Should you pay off student loans or invest in real estate? This is the question Tom Keating had to ask himself back in 2018. At the time, he had no real estate investing experience and only picked up The Book on Rental Property Investing by chance. He still had student loans but decided to spend his savings (which could have made him debt-free) on the down payment for his first rental property. Now, just six years later, Tom has an entire real estate portfolio of passive and active investments and is free from his W2! If you’ve got some form of debt—student loans, credit card debt, medical debt, etc.—you might think you can’t invest in real estate, but you’d be wrong. In today’s episode, Tom breaks down the simple equation you can use to figure out whether you should pay off your debt or invest. Tom took the path less traveled, and now, he’s benefiting from it, being able to go anywhere in the world, live where he wants, and control his schedule. Tom also shares a simple yet unbelievably valuable way to find the hottest real estate markets and areas to buy rental properties. The best part? The data he uses is FREE, and you can copy his same strategy to get cash flow, appreciation, or a bit of both! In This Episode We Cover Whether to pay off student loans or invest and the simple calculation you can use to decide  The super simple way to find hot real estate investing areas with appreciation potential  Quitting your W2 job and becoming a full-time real estate investor, even with a small portfolio  How to diversify your real estate portfolio with both passive and active investments  Why Tom invests across multiple states (and strategies) instead of drilling down on one area And So Much More! Links from the Show Join BiggerPockets for FREE Property Manager Finder Find Investor-Friendly Lenders See Dave at BPCON2024 in Cancun! Find Your Next Investing Market with BiggerPockets Market Finder Grab “The Book on Rental Property Investing” Should I Pay Off My Student Loan or Invest in Real Estate? (00:00) Intro (01:41) Serial Side Hustler  (05:29) Buying His First Duplex  (06:57) Invest vs. Pay Off Debt  (12:42) Tom’s Portfolio  (14:40) Investing in Multiple Markets  (20:01) Finding Hot Investing Areas (26:08) Working Less, Making More  Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-984 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices