All Forum Posts by: James Ma

@James Bitakis why not hire the person who has all of those skills AND the piece of paper. Like Russell said, the majority of job applicants now all have degrees. It's no longer a distinguishing feature and basically just a prerequisite nowadays. Lots of people I know have a hard time finding a good job with a degree

It's never a bad idea to finish your college degree. It will leave you with a lot more options in life if you ever want to change it up and teaches you a lot about business if that's your major.

Even on the Shark Tank, Mark Cuban wouldn't fund any of the brilliant entrepeneurs who said they would drop out of school if they got a deal - he felt they would be much better off finishing school AND working on their own business. I'd recommend you to do the same.

One of my friends was terrible at school, like a barely passing student. He now is a CEO of a public startup making amazing money, but he went back to school to get a business degree and studied as much as he could. It's a lot easier to get respect in the business world when you have some credentials to fall back on, unless you're well connected or funded - getting a degree will help you big time.

If your end goal is being a realtor, then maybe dropping out is fine and you can just learn the business.

@Aditya Soma Congrats Aditya ! Sounds like you've made some amazing progress and are getting to live the Canadian dream!

Hi Scott, I would recommend doing research on how you can leverage money to generate returns and learn the difference between good debt and bad debt. Typically mortgage & refinance rates are lower than investment vehicles yielding you a greater positive return. Rather than leaving your money sitting idle in a property or a savings account, its highly recommended to make your money work harder for you and generating more income through leverage

@Bjorn Ahlblad I live near Vancouver and only reasonably close area that cash flows is Chilliwack and their prices have gotten to a point where its pretty borderline too

@Steve DellaPelle why not just go digital to collect rent? It's 2019 and most etransfers are free with any big bank. If you're on a bigger scale, why not use a third party rent collection app where tenants can easily send you the money

If you want FI by 30, why are you investing into a ROTH. Those are contradicting investment goals. Your goal is lofty and I believe you would need to start your own business to achieve something that quickly. 

If you want to build up a business now and accelerate enough to be able to not work in 5 years, you need all the money you can get to do that instead of depositing most of it into a retirement account

I think it is important to evaluate and to ask - why is this person your mentor in the first place, what made you seek him out as a mentor? Did you guys align on your goals and how he would be able to help you progress in your goals or career ambitions?

I don't think a test necessarily can say whether someone is cut out to be an entrepreneur as much as knowing someone. I would dig deeper into what makes him think that. It sounds like you don't necessarily know each other well and met him at a conference and thought you would pick his brain into how to be successful in real estate.

Honestly reading a handful of good real estate books is pretty much the same information as what a lot of the workshops and expensive courses will teach you anyway. If you are a good self starter and hard working, you can learn pretty much anything these days on your own. If you want a book, it'll be there in a few days thanks to Amazon and the reviews from others typically can give insights into whether the information will be helpful or not.

Personally I see more value in a mentor for giving advice in emotional situations since they can be unbiased and for their Business relationships that they have established over the years rather than the foundation to go on a real estate journey.

BC assessment had my properties a bit overvalued in my opinion but it would be hard to argue since you have to go to court or talk to a board or something so just not worth it.

@Shaidah K sounds like you are killing it and doing well :)

Good for you for starting to think about real estate so soon.

Focus on building a roadmap to get you where you need to go. Focus more on the near future than the far, you can build your skillset and relevant knowledge when the time comes to manage real estate and properties. It makes no sense for you to be reading how to manage real estate right now unless you have the capital to buy some.

If I were in your shoes, I'd be working on figuring out how I can get a high paying job out of university that will help fund your own investment company or getting a job in the RE industry so you can build a network. Learn about how to manage your money and look into investments you can make with your money while you save up for buying RE