My wife, Kara, and I were celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary this past September with an Alaskan cruise.  We were out on the deck of the cruise ship enjoying the scenery, and we overheard some other groups talking.  Paraphrasing, the conversation went something like this:

Party A: “Oh, we love to go cruising…”

Party B: “How do you find the time and money?”

Party A: “Our schedules are flexible. We own rentals so we don’t have to work a lot.”

Kara and I looked at each other with that look of mutual understanding.  We had been discussing investment and wealth building strategies for about a year at that point.  We had to get off the sidelines and get in the game!

Hello Everyone!  This is a change from your regularly scheduled programming for an update from the other voice in this Real Estate journey.  My name is Ken (feel free to picture Ryan Gosling’s character from the recent hit movie) and I am here to share some of my own experience with you from our journey thus far.

The story from the cruise that I opened with was a motivating experience.  However, it was not what unblocked us (really me) from taking those first steps and investing in real estate.  Motivation alone may not be enough.  If you’re like me, you need a plan, and you need to be confident in that plan.

I’m not sure if this has come up in the blog thus far, but I am an engineer and student of the sciences.  I like determinism, and when I can’t have that, I seek likelihoods from well laid plans and systems.  I was unwilling to take those first steps in REI without the rules and playing field being well defined and well mapped.  Entering into a game full of unknown unknowns made me feel like it was too risky – that I’d get sidelined with something unexpected like taxes, unforeseen expenses, or even liability issues.

Let me ask you this: Would you go bowling, having never touched a bowling ball in your life, and bet the farm on your first toss?  That is how REI felt for me.  I knew in theory that REI could be a great investment, but what if my first deal was a gutter ball?

Now, consider this: It is your first time in the game, but you’ve had some practice, you have had coaching, and you are warmed up from these exercises.  Also, the bumper rails are up, so no gutter balls.  Oh, and you can decide exactly how much you’re willing to risk. Your confidence level is likely going to be very different in this scenario!

I still don’t love this bowling analogy because it involves betting, and that’s not what we’re doing here.  We are investing.  What I am trying to say is that our confidence to invest came from multiple things:

• Commiting to a curriculum and structured learning environment
• Utilizing strategy, community, and coaching
• Working with sums of money that made us comfortable 
• Having confidence because we’ve identified our knowledge gaps and minimized our blind spots

That last bullet is huge. You can’t know every detail of every small corner or niche in an entirely new industry before getting started.  But you can identify the blind spots and gain, at minimum, a base level understanding.  Maybe, in some areas, I only see the 10% of the iceberg that is sticking above the water, but that’s infinitely better than not seeing any of it at all. And we couldn’t know what else we didn’t know until we got started. 

The Rent to Retirement Academy gave us everything we needed to get started investing. It was their offerings that ultimately gave us the knowledge and confidence to say, “Okay, I’m ready!”  I’m not an expert in every area, but I know enough to effectively play the game… and make money… and have fun! …but also money.

My wife and I had been following BiggerPockets and Rent to Retirement on YouTube for some time.  We already knew we wanted to invest in real estate and take those steps toward financial freedom (remember that story from the cruise), but just wanting something was not enough.  If you are of an analytic mind like me, the infinitely nebulous “how” is probably what is stopping you.  Even before signing up for the Academy, we had already both agreed, “Yes, we want to start investing in rental real estate.”  What the Academy did is give us (mostly me) confidence and put us on the track to that first big milestone: our first out-of-state property.

At this point in the Academy, we have completed Month One of Three. Just getting this far, we have gained the confidence that comes from learning by doing. I am so proud that we are about to close on our very first property. We made the transition from thinking and wanting to actually taking action. The first steps can be the hardest to take, and now they are a part of our story.