@Katie Douglas I got really heated when I read your first post, and am glad I read all the way through to the end to get a different perspective on where you are. Is REI tough? Yes. Can anyone do it? Yes. Does everyone have the personal fortitude to make it work? Absolutely not.
You say you are motivated but then also in multiple posts say you are frustrated that people on BP haven't painted the most realistic picture from your point of view. BP is a tool and nothing more, does it have all the answers? No, but it does have a great community where you can ask just about any question in the REI arena and someone will more than likely give you an answer. I would say that if you are motivated, and I mean truly motivated then it wouldn't matter what you saw on BP in this post or that post, you would find a way to get what you wanted.
Here is my story, and I will start from a ways back. My family was not well off at all, I did not learn my money management skills from my parents, however I did learn my work ethic from them. I started working when I was 15, and I haven't not worked since then except for 3 of the 4 years I was in college, (Which I worked during the summer) the only reason I could go to school and not work were grants, loans, and credit cards. When I finished college 2002 I had around 5,000 in credit card debt, and ~18,000 in student loan debt. The only reason I was able to get out with only the debt I had was I lived very frugally (At this point I still had my same car that I bought when I was 16 which when I bought it was 20+ years old). I started working a job in my field (Mechanical Engineering) and also worked a second job nights and weekends. After 8 months I was laid off from Engineering job, at which point I started working full time at my second job (Which was a retail job). After 6 months I was a supervisor, and making about the same as my entry level Engineering job. 2 years after that a manager. The only reason I progressed as quickly as I did was I would do anything, and a lot of things that other people thought was not part of their job. So at this point I am making fairly good money. And of course with that I started living a slightly nicer life (I am in my mid 20's a this point), I bought a new to me car (spent 20k on it, looking back this was a stupid purchase, I could have easily just spent 4-5k and been just as able to get from point A to point B), I moved into a slightly nicer apartment, and I started going "out" more (food, bars, social spending). After about 2 years of this I started to realize how stupid I was being with my money, luckily at the same time as I was being stupid with my money I was investing into the 401k that was available to me as well as taking part of the employee's stock purchase plan (which is important later on). Once I realized how stupid I was being, I moved into the ghetto of my city and went from paying 800 a month in rent to about 350-400 depending on the roommates that I had, I stoped going out when I felt like it and started being selective on the money I spent and went back to living like a poor college kid even though I was making 50K+ a year. I aggressively started paying off my student loans, and credit card debt, and poring more money into my 401k and stock purchase program. And was debt free in about 1.5 years, was that time tough? Absolutely however the ends justified the means. I met my wife shortly after this and we moved to Sacramento when a job opportunity for me came up (we were not married at this point, however my job opportunity had the ability to pay for us so she would not have to work right away). Once we moved 2009 (got lucky here) we bought a house, I used a loan against my 401k as a down payment which at this time we had to come up with 20% down even though we were Owner Occupants of this single family house (super strict bank time frame). My wife found a job working for the state, not great pay but not bad pay, and for the next 2 years, we paid down here debt (she had a decent amount). We got married (Yay), however we paid for it, we had a party for our family and friends and then we took a vacation to a resort that if you stayed there for 7 days it included a legal US wedding, (we didn't invite anyone, as we didn't want anyone to feel like they had to come and spend money to get to where we were getting married and we didn't want to increase the cost of our wedding). So over ~15 years, I paid off all of my debt, except our primary residence, all of my wife's debt, used the stock money from my prior employer to put a down payment on our first rental property. So I am 35 now and I have just started my REI journey however it took me some time to get to a place where I was in a position to start. Could I have done things differently, yes, but you can't do anything about the past and can only work on what is in front of you.
Best of luck, and I would be happy to help you in anyway that I can as long as you are willing to help your self first.
