When did you decide to do real estate full time?

Question

Loving this forum and all the amazing success stories.

I've barely got a toe in the bucket but being midtransaction on our third property, my compulsive obsession with number crunching has me wondering how much is enough to do this full time? Seems like a number of people here do so I'm curious when did real estate investing become your main source of income?

In my perfect world, I'd spend the next 5 years building a portfolio and 5 years after that training a really great business manager so after 10 I can quit my day job it can become more passive for me. Does it ever become passive or is it always about growth and then next deal?

Eric Black · Answer

Ashley, it sounds like you already have the tools in place to help you when you get to that point. I hope you are able to reach your goals sooner than you plan and you've found the right place to get you there!

Cheers!

Eric

Ashly B. · Answer

That's definitely a huge factor for us. My husband's company doesn't offer benefits and its unreal how paralyzing having a benefits package can be! Its like you need to make your salary x 1.5 if you want to keep the same spending habits.

On the flip side, we're fortunate (though its not without a lot of budget dedication!) to live on about 55% of our net income. I can't decide if more free time or more money is what we need most to grow our portfolio! Million dollar question I guess.

Eric Black · Answer

Hi Ashely and congrats on your early successes.

The answer is going to be different for everyone so you'll have to come up with your own. However, a common "formula" is, assuming you want at least the same amount of money that you're making from your job, once you have enough passive income to equal or exceed that then you can quit your job. So if you're making $5,000 a month at your job then you'd want at least $5,000/month in passive income. One thing a lot of people don't think about is that, for many people your insurance costs will go up depending on what kind of (quality of) insurance you have through your employer so you'll need to factor that in.

Best of luck!

Eric