All Forum Posts by: Rich Weese

  @Allan Foote

I don't think you need a college degree to be successful. If you have all the skills to obtain a college degree, those same skills will probably allow you to be successful in whatever field you choose without becoming mired in debt! I was told I needed to go to college and earn a degree also decades ago and actually went to A university in Utah. 

My story is easy to find here on bigger pockets, but I dropped out to go into real estate and have never looked back. I am not a big proponent of needing a college degree or higher. I always agreed to help any of my six kids get a degree or help them with starting or buying an existing business. I have one that earned a degree in nutrition and now manages a hospital food service program in Lodi California. My other five children chose different directions and four of the five are in real estate or businesses that depend on real estate. I would consider them successful.

I take offense at one of the comments in your original post. You stated that your potential mentor  "found" tremendous success in flipping etc. You don't find something like that, you earn it through hard work and experience.

At my age, I am able to look back and see many examples of young people that earned degrees that became useless or useless to them in the career they followed. I agree there are social skills that you learn by being around students in school but you can learn those same skills being in groups, clubs or organizations outside of school. In my early career in real estate I attended a lot of real estate information and exchange groups. I believe I learned an adequate amount of information there, probably more than I would have learned if I had finished college.

I still own a lot of real estate and am not sorry for my decision in choosing that career and not international law. Good luck on what ever you decide to do.

Mindy Jensen- I did fill out the survey but not sure I did it correctly. My situation was like Henry Wolfe's. the first  commercial acquisition was due to necessity. I needed office space for my fledgling real estate office but didn't know I was going to end up with a new 30,000 ft.² vacant office building as my first entrance into commercial!

I sold the airplanes decades ago. One of my daughters just did her first touch and go in a little Cessna a couple weeks ago though.

I agree with Michael. I have often said, take a map of Texas and hang it on your wall. Step two – throw a dart. Step three – buy property wherever your dart landed!

Jared,

I suggest you do what I did FIFTY posts back.

"Jason, I think we are just going to need to agree to disagree on this point." So many things have changed since I dropped out of College at 22. Glad I did since I found Real Estate and retired at 29....

I have been on and off bigger pockets for many years. I continue to receive notifications of "colleague request" and I always click on it. It gives me two options: accept or decline. I have always clicked on except and don't believe I have ever clicked on decline. I really don't understand what that does. Did it really provide any useful purpose of any sort? Does it lead to anything?

I received notices that says so-and-so is now following me. What does that mean? Does it mean when I post something or start a thread the followers are notified of that? I guess I could see a benefit in that but do not understand the colleague benefit.

I would appreciate one of the many mods to explain it or tell me where to go to learn about these two wonderful programs........

Do the thousands of teachers average into your calculations also? I have always felt that a teacher does it for love of the job and would be rewarded financially much better for his/her talent in some other field. If you're good, you're good and going to be successful. Some successes are more financially rewarding than others......

I have invested in both markets during my career and you have certainly selected to very good areas to compare. I have invested in Arizona from Flagstaff to Casa grande and everything in between.I have also invested in multiple areas in Texas and am not as familiar with Austin. When I did my research, it was the most expensive area in the state for single-family residences , strictly going by median price.

I agree with most of the other posts. It depends on what your goals, strategies, plans, reserves, and what each for Plex is actually bringing to the table for you.

I found it very easy to be consumed with real estate. If I could go back, I would have allocated more time to spend with the kids when they were growing up.

Jason D,

We are just going to have to agree to disagree. I realize I am taking the contrarian view and I have numerous experiences and reasons for that view. The amount of debt a person is left with after receiving that degree is sometimes difficult to pay off with the job they end up doing after college. There are a certain percentage that do not even stay in the field where they earned the degree. There are also degrees that end up being useless because that particular field has disappeared or changed significantly and on the job training becomes more important for advancement. I acknowledge that many of the things learned in college are helpful in your life but so are the things learned on location in the field you enter.

I have always been a believer that no one will ever pay you what you are worth, except you. I'm very oriented towards trying to get into a field or a profession where you may end up as your own boss. There are too many college degrees that do not allow that option. Those are my reasons and I realized where your viewpoint is coming from.