Investing for hobby or Income

[G Pyros]

Who here invests because they want to as a hobby? I enjoy my full time job but would like a hobby and investing has always been an interest of mine, it is much easier to get involved with stock investing and I have been fairly successful.

Is your main goal for investing to get rich or get off the W2 or for a hobby (Pure Enjoyment)

[Kevin Siedlecki]

@G Pyros - I don't think anyone here would answer that it is a hobby. However much you enjoy it, you have to run your real estate investing as a business. There is a lot of money at stake, both on the positive side for growing wealth, and the negative side of big repairs, lost rent, and liability for lawsuits.

For me, investing takes up about as much time as a hobby, but my rental portfolio runs as a business. If you treat investing like a hobby, you're probably going to get burned. Golf is a hobby, because if you don't feel like going one day, you can stay home and read a book instead. If you are investing with that mindset, something is going to go wrong for you, either a tenant not paying rent, a repair that needs to be made, or a personal injury lawsuit because of a repair you didn't feel like making at the time. 

Bottom line, investing can be enjoyable and only take up as much time as a hobby, but it's not as flexible. If you are needed on a project, you can't decide you don't feel like dealing with it that day. So you either need to be available all the time of put systems in place for the portfolio to run without you. Either way, you have to have a business mindset to have any kind of success, and to avoid potentially costly mistakes.