Three Truths I Learned About Real Estate Investing from A Toothache

Do you remember when you were a child and your tooth started to feel a bit funny, then it stopped feeling a bit funny and started to hurt? Most of the time this was a sign that your “baby” tooth was about to fall out as it made way for your “adult” tooth to come in.

If you were lucky enough this tooth came out on its own, maybe suddenly or when you were biting down on a crunchy apple. Alternatively, you may have had the “luck” to lose you tooth in a manner like one of the many viral teeth pulling videos circulating on the internet. If your experience was the latter, hopefully it wasn’t too painful.

Either way, the loss of that tooth gave you access to join one of the many childhood traditions common in the US and many other parts of the world; you could now trade in your old baby tooth to the “tooth fairy” in exchange for some monetary compensation.

The “tooth fairy,” as the folk lore goes, is a magical fairy grandmother that comes around when you have lost a tooth. The legend says that if you put your tooth under your pillow at night when you are sleeping she would exchange your tooth for some money and you would wake up to a windfall cash inheritance (or at least what you may have considered a windfall during your childhood).

Do you remember this experience? How did you feel waking up and seeing that crisp $1 bill (or even more if you were lucky) that showed up while you were sleeping?

Pretty good, I bet.

A few decades later, for the first time since childhood, I found myself suffering from a toothache. There was no wobbly baby tooth, no viral videos. All my adult teeth were in at this point. I was just stuck with a toothache and this time it was bad, so bad I couldn’t sleep.

The next day I scheduled an impromptu visit to the dentist to get the tooth checked out. After a few X-rays and an inspection by the dentist, I found the source of the pain; it was a wisdom tooth that didn’t come in properly and the surrounding tissue was inflamed. I would likely have to have another visit to the dentist to take the tooth