Journal Entry #2 : Getting vetted by an Accredited Investor

[Joseph Medina]

So, week two what has happened... 

Well, I have been studying how to pour concrete. Why? Because the house my wife and I (the second pair of shoes in my profile pic) put in an offer to the owner of the house i discussed last week and part of the pool decking needs to be filled in with concrete. We currently live in there now, and as time goes on I feel silly we didn't do a Lease Option, but live and let live. 

We put down our earnest money and now we are in the next part of the process. there is a real good chance that i will push for us to refinance our loan as it is a great loan and terms, but its NOT FIXED. And as an investor that worries me. i think the ceiling is 4.25 % for the loan. I mean its not a bad loan considering we are borrowing the money for free given that the national inflation rate is in the mid to upper 5's, and in Houston, Tx our inflation rate according to the Chapwood index is the high 8s and low 9s. 

My wife told me she has been talking about REI to her co-workers while at work, and it makes me smile a little. I am not a rule follower and I am a maverick, mustang, renegade what ever you wanna say at heart, but my wife is, and she balances us out perfect as i am quick to give someone the proverbial middle finger and speak what i want, while she approaches things much different.

I scare her a lot because i do a lot of my work in silence, and to her it looks like i bounce from one thing to another thing to another. But, i take my time and study what i am doing. She sees me reading a ton of stuff on my phone (as i am a huge reader now) and what I was reading was/ were e-books. 

Now, i might be using my education in an unethical way, but i decided to buy paperback versions of the books i have read and i leave them all together (10 total) on the living room coffee table. she hasn't asked me what they are for, but when she does i will tell her this is what i have read so far on REI. Over 2000-3000 pages of reading about REI... it sounds like a lot and when you look at it; it is a lot. I sleep easy at night because i am not forcing her or trying to influence her on getting on this sailing ship, but what i am doing is showing her that i am not taking this lightly, and i am doing my homework, and that this is a well thought out decision.

So something really cool happened today, and i must get this out on "paper". A year and a half ago i was talking to this super smart older guy. Much older than i was. Come to find out he is an accredited investor that used to be some programmer or software engineer for Exxon mobile and is only working so he can spend more time with his wife. She, from what he told me, is a strong independent lady that doesn't want to depend on anyone ;). i was talking with him about my stock and forex trading, and i was telling him about a business model i had in mind. I eventually told him my #1 concern was taxes, and his ears perked up almost instantly. he said one comment to me that changed my life and set me down this rabbit hole of REI. "find a way to show a loss on your money."

Understanding the basics of it, and knowing that businesses if they report a loss on net profit for the year they can roll over any loss to the following year. So, I sat there pondering how i could do this. I wasn't trading enough volume for me to record a loss that would make a difference, and i wasn't losing much when i did lose. So, a year goes by and at that point i read rich dad poor dad and i read tax free wealth. i re-approached him and asked him if he had any books in mind for me to read about REI and he said "ill send you something" well he is busy i assume and i never got the recommendation. Now many might think "wow what a d***" but i am glad he didn't send me anything. See, I somewhat subscribe to John Locke's Tabla Rasa which means blank tablet. So what i learned was etched by my own learning and desire and was not influenced by anyone.

I correlate my desire to be successful in my endeavors to being like a little kid playing in the pool and getting held underwater. Anyone reading this can relate. there becomes a point where you need to come up for air so you push up and they push back down to hold you under, and there becomes a point at which you actively start fighting back, scratching, swinging, biting or whatever you must do to come up because you need to breathe. this is how i approach my success. If you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe you will become successful. So, you will not wait around for answers, you will go out and seek them, pursue them, and then and only then will  movement, and just movement, toward success begin. 

So I amazon-ed "real estate investing books" and David Greene's book on BRRRR investing came up. i looked at the one star reviews first and i didn't see anything about the book being inaccurate, out of date, or misleading so i bought the e-book and found BP. Started to listen to the Podcast and a few books later and countless hours later here i am...

So about 7 months has gone by since i last asked him about the books, now this past weekend i sent him the following deal...https://www.biggerpockets.com/... a few days go by and i scripted what i was gonna say to him the next time i saw him "it was just a deal i thought you would like to pursue, because I'm not in a spot in my life financially to move on anything at the moment i would of liked to see it go to a friend" 

I was at the gym today and out of nowhere i got a text from him saying 

B: "Hmmm... seems like a good deal what's your plan for it" 

Me:" Nothing, i cant move on it, but i would not fix and flip anything, not even a wrench with Biden's new Cap Gain taxes, but if i was to move on it i would buy/hold/ rent. 

B: "You should get something for finding this deal this is how it works, i sent it to my partners, and if we move on it you will get something for the efforts." 

and of course this is all paraphrased.  

A lot has happened in 7 days. cant wait to see what this coming week brings. we do have an appraisal scheduled by the mortgage company Thursday!  

PS the agent on our house SUCKS!!! Trying to communicate with the guy is like trying to use sign language to speak hieroglyph. and he is not some sort of Rockstar either that's just too busy, because the title company doesn't even know who the guy is LOL. almost over!