Completely New 24yr old in West Covina, CA

[Taylor Hughes]

Hello BP People!

I have been considering joining the community and posting for a while, so I may be a bit over-zealous. My apologies if this is the case but when I decide to do something, I tend to do it whole-heartedly. Please and thank you in advance for your reading time!

As the title states, I am 24 years old, living in Southern California, and motivated to start my venture into REI. I am a single guy, who spent a few years living frivolously after High School and was content "just getting by". After High School I went to a local community college for about two years without really accomplishing anything. I spent my money foolishly like many young adults do and I also lived with my single father always having to help with bills to keep the house we lived in. So after a while I made a tough decision to stop with school and work full-time to help keep our house (we needed more money NOW not later). Eventually I learned to hold onto my money, and today I am truly giving thought to my future in the measure of years instead of weeks.

Well, after deciding to work full-time, I was at least smart enough to know that full-time burgerflipping wasn't what I needed to do. Luckiy for me, we had family friends who worked for a rather large California-based insurance company who said they could get me in. it offered great pay, full benefits, AND education assistance - bingo! That was early 2012. As of today, I work in the Property Subrogation department in the same company after busting my butt and promoting 4 times in 3 years. I also have two insurance certifications I got through classes paid for by my company. One day I realized that I had actually gained a lot of valuable knowledge about property in general along with my knowledge of insurance. I knew that REI was a way many people created their own financial success stories so I started reading blogs, upon blogs, upon blogs, and here I am spilling my guts to you fine people.

Now for my goals, both immediate and long-term. After I delved into the blogs I became motivated to make this a reality, so I picked up a second job, cut my expenses, and began aggresively paying off my debt. I currently am debt-free and have about $7,000 saved on my way to $20,000. After I hit this $20K mark of mine, I plan to quit my second job, purchase/fix-up a Tri-Plex or Four-Plex via an FHA 203K loan, and positively cash-flow it into a cash-out Refi which I can snowball into future investments. My end-game, if you will, is to be financially free. Not rich per se, but enough to be free to enjoy life.

I am keeping the goals portion (not the overall post, sorry again!) rather small because I do have questions, but I'll save those for other parts of the forum so I can get some in-depth insight into those.

My deepest motivation behind all this is a rather simple, but powerful thought I had one day. I was submitting a vacation request for a week off during Summer and thought back on "Summer Vacation" from school. Then I had this sad realization - If I keep my 9 to 5 office job until I retire, never again will I have 3 months to just to whatever the heck I wanted like I did as a kid. Never. Then came the next thought - It doesn't have to be that way if i don't want it to be.......I have been researching ever since.

That's it, granted it's a lot of "it", but that's all of me - my story, motivations, and goals. I would love to hear from people. Please ask me stuff, please. Even if it's just more of me explaining me. That'll get my story straight in my own head and start me on the path to gaining insight from you guys! Thank you, thank you, and thank you some more!  ^_^