Washington D.C./University of Maryland Newbie

[Samual Keeler]

Hello BP hivemind!

My name is Sam. I am a 25yo graduate student at University of Maryland with a year left in my program. I have spent my free time over the last 3 years reading and researching personal finance and investing and have found myself always drawn to real estate. I really began studying real estate licensing/investing about a year ago and finally turned to the podcast about a month ago. I have listened to about 40 of the podcasts and am currently working my way through "The Millionaire Real Estate Investor," "The E Myth Revisited," and "The Miracle Morning."

The biggest hurdle I am having is that I am currently mainly working as an independent contractor in the arts. I hold Bachelors degrees are in Italian language and in voice performance and I am pursuing my Masters in Opera Performance at UMD. I took a year and a half gap in between my schooling during which I started by mowing lawns during the fall of 2015 and was promoted to manager of the company the following spring. Being in a seasonal job I began looking for employment for the off season. Through a connection I built in rec floor hockey I found a position with a 2 year old company as an intern. After a couple weeks they asked me if I could create a position and work full-time for them. I created the position of operations manager and ran the email marketing and help to launch the new redesigned site for the company during which I continued to perform throughout the DC/Baltimore region. I am now working about 25 hours a week for that company during the summer, am in a run of an opera with a small company, preparing to travel to Italy for six weeks to perform, and spending basically the rest of my time learning as much as I can about creating a business and real estate. 

I am extremely fortunate to not have any student debt and was able to build up a stock portfolio that I began in 2016 where I currently hold most of my investment capital. Also, due to the current low returns on my portfolio I decided to pay off my car so I now have no accounts payable on my books! While all of these work in my favor I am struggling with how to deal with the fact that I do not have a steady job and this would seem to make getting a mortgage a difficult prospect. Additionally, I do not know where I will be post school as the possibility of moving to Europe for a couple of years in the coming years is an option I am exploring. 

Long story short, I am looking for advice on what my next step should be. I've always been much more drawn to learning through action/observation and am finding myself getting antsy without having any application for everything I am learning. 

I hope to get to know many of you in the coming years and am excited to join a new community!

Sam Keeler