Hello and welcome to our community!

[Justin]

Hello and Welcome to the Rule One Investment Community!

You've stumbled across what I hope will prove to be an invaluable resource to aid you in your education process. But before we get started, I'd like to tell you just a bit about myself.

I am 22 years old living in a small town in Northwest Missouri. My family owns/operates a pest control business spanning the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and now Nebraska. I am currently working on building a branch in Omaha, Nebraska and hope to relocate within the next year or two.

I started learning about how to invest about 1 year ago when I heard Phil Town speak at a Get Motivated seminar. I signed up for the InvesTools class but have since dismissed most of InvesTools teaching. They seem to have a bit of an emphasis on the "traders" perspective and that just seems a little too risky for me right now. Rule #1 makes sense to me so I'm sticking with that.

I started the forums in April 28th and had hoped to have 40 or 50 other like-minded investors that I could share Rule #1 ideas with. Well here we are with over 1000 members and growing strong every day. It's absolutely incredible, and so empowering to be able to gain such useful insights and information from such a vast yet niche community.

I have some personal debt I want to get rid of, so I haven't started investing real money yet. Hopefully by October I'll be able to start with a decent amount of real money and put this philsophy to the test!

[Lois]

Hi, I'm 42 and Justin, my husband and I live in York, NE. Only 100 miles from Omaha. We heard about Rule #1 by going to a Get Motivated Seminar in Omaha and liked what he had to say.

We own a heating and air conditioning business and would like to be able to pursue other interests and go out and have some fun like Phil says to do. We do have fun but I would love to have some more.

We will soon have a college bound student and also need to earn some money to help her out with college expenses and retirement. I see the light with Rule #1. Maybe we can retire before we are 75 after all. How cool is that.

Still papertrading and getting comfortable but with my investments in the green, I'm feeling more confident all the time. I know I can do better than my mutual funds have made me.

[SteveMcG]

I'm a 36 year old mechanical engineer down in central Florida. I'm always reading different books to on success, leadership and finances. I've gone through much of the Rich Dad series of books and my Dad introduced me to Phil Towne's book about a month ago. I've read through it and started paper trading.

My Dad has been paper trading for 2 months and with a lot of success (he had a 28% increase in those 2 months), so he is going to start actual trading within the next month. I will probably wait until the beginning of next year, as I want to get rid of some debt we've accumulated.

My first shot at paper trading was terrible. Then I reread a few sections of Phil's book and realized I was reading the tools wrong. Since then, I've done much better, but I want to see how the next few months go.

[AlexG]

20 yr old Male from East Los Angeles, currently help my dad running the business, we have a manufacturing company, we make all the equipment for Paint companies, got interested in investing after reading the richest man in babylon, read Rule #1 at Borders, not the first time exposed to the philosphy but definately one of the best explained

im also attending college (majoring in finance)

[gonnkrazzy]

This is Great!!!

My name's Matt, I'm 32. My wife and I live in central Florida. I am a production manager of a granite fabrication company. I'm always looking for ways to secure our financial future, and hadn't put much thought into stocks.

I good friend of mine, Jack (also a member) told me about Rule #1, and insisted I read the book, have been hooked ever since. I started trading real money last week, and I'm very excited.

Also want to say thanks for all the support, and help from all the great members of this site, and thanks to Justin for making it possable!!!!

[Chicagoland Nick]

Justin, you beat me to setting up this kind of discussion site! Great work so far, and great initiative setting it up.

Surprise of surprises given my username, but my name is Nick and I live in the western suburbs of Chicago. :) I'm 42, and I am a principal consultant at a firm specializing in providing policy, analytical, and software services to government transportation agencies and related organizations. Most of my savings since I got out of graduate school have gone in my 401k which is Fidelity mutual funds. So spending effort on individual stocks hasn't been a high priority. But I'm contemplating a career change which would force me to roll over my funds, so I'm trying to learn about the stock end of the market. I have a small IRA from when I was in graduate school that made a good return in the 90s and nothing since, and that's what I'm going to be using as my experimental funds.

[BillZ]

Hello,
My name is Bill and I am a 38 year old Operations Manager for a company that rents equipment for concerts and events. I work and live in Maryland, just outside of D.C. and am engaged to be married next spring to my girlfriend of ten years. Recently debt-free, I was looking for a good way to invest money for a home and for retirement. A visit to Borders introduced me to Phil Town's book and here I am.

A big thanks to Justin for putting this forum together. I made my first trade a couple of weeks ago. My decision to jump in the market was helped greatly by information I gained on this site.

[patfergie44]

Hi,

My name is Pat. I'm in my 50's and single - dating a very nice lady for the last year and a half. I live in the middle of South Carolina. I'm an Area Manager for a manufacturing company located in Seattle - selling products into the Southeastern states. I too just read Phil's book recently (about 2 months ago) and have been absorbing as much information as I can (especially thanks to this forum and Justin). I've always wanted to get more involved in stocks but never really knew how. I think Rule 1 is definitely the way for me to go. I haven't done any real trading yet but I intend to as soon as I feel a little more comfortable with all of this.

[doreeg]

Hi All,
I worked for 30 years in computers - programming mainframes, analyst, then manager in large corporations – mostly on Wall St. I got an MBA in finance in 1978 (long time ago). In 1983 Jeff (my life and business partner of 27 year) and I started a computer consulting firm. We sold most of our stock and retired 10 years ago but we are still on the Board. It is a privately held NYC based company.

I’m 60 now. We are currently living in New Zealand. We just got our Kiwi (dual) Citizenship and plan to split our time between the US (not sure where but we currently have a house in Santa Fe, NM) and NZ in the future.

I know a lot about financial instruments and financial markets but until recently knew almost nothing about investing. Weird, huh? I read Rule 1 and saw the light – it is so totally logical. I have bought 3 companies so far but sold one at a loss (EBAY) when the arrows turned red. Would not make that mistake again but realize I still have a lot to learn. This forum is a major place for me to do that learning. Thanks for that to Justin and everyone else who participates!
Doree

[ApexAZ]

My name is Brian and I am 27 years old and live in Mesa, AZ. I do desktop support for a large OEM chip manufacturer in their corporoate office.

I'm terrible with my money. Absolutely terrible. So my new years resolution this year was to try and turn that around. I've been reading every book I can get my hands on about how to manage money and stocks.