My Journey To Financial Independence

The road to financial independence is not a linear path, at least that has been my experience. I have had the good fortune of 41 years of life and am so grateful that I was taught all the wrong things about money. Growing up in a world where financial insecurity was a way of life, rent not being paid, creditors calling, was not something I wanted any part of. Financial Independence was the last thing on my mind, I didn't really even understand what that term meant until quite recently. My "idea" of financial independence was financial security which is not a bad thing in and of itself. What I really wanted was security when I was quite young. A stable home to live in, some money in savings, maybe a nice car to drive, just your basic, middle class life and at one point, while it seemed like a reasonable goal for a person with my past, this was pretty much a journey to the moon in retrospect, but I never believed for 1 minute that I would not get there.

I think I was about 10 years old when I got my first job. We lived in Hamilton, Ontario at the time and I was a paperboy for the Hamilton Spectator. I write about this period quite extensively in my book, but for the purpose of this blog, getting that job so early in life got me hooked on making my own money and creating financial security. You see, making a few bucks and being able to buy a slice of pizza when you are hungry or a pack of baseball cards for entertainment became intoxicating psychologically and as this muscle began to grow and I became less dependant on my parents for my immediate or recreational purchases, I felt making even more money was a good idea and began to sell chocolates door to door and outside grocery stores. I did try to save a little of what I was making but who has financial discipline at 10 or 11.

While learning the lesson of hard work at a young age was invaluable, it did not correct some other learned behaviours. In my mid/late teens I was still the same child I was at 10 and 11. I had 2 jobs, although these were now McDonalds and Dominion (You may know this as Metro these days) I worked hard and had even taken to investing by this point but just as you can't out train a bad diet, you cannot outearn a lack of financial discipline. I got my first credit card around the age of 17, and I think by the time I was 18 had 2 or even 3. So while I was earning more money than most high schoolers my age, eating whatever I wanted for lunch most days, and even stayed in the occassional hotel, because I could, I was spending A LOT more than I was making and accumulated more than $8000 in credit card debt. While that may not seem like a lot these days with an average home costing about $800,0000, you have to remember in 1996 working for McDonalds I was making somewhere around $6.85 an hour. Sure, I had very nice clothes, and bought the finest supplements money could buy- yes even back then I was athletically inclined- and most of those were a complete waste of money.... I won't start down that path. $8000 in credit card debt was a mountain and I had no idea how to pay that off and a large part of me just wanted it to dissapear. Sure I had some savings and investments, but the amount of interest I was paying on credit cards made the choice to invest kinda silly. I considered bankruptcy! Can you imagine?! A child of 18 declaring bankruptcy.

Thankfully, I chose to pay that debt off. I cannot recall how that choice came to be but I am sure grateful I didn't choose the path of bankruptcy. In the following years the debt went away and I felt I had learned my lesson and to a certain extent I did. I began to invest and save more as the years went by, paid my credit cards off in full each month and became a homeowner at 23, it was magical! A condo that was to be built between 2002 and 2004!

Following that magical 2 year journey, I felt I had arrived and that some rewards were an entitlement. In 2005 I financed a brand new car, it was gorgeous, a 2005 Mazda 6 with every option I could imagine. God that felt great. What I actually did was trap myself for the next 5 years to a payment of $626 per month.

You see until a year earlier, I had cash in the bank, and almost no debt. The problem was, I tied all my cash up in that first Real Estate Deal in early 2005 and left myself with no cushion for the things that come up. You know what I'm talking about, a vacation, maybe your car needs brakes, your cat gets sick or even your rent when you don't earn enough in a particular month as a professional waiter, and you are a slave to a massive car payment like I was. So tragic. I relapsed and began to spend what I didn't have and was forced to turn to credit cards once again to maintain my lifestyle. It was an amazing fall from Grace, yes I had a condo that by this time had become a rental property with cash flow which provided me with some passive income but it was not nearly enough to cover my spending. It got so bad that a few months after I met my wife in late 2006 I had to borrow half of my car payment from her! Crazy eh!

Fast Forward to 2008 and I discovered the "magic" of the re-fi! I could take money out of the condo and pay off all that stuff I bought between 2006-2008. YAY!! The pressure came right off and there was enough left over to grow my Real Estate Portfolio. We bought another condo, this time in my favorite town of Ottawa! Another rental property to be! Then on top of that in 2009 we bought our home in Bradford Ontario. 3 properties in our portfolio and not a great deal of debt other than the mortgages.

I wish I could say that I learned my lesson and began to spend less than what I made, but then kids came along and I started a new career as a Realtor and I began to spend even more. You seriously can't make this stuff up!

In the years between 2011 and 2017 we re-financed 3 seperate times! It amazes me, even in this moment that I hadn't learned the lesson that the 10 year old boy delivering those papers did. Have cash, and if you want to buy more stuff, work more so you have more cash.

All those years of spending beyond our means came to a head in 2018. Our Debt, mostly on lines of credit and credit cards hit $53,000 dollars. Being charged a whopping $400 a month in interest! I had a 2015 BMW 535 that cost me $92,000. The condo in Ottawa was long gone (a story for another time) We were on vacation in Vancouver, BC and my wife wanted to know why I was skipping all the touristy stuff that cost a fortune in my eyes and I am screaming at her in the middle of Stanley Park, that "WE CAN'T AFFORD IT" (doesn't that sound like a wonderful vacation) I decided in that moment, NEVER AGAIN!! I had finally learned my lesson and our true journey to financial independence began.

Today, we owe a little less than $9000, that beautiful BMW that I still adore and drive, is all mine, paid off in full. We are a couple of short months away from moving to a larger home and expanding our rental portfolio for the first time in 9 years. We are closing in on a net worth of $900,000 and live and spend well below what we both earn every two weeks. There are no interest charges on credit cards, and we are able to give generously to our favorite causes and closest friends.

True Financial independence means being independent of your finances. These words of Tony Robbins echo in my mind every day. You cannot achieve anything resembling financial independence when you owe money to every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet. You are a slave to your debt and the bank. As the teenager in me once had, and the 20 and 30 year old for that matter, you may have the trappings and illusion of wealth but if you have to go to work each day just to pay back what you bought, that is not wealth and you are not on a path to financial independence. You are on a path of working the next 40 years, maybe you get a new car every 5 years, a larger home, a vacation here and there but you will work. I plan to work too but because I choose too, not because I HAVE TO, there is a very imporant distinction there. What would life look like if you were financially free, what would YOU do if you no longer HAD to go to work each day but could pursue your dreams?

With Love

-Chris