Why I Decided to Start Real Estate Investing

Hellooooo Bigger Pockets community.  This is my very first Bigger Pockets Blog Post so I will start out by introducing myself so that everyone will know a little about me and my background.  My name is Matt Reid and at the time of me writing this blog, I am 24 years old.  I currently live in North East Arkansas and graduated from college in 2017 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  That same year I also married the woman of my dreams, and I got the job that I had wanted since before starting high school.  Fast forward 2 years and I am still married to my dream wife, and I still have my dream job, only now my wife and I have purchased our first home with the intention of selling it in three years once she graduates from college.  Not really thinking about making much profit if any at all when we sell, we just felt like we were throwing our money away by renting out a place for $900 every month. Life is going great!

After working at my dream job as an engineer for just shy of 2 years back in April of 2019 I remember taking a gander at my retirement savings that I had built up.  In just two years of working for a great company, I had saved just over $15,000 for retirement.  My retirement account automatically makes assumptions and projects how much I will be making once I retire at 62.  The little formula told me that if I continued saving as much as I was up until the point I retired at 62 I would be able to retire and make around $160,000 annually including social security. 

Up until this day I had always been really proud of how much I had been putting back in our retirement.  I was putting nearly 10% of my income into retirement in hopes that I gain interest over what seems like forever to me at this point in time so I can make $160,000 annually once I retire.  I ran some quick numbers assuming 2% annual inflation rate and in 2057, $160,000 is equivalent to $75,000 in today's money.  I was absolutely dumbfounded when I saw these numbers.  I was doing everything right, saving as much money as possible, working at a great stable job, saving for retirement, and taking all of my mother's advice, so that when I retire I could literally make just as much money as I am now as a young engineer.  When I see myself at 62 I see myself wearing boat shoes, swimming shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a big smile that says "I clearly have no idea what day it is." while I drive my 30 ft catamaran in 6 ft of crystal clear water in the Caribbean.  Clearly this is an exaggeration, but I definitely don't see myself where my retirement account sees me at 62, beaten up after working for the man for 40 years at the same company making the same amount of money that I made when I started at 22.  

It was at that moment 5 months ago when I decided something in my life had to change, or I was going to be doomed to a life of working a high-stress job until I retire at "Sixty freakin two"  Since then I have reduced my contribution to my retirement to the bare minimum so that I can get the company match (against my mothers advice).  I'm sure that I was like most other people and started researching stocks because of the hoopla associated with the stock market.  I actually invested some money in the stock market with pretty good success up until a month ago when all my stocks fell right back down to where they started.  "Balloon Deflating Sound"  I stumbled upon real estate investing on Youtube while actually looking for stock investing videos.  The guy's name is Graham Stephen.  His videos really appealed to me.  I probably watched 90% of his videos in one or two weeks.  Then out of nowhere when one of Graham's videos ended a Bigger Pockets video popped up.  It was Brandon detailing out how he analyzed rental property deals on a whiteboard.  I was instantly sold.  That one video led me on to Bigger Pockets videos, then on to the podcast, then on to this website, and on to the forums.  The amount of information that was in front of me to get started on this journey was astronomical.

With all of this new knowledge in real estate and the belief that it could really go somewhere I immediately found myself ten times more motivated at work and in my marriage.  It was like now that I have got this huge goal of creating this real estate empire like some of the folks you hear or read about in the forums, I was going to need to have the best work ethic at my job, my personal life, and in real estate.  All that I had to do now was convince my not at all convinced wife that this real estate investing thing is the way to go.