Introducing.... Me

Hello everyone and welcome to this website! I will be one of the main contributors to this blog and I would love to introduce myself for my first written post.

My name is Justin, and I am from Panama City, Florida. A smaller town in the armpit of Florida. Grew up in a manufactured home most of my life due to my dad’s student loans and both parents worked in the school system. I didn’t feel unsafe until we moved into a part of the town where drugs were being made. Found out later that Panama City is a powerful city in the Meth game. Our neighbor, “PJ” would walk in his pajamas having a full conversation with himself and would walk with his arms extended in the middle of the road each day. Our power would routinely be turned off by people in the middle of the night and we could hear gunshots almost every night. The location wasn’t great, but we were still able to eat, do many after-school sports programs, and went to Disney World a lot during my childhood. It wasn’t until after my dad’s student loans were paid 20 years after he graduated that we were able to move into a gated community on a foreclosed property. They also proceeded to buy two new vehicles a year apart and life was good in the suburbs. No issues with neighbors, no drugged-up people walking around, and no gunshots, it was great. I was still a novice with money back in those days, so I had no idea how they paid for it. It wasn’t until I saw their bank account that I thought we were poor. Only $20,000 in the bank when I snooped over their shoulder. I had no idea what investments were, what savings accounts were, interest rates, or anything like that but what I saw that day was their emergency fund. A fully funded one too. This was the first sign that my mom was not a risk-taker. Her goal with her finances was safety. Unfortunately, this is a big reason she didn’t invest in a 401(k) or any stock retirement fund. She has a teacher retirement, but she could have had even more if she invested in a retirement fund. I was just able to talk her into a Roth IRA, but I did have to hit her over the head with the math repeatedly until she opened one. Sadly, she only gets 10 years or less of tax-free growth.

I saw the beginning of my parents’ retirement struggle. They will be able to retire if their house is paid for but other than that the money would be very tight for them. My dad’s 401(k) isn’t enough to sustain for 20+ years if they had to pay a mortgage. Seeing this, I put the small college fund my parents gave me and put it into a Roth IRA when I was 20 years old. Luckily, my college was paid for with my good testing scores.

My story is like most people in America because I had no financial knowledge at all. I remember when I got my first $300 limit credit card and I thought it was so great that I could afford some stuff now and only pay $15 a month. I had no idea what the interest was, I had no idea what the heck a utilization rate was. When I bought my first car, I still had no idea what interest rates were. Very grateful my mom was there co-signing with me with her 800-credit score. It wasn’t long after, that I decided I hate car payments. A hurricane hit my hometown, damaged my car, and I used the insurance money to pay off the loan. That was my first smart money move and a life with no car payment is an absolute blessing. I have heard story after story of stupid vehicle debt, and I am extremely blessed to not have that payment looming over me anymore. That decision was mostly emotional, I didn’t think about the math. Hell, I still didn’t even know the interest rate, I just knew a bill had to be paid every month and while I was still living at my parents’ home, I didn’t like that one bit.

I started learning a few things here and there, but my financial knowledge didn’t boom until I got a job delivering mail. I would be in a mail truck or at the post office, with just my Bluetooth speaker for at least 10 total hours a day. I discovered drop shipping, affiliate marketing, subscription box services, budgeting, retirement accounts, interest rates, and single stock buying and oh boy was I greedy. It was also the first time I had some real money to manage. $50,000 post-tax while living at home? CRAZY money. My parents were extremely generous in letting me stay rent-free, so I could put half of my yearly pay into the stock market and max out my Roth IRA for the year. I thought I was smarter than everyone and didn’t listen to anybody about the stock market risk. I was great in math and statistics; this would be no problem for me to spot a pattern. It wasn’t even a year and a half when I panic-sold at a loss of $15,000. This was a nice slice of humble pie where I maybe wasn’t as good as I thought. I just saw all of the YouTube videos of it being easy money. It wasn’t long after that when I found out about Mr. Dave Ramsey. He was simple and to the point with money. No fanciness, no dancing around the stock market trying to be smarter than everyone. It made me feel very silly that I was being a kid that couldn’t even drink alcohol but trying to beat the market. 80% of my portfolio was single stocks. I always wanted to leverage debt with rental properties and do the cash-out refinance trick that internet marketers love to say a free money glitch that leaves you holding the bag if anything happens.

More time passed and I couldn’t stop myself from reading all the money books, listening to all the podcasts, and video watching. I switched my college degree to the finance track and have been immersed in it ever since. There is just something so tantalizing about money, it can be a huge stressor on a marriage or any relationship for that matter. It can limit your retirement years. It can add stress on top of health scares. It can limit the time you can spend with the people you care about. It helps take the worry from your kids’ collegiate future. It can help you own more of your time to spend on the ones you love. You can pass on the financial knowledge to the next generation so they can avoid our mistakes. It can help you skip the lines at theme parks. It can pay for the wedding of your dreams. It is also a thing you can control to help you become wealthier, or more generous. It can do so many wonderful things, but you need to get a grasp on the essentials and never look back. It has really fired me up for contributing to this website. Helping others avoid the same mistakes I made growing up will make me extremely happy. I hope we can all learn more and live life the way we want to enjoy. Getting your finances under control can help!

Some personal financial goals of mine are investing and saving enough money to be able to take some years in a part-time capacity for me and my wife to enjoy the baby raising together. It is a personal goal for her to spend time at home with the family as well. Another goal is to be able to pay for my parents' house in cash. This will let them have a much more comfortable retirement to pay back all the help they gave me.