching.
What did it actually sell for?
Did it sit?
Did the price get cut?
Did it come back on market?
What did it eventually rent for?
Where were you wrong?
Do that 100 times and you’ll start seeing something most people never build: the difference between what a property looks like on day one and what reality eventually proves.
That skill compounds way faster than memorizing rules of thumb.
By the time you’re old enough and capitalized enough to buy, you won’t just know how to run a calculator. You’ll have a few years of evidence showing you which assumptions you personally tend to get wrong.
That’s a hell of an advantage.
We spend a lot of time looking at property this way — preserving the original assumptions and then comparing them to what actually happened.
The goal isn’t to be right more often.
It’s to stop being wrong in the same places.
1 Reply
Diana KhanPro Member
Attorney · 10451 Mill Run Cir #755 Owings Mills, MD 21117 · Member since 2024 · 403 posts · 162 votes
1w
Quote from @Josiah Shipp:
My name is Josiah, I am 17 years old and am deeply interested and passionate about the world of real estate, personal finance, and general investing. I am pretty new to learning about real estate investing and recently started reading "The Book On Rental Property Investing" and I came here to ask for any simple and basic advice that you could give to a young investor who wants to retire (or be work-optional) by 40 years old.
@Josiah Shipp, one thing I would add is to start learning how real estate paperwork works while you have the time to learn without pressure. I’ve worked with investors who understood the numbers really well but got into trouble because they did not fully understand something they signed.
You do not need to become a lawyer. Just start getting comfortable with things like purchase contracts, leases, deeds, financing terms, and how ownership is structured. Later, when you are actually ready to buy, those documents will not feel completely foreign to you. That knowledge can save you from some very expensive lessons.
I’d be glad to stay connected, @Josiah Shipp. Starting this young gives you plenty of time to learn the business the right way before you ever have to rush into a deal.
[email protected]240-266-0291
0 Reply
Dan NelsonBusiness Member
Real Estate Broker · Chicago and Kansas City · Member since 2016 · 87 posts · 67 votes
1w
The best part of being 17 in this business is that time does the heavy lifting, and you have more of it than anyone on this forum.
Three things to set up now, because every lender you ever meet will check them: income history, credit, and cash. Get a job and keep it, open a credit card as soon as you can and pay it in full every month, and give every paycheck a percentage that goes to the house fund before anything else touches it.
While the fund grows, learn your market for free. Pick the city you actually plan to live in, tour open houses, and learn what places rent for, block by block. The person who can look at a unit and know what it rents for is valuable in every deal, and that skill costs nothing but Saturdays.
When you get there, make the first one a house hack: a small building, you in one unit, rent from the other units paying most of your mortgage. Owner-occupied loans need far less down than investor loans, which is why the first property is the easiest one to buy, not the hardest.
Retire by 40 math is just repetitions of that move plus patience. You are starting earlier than almost everyone here. Keep reading.
[email protected]773-295-1751 Podcast Guest on Show 2 “Slam Dunk” Small Multifamily Deals in 2023 (and Where to Find Them)
Dan Loves Houses4.971 Reviews
Website View Page
1 Reply
John Leland
Specialist · I give advice - [email protected] - I focus on states where investing is profitable, reasonably safe & secure · Member since 2026 · 55 posts · 12 votes
1w
Quote from @Josiah Shipp:
My name is Josiah, I am 17 years old and am deeply interested and passionate about the world of real estate, personal finance, and general investing. I am pretty new to learning about real estate investing and recently started reading "The Book On Rental Property Investing" and I came here to ask for any simple and basic advice that you could give to a young investor who wants to retire (or be work-optional) by 40 years old.
There are a few good books to get you started, but also try to get practical experience by finding a flipper to work with.
0 Reply
Arman AhmedPro Member
Real Estate Agent · Columbus Cleveland Dayton, OH · Member since 2024 · 2k+ posts · 924 votes
1w
Quote from @Josiah Shipp:
My name is Josiah, I am 17 years old and am deeply interested and passionate about the world of real estate, personal finance, and general investing. I am pretty new to learning about real estate investing and recently started reading "The Book On Rental Property Investing" and I came here to ask for any simple and basic advice that you could give to a young investor who wants to retire (or be work-optional) by 40 years old.
At 17, your biggest advantage is time. Keep learning, but don’t get stuck waiting until you know everything. The best way to learn anything is by doing it, then repeating it until the numbers start to make sense. Analyze real deals, learn financing, rents, and expenses, save money, and build your network. If you stay consistent for the next 20 years, you’ll be in a very different place by 40.
[email protected]614-418-6081
0 Reply

Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.