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	<title>WIRL Project &#187; California</title>
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	<description>What It&#039;s Really Like.</description>
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		<title>How I Turned $50K into $1 Million!</title>
		<link>http://www.wirlproject.com/how-i-turned-50k-into-1-million/</link>
		<comments>http://www.wirlproject.com/how-i-turned-50k-into-1-million/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Edward Mei]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Buy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Home]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Money]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Real Estate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sell]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wirlproject.com/?p=5602</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hi, My name is Edward and I want to tell you a story from my life about how good things happen when you have perseverance  and patience. How I turned $50K into $1 million. In about 1987 when I was 21, I decide to buy real estate. I am a native San Francisco, born in Chinatown from a very modest family income (basically poor). Even though my parents never stressed getting a good education, they did mention to me once in a while that having your own home was important. Starting working part time when I was 15 ½, mainly after school and on the weekends at Safeway, which my uncle was the manager and hired me. Unfortunately he did not stay long after hiring me. He went to another Safeway and I found out from my mom he suffered from great headaches due being hit in the head with a gun during a robbery. During the summer of 1987, I purchased a 4 bedroom 2 bath ranch house in Pittsburg, CA.  The house was 1477 square ft but the lot was 10,200 square ft. At the time, I just bought what I could afford and the most space for the money. The purchase price was $109K. 2 years later, I bought a 2 story house which had 4 bedroom 2 bath. The purchase price was $180K. Then one year later in 1990, I purchased a 1 bedroom 1 bath (Concord, California) condo for $45k. Now to explain the math on how $40K turned into 1 million. The 4 bedroom 2 bath house in Pittsburg down payment  was $10K, so let’s round up the number to $15K with closing cost. Next the 4 bedroom 2 bath house in Concord down payment was $25K which is rounded up to include closing cost. For the Concord house, I did not even have the 10 percent down to buy the house which would have been $18K. Only had about $10K, but the seller was willing to carry a second loan for $10K at 10 percent for a 5 year balloon payment. The last one, which was the 1 bedroom 1 bath Concord condo, I will say the total down payment was $5K. Since I round up the cost of the two homes, I am using use $5K as the total cost for the $45K Concord condo sale. Let’s add it up $15K, $25K and $5K = $45K (round up to $50K). Then in 2005, the tenant at the Pittsburg house informed me that they were moving, so I decide to sell the house since real estate prices were climbing. The house sold for $430K on 6/23/2005. The sale went so fast and smoothly, I decided to sell the 2 other properties. On 3/10/2006, the Concord house sold for $457,500. Then later on 11/16/2006, the Concord condo sold for $199K. Let’s add it up again $430K, $458K, and $199k = $1.08M. Now you’re thinking, Wow! One million dollars! But, (there’s always a but in there somewhere) it took 20 years to make that and then 1/3 of the profits went to taxes (federal and state) and both the profits from the Pittsburg and Concord house was split 50/50 between my brother and I, since they both were considered family properties. The Concord condo I bought myself but still had to pay taxes on the profits. A few statistics to remind us about the world we live in. Global median salary is $18K. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Think about the $10 when you eat lunch on any given day. &#160; p.s. I met Sara, Founder of WIRL Project, at an event in San Francisco. I am a very private person, but she asked for help and I like to pay it forward. I am looking for help with my new startup also = www.blendedd.com Any content that can be posted/listed would be highly appreciated. Thank you, Edward]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>My Trip to San Francisco</title>
		<link>http://www.wirlproject.com/my-trip-to-san-francisco/</link>
		<comments>http://www.wirlproject.com/my-trip-to-san-francisco/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2015 22:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Sara Brennan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Food/Drink]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life/Leisure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Golden Gate Bridge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Grand Hyatt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hotel Union Square]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[San Francisco]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SFO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uber]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UberPool]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Union Square]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wirlproject.com/?p=5527</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; If you follow me on social media, you probably know that I recently went to San Francisco with my husband, Mitch, to celebrate our Anniversary and my 30th birthday. We left our toddler at home with Nana and took our first &#8220;getaway&#8221; without him. I felt guilty for leaving him, but we had a great time! For what we did while in California, I would not recommend bringing a toddler, or even young child, but it&#8217;s up to you and how you feel about the word &#8220;vacation&#8221; (lol). While in California, we visited San Francisco and Napa Valley, but I am only going to focus on the stay in San Francisco right now&#8230;my review of Napa will come later. We arrived at about 8:30 pm, got our bags, and arranged for an Uber driver to pick us up. If you aren&#8217;t familiar, Uber is an app that allows you to have &#8220;private driver&#8221; pick you up and take you to your destination. We love Uber because it shows you exactly where the driver is when you request the pickup (so you know the wait time) and it calculates the cost of the trip before you even get into the car; for San Francisco, it was great! We actually did something called &#8220;UberPool&#8221;, which is only available in larger cities, but it basically means you are requesting a driver to come and pick you up from your location but you are carpooling with other riders. This brings the cost down and we never paid more than $15 (most of the time it was less than $7) to get from Point A to Point B. I&#8217;d REALLY recommend using Uber because Taxi&#8217;s are much more expensive and the drivers aren&#8217;t nearly as friendly. We stayed at two hotels while in San Francisco, both were in Union Square. I loved both of our hotels and would recommend them. (If you&#8217;re wondering, we stayed in two because we went to Napa in the middle of our trip and spent on night there.) The first hotel we stayed at was called the Grand Hyatt. It had a nice lobby with a pretty friendly staff, a nice little bar and restaurant, and our room was very nice too, with a great view of the city (we were on the 24th floor). Our first day, it was about 85 degrees outside so we decided to take an Uber down to Fisherman&#8217;s Wharf, walk around, and then rent bikes to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. The bike rental spot, called Blazing Saddles, was great and the people were helpful, but they did not quite tell us the intensity of the hills we were about to ride up. Now, Mitch and I are both pretty athletic (#humblebrag), but DAMN! some of those hills were pretty steep! I would recommend taking a spin class (or two) to prepare if you know you&#8217;re going to do this when you visit! When you do this whole bridge/biking adventure, you ride bikes over the bridge and then take the ferry back (FYI, the bike ride is about 9 miles one way). Nobody told us how steep the hill would be on the way from the bridge to the ferry. Mitch did fine with this, but I was very nervous about it. There is a very little shoulder on the road and although it&#8217;s downhill, it&#8217;s pretty steep and uneven; so be careful! Overall, it was a fabulous experience! You could see Alcatraz and the entire city, I would 100% recommend it; just be ready for those steep hills! Later that day we ate at a big Market near Fisherman&#8217;s Wharf (we actually ate at the restaurant featured in the link) and it was really good! It was a really cool place FILLED with people. Then, we went back to Union Square and took advantage of all the shopping! That night we went to an event at General Assembly San Francisco where I represented WIRL Project and met some very successful people including David Mitroff and Josh May. We got some great feedback about WIRL Project, which is something to be proud of considering San Francisco is basically the &#8220;Tech Capital&#8221;! Anyway, after the event, we had reservations at Cotogna, a very yummy Italian restaurant &#8211; the Mushroom pizza was our favorite, but we also had the Lamb Shank and a massive Ravioli (right)! Yum!! The next morning we ventured off to Napa, which I will write about later, but I do want to discuss how we got there. We took an UberPool form Union Square to SFO airport and rented a car for about $15/day (compared to the $150/day in Union Square). The UberPool cost $15 each way, so it was still a muuuuuch better deal to go about it in this way. We came back to San Francisco the next afternoon and stayed at Hotel Union Square and were upgraded to a suite for my birthday (yay!!). They gave us a really good bottle of wine and a little note, very nice! Our room was very &#8220;boutique&#8221;ish and I LOVED it!!! It was right down town and a great location. We walked from here to Chinatown to get some authentic food; most might not want to do this, but Mitch being from Australia loooooves some good authentic Chinese Pork/Duck&#8230;so we gave it a try. It was REALLY good and we actually went back for more the next day! For the rest of the time, we just walked around, did some sight seeing, and some shopping! On my birthday, we went to Sift, a cute little bakery for some cupcakes, they were delicious! Although the city is super busy, it was somehow a very relaxing trip for us&#8230;probably partly because we didn&#8217;t have our sweet toddler with us. We took the &#8220;red eye&#8221; flight home and arrived in time for Mitch to head off to work on Monday morning. We had a great time out there on the West Coast and loved the humidity free weather (although it was a little chilly compared to Charlotte, NC). I left out quite a few details, so let me know if you&#8217;d like to know more. If you are considering traveling to San Francisco, California anytime soon, feel free to ask me for advice. Hope you enjoyed this post and found it helpful! xo]]></description>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Come to SoCal they said..</title>
		<link>http://www.wirlproject.com/come-to-socal-they-said/</link>
		<comments>http://www.wirlproject.com/come-to-socal-they-said/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2015 22:00:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lindsay Combs]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Life/Leisure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carefree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[happiness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[San Diego]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Self growth]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wirlproject.com/?p=4592</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Beautiful, sunny, warm climate year round with beaches and palm trees galore? Some of the most beautiful sunset spots, hiking, the most and best Mexican food you could ever imagine in your life? A place where anything goes, people don&#8217;t judge you for your clothes or hair or expensive bags. A place where people literally just go with the flow &#38; love &#38; enjoy life. Don&#8217;t want to wear make up today? Didn&#8217;t shave? Who cares as there&#8217;s a 50% chance the woman next to you on the trolley or at the bar for lunch didn&#8217;t either. Haha! Sounds a little like paradise. To me, anyways. Sounds like a place where you spend a couple thousand dollars on to vacation to for a week. Then fly back to your shit weather and the real world where you turn back into that work zombie and do your 50+hour a week job[s] to start saving for that next trip. Welcome to San Diego, my friends. Where I am so very proud to say, I now live! I grew up in a tiny town in NW Pennsylvania called Corry. There&#8217;s like 6,600 people currently still living there. It&#8217;s about 30 miles south of [literally] one of the snowiest cities in the country, Erie, PA. I guess you could say I was a pretty fortunate kid growing up. For most of my younger years my family was lucky enough to go on a trip to Florida every now and again. Walt Disney World is still to this day one of my absolute favorite places on the planet. SO many memories. We would usually go in December. Then as I got into high school, one of my best friends&#8217; family was nice enough to invite me to go down to stay for a week or so in the spring time with them a few years in a row. What a blast we would have! After high school I got a job with a corporate restaurant and graduated from Cosmetology school. Basically did nothing but work and drink. I was living the ultimate college life, had all the pretty friends, good looking boyfriends, went to all the coolest places, had the nicest clothes, always had my hair done. But who was I kidding I wasn&#8217;t going to college, heck I never even took my state boards for Cosmetology! My friends and I lived the good life for sure and none of us lacked a thing&#8230;material wise. The snow and cold finally did me in in 2007, so goodbye Erie, PA and onto Raleigh, NC. I had my first Christmas there in 2007 and it was 75, sunny and we actually grilled out that day. I vowed I&#8217;d never move north. Within a year and a half however, I met my future ex husband [ha!] who joined the Navy and we were stationed in Virginia Beach. [Wait hold up, did somebody say beach?!! I&#8217;m in!] Moved there in the spring and thought, OMG I live in paradise. I then vowed I&#8217;d never not live on the ocean again. Hmm. Then winter came. And kept getting worse every year. Ha! Shit follows me was the ongoing joke! Anyways the marriage didn&#8217;t last. We were divorced and I soon found my myself working 3 jobs, drinking my ass off, and not accomplishing much of anything but stashing $$ away. But for what?! I then took my first trip back down to Florida in about 8 years. Buddy of mine and his uncle, who are pilots, and I flew one of their small planes down into Naples. It was my first time there as an adult. It was even better than I remembered in the past; with the exception of Disney of course! And I only dreamed to someday end up in such a beautiful place as that. I made it back to Virginia and soon came to realize I was not happy anymore, just going through the motions day to day. I had a beautiful home, had bought something very nice for the first time in my life [my dream car], had a couple amazing jobs, friends and acquaintances galore, but yet I was so lonely. [and cold!!] I only had a few friends that I would ever actually hang with. Everybody else was work friends or clients or my bartenders, or it seemed anyone I got close to, got deployed or stationed elsewhere.  That being said, my best guy friend got stationed to San Diego Spring 2013. He had basically been deployed 5 out of the last 5 and a half years, so was very much looking forward to some shore duty out there. From the day he found out he asked me to go with him. I laughed, &#8220;My mom would kill the both of us!&#8221; I&#8217;d tell him. From the moment he arrived in SoCal, he raved about it. Oh, how he loved it. But it was all in one ear and out the other for me. Whenever I thought of California, all I could see was celebrity crap and dollar signs and Hollywood and the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The OC, everything I saw on tv. And that is definitely NOT my style! About 6 months later after a trip to Scotland fell through, I had $$ from that flight I didn&#8217;t take to use towards whatever I wanted. One of my buddies was flying out to San Diego to see our friend in a few weeks and said I should use part of the Scotland ticket to go. Two weeks later, I was in sunny San Diego, where it was mid November and 80 degrees. We took a trolley tour which started in historic &#8220;Old Towne&#8221; and it went all through the city, downtown, and then we were about to cross over that famous Coronado Bridge. My buddy, who was sitting behind me, and taps me on the shoulder and says, &#8220;Are you ready to fall in love?&#8221;. I said, &#8220;Oh, shut up!!&#8221;, and he said, &#8220;I mean with San Diego!!!&#8221;. Then, I looked to my left and saw the 2nd largest US Naval base in the world, and just past that? MEXICO! [I LOVE MEXICO!!!] Then you look to your right, sailboats galore! Mini cruise ships! Then the San Diego downtown city skyline. HOLY SHIT. This dude lives here?!? I actually remember somebody telling me, &#8220;Any day you don&#8217;t work in San Diego is like a vacation.&#8221; I didn&#8217;t quite believe that, but I was now up for the challenge &#38; it was literally over from there. Within 5 months, I went back to Virginia, tossed Florida out the window, and packed up my home and my fur babies. I barely made it through another terrible winter, when boom, I left all 3 jobs, and at the end of April one of my best girlfriends and I packed up a 16 foot Penske truck, had my car put onto a car port, that was being towed behind the truck, and we were off to drive cross country for the next week or so, stopping where ever, whenever we wanted. We made a little vacation out of it and thank God that I had her, because I would not have been able to do it alone! Sometime here in the midst of these few months [P.S., this &#8220;best friend&#8221; guy who asked &#8220;Was I ready to fall in love&#8221; has now become the boyfriend [oww oww! Haha!]], we were now moving in together. I got a job within four days of settling into our apartment and slowly started becoming familiar with the area. OMG, what isn&#8217;t there to do here?! There are miles among miles of beach, I can get a coffee and sit on the cliffs in La Jolla with the wild sea lions, there is the most fabulous Farmer&#8217;s Market in a different area of the city every single day, the coolest hiking trails, surfing, shopping, most beautiful golf courses, wine country is literally 35 miles north and has 40 gorgeous wineries! Mexico is a hop, skip, and jump across the border, LA is a two hour drive, Palm Springs is under three hours, and Vegas is under five! And don&#8217;t even get me started on the food, amazing night life, &#38; the most incredible craft cocktails you can imagine. I mean where else can you snowboard or ski and the surf in the ocean in the same damn day?! Get outta here! But with all that being said, you know the thing I like the best? The people and their way of life. Like I said before, anything goes here. And that was one of the first reasons the boyfriend told me why I&#8217;d love it. &#8220;It&#8217;s just so you, and so chill, and everyone is so caring and friendly.&#8221; Well let me tell you something, my hustle &#8216;n bustle &#8216;n race-to-get-everywhere-first &#8216;n be the first to do this or that&#8230;those days are over. I now work one job. It&#8217;s full time, but instead of working another couple hours here or there, or trying to book the next gig to bartend, I&#8217;m simply enjoying life. California has actually changed the person I am today; the stories of people&#8217;s lives and the open mindedness of everybody. There&#8217;s hippies and business people, tourists and sandwich makers. Bartenders, baristas, clerks at your local supermarket, dog walkers. NOBODY GIVES A DAMN. Everybody treats everyone equally. People are genuinely HAPPY! Even the homeless, when you pass them on the street, will occasionally give you a &#8220;Good morning!&#8221; And they expect nothing in return. [Well, not all of them!] WHERE AM I?! Haha! San Diego has taught me there is more to life than working and living up to all these stupid expectations you think you need to fulfill for everybody else. Do what makes you happy and so freaking be it. My ex-husband used to say to me all the time, &#8220;So you just want to be a bartender the rest of your life??&#8221; It used to infuriate me, because I&#8217;d think SO WHAT if that&#8217;s all I want to do?! I love it! I have met the most incredible people and heard the most amazing stories and I have learned so much being a bartender. It&#8217;s even how I got my day job that I loved so much in Virginia! What&#8217;s so wrong with that? I don&#8217;t know exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, career wise. Do I have ideas? Of course I do! Maybe I will be a bartender the rest of my life. Maybe I&#8217;ll open up my own bar someday. Maybe I&#8217;ll have the doggie day care I&#8217;ve always wanted, tied in with a small rescue program. Who knows? Who cares?! I&#8217;m not making any drastic moves until I know for sure and have the finances to 100% pursue anything, so until then, so be it. And San Diego is A-OK with that and you know what? 2 years ago I wasn&#8217;t able to say this, but that&#8217;s mighty fine with me as well!]]></description>
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