I was first exposed to real estate investing by my grandfather who I called Daddy. He was the man in my life as I was growing up and the one person solely responsible for me developing into a normal responsible adult. If it weren’t for him, who knows what I’d be doing today, and because of him, I have had a full and rewarding life up to this point.

About one and half years ago he died at the age of 91. He had always told me he was going to live to be 100 but one day he took a fall as he was walking to his garage. The fall resulted in a broken hip which led to a whole host of problems. Six weeks later he was gone and I still miss him everyday.

I feel his presence every time I think about buying an investment property. He is the one that gave me my entrepreneurial spirit as I watched him make investments during his retirement years. He also is the one that taught me to pursue security in my job as I watched him work for the U.S. Postal Service for twenty years. It was almost as if he knew exactly how to reach his dreams without taking risk by retiring in his forties with a comfortable paycheck month after month from his government retirement.

So now, here I am, fifty years old and no where near seeing a comfortable paycheck for my retirement. No, I didn’t learn early enough that I needed to prepare for the upcoming years if I wanted to spend them doing as I please like he did. I wish he had been more vocal with me when I started my working life about what it was like to live your dreams after twenty years of working a job. But I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway.

My grandfather included me in his will along with my mother and uncle. He also made me his executor. That wasn’t the easiest thing for my uncle to accept but I think he got over it when he realized how much work goes into executing an estate. It’s been a year and half and I just made the final distributions and closed the estate bank account. It was a long hard process that is finally over, thank heavens. And now I have a small sum of money and have decided to invest it in real estate that will create cash flow (yes, I’m a Robert Kiyosaki fan).

This blog will chronicle the experience of starting out in real estate investing. I want to share

• what I learn,
• where I learn it,
• how well what I learn works,
• the deals my husband and I are considering,
• the deals we buy,
• how I find deals,
• rehabbing,
• getting a mortgage,
• leasing property,
• managing property,
• making or losing money,
• and anything else you can think of that goes into being a real estate investor

I started this real estate investing adventure back in April and have already learned a lot.  In fact, my husband and I are looking at buying our first house. I’m going to have to play catch up writing about what I’ve learned and I will. I will eventually write about everything I have learned up to this point, it will just take a little time. So be sure to add this blog to your RSS feed or check back daily to find new posts as I bring you up to date with what’s going on.

At this point I want to close this post with one of my memories of my grandfather’s real estate investing experiences. I must have been about 6 or 7 years old and I remember him owning four rent houses. One of the houses was used by just about every one of his children. It was the ‘Sam Street House’. I even remember living there with my mother and brother for a short period of time. I also remember my uncle Sonny living there with his family, and at a later date, my uncle Jack lived there. I wonder now if Daddy ever had any rental income from that house, I guess I’ll never know.

But I digress, I wanted to share a specific memory I have of going with him to collect rents. When I think back, it seems like we were ALWAYS going to those houses to collect rent. He’d make me wait in the truck while he went to the door. I will never forget collecting rent on New Year’s day. At one of the houses his renter wouldn’t answer but he didn’t give up. It seemed like forever that he stood at the door knocking. Finally, the door was opened by a very mad and obviously hung-over man. Daddy was there to collect rent, just like every month, he didn’t even consider that January 1st was a holiday and that his tenant had probably stayed up late partying. I don’t know if he even got paid that day or if he had to make another trip out there to collect. That experience haunts me, I don’t ever want to have to go to the door to collect rents, I’m going to figure out a better way to get paid, like the mail or over the internet or something.

Until next time.

Reba

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