A New Kind of Life

[Karen} Someone asked me what I gained from my volunteer service with the real estate investor group and I had to think past the usual "it feels good to give" and when I did I realized how much I have learned. I really had started to take it for granted because the truth is that it does feel good to give a hand to those trying their hand at investing.

In the last two years I have met some extraordinary individuals, a small group with which I am involved on a regular basis and many great people who have come and gone. As I have learned, real estate investing has a great deal to do with relationships. You have to get out an network. You might walk into an event and meet someone new only to find a year later that you have partnered with each other on that four family property that you just could not pass up but could not swing on your own.

I know I said that it is work. After all, real estate investing isn't for everyone. It is hard work. As with any type of business, for the most part, it is harder to get up every day and work for yourself than it is to get up and go to work making someone else rich but isn't that the whole point. If you work for yourself, aren't you worth it? For me, I think about what I hear from those going to work every day and what I usually hear is that they are comfortable. I was too, to a point. Fortunately I have seen the light and I don't want to go back. A friend asked me, will I go back to the corporate arena and I can easily say, not if I can help it. There are no guarantees but I love it much better, even with all of the work, on the other side of, dare I say, Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant. I have tried employee for way too long, I want to try my hand for just as long and an investor and business owner. To me, a job is a place to kill time until you can leave and go do things that you really want to do for you and your family. I don't want to go back. If I click my heels, I guarantee, it won't take me back to a 9 to 5 job.

As a real estate investor, I have gone through my fair share of tenant issues. Usually, it comes back to the only real issue, which is where is the rent. Although I don't get the calls from tenants in the middle of the night, I have had a potential tenant call my office on a Sunday night at 11:00 PM looking for a place to live. Not exactly a broken toilet bowl but...I guess the early bird catches the worm. Or was she really late?