Greetings all! Finally getting around to making this first post after lurking for a month and absorbing everything in sight. Apologies in advance for the TL;DR... this is as much a record for me as it is to introduce myself to you.
Waaaaay back in the day, I high tailed it out of the country to the big city. Moved around from job to job as a youngster, picking up lots of life experience along the way. One of those jobs was a brief stint for Charles Schwab, staring at a green screen CRT and quoting stocks over the phone; this was the beginning of my intrigue with the market. Unfortunately, it was short-lived; they didn't like my anti-establishment style.
Somewhere along the way, I took the road of entrepreneurship and started my own business building high performance sports cars for the street, and production-based cars for road racing. The business was a good success; the shop and staff grew dramatically over the years. However, I was putting in 70-80 hours a week keeping everything going and everyone fed.
The money was great, playing at race tracks was an enormous amount of fun, and the clientele and people from all walks of life were fantastic, but the hours and overhead were exhausting. The price of success had cost me a lot; a wife, a house, lots of material items and quite nearly my health. I reached a tipping point and determined I'd had enough.
I decided to downsize the business. Slowly but surely I worked to reduce my monetary and time expenditures which eventually led me to where I am now.
The shop is now down to one man; me. Moved out of the expensive place I was renting and back to the country where I've been able to engage full-on minimalist mode.
I'm still working on cars, but out of a much smaller shop and living out of a 700SF cabin tucked away in the woods. Two years into the new gig, things are going well. By nature, my shop is quite specialized. Business is good, overhead is low and I'm enjoying life more than ever.
Still, I aspire to more. I've been doing the same thing for over fifteen years, and working on cars is hard on the 'ole bod. It's still fun, but I won't be able to retire off of it. And frankly, I'm a bit bored :-)
Trading is the first thing I've found along the way that has really grabbed me and inspired me to think about what's next and beyond. I can't think of the last time I felt so intrigued and willing to spend time learning, understanding and growing into something new. I felt the same thing at Schwab twenty years ago. I feel like a kid again.
I stumbled across this forum, and after a few weeks of nosing around it was clear that this place is a good one to be; I feel a great sense of community and camaraderie here. I'm looking forward to continuing along this path.