Newbie from Riga, Latvia

[Janis Dislers]

Hello everybody! I m Jānis and I m completely new to the investment world. I didn't want to make this post, but Josh and Brandon keeps telling me to do so on the Podcast, so I m doing it. Maybe this post will be helpful, when I look back at it in years. 

About 4 years ago I was in a really tough situation. I was living in the Netherlands at the time. I had hard time getting enough money to pay rent and buy food. When I finally got a decent job and stable income, I didn't raise my spending too much. So every month I ended up spending less money than I have earned. About a year later I realized that I have some cash saved up and put it into a savings account. The returns I got were a joke, but whatever. I kept saving up more and more money and after about a year I started thinking about better investment opportunities. Due to unrelated reasons I moved back to Riga, Latvia, where I'm from and this would reduce my spending even more, while raising my income, because I managed to get a better job. So at that time I was saving up real money every month and I really wanted to make it work for me (hadn't read Rich Dad Poor Dad at the time). I tried investing in some small business ideas with my friends, but that never gave me any returns. So finally I started looking at real estate. Lucky for me, my girlfriend suggested me that there is a lecture about how to be a landlord. So I went. And this finally gave me the push I needed. 

There was about 30-40 people attending the lecture. The guy giving the lecture was young. About a year older than me. But he really seemed to know what he is talking about. He seemed very successful. And he made everything sound achievable. I ended up contacting him afterwards and we established a good relationship. I consider him my mentor now and I think he is a very good mentor for me. He is very responsive with all the questions I have. He told me about the Bigger Pockets, when I asked him for some educational material. But best of all, he is willing to go into deals with me right away, as long as I m willing to put in the work. 

I've been listening to the podcast and reading a bunch here in Bigger Pockets now. I've decided that I want to start with flipping. It seems to me that flipping is the best thing to do, if I want to learn about the industry and market. If I get good at flipping, I understand, how much everything cost and I can recognize deals because of that. Currently my work takes up a ton of time, so I don't think I can really do any deals. Therefore I m trying to educate myself as much as I can. I m planning on freeing up a lot of time starting October, so I m going to start doing deals then. 

I live in Riga and there are some differences from USA. Most people here live in apartments not houses. We don't have MLS. And there are some other differences, but I m managing to apply most of the stuff I read on Bigger Pockets, to our market. Maybe someone can suggest me some posts on apartments that I should check out?

So my strategy now is to do flipping deals with my mentor to learn how everything works. I have plans on setting up a wholesaling system afterwards with a lead generating machine. I want to build up my capital working on flipping and wholesaling. I expect another market crash in few years. I want to build up a capital by then and buy a bunch of buy-and-hold properties, when the prices plummet after the crash. 

I know, this post is way too long. I will appreciate any tips on how to better start my investing, how to structure relationship with my mentor, when we go into deals. How to write better posts or anything else. I hope at least someone got to the end of the post. Boom!