Hi all, I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself and tell you where I come from and where I’m going. I veered over here after being a long time lurker on the RD forum. I probably visited that site almost daily for 3+ years, but rarely contributed.

I am 31 years old with a wife and 2 little kids, I am also very much in the rat race. I was raised by two E’s, trained to be an E, and I am successful as an E. The problem is, you guessed it.. I no longer want to be an E. I have seen the light but haven’t followed through with the action to get where I want to be.

I have experience in real estate as a landlord, flipper, and as the money guy. My rentals are really just break even after repairs and vacancies, the rehab/flip project I did was profitable if I don’t factor in a reasonable cost for my time, and the project that I was the money partner for was an all out disaster. I obviously didn’t get rich, but learned a lot and will continue to pursue good real estate deals and make real estate a part of my wealth building.

Although I still hold my rentals, over the past year or so I have been looking to the stock market rather than the real estate market for my deals. I have been having a lot of success with options, particularly defined risk option spread strategies. I mostly stick to liquid indices and trade spreads (iron condors, verticals, and butterflies). These aren’t as sexy as straight put or call trades with the triple digit weekly returns, but I am still an E, so I have found that these trades allow me to not look at the ticker symbols all day and still sleep at night.

I do consider my option trading riskier and less passive than typical real estate investing and I don’t plan on using my particular style to generate enough income to support myself for the rest of my life or take me to the level I want to be at. I do, however, view it as my way of generating chunks of capital to put to work in more passive areas. I also view it as a way to generate enough income to walk out of the rat race so that I can free up that time to step up to other real estate and business ventures that will take me to the next level.

I look forward to discussion with everyone, I will mostly be found on the stock & option trading board and the residential real estate board at first, but as my plan evolves, I’ll be chattin with everyone on the commercial real estate board before long also.

Edge