Fort Worth, TX · Member since 2020 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
If you have not seen the release of Dan Sheeks' new book, "First to a Million", grab it ASAP! He is going to be doing an Ask Me Anything Night in the forums next month that you will not want to miss!
In light of this release, I thought we could share the bit of advice we wish we had as a teen or young adult. This could be to yourself, your children or extended family, or any young person in your life. Share your knowledge for our young FIRE and RE members!
Seek out good books, courses, mentors, etc. You'll save yourself a lot of time, mistakes, and stress. Make more money sooner. You may pay to learn but its focused education, worth every penny.
Hey Alicia! What I always understood when getting started at any venture is to not wait till you have 100% of the answers to actually take that 1st step. "Go as far as you can see, then you'll see more from there than you could see before. As they say, avoiding paralysis by analysis. And then having people around you seeking the same, "water seeks its own level". And finally, adding value to someone with more knowledge to help your journey as well.
But the biggest thing I overlooked and would tell myself is to have good checklists with everything I do to make sure that whatever I do would has a good structure. Yes, it doesn't sound sexy! But it would have avoided old pipes cracking in units because I didn't just change out the plumbing upfront and paid for it in the end. Contractors skipping out because I didn't vet them well. Tenants with 6 dogs in the house because I didn't do quarterly inspections... And so forth..
So, I would tell myself.. Create a checklist with every major part of my process so its repeatable and sustainable.
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawamde. Great book!
1. Lay off the doughnuts 2. Implement a version of the Miracle Morning and do it every day. 3. Maximize your downtime. Listen to every investing podcast, YouTube channel and self-improvement book available while out driving around. 4. Attend (or better yet, start one) local investing meetups and REIA, and mix in a national conference once a year. 5. Network like your career depends on it, because it does. Continuously level up your circle of contacts and look to add value to them. 6. Seek out and work for a successful investor or agent who works with investors when you are first starting out so you can learn the ropes. 7. Go walk through 100 houses so that you understand values. Being behind a desk is great for research, but it is no substitute for physically looking at properties. 8. Buy where the good schools and jobs are located. Cashflow is nice and pays the bills, but appreciation is what makes you wealthy. 9. Don't chase shiny objects. Master one aspect of investing before moving on to the next. 10. Life is short. Don't wait to pursue your passion.
Build my investing/business around my life and not the other way around. Pay more for good employees. Make sure the investment vehicle matches my personality and natural tendencies.
Don't get discouraged/unmotivated to learn just because you aren't in a position to take action right now. I've been interested in real estate since middle school (thanks to REI parents), but my interest has always come in waves. I would be motivated and actively learning everyday, only to come to the realization that I wasn't going to be able to take any real steps for many years. This went on until only recently. Now, being in a position to invest, I wish I had never stopped learning even for a minute.
For me this is mostly irrelevant because when I was young I would never listen
but, in theory the two things I would tell myself is:
1. Read difficult books - Knowledge is the best investment and the best risk mitigator. Feed your curiosity with reckless abandon
2. Choose your social group with great care, you will become them - When I hung out with alcoholics I became an alcoholic, when I started hanging out with wealthy investors, I became an investor (who might someday become wealthy lol)
To trust your gut and follow the steps real book was telling you to do. Go against the grain instead of following people who are in the same position as you.
For me, it's network better, sooner, and work with people more. The ability to work as a team and work with other like minded individuals, really opens the doors to bigger and better things.
Put more focus into actual knowledge that I'm going to need down the years of my life. More financial knowledge- something our school system doesn't teach us or even real estate in general- a forever appreciating asset
We hear what we are ready to hear. Still to this day, I wish I would've listened and did better. But now we seek something different so now that we know better, we do better.
Write down more goals and stay more focused on accomplishing them. You will never remember the video games and junk food. Focus on what matters and take care of your body!
Save your money and invest it when you are young. I had a job at 15 and had $0 in savings when I graduated college. You don't need money when you are young. Put it somewhere, let it grow, take advantage of compounding interest.
1. Money as capital is power. Money as something to spend to buy things that don't make you money in turn is opportunity lost.
2. The gap between what you spend and what you make is the place where all personal wealth is created. It's OK to be obsessive about keeping that gap as wide as possible and widening it further whenever possible. A lot of other people with lots and lots of money are obsessive about eliminating that gap for you.
3. Your three largest household expenses are housing, transportation, and food. Worry about those before you worry about cutting your expenses elsewhere.
4. Trust no man who will not keep faith with his spouse.
5. Every single word you have ever heard about the importance of worrying about "your future" and "what you should do in life" before you are 30 is useless claptrap for 99% of young men.
6. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to happen automatically. There will be immense, sustained, dedicated effort involved. Don't look for anything easy. There is no such thing as a lottery worth winning.
7. You will not succeed in anything worth doing that will not change you. Allow yourself to experience that change. You will never be the same person going into a reaching a worthwhile personal goal that you will be coming out of it.
Start reading books on topics that matter. Reading a good book is the equivalent to a power-up or skill-up in a computer game.
A lot of books are written as a summary of someones key findings after spending decades on a subject! Everything they leaned through trial and error and expensive mistakes summarized on 200 pages!
It may have taken the author 20 years to learn. You can acquire the thatknowledge in about 10 hours!