New member intro from Maryland

[Jeremy Paris]

Hello World. My name is Jeremy Paris and I currently am living in the country outside of Baltimore Maryland. I am originally from Buffalo and during my 10 years in the Army I also spent time in Oklahoma and Alaska. To further complicate things I am looking to move to Tucson in the very near future, but for now let's just stick to Maryland.

I manage technology projects as a DoD contractor by day, and by night I spend most of my time trying to build up enough income to be able to leave my cubicle some day. Any geeks out there could tell that I was a fellow geek from the first two words of this post. For the non-geek, "Hello World" is usually what you make the screen say when learning/testing a new code. I create websites usually using Drupal or Wordpress and am good enough to be able to start my own company and probably rival my current income, but then I would still just be a slave to a job so I haven't gone that route.

I got into real estate investing when I first went on active duty. I bought a duplex in Oklahoma so I could live rent free. A month later I got orders for Alaska and had 10 years of trouble with bad management companies and worse tenants until I finally sold it. I then bought a couple units in Maryland and a 4-unit in Buffalo that I moved my Dad into so he could retire. Long story short the bubble burst along with other misfortune and I ended up in foreclosure and bankruptcy. I gave up on real estate and decided to work on trying to figure out internet businesses. While I learned a lot about internet businesses, I kept coming back to the same question "If I have to do something for the rest of my life would I want it to be this". The answer was always no and a couple weeks ago I was digging through some old documents and found some real estate stuff. The feeling came back to me and it was one of those "ah-ha" moments. For the first time I was able to answer that question "yes...I would LOVE to invest in real estate for the rest of my life". The first thing I needed was a plan. I started doing some searches and found Bigger Pockets. After 20 minutes of reading I was like "man, I wish this was around when I was having all of the trouble with my investments". Then I found out that it was around. How did I, a geek who is on the internet all day, not every know about BP all this time? Crazy. I'm just glad I found it now. I plan on posting a bunch of blogs documenting my experiences (especially my failures) in hopes that someone else finds the help they need. I also plan on building up my own portfolio to the point that I can walk away from the cubicle for good.