In this post I’m going to cover 3 things that brought me from being over $10k in debt, to being a millionaire. First, this is not going to be some get rich quick pep talk. This took years to achieve, and while I’ve gotten here before 40, it didn’t happen overnight.

Secondly, admittedly writing this makes me a bit uncomfortable. While I talk about investing and real estate a lot in my personal life, I typically don’t advertise my net worth. I’m also in a line of business where it doesn’t look good to show off your wealth. However, I know that I’ve traveled in many different shoes throughout my journey. I’ve been broke, I’ve been up to my ears in (bad) debt and now I’ve come to a much better place. Even though sharing this is somewhat uncomfortable, I feel if just one person can benefit from hearing about these experiences, then its worth it for me to open up and talk about it. With that said, here are 3 things that brought me from broke to millionaire.

1. Pain – By far, the number one catalyst that brought me from the brink of financial despair to the top 1% was Pain. I’ll never forget the feeling, where I was and how it felt. After months of frivolous spending, partying, 2 trips to Vegas and who knows what else, I finally worked up the courage to look at my credit card bills. After adding up the totals my jaw dropped. Ten Thousand and change. That didn’t include the $20k plus I had in student loan debt, the auto loan I had for my car, which was way more than I should’ve been able to buy. Every cell in my body felt like running, but there was no where to run. My fight or flight response was in a frenzy, and the message was read loud and clear by the most primitive part of my brain – run. But there was no running from this danger. This wasn’t a lion in the bushes ready to pounce, this was a mountain of debt, one I had built credit card swipe by credit card swipe, and I had no one to blame but myself. Looking back, this pain was the catalyst that prompted me to change. To this day, I never want to feel that pain again. It sucks. Its a feeling of hopelessness and despair, mixed with guilt and a dash of claustrophobia. Maybe you’ve felt it too. I’ve seen others in my life, hit this proverbial bottom before finally deciding to change. I’ve also seen others tread water, doing everything they can to avoid this pain, and the results are predictable…nothing changes. The fear of being poor has motivated many a millionaire to riches, and is documented by none other than Napolean Hill and many others. I’m not saying that feeling this type of pain is absolutely necessary in order for anyone to become wealthy, but it certainly was for me.
2. Discipline – Once I decided to change things in my life, the next most important key for me was Discipline. I had grown accustomed to driving a nice car, going out on weekends, traveling and living well beyond my means. The media was constantly bombarding me with images of successful people, and telling me that THIS is what I was supposed to look and act like. Moving forward, I had to have the discipline to live well below my means. I was already poor, and now I had to act even poorer in order to get ahead. I had to say no to friends, I had to set a budget. I basically had to do the complete opposite of what I had been doing. Slight changes weren’t going to help here, I had to go all in. Now, to some this might like a terrible burden, even the complete opposite of the freedom I was seeking. Those people would be right, at least in the short term. But over time, this discipline leads to real freedom. Not some fake notion of freedom the media sells. If you get nothing else from this post, get this, there is no freedom in living under crushing toxic debt. Real freedom is knowing you can afford to fix your car if it breaks. Real freedom is knowing you have a cushion. Real freedom is knowing that YOU are setting your limits, you are in control. Eventually, over time this leads to the freedom to dream. You see, when you are heavily in debt, or broke, or a combination of the 2, the idea of becoming financially free seems like fantasy. Its so far removed from your reality, that one can’t even allow themselves to dream about it. The reality is, if you can’t imagine being wealthy, you never will be. And to get to that point requires discipline.
3. Financial Literacy – So ok, you’ve probably heard all this before. I mean this is what every financial planner and guru tells you. “Get out of debt, pay off your credit cards, etc, etc.” But the third point is what made my journey different from most. Once I felt the pain, and once I got my finances under control through disciple, I now had funds with which to invest. I now had to learn how to become financially literate. I had to learn how to make my money grow more than just sticking it into an index fund. If I wanted to become financially free, I didn’t need a PhD to figure out a 401k was not going to get my there. Furthermore, I didn’t want to wait until I was 65. (Side not: Personally I feel a 401k is a terrible investment vehicle, but I’ll save that discussion for another post.) After researching several investment vehicles (stocks, options, futures, FOREX, private equity, My own business) and after reading Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” for the second time, I knew real estate was the route I wanted to take. I’ll cover the key benefits of real estate in a separate post, but what I knew at this point was that real estate offered me the opportunity to create income I could live off of, without spending down my balance. This sounded appealing to me, but as I would later discover there were many other benefits I hadn’t even considered. Still, this desire to become financially literate, was the third driving force that propelled me towards financial freedom.

So there you have it, the 3 keys that – for me – brought me out of debt and into a life of wealth. 1) Pain, 2) Discipline and 3) Financial literacy.

I’ll dive deeper into these topics in future posts. Feel free to leave any questions in the comments.

Until next time, live free.

Collin