Just Beginning in St. Louis, Missouri

[Joshua Pfeffer]

Hey everyone. I do a lot of “lurking” and thought I’d make the jump in to officially introducing myself and starting to comment more here. 

My name is Josh, and I’m a 31 year old newbie from the St. Louis area: I work in the Soulard neighborhood of downtown St. Louis and live in Imperial, in Jefferson County, Missouri. I’m married with three boys, 4, 2, and 10 months, and I’m truly in the beginning stages of investing, just trying to educate myself as much as possible. 

I tend to "jump ship" a lot, not because things get difficult, but because I tend to get bored, which I think REI may be immune to. I went to school to be a youth pastor, then immediately re-enrolled in a nursing program. Worked as an emergency room RN for a few years, then went to work as a fleet diesel mechanic, and now run operations for buried telephone repair across the St. Louis area, which might be the most random set of career paths possible.

I have a few friends who are full time agents, and I’m a big fan (although not dedicated follower) of Dave Ramsey, so rental property investing has been tossed out in conversation within my circles for several years. I decided to search YouTube for how a person would even get started in the investing world, continued to find BP videos (and Brandon’s face) all over in nearly all of my searches, and the “hook was set” so-to-speak. 

For the past three months or so, I’ve made it a point to read at least two BP blogs every day, I finished reading The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide, and just started reading The Book on Rental Property Investing, with several other BP produced books waiting on my bookshelf. I pour over MLS listings in my spare time, running back-of-a-napkin analyses as I go in order to develop more comfort with the numbers, and I've started scouring tax lien auction listings in my county. My job has me in countless neighborhoods within an hour radius of downtown, so I pass the time by doing mock "driving for dollars" since I drive through neighborhoods checking for jobs anyways.

Besides trying to educate myself as much as possible on all things investing and real estate, I’m finding myself trying to prepare my personal life and debt for investing, including getting my spouse to a point of comfort with the idea, while trying to make sure I don’t get stuck in an analysis paralysis either. 

I have a phenomenal job, with a six figure salary that gives me huge flexibility with my scheduling, but I’m also tied down to always being on call, and always being in a company vehicle and on a company phone. So while I have more freedom than a lot of people in my position, I also have a few things that hinder that freedom as well. 

My wife isn't completely against the idea of REI, but she wants to maintain a level of security as we start to invest, so I won't be putting my house up as equity on a four plex anytime soon, nor will I be House hacking a duplex with three little ones. So for now, as I get more educated and more certain about what REI actually looks like and could look like for me, I’m also focusing on eliminating all of our personal debt to prepare for future investments.

I think this should give a pretty basic overview of where I’m at in life and in my investing journey, and I look forward to being more active in discussions here as I move closer to pulling the trigger on my first investment!