This morning, I left the AirBnB at around 7:30AM and walked to the bus stop across the street from Mayfair Mall. At around 8:45AM, I arrived at the Black Ball Ferry terminal and purchased a ferry ticket to Port Washington. At about 9:30AM, Tyler texted me that he and Michel weren’t able to obtain a spot for the vehicle on the 10:30AM ferry, and that the next opportunity we would have was to obtain a walk-on spot on the 3pm ferry.
For the next few hours, we stopped by Starbucks, stopped by the Empress Hotel to say hello to Julie, one of Michel’s and Tyler’s Meetup friends. Earlier in the morning, they had been gushing about how cool, enthusiastic, down-to-earth and (overly) talkative she was. After stopping by the Empress Hotel, Tyler and I walked over to Starbucks and began talking more in depth about what each of us do for work.
Tyler is 28 years old and became passionate about investing when he realized that $10,000 that he saved up, could provide with him $400/year of passive income, which in turn could cover some of his living expenses. If he could save up enough money, he knew he could live comfortably through his passive income without needing to work at all. At that point, he was hooked and eventually came to own 2-3 residential properties. He has a very conservative approach to investing, by which he has acquired homes at or near market value with 20% down payments, locks in a low interest rate, and uses the property’s cash flow and income from his plumbing job in order to pay down the mortgage as quickly as possible. This approach is very conservative (and therefore admirable) because he is not focused on buying as many homes as he possibly could, but rather buying a home at a time and focusing on paying down mortgages quickly, thereby greatly reducing the risk he’s taking on. The one concern I have with his strategy is that he is buying homes at or near market value. Considering his expertise in plumbing, he has a huge advantage when it comes to renovating homes and is well positioned to enter investments with significant instant equity by acquiring distressed homes at a low price and possibly even adding more value through renovating. Regardless of that overlooked profit potential, at 28 years old he probably has a net worth of a few hundred thousand dollars and is well on his way to becoming a millionaire before turning 40 if he continues on his current, conservative path.
In addition to real estate investing, Tyler also speculates in the stock market through day trading. His approach is very interesting. He feels like he has a very good understanding of oil stocks (especially a stock called “baytechs”), and his strategy is to acquire a few thousand shares of “Baytechs” at a time and sells them when the stock moves up a very small amount ($.10 or $.20). Through this approach, he makes approximately $2,000-$3,000/month. He also buys conservative dividend-paying stocks, acquires stocks during bear markets (brexit, crashing oil prices), and hedges his stock picks, for example by acquiring both stocks which would benefit from higher interest rates (banks) and stocks which would suffer from higher interest rates (oil companies which have high amounts of borrowing).
At 1:30PM, we met back up with Michel at the line of vehicles, processed our paperwork, and boarded the ferry. The ferry ride was scenic but the boat was also swaying a lot and led to me feeling a bit noxious.
When we arrived in Port Angeles, we drove to the entrance of Olympic National Park, scoped out a camping site, and ate dinner at a waterfront restaurant.
At around 9:30pm, Kanai, Sarah and Whee arrived in Port Angeles and we met them at Safeway to do some shopping. There are major language barriers with the three girls, especially Sarah who humorously asked us in Safeway twice: “What are _______ ________?” None of us had any idea what she was saying but apparently she was saying “What are yousins (you guys) buying?”
Below is some additional information about the people on this trip:
- Sarah is originally from Ireland and has been living in Victoria for 2.5 years. She is a “Landscooper” (landscaper) and reminds me a lot of a Sara I dated a while back. They look alike, they both have the same body type, they have the same playful/shy/wild/adventurous personality, and they both have been living somewhere new for almost exactly 2.5 years.
- Kanai is a Japanese freshman university student who has been studying abroad for 4.5 months at Uvic. She is adorable/sweet and will be headed back to Japan in 2 weeks
- Whei is a ~40 year old Asian woman who has attended quite a few events with Michel and is relatively quiet and reserved. I’m sure we’ll we hear much more from her as the trip progresses.
- Michel is the organizer of the trip and retired from the Canadian Army two weeks ago after 25 years of service. He has hiked and backpacked many trails on Vancouver Island and is very experienced. He enjoys hosting people on Couchsurfing and organizing Meetup groups. He seems to enjoy spending time with women in their 20s and 30s, whether it’s a potentially romantic relationship or just a friendship.
After leaving Safeway, we drove directly to the campsite near the Lake Angeles Trailhead and camped near the parking lot for the night. I knew about the area we camped at from my previous trip to Olympic NP with Omer, Chloe, and Theresa, and this campsite ended up being a great help because the campground “Heart O’ the Hills” was had no available sites. Also, the six of us saved a total of $80 by camping at the Lake Angeles trailhead rather than at one of the developed campgrounds.
