Good afternoon everyone, my name is Zachary (I prefer Zach) Mutart and I'm extremely interested in real estate investing! 

A little about me: I'm currently serving in the Marine Corps and am about to embark on my 3rd and final deployment before separating in August of next year, 2015. I've had the pleasure of being stationed and living in two beautiful states, Virginia and Hawai'i, over my 4+ years of service. I've also visited 15+ countries all over the world ranging from Southeast Asia to the Middle East to Eastern Europe, some of my favorites being Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Italy, and Thailand. Kuwait was probably my least favorite (It's what I imagined living on Mars to be like). Even after all of that traveling though, I do plan to move back to my beautiful home state of Michigan! I have a wife, Leah, the cutest little pitbull/shar pei mix, and a baby boy on the way, due April 28th!

Okay, enough about me.

Why I'm here: Fortunately, thanks to the Worldwide Web, no matter where I've been on my endeavors, I've always got a means of researching. Even more fortunately for me, I happened to stumble upon 'everyone interested in real estate investment's biggest asset, BiggerPockets! 

I remember a speech from my Sergeant Major (most senior enlisted Marine in my battalion) once and he talked about the rare opportunity we had as service members to "own a home for free." I won't bore you to death with the details of his speech and how he was successful in becoming a homeowner with zero of his own money (especially because I'm sure there are a LOT of investors on this site who have done so themselves), but I just remember the impact that speech had on me, because prior to that I was clueless to the opportunities. And thus, my new found passion for real estate (after an abundance of research, of course)!

My goals for the next 6 months (over the course of my deployment) are listed below:

• Network, Network, Network. Clearly an important step in becoming successful in ANY business.
• Educate myself on the VA Home Loan guarantee and how it can be a great asset for my investing.
• Learn more about House Hacking. Research multiple family houses and duplexes in my area.
• Complete my real estate pre-licensure coursework. From my research, it seems like a fairly cheap and easy process in Michigan that I feel would be another asset in real estate investing.

Thank you so much for reading everyone, and happy investing -- from the sunshine and beaches of Hawai'i!