My Financial Independence Origin
Before my journey to Financial Independence started, I was a broke college graduate spending every penny I earned while racking up credit card debt just to keep up with the Jones’… It was hard for me to accept that I was failing at something. The people closest to me looked at me as a leader. If they knew I was broke, pretending, and flat out lying… what would that do to my ego. That is where my thinking was wrong..
My mind started to shift a little. I wanted to somehow make enough money to do the things in life I really wanted to do. Before getting married it included golfing, vacations, and just hanging out with friends. I know, super boring. Today, I want to spend time with my wife and son. The thought of missing my son’s important moments is enough drive to fill an entire bank!
Although my mindset started to shift, I was still broke. Same bills coming in with not enough money to cover them. At the time I was struggling with money. That meant I had to use credit cards, not pay my bills, or ask family for money. Pathetic, right? Since starting my Financial Independence journey, I notice many in the community struggle with the same things.
Due to my lack of financial confidence, I felt like a failure. I had a college degree, was a former student athlete, captain of all my college teams, lived a life of structure and discipline.. so I thought at least…. Yet, there I was 25 years old pretending to have all the money in the world.. The credit card companies let me think that for sure! If you pay the minimum, they’ll keep lending you high interest credit limits…. School doesn’t teach that. You just have to learn it. Hopefully not the hard way like me.
Then, a new year started and guest what? Not good news unfortunately… My student loans increased by $500 a month and I felt like giving up. That may not sound like much money, but at the time it was more than my rent. Then something amazing happened. I began to educate myself on personal finance and the principles of Financial Independence and everything changed. I was able to take a big step back and understand why I was broke. All of my spending was brought to the forefront. At that moment I realized… I’m not broke, I’m just dumb…..
From that point forward, I decided to organize my finances, get out of debt, and be discipline again. All of this so I could start buying Cash-Flowing Assets and become financially independent.
There was still a problem though.. I still had to deal with the debt. Before the journey to financial independence could start I had to eliminate my student loan debt. All of $105,000.. Just writing that makes me motivated all over again. I’m still in this very journey today, but have put together a plan to catapult me through the debt.
In the end I started to tackle the debt by putting every penny possible toward the it. That allowed me to start saving for my first cash-flowing asset. It was a rental property that brought me in an extra $400 each month in net income. My journey to Financial Independence had officially started.
When all is said and done I was able to build a financial independence blueprint so I can be with my family more often and do the things I enjoy the most. And in the end, all of this means FREEDOM!