Rethinking things...

So, on Saturday we went to the big deal REI meeting we go to every month. I'd first gone to this meeting back in July after making a drunken decision the night before to "do something" about our looming financial crisis. (And I have to LOL about that now--back then it seemed like our situation was so dire as to be hopeless, and I had no ideas. Now, we're far closer to ruin than before, but I have a thousand ideas and nothing but hope. Strife is the father of ingenuity...or something).

I think that first meeting was probably the best I could have attended all year long. S., the founder, had assembled a panel of about seven or eight local investors specializing in some aspect of the industry--short sales, sub-2s, mortgage lenders, etc. Before then, I'd never even heard the word "wholesaling." Afterward on the drive home I called grace and said "I know how we're going to pull out of this mess." In fact, I think I said, "I know how we're going to get rich!" Ah, the innocence of a newb...

(By the way, I want to be clear about this "mess" we're in, in case I haven't already: we don't have a big screen TV, a gold-plated toilet seat or monkey butlers. We have a couch, a dining room table, and, okay, we do have a flat screen TV, but it's only 37 inches! We have basic cable--local channels only--and not only do we not have gold-plated toilet seats, sometimes we can't afford toilet paper and have to use the Post for its one useful purpose. No, we bought an overpriced condo because we thought buying--no matter how or when--was far better than "throwing your money away in rent." Two salaries were able to sustain us, but then we got an ultra-traditional bug in our ears about getting Grace ready to stay home and take care of the baby. Good plan, but there's that immovable fact of the mortgage...)

Anyway, this has the feel of a novel, so I'm going to try to get right to it: We're radically changing our methods. Why? In part because we've reconnected with our goals which, not surprisingly, had been shelved while we grabbed for the quick buck.

How and why? Well, let's see. Our financial situation was taking a nose-dive. We estimated we had about three months before we were living on credit cards and cat food. Just as citizens of London weren't concerned about their long-term financial goals while V-2 rockets rained from above, I wasn't really thinking about "where I wanted to be in 10 years" because if I wasn't on my feet in 10 weeks, in ten years I might possibly be able to aspire to a really nice refrigerator box between the Giant grocery store and the porno shop. Wholesaling was the key. I just had to learn how to do it, get the system in place, and land and close a deal in three months.

In retrospect, after massive hair loss and several fist-holes in the walls, I might have looked for a more practical means of salvation.

Toward the end of the big REI meeting, my wife and I tracked down S. She said she could block out ten minutes to help us re-focus our efforts which had, as of late, ground down to a crawl. (Just a few offers a week, no mailings to speak of, not even reading and REI stuff in the evenings...) In twenty minutes she blew away the bullshit, gave us a plan, and helped us remember our original "ten years from now" goals. Just like that.

In short, she told us to:

1. Lease option our condo, which right now would cost us to sell. Lease options are one of those tools in the kit I'd never really thought about much. Now that I understand it, this could really be our salvation, or part of it. We need to get rid of this thing (just as you said, Jimi).

2. Grace: get a job. I'm embarassed about this one. I knew that was the best course of action, but I hated the idea of my pregnant wife working.

3. Re-tool our strategy to help us achieve our goals. I won't go into all of that, but basically we need to be looking at buying-and-holding, not looking for quick cash in wholesaling. We'll still keep an eye out for that, but now that our allotted time is up, oddly enough, the pressure is off. We can now go a more traditional route.

S. damn near brought me to tears with her compassion, her no-bullshit talent for getting right to the bottom line, and the way she took an interest in our situation. I'd gotten so used to the isolation in this business that I'd forgotten just how "commando" we've been going. (No, not that kind of "commando.")

Afterward, we took another local investor out to lunch. B. had seen great success, and he'd also hit rock bottom. His perspective was invaluable. I had intended to pick his brains about the market, his methods, etc., but in the end we just had some burgers and shot the breeze. After the talk with S., means and methods just didn't seem relevant anymore.

However, the lunch "meeting" was awesome in one respect: it confirmed something I'd been suspecting for months, something I'd really known all along--gurus and systems are helpful in the beginning, but you have to take their grandiose claims with a grain of salt. It's like predicting the end of the world--if some prophet tells you the world will end on January 12, 2012, you can be sure that it will not end on January 12, 2012. Same with gurus--if they promise you real estate wealth in a certain number of days, you know they don't know what they're talking about. This is a business like any other. It takes time and determination.

Turns out my dad was, once again, right.

Lunch with B. also confirmed that for all the information out there, eventually you have to do it on your own. You can use the information you get from the so-called gurus, but every situation is different, and you have to use your own brains, ingenuity, etc.

I feel liberated. I feel vindicated. For the first time in a month, I feel hope.