2020 Update

It's been awhile, and I wanted to provide an update because  a lot has happened.

We've paid the house down to $70,719 and it's been amazing at how fast it's happened! I worked 60 hrs a week for an entire year and we just kept putting huge chunks down on principle every month. It has been so satisfying to see the numbers changing so quickly.

I had a massive feeling that 2020 would bring about some crazy thing, and I was right. We are now experiencing a global pandemic called the Corona Virus that came out of China. It is spreading extremely fast because people are not taking it seriously enough. Thankfully Governments have started to issue stay at home orders, but the economic effects are quickly being felt be everyone globally. It's staggering to see how fragile our economy is. Jobs reports just came out and 6,000,000 people are unemployed at the moment. In the past this would have caused me quite a bit of panic, but this time, I am actually watching all of this with an interesting level of detachment.

I am fortunate enough to have an essential job in the trucking industry, so that provides a bit of security, but I am consciously prepared for something to change. I have done my best to prepare, and my fear of situations like this are what have led us to be in the position we are in. We currently have 6 months of mortgage payments set aside in case I lose my job, and we are actually looking to refinance right now to lock in a lower payment that would increase our margin of safety even more.

Another rather interesting change that has taken place this year has been in our mindset about finances as a whole. I can't remember why, but we listened to the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" audio book on YouTube and it really got us understanding how important it is to create cash flowing assets. There is a massive difference between being debt free, and being financially free. We have now spent a lot of time considering, planning and projecting a financial future that includes rental property. I have been taking in hours and hours of content related to passive real estate income, and I found myself in an excited, but somewhat overwhelmed state in considering all the time and hard work involved.

You see, in pretty much every piece of content that discusses real estate and growing wealthy, they all describe a method that involves you leveraging yourself to the hilt to acquire all these properties so quickly. It felt risky to me, and the reality is, this epidemic might just have been the perfect thing to educate me on the risks of doing just that. I think the reality is going to be that a lot of leveraged real estate people are going to struggle and possibly lose their properties thanks to this unforeseen event that is causing a massive global economic shift.

Just yesterday we just spoke with an acquaintance of ours that has become financially free from real estate, and they basically confirmed that the frugal, slow approach my gut has been telling me is the best way, is definitely the best way.

So, in the next couple years when this house is paid off, we can simply start saving up for our next property and slowly achieve cash flow the good old fashioned way. By paying off our properties and being basically impervious to market conditions. Patience truly pays.

On the trading front, I had initially decided to forget about it until the house was paid off. I have since realized that I should at least be getting my screen time for the next two years. It could only help. And with screen time, came paper trading again, which has gone back to being successful, yet... boring. So, I decided to put some real money into my TD Ameritrade account because I realized I need to start working on the actual emotional side of things, because that's what I truly struggled with on the last go around. Well, that and trying to trade on a platform that I simply wasn't familiar or comfortable with.

On my last venture with live trading, I ended up using Interactive Brokers because they were the cheapest commissions at $1 per trade as long as you traded 100 shares or less. The completely unexpected thing that has since happened, is that all the major retail brokers went commission free. I guess this was in response to up and coming competition from brokers like WeBull and Robinhood, that offered zero commission trading.

So now I get to trade commission free on a platform I am extremely comfortable with. The somewhat comical thing is, as soon as sat in front of the computer to trade, I was petrified because it was real money. I ended up having to force myself to trade with 1 share just to be taking the damn trade. And, it worked. in the last 13 real money trades I am actually up and have been proud of myself for being really choosy with my 3 day trades. My plan is honestly just to keep trading small and gradually ramp it up as I can handle the emotions of the sizes more and more comfortably, until hopefully I will be trading profitably (and rather emotion free) at a size that provides meaningful income.

We have also entered a long term trade on Carnival Cruise ($CCL) lines and are long at an average price of $14.49. Everything got hit hard, but them most of all, dropping 80%. The government has decided to implement a 6 Trillion dollar bailout package, and last minute (after we already put our position on) decided that the cruise lines aren't going to be included because they aren't registered in the US. Which, makes sense honestly. It's a small $2,000 position that while we would rather not lose on, we can afford to. I think that as long as they actually survive, we'll see a good return, and possibly even some dividend income, which I have never received before.

The future will certainly be an interesting one, given all the potential outcomes.