Sam's long overdue intro.

[Samson Hollmérus]

Heya BP community.

Finally taking the time to write an introduction after 5 years of lurking behind the scenes, in the fear of losing my anonymity.

Here comes a long postponed intro of who I am and why I keep coming back over the years.

I first want to start off by admitting that I've been enjoying BP anonymously since 2015 and I regret not being more active earlier.

I've learned a lot about analyzing deals and a lot from other peoples shared mistakes and successes that are shared on the forums and podcasts. I've also been to several webinars and been writing notes extensively on what has worked for others. I even started to track income and savings in several spurts. (to keep it transparent; I didn't keep that going long enough with the discipline it takes to reap the best benefits.)

Having shared that, what's gotten me to realize that I haven't utilized the forums correctly lately has been the podcast episodes 31 29 27 and 25. All of which I listened to yesterday while working repetitive tasks at my 2 w2s.

These episodes opened my eyes mainly because they're all success stories from other BP members that spent time asking questions and applying the help from the community which we're all part of. Can't thank you enough for putting the work and effort into the podcasts. THANKS!

A little about me, and why I've kept coming back to this forum since mid 2015. 
(PS edit: it's a lot.)

I'm Sam and been an investor since the age of 13 when my grandmother died and left me an unexpected inheritance. Today I'm 28. Still investing and learning how to make money work for me.

Mostly been interested in stocks and other securities and been trading in one way or another since 2003 when I asked my dad if he could put that inheritance I received into a fond. The funds grew as the fond grew. (fun fact;10 years later I learned the costs of fond investing at 23 after reading money master the game by Tony Robbins.)

In 2012, after reading in several self help books such as think and grow rich and rich dad poor dad, I decided that it's time to write a house budget and, planned with my partner at the time, to buy a house or apartment and pay our mortgage instead of paying someone else's.

The plan was simple. Get a house that we could afford to live in with our baby daughter and also save enough monthly to later buy investment apartments. We wanted to enjoy being at the other end of the rent bills. At least that's how simple we thought it was at the time.

I'll one day write about the nitty gritty of how we bought our first apartment but this is a long enough intro and I'll continue to share on the forum and the BP blog. If you want I can also write as a reply what happened.

To conclude;

I'm grateful to have found this community through YouTube videos in 2015 of Brandon explaining real estate investment strategies. We were just done with renovating our house and I wanted to know how to find investment apartments.

Thanks for creating this awesome community and thanks to all who take time out of their days to help and contribute to making this the treasure trove of REI info it's become.

Appreciate it and will show it more in the future.

All the best

Sam

PS: 
To all lurkers.. I understand you and encourage you to step out of that comfort zone and join the convo. If I can after this long you can too.