Quote: (04-23-2015 03:23 PM)se7en Wrote:
Quote: (04-23-2015 01:11 PM)Menace Wrote:
The guy who owns the garage I take my MB to drives a V12 S class and a Bentley. His son is getting a used SL 500 bought brand new as his first car. The way to make real money is not with a job like a lawyer, it's by owning a garage, a flower shop, real estate, some easily understandable cash business, or selling such a business.
Agree with this. However, the key here is owning the real estate on which your cash business sits. I had a friend whose family owned a flower shop and they actually went bankrupt. You also see a lot of restaurants going bankrupt - very often people just cant afford to make the expensive lease payments when they don't own the real estate. Commercial landlords are jacking up prices all the time. They will juice you. Then, they find someone else to sign a 3-5 year lease, and then they juice them even more.
One of the reasons that McDonalds was so succesful at the beggining, apparently, was that they always owned their real estate. If you do own the real estate, then you can do whatever the hell you want with it - rent it out, start a flowershop, etc... whatever you find most profitable.
Keep in mind, however, that real estate requires some start-up capital. The more you have, the lower your risk, because the more equity you own from the start, the less leverage you have to utilize.
Traditional professions, such as lawyers and doctors, are a great way for someone without old-money family wealth to save-up some capital and work stability in order to get into real estate. Similarly, working in those professions allows you to build strong relationships with other people who have a lot of money. You can co-invest with these people. I know a former medical guy who is now a big commercial real estate owner - he pooled money with his doctor friends and bought an office building many years back, and has been moving forward.
This is a solid strategy. If you're an engineer/doctor/lawyer, you often know other engineers, doctors & lawyers.
Otherwise look for family connections. If your family is jewish for example, there are often a lot of doctors/lawyers in your family you can try to talk to.