I just found out that I'll be working even more overtime next week. With only 8 days left to reach my $4500 quota, I feel pretty good knowing that, should I fail to reach it, I'll get a headstart for September's 7k goal. So I won't feel too bad if I'm short a couple hundred bucks on the 31st.
I'm extremely excited about 2012. As I read over my blog this morning, I realized that I'm going through phases-- three to be exact. The first phase was from 2007 to 2009. This was my "Blind Buying" phase. I bought properties Alpha, Beta, then made the mistakes with Paul Maddox's property and my bad tenant management. I also didn't anticipate alot of common real estate problems and had to max out my credit cards and destroy my credit.
Phase Two was from 2009-2011. This is my "Healing and Planning" phase, which I'm currently in. Here, I had to fix all the rookie mistakes I made in phase one, and teach myself how to avoid making the same mistakes again. This includes paying off my debts and rebuilding my credit. It also involved learning more about real estate and developing a tenant managment system, which I'm currently doing.
In a little over four months, Phase Three will begin. This will be my "Property Acquisition and Management" phase. This is when I get to buy properties and apply everything I've learned to a larger scale of properties. I continue to make adjustments to my tenant management system along the way, but I don't make the big mistakes from Phase One. I'm dying to start this phase, as I can finally start doing this real estate stuff full-time and not have to work at a job anymore!
The Blind Buying phase could have been avoided. I could have read books and educated myself in real estate and things like that. The problem is that I don't learn that way. I need to feel the pains and consequences of the mistake so that I don't do it again. For example, I know never to rent to public assistance tenants for any reason. The books don't teach you that. As I continue to educate myself, I wait for January 1st, 2012. On that date, the countdown to financial freedom will begin.
Sometimes I wish I can just skip straight to Phase 3 and get things over with. But really, it's what you go through in Phase 1 and the adjustments you make in Phase 2 that's going to make Phase 3 truly shine.
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