How to Juggle Your Real Estate Investing with a Full-Time Job

by Greg hammond

If your life is anything like mine , you probably know how challenging it can be to build your real estate business while holding down a full-time job.

If you have a family, friends, hobbies and a life –then you probably know it gets even more complicated…

Take ME for example. I’ve got several things on my plate every day:

• I have a full-time job (maintenance director for a local hospital) that usually consumes anywhere from 40 – 60 hours every week.

• I have a wife and three kids – all require (and fully deserve) some pretty substantial slices of my time each day.

• Every week, I put significant time and effort into publishing content for this blog (and reading through others blogs)
• I'm the co-chair for our local Relay For Life team

• I’m an active member of my church, neighborhood and a couple of local real estate groups where I try to participate in several extracurricular activities each year.

• I have a handful of other hobbies and fun activities including coaching my two sons basketball teams that I thoroughly enjoy  (and without these things, I’d probably lose my sanity).

Some days, it is totally feasible for me to keep all of these things working together in perfect harmony. Other times, it can be a major challenge to keep it all straight. When one or more of these segments of my life picks up and gets busy – life can get overwhelming very quickly.

Most successful real estate investors are quite familiar with this juggling act…   but how are YOU supposed to take care of all your pre-existing obligations AND carve out the time you need to run a profitable real estate investing business?

First off – I should clarify that my schedule doesn’t necessarily look exactly like this every week, month & year.

Depending on what projects are hot on the burner, some weeks may require that I devote substantially more time to “Rental Properties” (if I’m trying to buy a new property), or to my “Land Business” (if I’ve got a big transaction in the works), or to my “Full-Time Job” (when I get slammed with a massive load of projects to work on)…     but all in all, if I average out all of my various working activities over the course of an entire year, this is probably the most accurate representation of how my time is spent.

And to be clear, this is my “working life” we’re talking about here – so it excludes things like being a parent, husband, and other adult duties like cleaning the house, yard work, shopping, fixing stuff, etc.

My weekends (and some week nights after 7 pm) are still my most productive times of the week in terms of making progress with my various business endeavors. This time is essential to my ability to “get ahead” so to speak.

The End Goal

As of today, if I had to show you how I envisioned my life panning out over the next 20 – 30 years, this is probably the best representation of how I’d like to see my global income when all is said and done: It’s important to note that I have no aspirations of “full-time investing” – ever. Why? Because that would literally be nothing more than replacing one job with another.

In the future, I’d like the majority of my income to come from my rental property portfolio. Why? Because this stream of income will keep coming in the door without requiring any substantial work from me. It also has the benefit of some significant tax shelters that aren’t available from a job, a land business, a blog, or any other source of income (that includes flipping, wholesaling, rehabbing, and almost any other real estate business you can think of). These other streams of income (full-time job, land business, blog, misc projects, etc) can & certainly will provide some substantial income, but it’s only for the purpose of feeding the long-term growth of my rental property portfolio. They shouldn’t be the actual end game (according to my plan, anyway).

Of course, it’s impossible to know precisely how the future will pan out. There are an endless number of variables that could come into play and completely change the trajectory of where my life is headed. However – I do believe it’s important to at least have an idea of what direction I’d like life to go…   

How Is Your Time Spent?

Now that you know how I spend my time, how I make my money and what my end goal is – let’s talk about YOU.

 Where do you spend the bulk of your time? Which of your activities generate the majority of your income? Are you satisfied with your current situation or do you need to make some changes? If changes are needed – what’s your game plan?   What are you doing with your daily life? Are you moving towards the destination you want to reach?

Of course, you won’t be able to answer these questions until you truly know what you’re trying to accomplish – so take a few minutes (or hours, if necessary) to organize your goals, figure out where you want to go and what kinds of activities will bring you towards that destination.

If you’re lucky, you might just figure out some things that need to change… and the sooner you can do that, the better.