I’ve been wanting to share my story with Blind. It’s something I’m proud of, but I also think it may help many people who read it- it covers my highs and low, my days of being poor and rich. I started my career in 2013. My first job was as a dev in a 10 person startup. This wasn’t a fancy VC funded startup but a real one, where the founder was running it out of a tiny cheap office 10 miles from downtown in a LCOL city. My pay was $11 per hour. I worked there for 2 years, and fought tooth and nail to increase my pay to $12/hour. I knew I was being underpaid and I needed more money. I saved aggressively. I paid a paltry rent of $500 per month sharing an apartment. Bought a used reliable car. I still managed to save money. I never bought furniture- always picked up something from the trash. Slept on the floor. Used my office laptop for everything. Shared Netflix accounts, barely ate out. Did odd jobs sometimes to earn a few bucks. I split on dates, and kept it low budget (they usually didn’t go well as a result). I upskilled myself with the money I saved. A couple of years later I got a job at a bigger, more well known company, which paid 70k/year. The work was very tedious and boring. The office was filled with old folks with institutional knowledge and it was a terrible fit for me. I slacked off and one day I found out I was laid off. It came as a shocker. People who have worked for a few years know this is common but it feels terrible the first time. The next few months were spent in a lot of intense prep interviewing. I knew about the way better offers out there that FAANGs could give and I wanted that. I had countless failures. I was getting nothing. The only offer I got was a 3 month contract from a family run insurance company for barely any pay. The person I talked to was clearly toxic and made it clear he was doing a favor to me. I hit rock bottom then. Depression and anxiety consumed me. I had one more opportunity- an interview with Microsoft. Two days before the interview I had a panic attack. I gave the interview everything I had. After a painful wait, I got a call saying I got the offer. It was surreal. I simply refused to believe it, even after I began the job. They offered me top of the range, about 170k in Redmond, and for me it was a big jump. It honestly took me a few weeks after I began the job to even accept that I really had this job. I was so grateful for being hired. I worked hard and was a top performer, but I continued having anxiety and depression and imposter syndrome the next few months. Kept saving like crazy for a while. Got married soon after (no frills affair), and wife wanted to buy a house. I was the type of guy who thought twice before buying a spoon, so took a while to process that. While she shared my frugality to some extent, it wasn’t as extreme as me. Housing in Seattle was booming and it didn’t seem right. I waited and invested in high growth tech stocks. I finally got myself a real mattress (and bed soon after). I began shopping from Whole Foods sometimes. I got a couch from ikea. Nervously got a TV. When there was pullback in the housing market, I pulled the trigger and got a large house after putting in every dollar I had. Converted a part of it into an independent room I could rent out. Refinanced at low rates. When I moved into the house, I still had such few possessions that it just took a small U-Haul and 1 trip. Could have fit in a car tbh. Didn’t even own a table to eat food on. After a thaw, house prices began rising again and now my wealth began to increase with it. This was honestly the biggest wealth builder for me. Partly luck, partly smarts. Covid came along, I switched jobs. Got more pay, 270k. Put it all in stocks and crypto which were booming. Sold most of it at highs. I was feeling great. Got a proper new SUV this time. At this point I was living like how “normal” people live like. Then I got sucked into the wrong circle. People who could not stop talking about how the world was going to change post Covid. I was skeptic for the longest time until I fell like an idiot for missing out on gains every retail trader was having. I got a few options- something I had refrained from touching for the longest time. When the pullback happened, I doubled up. When the pullback continued I doubled up again. Lost quite a lot of money in obviously stupid stocks in hindsight. It was a great lesson for me to not get sucked into hype and to only trust my own gut. I still own some crypto, and some risky stocks but it’s way smaller now. This past year I recovered some of these losses and close to 2M in net worth (wife works too, and this is combined). I have 2 kids now, and a job that actually pays lesser but where I’m very comfortable at. I’m no longer able to focus on money, and even losing it because raising 2 kids is expensive. I’m comfortable now. Having this much money now means I no longer worry about every day expenses. It’s really nice to be able to dine out any time or buy something without thinking twice. Even pay for luxuries like having my house cleaned up, or repairs taken care of, or food delivered. I feel grateful for my life’s trajectory. I acknowledge that luck played a role, but I also know deliberate actions that I took that greatly increased my wealth. It feels like the gap between the rich and the poor is ever increasing and income mobility is decreasing. But there are absolutely steps that anyone can take in being frugal, being pragmatic, and occasionally taking a calculated risk based on a strong gut feeling or facts, that can pull people up. Along the way in my journey I’ve met people who spend every last penny they earn and live paycheck to paycheck. Buying a Camaro they can’t afford, or the makeup subscription box, or eating out daily, or buying designer shoes racking up credit card debt. They’re quick to complain how little they get paid. Honestly it astounds me how irresponsible some people are. Even as I acknowledge I used to be extreme in my frugality. Hope this was a good read. TC: 280k
Congrats but this could have easily gone south
TLDR? Please
You missed the point- this is about the journey not the destination
Is there a typo? assets or asses?
Asses
cool? I guess? I work to live. I could never be this frugal, it sounds awful.
That’s a really nice and inspiring story. Thank you for taking the time to write and share this. Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone else above my comment is just being a prick, ignore them
Congrats. What is your TC and NW in under 5 words?
Current tc is 280k though it used to be higher. Wife has the same TC. NW is close to 2M combined
Thanks. Congrats to you and your wife
Congrats!!
Good share, TY...Extra Kudos if you typed this on your phone.
Typing on the phone was hard. Blind also starts lagging if the text is too large
I don’t understand how you accumulated such a NW when it sounds like you didn’t start making good money until ~5 years ago? Or is almost half your Nw in primary home?
Yes a lot of it is in the primary home. Got it at a low period and refinanced. Value skyrocketed after Covid. Saved money on rent and instead made money renting out. And only recently began having lifestyle inflation, so before that everything I got would go straight into investments of some kind. Also got married and wife doubled TC- big reason.
How much of your NW is locked up in home equity?
Too lengthy 🥱