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Alan Pederson
  • Investor
  • Kennedale, TX
349
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219
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The last laugh. My 2 cents about investing.

Alan Pederson
  • Investor
  • Kennedale, TX
Posted Sep 25 2018, 23:09

My day job is for a paper company. I'm a salaried manager and I've been working here for 33 years. A few years ago me and my wife started buying rental property so we could retire a few years earlier than we normally would have been able to. We aren't in this for a quick buck but look forward to a steady second income stream. We have bought one house a year for the past 3 years and we have the means and motivation to continue this practice for years to come. We live well beneath our means and save money so we can keep buying houses. Nothing remarkable here. If we can do it, anyone can.

This brings me to the point of writing this post. A few weeks ago, the company I used to work for offered a lump sum buyout of the pension I have with them. All of the managers I currently work with used to work for this company before our division was sold to another company. During a meeting we had to discuss the various options we could choose from one of the managers (that I have never got along with) made a comment in front of the group about how he wanted to hear from Alan about how to buy rent houses

(I'm not planning to use this lump sum buyout to buy property. I plan to invest it in a self directed IRA.).

I asked him what he wanted to know and he just laughed and the group disbanded. For a few minutes, I thought he was serious but I quickly realized he was just using this opportunity to make a joke about what I was doing.  My boss did the same thing about 4 years ago when I told him I was going to start buying rent houses. People say things all the time or have big plans that they never follow thru on. I hear stuff like this from some of the hourly employees. Real-estate has been a solid investment for generations and has created more millionaires than I can probably count. I never proclaimed to have a goal of millions in income in a few years so I'm not sure why they think this is a joke. My goal is to make $5,000 a month by the time I retire in 8 years. More would be better but I try to set reasonable goals for planning my retirement strategy.

Now that we have purchased a few houses, my boss has changed his attitude a little. I told him my wife now has the opportunity to retire in just a couple more years and that would have never been possible without the extra rental income we have right now. The more we buy, the sooner I can retire at the level of income I want to be at instead of retiring and trying to live off Social Security, 401K, and the pension i will get from my current job. I really don't see an end to this. We can keep investing as long as we want to and build this up as big as we choose. I encourage those around me (hourly, salary, and personal friends) to look for ways to make money outside of their regular jobs. I like doing home repair work and that works well with having rent houses. I work with an hourly employee who started selling chicken nest boxes a couple of years ago. I didn't see how he could make much doing this but at least it was something he was interested in. He has now expanded to being more of a distributor and makes well over $60k a year doing this just on the weekends. He keeps his regular job for the security and insurance.

I guess some day I will have the last laugh when my little adventure of buying rental property starts really paying off. It is already paying off in multiple ways but when my boss or other managers ask about it I just smile and say "yeah, we make a few dollars" or "it's going okay". I don't waste my time or energy on people like this. My advice to anyone who wants to invest in real-estate is to make a plan, follow thru, and ignore those negative people around you.

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