Long time lurker, first time poster from Buffalo NY

[Anthony Liberati]

Good morning everyone,

I have been lurking off and on for the past 2 years or so.  I have also listened to every podcast multiple times.

To give everyone a little background on myself: I recently withdrew from an accelerated combined undergraduate/graduate degree program after the first year of the MBA portion for reasons I will discuss below, and subsequently was awarded a Bachelors Degree in Business.  I have started working for one of the largest national defense contracting companies in the world.  I love my new position and I am looking forward to a long and prosperous career with the company.  I have every intention of completing my MBA over the next 5 years or so on a part time nights and weekends basis, which my new employer will pay for 100%.

I am in the middle of a divorce right now.  To put things lightly, it is not going well at all.  The negotiations never really started but recently have come to a complete stand still.  I have hired a new attorney that is widely regarded as one of the best in the area let alone the state and country.  Outside of the high costs associated with the divorce, I am actually feeling very confident about the future outcome of the case.

Now for the reason I have always been interested in real estate, but have really engrossed myself over the last few years, is because I have 2 small children with my soon to be ex-wife.  I grew up in a very poor environment without a male figure ever in my life.  My mother raised both me and my sister by herself, working what ever meaningless jobs she could find, relying heavily on public assistance to keep the lights on and food on the table.  You get the picture.

My entire life I have always dreamed of being rich.  I started going to school to become a medical doctor.  I learned very quickly that I am absolutely awful and chemistry and biology.  My issue was that it was all theory and things I couldn't use on a day to day basis unless I had a $500 trillion dollar microscope to show you things.  I learned about these people called hedge fund managers and told myself I want to make billions of dollars a year (I had no idea what a hedge fund manager did, or much about the stock market at all fyi).  So down the path of finance/business I went.

I plan to continue educating myself and building my network during the next year or so while the divorce is on-going.  Once the case is over I plan to begin building my real estate empire.  I have a pretty thorough business plan written up that I have been tweaking every so often but like it is stated so frequently on the podcast/forums I need to take the first step, I need to take action.  With the pending/on-going divorce it would be incredibly complicated for me to do much of anything, so in the meantime I will continue doing what I have been doing.

I will get a profile picture posted tonight and I will complete my profile as well.

Thank you in advance to anyone that reads my essay!  I look forward to meeting and speaking with all of you.

Regards,

Anthony Liberati