Diary of a newbie

[Gabriel G.]

Since reading J Scott's diaries, I've decided to make one of my own about my endeavor in the real estate business. Hopefully I can get a lot of advice and also contribute to other newbies in the area. Long story long, I am 25 year old Marine veteran and I just quit my job about a month ago. Luckily for me I have always been good with money and I have enough money to get me by for about a year and I am also using the money in my retirement account to fund my business. Just like many of the people on the podcasts (I know it's super repetitive) I read rich dad poor dad when I was younger and It completely changed my way of thinking. At first I tried doing stocks for a while but I realized that stocks are VERY volatile and learned a couple of lessons the hard way. After a while, I was making some decent trades here and there but I was no wolf of wall street. I had really gotten into trading on my second deployment but by then I was looking to move on from my military career. When I came back stateside I got a job in Maryland with a major defense company. At first I really enjoyed it (especially the money) and I saw myself working for that company for a long time... I mean what's not to like, I got decent healthcare, matching 401k (which I could control and trade with) and other great benefit. I managed to even purchase my first triplex in December 2014 in Charles Village, MD ( really cool hipster part of Baltimore). I basically lived rent free. But then it happened... My boss had a kid and was on maternity leave for a while. Then shortly after that a coworker was also off on maternity leave when my boss came back, then some high profile stuff came up at work and then we got awarded new contracts and before you know it I was working well over the usual 40 hours a week. It got to a point where I hated getting up and going to work because I know no matter how hard I worked, I felt like nothing got done. Then it REALLY hit me.... I'm too deep in the rat race, I'm a slave to my job.... It was at that point (about a month ago) that I quit my job. I had thought about it long and hard. I had asked myself "Do I really want to work a 9-5 my whole life?". I also thought about it and asked myself "what is the worst that could happened?"... There was only two outcomes I could think of: A) I start my own business and am successful or B) I go back to working 9-5 with a little less money in my pocket and try it all over again. Either way I am now convinced that having a job is (I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of hate mail for saying this) the lazy or complacent way of living. According to our unemployment rate 95% (or so) of us have jobs. That's not hard! I instead am choosing to be financially free and am hoping that with hard work, knowledge and perseverance I can get there.