About Me

Hi, I’m Brad. I’m the creator and content writer for this blog.

I want to start off by thanking you for giving my site a look through. With that being said, I’d like to share a little about myself. I was born in 1988, the second and last child to be added to my family. I grew up in San Diego in a two bedroom apartment with my mother and my brother after a divorce separated my parents. My father was and is a good man but the marriage simply wasn’t going to last due to their differences. Throughout my early years, my brother and I would be passed from household to household to try to split the time between my parents since we were both very young when it first occurred. This gave my brother and I the chance to learn from two separate (but equal!) households. My father was the rule maker, always strict with teachings and trying to mold me into a frugal and well-rounded gentlemen and my mother spent her time being the emotional caregiver that my dad was not as natural at being. Naturally, this caused strife at times but it was the perfect catalyst to making my brother and I into well mannered adults. We climbed through the various steps of schooling eventually moving out of the two bedroom apartment when my mother remarried a good decade later and then I would part ways when I headed to college in Nebraska to pursue my degree in Psychology with a minor in Sociology.

I would find quick success in school as I realized that there was a simple to follow order to things but as soon as I graduated, the brick wall of reality hit. Even though I had held jobs without any gaps in my employment since I was 14, I would fall into a depression as it took months for me to find a job after graduating and heading home to San Diego. In mere months, the money I had worked hard to build up would find itself in an all too barren bank account with no end in sight. The struggle to find a job could not be more real. I was over qualified for the jobs I previously worked in to get myself through school and I was under qualified for the jobs that required five minimum years’ experience to get into in addition to the college degree that I held.

The storm finally ended when I found a job in social work. I became a house worker for a group of boys that ranged from 14-18 y/o but I would quickly find the iron pay ceiling of the social work system. There simply wasn't any money in social work and living in California would not allow that to continue. One can simply not live off of ramen and mac n cheese for more than a few months! Luckily, after landing a job that required a degree, getting another replacement job wasn’t as difficult. In what seemed like a short night, I landed in a corporate job making great money ($42k/year!) that would be able to cover my finances. With the new money I gobbled up all the things I had been starved of for the months prior and would once again find my account not going anywhere. It was stalled as my stomach ate through the large paychecks I was taking home and the worst part was that I hated every minute of my corporate job.

Thankfully, I then found myself searching for a job that would suit my needs. It required me to move back to the state of Nebraska but I would soon land a job there working in insurance where I could feel like I was actually helping people and also taking in enough money to still make ends meet. I still worked for the man but I would at least feel like I had the ability to do right where my last corporate job had me losing sleep at night for a paycheck. My bank account soon began to grow as I got used to a more stable adult lifestyle and I began to wonder about my future. I needed to think bigger than simply putting away a few hundred in a savings account. I wanted my money to actually do something for me.

My hunger grew and before I knew it I was wolfing down as many investment books as I could, trying to learn the secrets. And as soon as I thought I was ready, I opened up my first brokerage account with TD Ameritrade (still the current platform) and began to throw my money at companies that I thought I could earn money fast with. Needless to say, this was doomed to fail. I failed to realize that all the time that I had thought I had been studying, I had only been reviewing others who promised high returns and I fell for their bad advice.

Then came year two: judgment year! I was determined to stop listening to the advice of others who gave false promises and stop to learn the process of evaluating my own potential stocks. I went back to basics and reviewed all the investor’s education I could from the investment tools in TD’s learning center, I read books by Warren Buffett, Graham, and others who gave advice on how to actually read the companies rather than believe someone else’s own take on the company, and finally I started mock portfolios to track how I would be doing if I was throwing money at it after learning the new tools. The future was suddenly brighter.

That brings us to the year 2015, the restart of the portfolio. Unfortunately, I did not think of having a blog to document the new portfolio until the end (literally, the 31st of December, 2015!) of the year but from now on, I will log it all and share it all!

More about me:

I now live in the incredibly flat state of Nebraska with my wonderful wife, Kaleigh. We were recently married in January of 2016 but look forward to the many years we will spend with each other. We met when I was bar tending my way through college. We have had our good times and our bad times but we always stick together and find a way to make the most of every situation. When I'm not on the blog I'm digging into information on various activities as I tend to jump through a new activity every month. Whenever I find something fun, I always want to jump into it and experience it. These hobbies can vary anywhere from learning the harmonica to attempting to learn Japanese. The hope is that one day, the portfolio will really take off and help supplement our income to the point where we can further enjoy life but with less work.