For the young dreamers...
Had nothing but a partial college education, a decent family life with parents who stayed married. Bought a six plex with my dad with all the cash I had. Busted our butts on that place. Sold it. Bought a townhome at foreclosure. Landed a decent girl, who pushed me to be a career man. Did IT work on W2 for a while, the better part of a decade with access to 401k and sometimes match for most of that time.
Steadily grew our NW and invested assets. Bought a foreclosed townhome. Fixed that up, lived there until it wasn't cool and bought our first SFH on Obama FHB tax credits. Was able to do this because first 2 properties were CFD. So I FINALLY had my own note in 2012. Sold that house 2 years later. Kept the townhome, and the CFD. Eventually sold that in 2022.
Kept buying AAPL stock, and high tech. Stayed basically 100% equities through the whole ride with the thought that I could take risk when I was young. I never had margin, or options or did day trading or swing trading. I just DCA automatically via the 401k, regular Roth Contributions once I could afford them
Started some side hustles that became more than that. Offered some favorable tax treatment that allowed for mega backdoor roth conversions in my late 30s/early 40s.
Some things I observed on the way up... some will be happy for you, but most will not care or be turned off if you discuss the results...until they aren't and then start asking for your advice...or just again, don't care.
Find a good partner that compliments you, isn't afraid to grind and support each other's dreams and ambitions. Flipping those houses and owning real estate was hard. Owning a window company was hard. Owning a tree company was hard. Owning a consulting company was hard. But all of that experience got us where we are today.
Stay the course.
I also did some capital stacking and leveraged other people's money and rewards points. I did some hard money loans which maybe were risky but came back to help us when we needed the cash for real estate transactions. People repaid us the debts, we leveraged it into real estate with almost 0 down and low interest environments.
Marry the home, but date the mortgage rate. We jumped in at like 5 or 6% rates...the dropped down to like 2.8% so I refi'd what needed to be.
Avoid interest like the plague unless its cheap interest. But I spent a LOT of energy avoiding paying interest. I didn't pay much rent in my life...just jumped right into real estate.
I took some risks. Joined the Air Force. Got married. Moved around a bit and chased opportunities to Hawaii and back to Minnesota.
179 depreciation and bonus depreciation. S-Corp entitles.
Keep an eye on your monthly subscription and annual fees. Try not to pay fee's unless absolutely needed. I've actually pushed out over 55k in debt onto credit cards before and leverage the bank so I could plow money into the markets. That was all done on 0% credit card loans, with sometimes 3% balance transfers as I knew keeping cash in the market while holding very little interest bearing debt would be a better long term play.
I'm not saying this is THE way...but it's the way we took. YMMV...and for some sort of satisfaction, here is the decade's long chart I kept track of along the way.
I knew I wanted to FIRE when I was 18. A few things cemented the possibility and this forum helped us greatly to finally realize the possibility. Still marching to 2031. If we can double our invested assets by then we should be in fairly decent shape to stop working after the house is paid off.
Coming up we drove Camry's and Silverado Truck's. This combo was complimentary and saved us gas money, but allowed us to haul a lot of stuff. All of these vehicles would eventually be paid down by the revenue from the small businesses.
College and Health care/health could be X-factors. Possibly mitigated with healthy choices, college scholarships and proper guidance...and maybe some luck or inheritance?
The 'ole man says the first million is the hardest.
Ask me anything, I'm here to share.
Had nothing but a partial college education, a decent family life with parents who stayed married. Bought a six plex with my dad with all the cash I had. Busted our butts on that place. Sold it. Bought a townhome at foreclosure. Landed a decent girl, who pushed me to be a career man. Did IT work on W2 for a while, the better part of a decade with access to 401k and sometimes match for most of that time.
Steadily grew our NW and invested assets. Bought a foreclosed townhome. Fixed that up, lived there until it wasn't cool and bought our first SFH on Obama FHB tax credits. Was able to do this because first 2 properties were CFD. So I FINALLY had my own note in 2012. Sold that house 2 years later. Kept the townhome, and the CFD. Eventually sold that in 2022.
Kept buying AAPL stock, and high tech. Stayed basically 100% equities through the whole ride with the thought that I could take risk when I was young. I never had margin, or options or did day trading or swing trading. I just DCA automatically via the 401k, regular Roth Contributions once I could afford them
Started some side hustles that became more than that. Offered some favorable tax treatment that allowed for mega backdoor roth conversions in my late 30s/early 40s.
Some things I observed on the way up... some will be happy for you, but most will not care or be turned off if you discuss the results...until they aren't and then start asking for your advice...or just again, don't care.
Find a good partner that compliments you, isn't afraid to grind and support each other's dreams and ambitions. Flipping those houses and owning real estate was hard. Owning a window company was hard. Owning a tree company was hard. Owning a consulting company was hard. But all of that experience got us where we are today.
Stay the course.
I also did some capital stacking and leveraged other people's money and rewards points. I did some hard money loans which maybe were risky but came back to help us when we needed the cash for real estate transactions. People repaid us the debts, we leveraged it into real estate with almost 0 down and low interest environments.
Marry the home, but date the mortgage rate. We jumped in at like 5 or 6% rates...the dropped down to like 2.8% so I refi'd what needed to be.
Avoid interest like the plague unless its cheap interest. But I spent a LOT of energy avoiding paying interest. I didn't pay much rent in my life...just jumped right into real estate.
I took some risks. Joined the Air Force. Got married. Moved around a bit and chased opportunities to Hawaii and back to Minnesota.
179 depreciation and bonus depreciation. S-Corp entitles.
Keep an eye on your monthly subscription and annual fees. Try not to pay fee's unless absolutely needed. I've actually pushed out over 55k in debt onto credit cards before and leverage the bank so I could plow money into the markets. That was all done on 0% credit card loans, with sometimes 3% balance transfers as I knew keeping cash in the market while holding very little interest bearing debt would be a better long term play.
I'm not saying this is THE way...but it's the way we took. YMMV...and for some sort of satisfaction, here is the decade's long chart I kept track of along the way.
I knew I wanted to FIRE when I was 18. A few things cemented the possibility and this forum helped us greatly to finally realize the possibility. Still marching to 2031. If we can double our invested assets by then we should be in fairly decent shape to stop working after the house is paid off.
Coming up we drove Camry's and Silverado Truck's. This combo was complimentary and saved us gas money, but allowed us to haul a lot of stuff. All of these vehicles would eventually be paid down by the revenue from the small businesses.
College and Health care/health could be X-factors. Possibly mitigated with healthy choices, college scholarships and proper guidance...and maybe some luck or inheritance?
The 'ole man says the first million is the hardest.
Ask me anything, I'm here to share.
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