Shows like "Flip This House" and "Flip That House" make real estate investing look easy. It makes you wonder if you could do it yourself, but that might not be the question you should be asking. The question may be, Should you? Read on for answers.

You're familiar with the scenario, right? The young couple in Southern California who buys a single family fixer-upper for (gasp!) $426,000, spends the next 12 weeks of their lives fixing it up, spending gobs of money on Italian marble and Travertine Tile, and re-sells the house to the very first family that calls.

The after-repair net profit? A healthy $128,000. Anybody could repeat that, right?

So, with your calculator in your right hand and the MLS listing in your left, off you go to look at the fixer-uppers in your town. You spy a good looking one from the road, vacant and overgrown, needing mostly cosmetic repairs, and listed for $120,000. Wow, you think. Is this ever a diamond in the rough!

You make a full-price offer immediately, motivated by the 4 other investors who were following right behind you at the walk-through. Voila! Offer accepted, and you're ecstatic... until the rehab fun begins.

Once you get into the project, you realize that not only have you bitten off quite a bit more than you are prepared to chew, both in terms of time and know-how, but you have also wildly overpaid for the house. The project is going to go over budget... well over. Your budget is broken faster than you can say needs a new roof, too.

Cowed by defeat, you lick your wounds, take a huge loss, and throw in the real estate towel for good, happy just to go back to your 9-5. Leave real estate investing for those other losers, you think. You'll stick with something safer like gold or stock options.

Real estate investing is dead. or is it?

If real estate investing is truly dead for many people, people who have experienced similar nightmares to the one I described above, the fact is it's not truly their fault. Yes, I know that they bear the ultimate responsibility for their own mistakes, and they should have done their homework before taking the leap. But in my mind, the media is to blame, especially television and the internet.

I believe its irresponsible to promote any investing philosophy, be it buying stocks or flipping houses, without spending an equal amount of time educating people on the risks and the proper way to avoid them. Yet what do the one hour "flipping houses" shows give us? They give you a healthy dose of five and six-figure profits, but not much in the way of nitty-gritty real life.

Therefore, I offer a word of caution. Don't build your investing philosophy, or base your investing decisions, on what you see on television. Market conditions are wildly variable from town to town, and even neighborhood to neighborhood. Your skills arent the same as those of the TV investors, and neither is your temperament. Investing isnt a game, its a business, and it can provide you a wonderful life.

If you educate yourself properly, and develop the right attitude, you will be able to succeed at a level many folks can only dream about. In addition, when you do it right investing in real estate can be a lot of fun. If you're thinking about investing in real estate as a business, understand that it can take you to some wonderful places.

Or eat you alive.

After all, would you decide to become a doctor because you watched an hour of ER?

Now, go make more offers!