What I learned from my trip to Atlantic City

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I spent the weekend in Atlantic City with three college buddies. It certainly hurts a lot more these days to pull an all-nighter than it did when I was 21.

I ended up losing $400 while I was there, but one of my buddies was cursed and lost $3,000. As soon as I placed a $50 bet on the craps table, and then lost it thanks to his roll of the dice I made sure to avoid betting any time the dice were in his hand.

Also, I took a helicopter ride while I was there, which was pretty awesome since I’d never done that, and overall it was a fun trip of good food and gambling.

So… here’s what I learned:

People will always spend money on what they want. Some folks are worried about this recession, but the tables were PACKED in all of the casinos and people were spending money like it grew on trees.

And these weren’t necessarily reach people either. I talked with some of them who were blue-collar Americans probably making $40,000 a year and they were happily dropping hundreds of dollars on craps, roulette and black jack.

The point I’m trying to make is two-fold…

1) Real estate investing will never go out of style because people will always be going through divorces, having medical problems, getting new jobs in other states and, gambling away their mortgage money.

That’s when you and I come in and help them out and purchase their houses and get them out of their situation (whether it was stupidly created by them or not).

2) People will always spend money on their “priorities”. When I used to spend a week every month in Florida I met a waitress who was about as broke as they come. However, every night she went out with her friends drinking and probably spent a few hundred a month on bar tabs (yet, she couldn’t afford her utilities or cell phone bill).

How about the person who lives in a trailer with the BMW parked out front and the $7,000, 65-inch flat screen TV inside. Yet, they can barely afford to put food on the table for their families.

Or how about the real estate investor that buys a brand new car every year, and owns more electronics than Circuit City, yet complains about how they can’t get started in this business because they can’t afford to do any marketing.

We all have choices in life

We’re very lucky to live in a free country that allows these choices. However, if you want to be wealthy you’re going to have to sacrifice just a little bit. And once you do, and properly learn this business… then you’ll have a valuable skill which will pay you a ton of money for the rest of your life… since people will never stop needing to sell houses quickly.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.