Hi, I’m Julie! I have been obsessed with personal finance since I started getting an allowance as a young child. I was constantly negotiating with my parents (and my brother) on ways to earn more and save. Some of the favorite memories I remember include…
– Getting my parents to pay me money to wear a dress to church
– Similarly, earning money to grow my hair out (I was quite the tom boy and had very short hair.)
– Helping my brother sell his Boy Scout Popcorn
– My dad paid me $100/month to not watch TV for a year, with an added $100 bonus if I made it the whole year. I did.
– Forgoing prom but requesting the money my parents would have paid on a dress
I have always enjoyed saving. While I did make some big purchases as a tween and teen, the biggest one being a BMX bike, most of my money sat in my bank account that my parents opened for me. I wanted to start trading stocks as soon as I could, so I opened up a Roth IRA and an investment account at 18. When I left for college I had a few thousand dollars. That felt like a million bucks back then. I worked throughout college, saving more money and being lucky that it was right around the big market crash in 2008-2009 that I started to have bigger chunks to put into the stock market. I graduated college early to save money, and used what was left in my college savings account to put down on a house. Plus, the government was giving out the $8,000 first time home buyers tax credit. A lot of my financial success has been luck, but a lot of it too was being in a position to be able to take advantage of my good luck on timing.
My first job out of college paid $50,000. I started saving 6% of my paycheck into my 401K, and maxed out my Roth IRA each year. Other than that, I continued to invest in stocks and a high yield savings account. I never thought I’d see 5-6% again on a savings account, but here we are (as of this writing in June 2024.) What has really grown my wealth, though, has been investing in real estate. I turned the first house I bought in 2010 into a rental a few years later, and then turned that next house I bought into a rental a couple of years after that. By the time I bought my third house in 2015, it was strictly meant to be an investment, and from there, the snowball effect really took over. I try to buy houses that will cash flow at least $500 per month, which may not seem like a lot, but by the time I had 3 and that was yielding an extra $1,500/month, it took way less time to save up for the next down payment, and so on and so forth. Again, I was definitely lucky in that I purchased the majority of my properties between 2010 — 2020, right before the market really seemed to pop off.
I crossed the $1M net worth threshold around 30 years old, and I am really proud to say that I achieved it by a combination of luck, fiscal responsibility, and sticking to my beliefs. A lot of people told me investing in real estate and being a landlord in my early-20’s was absolutely nuts. A lot of other people told me to leverage myself way more than I did to grow my net worth by 10x, but I didn’t feel comfortable having that much debt. At the end of the day, I hope that this blog helps you develop your own financial beliefs. I don’t think you should do everything I say because your situation is different than mine. But, I hope that you take my advice as a piece of your puzzle, and figure out what works best for you.
I also hope that everyone realizes by reading this that financial independence is possible for anyone at any age. It will take time, dedication, and sacrifices but it is possible and I can tell you that not having to worry about finances is SO worth it. 🙂
Enough about me. Thank you for reading and look forward to chatting with you soon.