This is funny stuff. Keep it coming. But please share why you left a job where you were the best in the world to join the Army.
I never quit equity trading in the first place. I still do it as a side job. I won't go into details why I join the Army. But, it was a contemplating process due to my belief, occurrences in life, and new additions to my family.
I am very well aware that things could blow up in my face forcing me to take on 50-60% drawdown. That's why I believe in continuous self-improvements in order to diversify my income streams. Obviously, one of my investments is to invest on myself, as evident by my medical pursuit. Income diversification is also the reason why I am itching to start building a portfolio of real estate at a young age. I'm not going to discuss my equity trading acumen any further because some of you are suspecting that I'm trying to impress the folks here in order to sell snake oil. That's far from the truth. One of the reasons why I don't bother to go into professional financial management is that I don't like the everyday burden of trying to sell people on products and that possible day when I have to explain to my investors why their retirement nest eggs take a 50% cut for the year. It's a hassle. I'm doing fine managing my money at this point. Family members and colleagues have approach me with six figures accounts, asking me to manage their money. I have turned their offers down. I love teaching and am always open toward teaching and guiding people through their financial learning. However, I refuse to give stock picks and advice because I am very well aware that my definition of normal risk significantly diverges from that of mainstream America. Throughout my life, I have only given out stock picks to friends and family members twice. Both of those picks return a 20-30% short term gain in 3-6 months with an annual dividend of 5%. Those picks were no brainers that only happen in rare occurrences. Short term and long term implications for those names yield multiple benefits. In my opinion, they were free money that only occur a few times in a decade because of panic selling.
Back to the topic, the point that I'm trying to make is that taking a $400k mortgage is not that asinine, considering the rate and 0% down from the VA loan. Even with the 400k mortgage, monthly mortgage and tax total up to about $2,000-2,200 a month. For that given area, I usually find the rent of inferior properties to be around $1,600-1,900. Given that situation, it was appealing for me to consider buying a significantly better property considering its proximity to good schools from elementary to collegiate levels. Perhaps, my thesis of a booming housing market is wrong. However, I can assure you that a myriad of factors go into my decision rather than the financial aspect of free rents with my supposed assumption of break even in the worst case scenario. The fact is that my wife and I don't mind possibly living in the area in the long run. Considering its location next to a marque university, it might not be a bad location for housing accommodation if our kids decide to attend that school for undergraduate studies. We love the area and could see ourselves living there for a while. With that in mind, I also have $150-200K in auxiliary savings to bring my mortgage payment down significantly if things diverge from my expectations. Lastly, it's not crazy when my expected gross after four years of med school is over $100K.
