Newbie in area of Bonney Lake, WA

[Terry McCoy]

Hello, this is Terry from Western Washington. 

I am just getting started into real estate and this forum will be my first resource for discussions. My wife and I are in our early 30's, married for 13 years, and have an 8yo child. We have been in Washington for almost 4 years and prior to that we lived in TN (My home state) for about 7 years. My background was Infantry in the Army including a little time in Iraq. When I got out I took some vocational schooling in Industrial Maintenance and Computers. For the past 8 years I have been working rotational shifts in the oil industry. For those of you not familiar with that kind of work it means I live at work for 2 weeks working 12hr days for 14 days straight followed by another 14 days off (Rinse & Repeat). So in short I have 6 months out of the year I can invest into real estate. My wife has a degree in the medical field but only spent a short amount of time in the workforce before devoting her time to raising our child. We have been interested in real estate for over a decade but never had the income and lived paycheck to paycheck. Working in the oil industry has allowed us to rid ourselves of debt (Not counting current mortgage) and begin saving money the last few years. That brings us to why I have now decided to get into the real estate business. I was reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" on a flight to work and everything he said was ringing true to my situation. I am in the Earned Income section of the Cash Quadrant happily filling up my 401k thinking everything is going to be OK when I retire. Once I started looking at the numbers and seeing what successful people are doing all around me I realized I was trading my freedom for a false sense of security. I have always been a hard worker but I have also always been someone else's worker, looking forward to changing that. I updated my profile and added a picture so feel free to stop by and say hi. 

,Terry