Cody left Tacoma Community College three years ago to invest in multifamily real estate instead. He breaks down the choice through three pillars: building certainty before committing, comparing college costs against real estate ROI (seven rental units at $1,000 monthly NOI replaces an $80k salary), and asking what you want to do in twenty years.
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Hey YouTube, this is Cody. Welcome back to this week's video. Today I'm talking about multifamily versus college. I had to make this decision a few years ago. I know there's a lot of folks, at least that have been reaching out to me, that are asking, they're younger or they're a little bit older, they're thinking about going back to college and they're wondering, "Should I go to college or should I jump straight into multifamily real estate?" So jumping into today's video, I want to start this out right away Should you go to college or should you leave college? And I want to give you a little introduction. I dropped out of college 3 years ago. I was going to Tacoma Community College. I got accepted in some of the higher-up colleges around the area, and I decided that it wasn't for me. And there's a few things I've had to learn along the way that might help you make a decision and steer you one way or another. Neither way is going to really be a bad decision as long as you're committed to working towards what you want to do. And so number 1, focus on becoming certain about what you're doing. Acquire information for certainty. And the reason I say this is when you see an opportunity, for me, an opportunity means a real estate deal. For you, it could be a career path, and maybe then that opportunity lies in college. But when you find an opportunity, if you are certain about it, you can go quickly. If you don't know what you don't know yet and you're kind of hemming and hawing, you may lose opportunities that are really the diamond in the rough. They could really lift you up from where you are to where you want to go. And so while you are considering what you want to do, you're looking at going to college, maybe you go to a community college, don't go into a whole bunch of student loans right now if you're not certain, but try and gather as much information, get as much connections as you can in the space. And if you really want to do multifamily, there's enough people out there that will help you They're not going to charge you some arm and a leg to help out. There's enough people that will help you out. You may have to spend a little bit of money, but it's worth it because if you can get certain about what you're doing, the day you find that opportunity for that career, you're going to know what you want, when you want it, how you're going to get it, and you can move quickly and you can act on those opportunities. Number 2, learn everything you can about opportunity cost. Let's say that you're going to go to college and you're going to spend 4 years or 6 years or 8 years, depending on what you're doing, and you're going to make X amount of money. You should do the math on this because if there's not an ROI, it may not be wise for your financial condition to go to college. If it takes you 4 years to go get a job that pays you $80,000 a year, if you spent the same 4 years and you looked into a business opportunity or you looked into multifamily real estate, Can you come up with something that pays you $80,000 a year? And if we do super simple math and let's just say that every rental unit that you own makes you $1,000 a month in NOI, now it's going to depend on what market you're in and what type of rentals you have. But just for round numbers, each rental unit you have makes $1,000 a month in net operating income. You need to go get 7 rental units and get them paid off, and you're set. Now, you don't need them paid off in 4 years because they're going to gradually pay themselves off over time. But if you go get 7 rental units that net $1,000 a month before the mortgage, you built out a retirement plan that will adjust for inflation, that will cover that college route that you were going to go take down. And so it really comes down to where you want to put your focus. And point number 3, is what do you want to be doing in 20 years from now? If you're going to college just so you can get money to put into real estate, that might not be the right route. If you can then shift all of your focus from, "Okay, I'm going to college to get some money so that I can put into real estate," maybe the different question to ask is, "How do I learn about real estate so I can go buy real estate in my current condition and get real estate that'll pay me, that'll go up in value, The tenants will pay down the debt and I'll get some tax benefits in the meantime. If you shift all your focus onto being— you're hyper-focused on learning this space opposed to going to do some side gig just to get some money that you think you need, you need to analyze that situation and say, "Is this really the right course of action?" And it might be. There's a lot of people that go to college, they make a lot of earned income and they can shovel that into real estate. They got that big income shovel. It's going to depend on what you're trying to do, but really look at the opportunity cost. Is it something that you want to be doing in 20 years? Are you just doing that so you can do the investment space? And acquire certainty. No matter what path you're going to do, be certain that it's the right one for you, and go all out. Burn the ships, as I've said in other videos. Don't have an exit plan. That said, what's right for you? Let me know in the comments below what path you think is right for you. If you have questions, comments, concerns, let me know. I'll answer them. And like and subscribe if you haven't already. I'll see you guys next week.
