I'm guessing you had childhood friends whose parents "moved to LA to become an actor" and whatnot).

They spoke of a hard-won, honest self-awareness few adults have, one clawed back from the forgotten point where we all seem to lose it in childhood.

I bought my first house at 19 and this is how I did it.I was 19-year-olds are stuck in their childhood bedrooms or squandering their student loan.

The back story is this property was his childhood home.

Whereas, my friend's childhood town let them have chickens, bulls, pigs, mini horses, goats, and all sorts of crap (literally) right in the residential neighborhood.

When I bought my brand new block 1910 sqft 4/2 house in 2009 for $180k, I looked around in the nicer areas of Altamonte Springs that I knew from my childhood. 

I'm living in a single family that I'm renting, the house has sentimental value to my landlord since it is her childhood home.

We spent our childhood summers in this house and don't want to sell it, but neither do we want to spend our own money on upkeep.

Motivated by the desire to invest the modest sum of cash I held in savings, and influenced by my underlying comfort level with real estate nurtured from childhood, I packaged my savings with leverage on my primary residence, and acquired my first 2 investment properties.

When I was a kid my next door neighbor was an English war bride and a former professor of English at Oxford and she would cringe at my farm boy English.