The Blog Begins

This blog will document my journey towards retiring at 40. Why 40? Well since forever I had always had a goal for myself to retire at 29. I never was a big fan of working and I'm not one of those people that needs work to occupy their time, so this seemed like a great age to jump out of the Rat Race. Unfortunately, two months ago I realized that 29 was coming way too quickly (Aug '08) and there was little chance I would accomplish this goal, since I don't buy lottery tickets.

So I started a new goal and decided I would actually develop a plan to accomplish this goal. The new aspiration is to Retire at 39, for the blog we'll call it 40 to make it a nice round number. I did a little math and figured that if I had a house paid off, car paid off credit cards paid off I could retire with $500k in investments. For cost of living increases I would rely on my traditional retirement accounts (ROTH and 401ks) that I could tap at 59 or so. Then someone mentioned the cost of having kids, which I definitely hadn't considered. So I threw out the 500k idea and decided it would have to be closer to 1 million...

To make this goal I figured out the only way to do this in 10 years was to become a real estate tycoon. I'm not a particularly savvy investor so I decide I needed to get a good background in real estate, investing and tax law. So, where to start? Well first was pay off my credit cards and get rid of extra overhead in my life. With the help of a tax refund and the sale of my motorcycle, my credit card will be paid off in two months and then I will have to pay off my landscaping. From there I can move on to my mortgage and car.

The next step is the real estate background, so I'm currently working on my NM real estate license. I figured this would give me a great start on understanding real estate and would help save me commission on my future deals. In the next couple of weeks I plan on finishing my license and my realtor was kind enough to let me become my Qualified Broker. So with this the journey begins.