After living on the boat in the Caribbean for a year, Bequia and I came back to Montana.

Out of the blue one night… I don’t know why… I threw it out.

We had been together since 1985 or 1986. We had been living together forever and I guess I just said to myself: “what the hell?”

Just before I had met Bequia I had bought my first house. I started renting it out. On my 30th Christmas, I wrecked my truck on tequila. Bequia had gone back to North Dakota. I took the insurance settlement and put that as a down payment on the house.

That investment is what has allowed most of our lifestyle since then.

I had been renting a house near the University of Montana. It was in a very desirable area, but it was a rundown house. I traded my VW Microbus for a Suzuki 750 for a 35ft. house trailer. I put that on a lot in east Missoula where I could live for $65.00 a month. That was my first real estate. So I eventually sold that and bought tickets to the Caribbean.

Eventually we settled into a house and told the owners that if they ever wanted to sell it to please let us know. They had moved to Alaska and, sadly, split up. We bought the place and spent ten years living in it, fixing it up, and making it nice.

We bought several houses in succession and sold our original home for six times more than we paid for it. I’ve done well enough that I’ve been able to stop working for other people and now spend fulltime working on my properties. I messed around in the stock market for a while; two and that went pretty well.

At this point we don’t have enough income to allow us to stop working altogether, but we have enough of a nest egg that if the shit hit the fan we would be all right. We just can’t live too high on the hog, that’s all.

Taking chances has always worked out well for us. Everything we’ve done has been based on the philosophy of: “let’s try it.” It usually works out.