We are still fighting colds but Nyquil and Dayquil seem to help. We left Tucumcari with a few very light snow flurries and drove right into a storm. For a little while we were ice skating. Once we got around mile post  200 the snow was gone and the sun was shining.  The KOA in Holbrook is very nice and the WiFi is pretty fast. However, we can't watch NBC here because of an problem with the cable company. I hope our cable company isn't in the same fight.

One more night on the road and we will be home once more.

More soon

Thanks for the nudge. I had not bookmarked my own blog and couldn't remember how to get to it. 

 

We are at the Tucumcari New Mexico KOA. Brien and I are both trying to fight off what we think is a nasty cold. To give a quick update Brien and I have had a touch of success over the last nine years buying real estate holding it awhile and then selling it. Brien and I met in 1994 and married in 1996. At the time of our wedding our combined net worth was around -$50,000. Today our net worth is between $900,000 and $1,000,000.  We have been trying to develop a business around real estate that could support us and help the rest of the family. The net worth mentioned above is paper money not spendable money. We are trying to leverage our holdings into monthly income and cash flow. In 2005, we incorporated and started trying to pretend we were a business.

 

The main result was that by the end of April I realized that I was losing money by going to my 40 hour a week $60,000 a year job. I told my boss that I had to retire from working for other people as soon as they could replace me. I was liberated on August 19, 2005. Since I starting working/playing as a real estate investor full-time I have been having a great time. With the help of a great mortgage broker we refinanced our rental and paid off most of our consumer debt. This raised our overall credit scores to a point where I could start getting credit in the business name. We liquidated some of our assets and purchased a 21 foot camper van that we are using as a mobile motel room and office. We spent 6 weeks in Arkansas with the grandkids while we studied the Little Rock Metro area Real Estate market.

 

We went to Memphis, Tennessee and did a drive by of 12 potential apartment properties. I feel that there is a lot of money to be made in these not so hot markets.  It is much harder to make money in a really hot market because there is so much completion. Anyone that can get their hands on a piece of property will make some money in a hot market so the prices go up and up. When prices are more stable then you can buy a property with some problems, fix the problems, and make money.  Prices go up slowly.

 

So far I have not updated my resume. I still have a good shot at pulling this off. I feel so much gratitude every day that we were given the information we needed to jump off the train. I would have spent the next eleven years or more sitting at a desk 2000 miles away from everything that really matters to us. Our grandchildren would grow up without us. Now we have a chance to be a larger part of their lives and do work that we enjoy.

 

I will try to update this a little sooner next time.  

Today was the last day working for a large corporation. It was slightly bitter walking around the grounds where I had worked for the last 9 and a half years. I don't think anything I did there will be remembered in ten or twenty years. I think when you really look at it the only things that matter in this life is your interactions with other people. My body is having a problem with the idea of not working for other people. I have been having stomach problems the last three days. I hope I feel better in the morning. We have so many plans some of them have to work.