New to REI from San Mateo, CA

[Matthew Roberts]

Hello all,

My name is Matt Roberts and I'm originally from the Bay Area in a small town called La Honda that no one has ever heard of. I'm just getting started with REI, and I'm very excited to have found this community. I'm looking for some advice on getting started.

 I graduated from Chico State with a BS in Business in 2010. In order to pay for my college education I joined the Army National Guard as an Engineer. After graduation I was immediately deployed to Afghanistan where I spent 12 months assisting in the current operations. My goals were to continue my military career into retirement, however, with in a couple months of returning home I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. My career goals suddenly disappeared. I was no longer fit for duty. 

Luckily I had already secured a job at Frito-Lay as a sales manager in San Jose, CA which provided me with excellent healthcare while I waited for the Army to process me out and the VA to process me in. After a couple years with Frito-Lay waking up at 3 or 4am to go meet with grocery store managers, I needed a change. I watched the tech world expand around me and I wanted a piece of the action so I changed careers. I started a new job in San Francisco working at a start-up called Demandforce that had recently been purchased by Intuit. I started in sales and worked my way up to a sales manger. After a couple years I needed another change.

I quit my job and bought a one-way ticket to the Philippines. The past 2 years I've spent travelling around SE Asia, and I'm currently living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I've really enjoyed my travels, but I'm ready to come back to the US and begin investing in buy and hold rental properties. 

My goals are to meet successful people in this space and start investing the right way from the beginning. I'm still a rookie by all accounts, but I've been putting my focus on educating myself as much as possible and I'm looking forward to connecting with like-minded individuals. I feel a little late to the party, but it seems like there is still money to be made if you know what you're doing. I want to know what I'm doing (or at least as much as possible). 

Right now my plan is to buy on average at least 1 SFR or Multi-Famly a year and get enough cash flow to allow me to continue to travel around the world.

I found BiggerPockets by searching around on YouTube for information on REI. 3 hours of watching BP videos later... I became a member.

Please feel free to ask me anything.

Thanks,

Matt Roberts

(Apologies for the wall of text)

[Arlen Chou]

@Matthew Roberts great back story!  Even though you cannot make it out to the summit, you should try to connect with @J. Martin. He has been doing the REI thing and traveling all over the world. After the summit that he is organizing, he will be headed back to SEA. In February, J and I are planning to meet up in Ho Chi Minh City and take some donations to a few orphanages up in Hue, via motorcycle. If you are still in Cambodia in February come on out to HCMC and lets do mini meet up!