I am 24 What did you have to do to get a ferrari?

Everything James said made sense to me, and I've bought a sold a few homes here in the Washington D.C. area, however my forte is technology. You are wearing your jealousy on your sleeve, for all to see, my friend.

 

I honestly could not be bothered to read 6 pages, so I dont know the story to date, BUT, in awnser to your original question, I am fairly young (23) and have already owned 2 360 CS, a 360 spider, own a F430 spider, and have a friends 599 for 2 weeks to decide wether I want that or a 612. I made my money by developing a system for forced induction vehicles to cool the pre and charged air other than intercooler/charge cooler, sold the rights to a particular vehicle manafacturer who then sold it on to someone else for use in military defence vehicles. That manafacturer gets a royalty for evry application used, and I get a royalty from that. How did I do this, just a simple idea whilst tinkering around with my 10 year old VW. Developed it into an extremley crude system, and sold it. There was a huge amount of luck to my story, and the moral of this is, if you have an idea, no matter how small, STICK TO IT! Im gonna enjoy my wealth while I have it, if it went tommorow, I wouldnt be bitter, I would be thankfull I had it. You will find many people out there who will deal with you because of your passion for your idea rather than you Grades and acheivements. Just my 2p. Very best of luck. Michael

 

uh, YEAH! LOL.

Great story though. Still inventing things or taking it easy?

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That WAS funny.
To tell you the truth, I am not jealous at all. I think I am doing quite well for someone my age that works for a weekly wage. 2 homes, financed of course, around AU$40K+ cash in a very nice nest egg at 9.8% and my Ferrari 348 at 25yrs old. Dont forget we pay double what the US Ferraris sell for, because of our Import tax, Luxury Car tax and Gross sales tax. I am contemplating buying a $1mill dollar home at the moment too, using the $300K+ equity I have in my 2 homes as security.(Have made a killing on both homes). Well, have been thinking about it for the last year or so. But that would require negative gearing the property with around half of my weekly wage. Can be done, but over 20yrs can be quite a drag. The rising interest rates are also concerning. So.............I may buy 3 $300K homes instead, which will make it easier on my pocket. All this has happened for me in the last 2 years, before that I was earing chump change as a mechanic at a small workshop. The more you earn, the more you can invest and divide your money intrests to make more money.
Your forte is technology?? Good money in that I heard. Did you buy and sell 15 homes in 3 years also? You probably did, because you had a JOB! My forte is Underground Mining. Good money in that Mining also. Jamesbond claims to have bought and sold 15 properties in 3 years, while hiring a crew of 5 to do the work for him, while he was playing golf..........all without a job and $10 to his name? Straight out of school? I cant believe that is allowable in the USA. WOW!!! Seems they will give anyone money to buy anything. Different story here. Would NEVER NEVER happen. The banks here will root ya before they let ya do that.
I still find it hard to believe seriously.......but either way, I personally do not care. Good for him. Anyone can post whatever they like on the internet without an ounce of proof needed. I am a strongly follow that "I have to see it to beleive it".
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Hey Pap, are there any jobs going there atm?

 

There are plenty of jobs going at the moment mate. They need around 600 people to fill in the new 3500 project. Deep into the bowels of the earth kinda work. You will have a Ferrari before no time working down there.

 

Read this, it might help some

---------

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

 

WOW! Thanks, that was great

very inspirational

 

Another long rant...surprising. You sure seemed jealous when you immediately started attacking the other poster. I'm not questioning your success, that's just how you projected yourself...that's all.

 

The guys cleary a jerk. He's one of reasons why ferrari owners are given a bad name. Guy risks his life everyday working in a coal mine so he can buy a 14 year old ferrari and now he thinks he knows everything there is to know in the world, i love it. I cant say i blame him for doubting me but to the extent that he takes it is a bit nerotic(sp). Not to mention he lives in Australia where Real Estate laws are obviously different so how he expects to know everything about international real estate is beyond me. 14,000 posts, thats quit a bit of time spent on the internet, do you think that time just might be better spent doing something constructive? maybe?

 

have to take jamesbonds side on this one. It helps that ZR1 is making a fool out of himself. I bought my first house with $800 down (including closing costs) when i was 19. I think i made about 20k a year back then and had zippy for credit. no cosigners or other partners, just me and the seller. no take backs either. That was 23 years ago. I still own it. It has quintupled in that time. It's much easier now for anybody to get a loan. Back then i was a real estate agent. I remember cobbling together a loan for a brother and sister who were recent immigrants. they worked a combination of 5 part time jobs, all at minimum wage. they changed jobs about every six months. it was a nightmare. nobody would touch them. but i was young and hungry and made it happen for them. i have since bought several homes and have been a biz owner showing little in the way of income for twenty years. i have never had a problem getting loans. I can get anybody a loan on any house they want right now. guaranteed. the second house i bought at age 20. my new father in law lent us the downpayment for our wedding present and we assumed a va loan ( by the way, almost anyone can assume a va or fha loan). No money out of my pocket. no prob assuming loan for a 20 year old with little income or credit. payed him back the deposit in 5 years by refinancing the house. That was my first two deals, by the age of 20 with $800. Much easier to do that today with who and what i know now. Bottom line-ZR1 don't know ****. as usual. goes for you too pap. you don't know **** about real estate either. at least not in the us.

 

you prove you don't know **** about real estate. Let me ask you this mr. banker. if an 18 year old came to you with sales contract for 80k on a house that appraised for 100k would you lend him the 80k no docs involved? your damn right you would. you'd be an idiot not to. i can do it for any 18 year old right now. i know you'll say, well no one would sell you a house that appraised for 100k for 80k. Don't do it, it will prove yet agian you don't know real estate. stick with the corvettes (assuming you know anything about them). i can't believe a guy can make such a fool out of himself in so few posts.

P.S. so far, i've been talking legit, above board deals. don't get me started on creative contracts and financing. if you want to go that way, i can get your dead grandmother into a house with no money down.

 

Jamesbond-like the screen name. that was my screen name in another forum. until i got banned.

 

Thats actually a really good example. The 3-family that i just bought and am keeping, i am paying 200k for and it appraised at 300k and thats not overappraised for the sake of it, thats actually market value. I have **** for credit, never worked a steady J.O.B., my car is paid for in cash so i have no loan history and the banks were going nuts competing to give me a loan on this deal.

Well, not exactly **** for credit. I actually have a good credit score just zero loan history.

 

Most banks would not make that loan. Banks are not in the business of selling houses. Banks do not want to foreclose on a house or be in a position to sell it. Banks love people who make payments on time. A 18 year old does not have a credit history or a job history to get a 80K loan. A bank does not look at a deal to see how good it is for the customer. A bank cares about risk. A bank has thousands of loans. If 10% of them went belly up, even if the bank owned all the properties, they could not sell them quickly enough. Where do you think the money banks have to make loans with comes from? It is from people who have savings with the bank. A bank might keep 10% in reserves, a % in loans, and the rest with the Federal Reserve Bank. If too many loans go bad, the bank would be in a position to borrow from the Federal Reserve to cover the savings and reserves they are forced by law to keep. The whole time the bank tries to sell the foreclosed property, the bank is paying interest on the loan they took to cover reserves.

You can take a 100K house and have a person walk in with 20K down, and if that person has bad credit they won't get the loan for 80K from most banks.

Wetpet, the only person who looks dumb is you. I have come around to believe that JamesBond could have done what he stated if he found the right sellers. I think it is dang hard to find someone and talk them into a sale where the seller has all the risk. But it's possible and I will admit that. JamesBond says he did it without the help of banks for his first couple deals.

 

hey james. don't sweat it. the more zr1's and pap's there are out there not looking for deals because they don't exist, the more of those non-existent deals there are for us. shhhhh....

 

you have just proven to anyone here that knows the basics about mortgage lending that you don't know **** about it. I will not even bother responding to your points as they show a lack of understanding even the basics of mortgage lending. please stop now as it is getting painful for me to watch. Please read my posts. i have already stated unequivocally, i can get any 18 year old with no credit or bad credit the loans i descibed above. and not from sub-prime lenders either.

P.S. most banks don't need to make that loan, although they would. only one does and the deal is done.

 

james, a word of advice from an old man (42). stay in the biz your in and continue on the road your on. I didn't. i sold out for the sure thing. if i had continued with the real estate like i started, i would be retired many times over by now. Even with the little i did i'm doing quite well. The long term upside of what you are doing is enormous. most of the self made successful people you will meet will have made at least a sizeable portion of their net worth through real estate. don't sell your properties, refi them. Time is on your side. and by the way, don't waste time arguing with idiots. learn from my mistakes.

 

I hear ya, I am a very modest person and feel that 15 properties over 3 years isnt much at all but when i look at what alot of my freinds are doing... and if i multiply that by many years i will end up very well off. I find it so hard to keep property and not take the propfit off the table now. My idea now is to keep flipping the single family homes that i buy for dirt cheap and keep the multi's that i come across that way they will always be gaining equity because someone else will be paying the loan down, these will always make sense to hold long term. Unlike stocks real estate will always be worth something and with houses that are paid off in full you cant go wrong. I think if i was older i would sell everything but i have time on my side. I appreciate the advice as well.

 

this is exactly what i'm talking about-don't do it. there is much more money down the road if you keep them. let some other sucker pay the carrying costs by renting it. bite the bullet now why your young and can do it. once you are married, have children and expensive toys, you need the money. a couple of years from now, you can start pulling money out of the houses if you need it, but don't sell. The tax advantages alone are worth keeping them. i know this is hard to do, as i said, i succumbed to the easy money and i regret it. take my advice and when you are 35-40 you can buy all the ferraris you want. why every young single person doesn't go out and get a property by any means and rent out the other bedrooms to make the mortgage i don't know. can't do that once you have kids.

by the way 15 properties is more than enough. if you only bought and kept one property per year, by the time you were 40 you would be financially independent.

 

What did I have to do to get a Ferrari? Lets just say it involved some tequila, a midget, and one night I never want to remember again.

 

you notice i won't even post what i had to do.

 

Trust me, not jealous at all. Just very hard to believe. As proven, the US bank/loan system is ALOT different to Aus. One would think that you would have to at least have a job and cash deposit to buy a home, seems to not be the case at all. This is the internet after all. Anyone can say anything they like. Simple as that.

 

Yeah, righteo clown. We will leave it at that.
Who ever said I work in a coal Mine BTW? Think outside the box son!
Americans get it easy real estate wise so it seems. More power to you if you really are doing that great. Really. Your website link leaves alot to to be desired IMO. I showed my friend that link, who just visted me this afternoon, and who know a little about web design. He said that can easily be replicated with something similar, like Pap's realestate, which also make me a realestate Entrenepure also. We can make it happen he reckons.
And............I work 4 days and have 5 days off. Which allows me to do whatever the f*ck I want. Thats why I have 14,000 posts, amongst other things I get up to. Also, this town sucks ass, which is why I am here.
Drive the 348 when I feel like it I guess.