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What the Hell Are We Doing Here?

What’s the point of this whole thing? I don’t know entirely, and I’m sure we’ll all find out together along the way, but I wanted to start a blog to share what has been my journey toward Financial Independence starting with Real Estate (get it? RE to FI – ain’t I a genius?) I’ve been reading personal finance books for 20+ years rebounding through all the different methods we all learn about along the way: stock picking, extreme frugality, real estate, index investing, etc.

The problem with all of these methods is I was way too poor to put any of them into action. As a single person making crap wages (until recently, but more on that later) I didn’t think I had a chance to ever retire, much less retire early. So I hit on real estate as the one sliver of hope for an eventual pre-death retirement. At one point, through traditional retirement investing calculators, I forecast my retirement at the ripe old age of 112. Ummmm, no.

And real estate it was! I’ve been moderately successful with rentals, and I wanted to share my successes and challenges with all of you (at this point entirely fictional) readers in the hopes that I could help smooth your path. I’m a relatively recent convert to the concept of FI, but I’m realizing more and more that real estate investing is a great tool to meet the goal of financial independence, and I wanted to share that too – especially as I think it can help people not surrender to despair when there’s very little chance of earning a big enough pile of Spondulix to live off of 4%.

So what can you expect? In the tradition of Millenial Revolution there will be a lot of Mathing shit up. I’m going to try and be very detailed about where I am, what I make, etc. so you can see my progress as I go along. I’m a big fan of data, so I think it’s going to be more helpful to you to see what my actual balance of incomes and expenses across businesses is like. That will allow you to steal what you think will work for you, and ask questions or make suggestions. I want this to be an interactive and iterative process for everyone involved. Which, I know, is only me – but let’s change that! Onward to Freedom! (Boy, that’s cheesy.)

Dumpling

6 Comments

  1. Dumpling,
    I am not sure how far along you are on your FI journey at this point in time from this article (I anticipate more will be revealed in future posts) but I am excited for you and I look forward to reading about your experiences. I, too, focus on real estate as part of my FI plan so I feel like I will benefit from following your pursuits.

    • Thanks David! I’m also interested in learning how far along I am as well. I think part of this whole blog experiment is to motivate (force) me to actually sit down and put some numbers around what my current state and goals are. It’s actually been really instructive so far, and I’m planning on doing a ‘milestones of FI’-type post to unpack that a bit.

      Feel free to make suggestions for anything you’d like to see or know. Us real estate peeps have to stick together!

  2. I live data too! I think spreadsheets are so motivating. My real estate plan is to pay off my mortgage in 15 years (I’ll be 55). So I’m trying to stay motivated. So far it’s meant that my retirement savings hasn’t been what I’d like, but I’m a huge believer in being debt free. Thanks for the blog!

    • Thanks for the comment! I go back and forth between wanting to pay off my mortgages and saving. It’s so hard to decide!

  3. Discovering the FIRE movement is pretty awesome! Glad you’re on the journey!

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