Why Keeping Your Job Makes You Richer (Quicker) in Real Estate

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

BiggerPockets

Education, Business, Investing

4.8 • 16.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We know you’ve been thinking about it. Dreaming about it. Talking to your spouse, friends, and family about it. Take our advice: don’t do it…yet. Obviously, we’re talking about the one thing every real estate investor is after: quitting your job. It’s the goal of every rental property owner to have enough real estate cash flow to pay for your life, tell your boss it’s over, and walk out the door, fading away into the sunset. But quitting your job for rentals could add years to your financial freedom timeline, limit your ability to scale your real estate portfolio, and force you back into the job market when things get tough. Today, we brought on someone who’s proof that keeping your job makes you richer (quicker) in real estate. Paul Novak has worked full-time for 20 years. At record speed, he acquired eight rentals in just five years. And guess what? In five more years, he could be financially independent and retire early, IF he keeps his job and invests. The best part? Paul has unlocked secret, low-interest loans that W-2 workers have easy access to but rarely know about, helping him supercharge his rental portfolio. If you really want to quit, do it. But if you actually want to get wealthy with real estate, listen to this episode. In This Episode We Cover How Paul scaled to eight rental units while working a full-time schedule The secret loan to fund your real estate deals that W-2 workers have easy access to Why you’ll retire much sooner if you keep your W-2 job vs. quitting Should you work in the real estate industry if you don’t like your job? The benefits of going full-time into real estate (only quit if these are worth it) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-1211 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	True or false, you need to quit your day job to scale a real estate portfolio.
0:05.0	A lot of people will tell you that you have to quit your job and go all in on real estate
0:09.3	if you want to reach financial freedom.
0:11.4	But I'm telling you, that's wrong.
0:13.3	I believe it's not just possible to invest in real estate with a day job, but keeping your
0:17.1	W2 is maybe the secret to building a portfolio as fast as possible.
0:27.1	Hey, what's up, everyone? I'm Dave Meyer. I'm the host of this podcast, plus the head of real estate
0:31.8	investing at Bigger Pockets. That's my day job. I've been working here at Bigger Pockets for almost 10 years, even though I've been investing in real estate for even longer.
0:41.6	And I've kept my job even as I've grown a real estate portfolio because I believe that's the best path to building wealth.
0:48.9	This can be a contrarian opinion in the real estate space. So today I'm going to break down why I think
0:55.2	having a nine to five can make you a better investor over the long term. And to help me do that
1:00.7	on the show today is Paul Novak. Paul is an investor with a full-time job from Schauboigan, Wisconsin.
1:07.4	And you can hear his full story from his previous appearance on the show, episode 1123 from May 19th.
1:14.7	Paul and I are going to talk about the hidden benefits of keeping a W2 job while investing,
1:19.9	some of the under-discussed downsides of quote-unquote going all in on real estate,
1:25.4	and even share a few tricks like 401K loans that are only
1:29.2	available to people with full-time jobs.
1:31.7	Let's bring on Paul.
1:33.1	Paul, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
1:36.0	Thanks for being here again.
1:37.3	Yeah, super excited to be on.
1:39.2	You have been on before.
	...

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