7/20/2014- The Journey Begins

For many years, I've been interested in real estate and real estate investing. I saw many for sale signs in yards, in magazines, on the Internet, and in newspapers. I also saw the late night infomercials with the "real estate gurus" that had the lavish lifestyles that so many people wanted to have and I could too......for 3 easy payment of $349 for a course that would launch me into the life of my dreams using their system. I was in awe and wanted to do just that...put my hard earned money into a system that worked for him so it has to work for me right??!!!! I mean all the late night hype guys had the same things that I wanted and I too could have it if I used their system.

Well my good sense kicked in and said, "Wait a minute!!! Do your homework first and then we will see from there." As an IT guy by trade, I did some digging and "acquiring" these DVD's, books, and worksheets by back channels and was NOT impressed by the hype and blatant self promotion to buy MORE trainings and seminars in order to get where they were financially. I was hungry to learn so I bought a few books on the subject and tried really hard to seek out guidance and counsel from investors in my area to help me understand the terminology and the concepts....that went nowhere as no one was willing to teach me even for a fee. At this point, I was completely turned off about real estate and investing altogether and settled back into my day to day routine in IT with no further contact with the subject.

Fast forward to June 26, 2014; my nice IT job comes to an abrupt halt when the company I worked for decided to end my contract without notice. No severance, no thanks, and no warning. That unfortunately has happened twice in the last five years as a contract-to-hire worker that the companies had no intent to hire from the beginning. I was very irritated and disappointed in the lack of loyalty, respect, and courtesy of the company towards me and even more disappointed in my agency for abandoning me and not actively looking for other opportunities they had for me. After submitting hundreds of resumes to companies to get back to work again, I received 3 calls of which 2 weren't serious about hiring and 1 was a scam. With no one calling me I went into working security for half the pay and twice the hours and not able to make ends meet.

With that being my current predicament I decided to look back into real estate investing again after years of not being concerned with it. I was looking to find information and stumbled upon Bigger Pockets and was impressed with the sheer number of real estate professionals that are willing to help and want to help as much as I want to learn. Thus I now take this step to improve things for my family and myself to head in the direction of the freedom that they so deserve more than I do.