In the beginning there was great spending, bad decisions, student loans, auto loans, credit cards. There was little understanding. There were dozens of low wage jobs with lousy or no benefits. There were friends that were in the same boat, or worse. There were parents in the same boat, or worse. Siblings in similar or worse situations.
About 6 years ago, I met the love of my life. She already had children. We’ve had more since then. We both got serious about finishing our education. I got serious about finding a career. I went into IT, starting as technical support, then help desk, then asset management, and I’ve now moved into network monitoring for a fortune 500 finance company.
While I was in IT Asset Management it was just me and the inventory in a large storeroom. I would bring in my portable bluetooth speaker and listen to music while working. One day I decided I wasn’t in a music mood.One of the other guys on our team had mentioned he listed to podcasts like Joe Rogan. I’ve had some interest since Kevin Smith started doing them, but never got around to listening. But before checking out either I got the bright idea that maybe I could learn something instead of just listening for fun.
My wife and I rarely fight about anything. But occasionally, when we dare take a real look, we fight about finances. We talk about our goals frequently. We both are a bit spendy though, and have tendency to overspend our means if we’re not paying attention. With this in mind, I decided that day to look up personal finance podcasts and find one that I liked.
I gave a few different ones about 15 minutes each, always starting from episode 1. The first few I listened to were discussing concepts I’d never heard of. Eventually I found a podcast called Paychecks and Balances (paychecksandbalances.com) and they were speaking more on my level. I don’t think I’d learned anything about personal finance since 8th or 9th grade outside of life kicking my butt. After a couple of episodes, I was hooked. I started taking notes and listening to as many as I could fit in while working every day. My music routine was replaced by Rich and Marcus telling stories, interviewing guests, and dropping knowledge I never knew existed.
I’ve since read a dozen books and fully listened to several podcasts from episode 1. Some of my favorites so far are Afford Anything with Paula Pant (affordanything.com) and Bigger Pockets: Money (biggerpockets.com/moneyshow.) I’ve been catching up on blogs such as mrmoneymustache.com and madfientist.com. I’ve been a sponge, soaking it all in.
I’ve been slowly bringing my wife on board. Setting long term and short term goals and tracking them. Tracking our spending and payments with Mint.com and spreadsheets. We even now have a credit card payoff posterboard hanging in our walk-in closet so that we see it a couple times each day.
We’re just starting our journey toward financial independence, but we’re so happy to have found it. After starting this self education, I already believe I have some insight I can contribute to the space. Everything in life is a credit or debit from something. You start each day with 24 hours and everything you do is debiting from that time bank. You start each day with a personal weight and a 0 calorie count, everything you consume or physically do contributes to addition or subtraction of both. You start each day with a certain amount of net worth, every action you take monetarily contributes to credits or debits of that net worth. I don’t know all of the topics we’ll get into quite yet, but I do know this blog is to help keep me honest along the way, and tell our story.
We’re on our way to getting out of debt. We’ll then start building assets. We want to retire early in our mid to late 50s (we’re currently in our mid and late 30s respectively.) Our goal one day is to own both long term rental properties, and short term rental vacation lake houses that will create passive income we can live off of in retirement, as well as vacation options that we personally own. We will also be funding our 401Ks at work and IRAs. I will post some details about our current situation, and updates along the way. Hopefully you’ll get to follow us from typical middle class debt, to real wealth. Welcome to Credits and Debits, I hope you enjoy the ride!