we got to talk about your stock market escapades now where did this all start because uh i i don't think a lot of people know your your true backstory working at a as a gas station attendant yeah yeah attendant that's that's that's a term there a tendon it sounds like i'm the guy that like pumps it if i think i think there's still some states where you can't legally pump that's true oregon yeah what oregon are you serious yeah oregon wow crazy there's a fancy gas station in beverly hills where they have this uh the service for it it's the gas like a dollar extra gallon that's a luxury but you go to oregon and it's just like assumed someone's gonna pump your gas yeah do you t do you tip them or is it i mean i'm assuming that you do that you do tip them yeah it's just to provide jobs like that's the they provided they made lettuce legislation to like really yeah so you have to have people pumping your gas for jobs is that a service people want yeah for me no i don't think so i was about to say like i feel would feel uncomfortable i would feel like this is something i'm capable of doing myself and i should be able to they're probably better at it than you are yes so if they can do it better than you sure from a from a quick google search people in oregon do not tip oh okay so it's not customary to tip okay well it doesn't cost any money right well if it's free yeah and you don't pay more for gas where does the money come from listen i didn't research that far i just saw that the locals do not tip yeah because oregon doesn't have sales tax that is your like their big thing that's their stick no sales tax you buy something what you pay is what you pay i'm curious where the money's coming from no oregon don't they also have no state income tax no oh it's not oregon yeah okay i don't know why i was thinking oregon was one gosh imagine i would be in oregon i would be in portland right now if there's no sales tax income tax jeez everyone would move to portland oh my goodness but anyway anyway yeah back back to the the whole story there so in terms of me getting the stock market actually happened before i got to the gas station and quick trip that actually happened back when i worked at walgreens uh making shoot i don't know i think i started there at 8. 75 an hour in the photo department at walgreens and um essentially that walgreens had a plan where essentially you could buy shares of walgreens stock for i think it was either a 10 or a 15 market discount so you know if the stock was trading at let's say 20 a share you could buy it for i don't know 18 19 a share or whatever and so i was like well that seems like a no-brainer you just had the only catch was you had to hold it for at least three months and so i was like okay let me start doing that so i started doing that that's how i set up a fidelity account and then i had an accounting teacher actually uh community college who showed me the most powerful thing in my life as far as financially which is a compounding calculator oh i love that yes and he would show us you know if you had this amount of money and you and you got this percentage return and you know if you've never seen that before that is like the most mind-blowing thing at least for me seeing that right and uh so right away i was like okay investing i kind of started doing the walgreens thing and then i was like well i can look into other stocks and i was like this is all available information on the internet and then i just started going down the rabbit hole started watching warren buffett things learning all that and next thing you know i was starting to invest money and it was like 250 500 bucks a time back then it was 19. 95 cents to buy a stock to execute any trade yes you don't realize how good you have it now oh man thank you robin hood i used to use sk it was scottrade back someone bought them i forget who it was but it used to be scottrade i think back then it was and this is like mid 2000s but this i think they were like seven dollars and ninety five cents or it was like seven to ten bucks yeah per trade if you wanted to buy anything or sell anything yeah fidelity was 1995 when i first got started and then very shortly after they switched to 9.
95 because i think they were getting competitive pressure one time i made a huge mistake and i phoned in a trade i didn't know how much it was 39. 95 and we're talking i was buying like 400 worth of a stock so now i need to get a 10 return roughly just more than 10. yeah yeah then just to cover the trade to buy and then imagine if i was to sell another 1995 if i did online or 39.
95 but anyways that's a long story so i i stayed with it because i at the end of the day i looked at it and i was like i think i can get a positive return then they lowered in 9. 95 i got even more into investing so i'm like oh now it's only ten dollars to buy a stock i'm like this is great and i would save up between five hundred dollars and a thousand dollars a time and i go ahead and make that move so the way i thought about it is i think save a thousand to invest you know which would sometimes take me a month if not several months back then to do that right the way i kind of thought about it was all right uh invest a thousand is a ten dollar trade commission so that's like one percent right and then so basically in my mind i'm like i gotta get at least two percent on this position to cover cover the the trades and um and then i just started building from there at first it was the most boring stocks i bought stocks like canagra foods walmart like like uh i bought bp after the oil disaster uh the the stock just got hammered i was looking at the balance sheet at that time and i was like i don't think they're gonna go bankrupt there's some people pricing it for bankruptcy they made it through i made a little money on that um and then i just started building from there when i got the job a quick trip that's when i really started rolling so that was that was a game changer because then i was making uh they started me out about 40k moved up really quick uh to a high bonusing store one of the best bonusing stores in arizona started making over 50k and and then uh my apartment was probably 725 or 750 a month rent and uh i used to keep all my other expenses super low i used to shut the air conditioning off if i was gone at work and like do anything eat ramen noodles and just like i used to eat those uh pork and beans you guys you can get those back then you get them for like 88 cents at walmart and then you throw a piece of ham or two in it throw it in the microwave that would be a meal less than a dollar so i try to keep all my meals less than two dollars for sure but ideally less than a dollar and uh man i was just investing i was invest in beast and uh invest in like a thousand two no at that time you know when i started getting to a place where i could invest like two thousand dollars a month it was crazy that's a decent amount of money though two thousand a month so what were you making to invest two thousand a month back then that's when i got 500 um that's when i uh what was i making as terms of my job yeah so that's when i got bumped up to making about 4 000 to 5 000 a month for my job and then you get the taxes taken out of that you know a quick trip uh they used to help a lot with health and health insurance so you got the health insurance you had some other cost uh i used to always keep my expense super low as far as my cars went things like that so yeah i was able to start investing like 2 000 a month um back then which yeah it felt like a lot of money there's no doubt about it and and that's how i really started this snowball rolling in 2010 and then i also simultaneously taken my investing game up to another level and i found some really good stocks back then so what did you find so tattooed chef no yeah that's now yeah so yeah oh gosh no so there was a a stock i found named trinity industries and uh this is when i started piecing things together as far as uh trends that were multi-year trends that were going to play out in industries where i saw a tremendous opportunity so trinity industries was this company super boring company they had a construction side of their business uh selling like safety cones and like the the stuff that's like on the side of the highway that if you like hit it it kind of like crumples you know those sorts of things but they also have to decide their business of selling real cars in this real car business there's hardly any um companies that sell rail cars it's such a random thing you need to get all these industry standards there's maybe two or three companies in the whole united states that probably are sell big volumes of rail cars right specifically oil and gas rail cars well i was looking and at that time in north dakota fracking was starting to take off huge and you were starting to hear stories about people were moving to north dakota making like 120 150 000 like basically just fracking oil and so i was like well there's no pipelines to like transport this so the only way you could transport it is through rail cars so i looked at this and i was looking at the stock and it was trading very darn cheap and i'm like they're about to see a massive multi-year boom in their business in my opinion sure enough that's exactly what played out and trinity industries went on a crazy run and that was one of the first if not the first stock that really gave me a lot of confidence that i'm like i can do this like i i can do this before that it was kind of like this is this is something i could be decent at that was the stock that took me and i was like i can be really good at this and uh it gave me the confidence and then after that it was a lot more stocks including cabela's and some others but the trinity industries that was huge for my confidence that was a really good time to invest though yeah to start in like 2008 nine that was like you missed the entire run up started going down and that's when you started investing so everything after that was was gravy for the most part yeah i just wish i had more money back then the problem was you know 2008 2009 you know i'm investing 500 bucks a time or 250 bucks whatever you know 2010 i finally started getting going but that wasn't until like the end of 2010 so that huge initial ramp up i had like hardly any money in the market so i really wasn't able to capitalize but from your standpoint what if i had got in 2006 maybe that would have killed my confidence right off the bat seeing the market dip i don't know you know you can't ever go back in time like that but uh but yeah it was certainly you know it was an interesting time to get involved in the market because you know a lot of people were scared and i looked at it i'm like i'm just getting involved in this thing man like you know i i didn't have much fear as far as that went but i also didn't start out like super confident like oh i'm gonna be such a great stock picker that happened over time i needed to see the results and that's mostly how i am in life so so you built up the portfolio your number is 200 000 at 25 years old and then once you were 25 years old is that when you quit quick trip no i had 200k before i was 25. so i quit quick trip at 24.
and um you know it was a it was a tough decision so i was really burnt out a quick trip i'll be completely honest you know it was um it was a grind man up at 4am almost every day and um just putting in the hours you know you're working 48 hours a week sometimes 50 hours a week on on manager's schedule you know waking up at 4 a. m you get off pretty early you get off at like 2-3 but you're on your feet all day there's no breaks a quick trip there's no you know let's go sit in the back for 30 minutes aren't legally you're supposed to have a lunch and do breaks or do they is it just you know well um yeah i'm not gonna throw my whole company under the bus man they gave too much to me for me to ever throw them into the bus but i don't know you'd have to look into that situation but uh essentially yeah there were no there were no breaks there were no uh official breaks there was no like oh you get uh you know go clock out now and take your lunch or take your 15. at walgreens yeah it was super professional like that in terms of like you know you got your 15 then you got your 30.
and people were super demanding of it too quick trip you might work 10 hours straight you're on your feet your whole time and you might never get a chance you if you're gonna even dream of eating you better eat that hot dog fast that's all i'm gonna say about that i i hated the 15 30 minute breaks when i was doing that uh data entry job they made you take uh the the 15 minute break in the morning 15 minute break in the afternoon and i think it was a 30 to 45 minute lunch i hated it because i didn't want to have lunch i didn't want to take a break i was just like i'm just getting going and now i have to take a stupid and i'd literally sit there and just twiddle my thumbs for 15 minutes being like can i just finish what i was working on yeah and i remember we had uh roxanne i did not like roxanne she was the uh like the back office manager and i would tell her these complaints like can i oh what i wanted to do is just take my break a little bit later and then push my lunch later like i wanted my lunch to be as close to the end of the day as possible no no no you can't do that you have to take your lunch between these out like it made no sense to me and then i brought up the argument what if i just work straight and i just get off an hour and a half early no we can't do that we have to comply with you it's just it's stupid it's because i i'd just rather work and just get it done and then leave yeah leave an hour and a half or early then i miss the traffic driving home but never understood the the need for a break i don't know just just take a break when when you're hungry yeah and for as long as you need to and then just come back and finish it that's what it was like for me working in a restaurant before i worked for you it was there was there was no mandatory breaks even if you were working like an eight and a half hour shift or whatever you just take a break whenever you get hungry or when whenever you like get tired from walking everywhere then you take like 15 get a sandwich get back to work yeah that's the way it should be they should really go over the entire structure of the nine to five i really think they should stagger it get rid of the nine to five completely and just have different shifts like you want to be shift a b or c and maybe shift a starts at like 5 a. m for the people just want to finish early shift b starts like eight shift c starts at like 11.
