Testing…1, 2, 3. Can you hear me out there? You listening? Good. Ah yes, I remember it like it was yesterday.
One of the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) Bloggers that I had been reading was featured in Forbes. I remember thinking how did he do that. Well, when you go from $0 to $400,000 in seven years that does tend to get people’s attention.
The thing that really stood out to me was that he actually got to $400,000. I just knew if he could get there, then he could get to $1 million.
That blog was called Budgets are Sexy.
I had the pleasure to not only meet J. Money, or J$ for short, in-person just a few years after that article, but also got to interview him on this blog. He’s one of the most coolest and down-to-earth finance dudes you will ever meet.
Over the years, he has given his advice on how he basically went from nothing to something.
He regularly talks about his net worth on his blog and does not shy away from telling you about the highs and the lows of building wealth.
He even did a post on how he lost over $60,000 in the market in one month!
His transparency is why people gravitate towards him. He tells it like it is. He walks it like he talks it.
One of the best pieces of advice he gave me on the road to $1 million was to max out your retirement accounts. All of them. And if you can’t do that, then save as much as you can.
What J$ didn’t know is that his blog lit a spark for me.
If he started with nothing and could go to almost half a million dollars, then I could too.
We like to call J. Money the Godfather of FIRE blogging because he started back when it was just a small niche in 2008. There is even a joke on his site where he is called the Miley Cyrus of Finance! Ha!
All jokes aside, I was paying attention. Budgets are Sexy is the personal finance blog in which it is Greenback’s Magnet yardstick for building wealth. Like Visa, his blog is everywhere my blog wants to be.
Therefore, after reading that Forbes article, I decided at that moment that I wanted to get to $400,000 too!
So I put my head down and went to work. At one point, I was investing 25 percent of my income. I lived off rice and kale. No avocado toast for me. I wanted that sweet taste of freedom.
Every spare dime was put to work in my brokerage account.
This blog is also how I keep myself accountable to reach my financial goals. It didn’t matter if I had holes in my shoes, I kept walking in then until they literally fell apart. Nothing went to waste. I was reading 10 to 20 books on personal finance a year.
I paid off my car $450 payment in 2009. Then my personal loan that was costing me $333 a month. All the hard work and sacrifices paid off when I saw that my balance had grown from $50,000 to $375,000. Then within a few months, I was at over $402,000!
That’s how your girl eventually ending up getting the greenlight to be a story featured on Business Insider.
It also got picked up by some other sites like Yahoo and AOL.com.
I am still increasing my annual contributions every year. I won’t stop until I reach my target: $1 million dollars!
The one crazy thing I noticed in the comments section is that there were many folks saying that $1 million will not be enough to retire.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I simply was sharing how I set a goal and was working on reaching it. Man, that really knocked me over. Nevertheless, I recovered quickly. You have to have thick skin once you decide to put your name or work out there.
Unlike George McFly, I can handle rejection. The point of the story was to help and inspire not to hurt and discourage.
I felt like 50 Cent on that interview he recently did on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast where he says his first record deal with Shady Aftermath netted him $1 million and Dame Dash says that ain’t no money. Huh? When you go from nothing to $1 million, you bet your a$$ that is a sh*t ton of money.
However, I digress. I just put my head down and went back to work.
No wonder people practice stealth wealth! Regardless of all the naysayers, I am still working toward my goal. Next stop on the million-dollar tour is $500,000. After that, it is $750,000. And of course, $1 million.
If being on Business Insider taught me anything, it’s not to let anything or anyone trip you up on the road to your dreams. It’s great to be acknowledged and to talk about your goals, but it’s even better to actually live out your dreams.