Afford Anything - The Story of M.O.N.E.Y. -- Having Heart and Hustle

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

#1: Becoming successful in finances takes more than M.O.N.E.Y. - it takes heart and hustle. Meet Paula Pant and J. Money. Both worked day jobs before becoming successful bloggers. They share their stories about buying a house before the market tanked, starting their side-hustles, and achieving "mini-retirement", at least for Paula. We value your input. Please visit https://affordanything.com/episode-1-story-of-money-podcast to leave a comment. If you like what you hear, please subscribe for free in iTunes http://TheMoneyShow.co/iTunes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, let's just roll. Sweet, let's do it. Three, two, one. What up, Jay Money! Welcome to the Paula and Jay Money Show, a real and uncensored show about growing wealth and financial freedom. Your host, Paula Pant, is a fun-loving globe charter who lives on the West Coast, focuses on real estate investing, and runs the blog at Affordainthing.com.

Host Jay Money is a husband and father of two who lives on the East Coast, focuses on saving money and runs the blog, Budgets Are Sexy.com. While they may have wildly different approaches to building wealth, they both have your financial independence in mind. Which one most resonates with you? Find out. As you listen to The Money Show, here are your host, Paula Pitt, and Jay Money. What up, Jay Money? What's going on, Paula P?

How you doing? I'm doing great. How are you on this fine day today? I am awesome. You're always awesome, I feel like. You never seem to have a bad day. Hey, wondering why the sound quality kind of sucks? It's because we don't really know what we're doing.

at least not yet. So if the sound quality bothers you, just skip ahead to episode like five or six where we figure it out. But if it doesn't bother you, stick around. We got some good stuff. Actually, that's what I should start. Like, what's one bad thing that's happened to you in the last week? You know what? I would say I'm just like a little bit stressed because I just moved to Vegas and I was only in my new condo for a little less than two weeks before I had to leave for a month. So I had three back-to-back trips scheduled. I went to Colorado and then Costa Rica and then Switzerland. And I know this is like the definition of a first world problem.

Like, whey, I took too many trips and now I'm stressed out. But, I mean, seriously, it was like, I mean, I went to a wedding and then I had to speak. I presented for a week at a conference. And then after that, I had this long scheduled trip in Switzerland planned with an old college friend. And so now I'm back in Vegas and I'm only here for a week. And, you know, my place is still like just nothing but cardboard boxes. And so I'm, that's, I think, the thing that's, like, stressing me out right now is, like, when am I ever going to be out of these cardboard boxes?

Yeah, that's a good problem to have. You know what I did all this week? What'd you do? I hung out with two babies. Aw. I'll hang out with my little boys, a different kind of adventure. But that's what I love. That's why I'm glad, like, for everyone listening.

I can hear one of them in the background, by the way. Oh, geez, yeah. Oh, no, no. It's all good. It was actually perfect timing. You were like, I hung out with two babies and right on cue. Well, no, that's what I was going to say, like, for everyone listening, like, Paul and I've been talking about, man, doing this pot, I don't know what, four or five months now.

And we're like, you know what, let's just put it out there. Let's just start and just learn. Like, we don't know what we're got. I mean, my microphone fell in half and I was putting it together and rolled across the room. So, like, we don't know what we're doing with this podcasting thing. But it's fun, you know, we want to talk about money and how you can live these crazy awesome lives like Paula. This is like a show on how to be Paula pretty much. Oh, no, no, no. Actually, what I like about this show, and you and I have talked about this, because both of us have very

different lives, like, you know, I don't have kids and I travel a lot and I'm like big on the sort of adventure scene. Right. And, you know, you're like family man, you know, and you've got your your house and your like two babies and all of that. Like, I think that's a really good balance, because both of us are going to be talking about money and about life and we'll both naturally be coming from our own perspectives. Right. And I think. think that we have a lot of shared, shared philosophies and shared ideas and goals and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but, you know, but the backgrounds that we're coming from are just so different.

Yeah. When you forgot the biggest one, you are of the female species and I'm of the male. Do you that? You're a dude. And you've already accomplished for everyone that doesn't know, like, Paul has already, like, technically, in theory, you could retire now and be financially okay because of the way you've aligned your income and also your expenses are so low. You know, whereas I, like, I'm.

I'm working on it and I'm hustling and I'm trying to do the thing, but I'm still trying to catch up to that. Like, you reach, like, the ultimate pinnacle which a lot of people want to hit. And I'm slowly working towards, so I'm probably like in the middle somewhere. So for everyone listening, that's like a cool, like, perspective that you're going to get. And I'm sure we're going to bring on people. I mean, hell, that's a negative $200,000 debt that's, you know, in the beginning of the process. Right.

Exactly. Exactly. So I think we're going to have some really cool conversations, Jay Money. It'll be fun. I like it. And it'll be a lot, yeah, no editing, like, and blot writing a four-hour blog post just to say, like, two paragraphs that, like, takes me forever. You know, it's funny? Like, I love getting info out, but I hate the writing process. Even though, like, I've blogged, I mean, I've been doing it for seven and a half years now, I think it is. And you've been at it for what? Four or five years? You've been out for a while, too. Four years. Almost four and a half at this point. Yeah. So when this whole, like, podcasting thing blew up, I was like, oh, like, I was so excited because, you know, I love talking. And, man, that's like I started doing, like, blog coaching.

and money coaching just to like talk to people one-on-one. And it's just such a different vibe than writing and then sending it out and hitting publish and, you know, people are reading it, but you don't often get to hear the responses. And I don't know, this is a fun experience. Yeah, I totally agree. And like sometimes a lot of times when I write, I feel like if I could only speak the words out loud, my tone and my style might convey what I'm trying to say a little bit better than words on the screen.

Right, right. Well, that's why we have, you do too, lots of expectations. information point. I don't think I have like probably a thousand more smiley faces in mind than you do, but that's like my way of expressing it. Like people like, dude, you have so many damn smiley faces. I'm like, I know I'm trying to like get the happiness, uh, in mind. Like, I rarely write anything negative. I do bolding and italics. I try to do that a lot in order to like communicate emphasis. Right. Yeah, there you go. I break like every freaking rule of journalism. It's really, it's terrible. Yeah. And you, and going back to the background, so you, you actually do have that journalism.

in the background. I know you've won awards for it. And you're a really good writer slash journalist slash whatever that thing is called, right? Like I come from like a visual, like I went to school like graphic design and like multimedia stuff. And so writing for me is like the way, I mean, my background isn't in it. But what I love about all this new media just in general is just like the average regular person sharing their thoughts on any subject. Yeah. Like we're obviously we talk about money and entrepreneurship and that kind of stuff. Me, I personally relate to people, like reading your blog. You know, I love, I get, like, I know who you are, you know, I know your background, like I'm interested. Like,

I learn and respect your stuff more than say if I went to, hey, any, you know, blog that I've never heard of, but like, even especially like a corporate website or, you know, something that, like, it's just not a person. It's just like info, I guess, if that makes sense. Exactly. Exactly. Because, you know, if you, like, seriously, for all you listeners out there, if you really wanted to learn the nuts and bolts of personal finance, you could read a textbook. But you know what? You're not going to. And neither am I. And that's totally fine because textbooks are boring. And, you know, the heart of money really is like we make financial decisions with our heart and with our gut. Yes. I feel like it's good to have information so that our brain can inform

our hearts and guts. Wow, guts makes us sound like a really gory topic. You can say emotion. I say it's between emotions and then like facts. Yeah. I'm a very emotional person and then there's people that are very factual and it's okay. As long as you know that both sides and then you pick the one that like goes your general direction that you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Because there are so many financial decisions that I've made where I'm like, look, I know this doesn't make sense, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Hell yeah. And that's where like I think having people, human beings like bloggers and podcasters, rather than just reading cold data in a textbook, I think that's where that becomes really. valuable because you get that human. You get that dude who's like podcasting with his like kids screaming in the background, you know. Yeah, right. Exactly. Well, and I, what I like to and this, I want to his point, like you or me, I mean, at least me, I like, I hate when someone says, like Jay Money, like the financial expert. I hate the word expert because we're, like I said, like we're just people, regular people that figured out some degree of money and we're different stages, right? But we're not like, like I don't, I couldn't tell you the ins and outs of like,

all these super different IRAs and different, you know, I don't know, credit score stuff. Like, I know the general stuff. But like, like, we just, we're, I guess we say like our thoughts and our tips and everything based on personal experience and what we've learned being online and just in the world. So if everything we're saying, like, you know, do your own research and all this stuff, but just know that like this is from our personal stuff that we like to share. We're not like, quote, like experts in fancy pants, finance, grad school or whatever. Yeah.

I don't even know what it's called. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, we don't have like a master's in finance or a PhD in finance. And you know what? And I get that question a lot, actually. People are like, oh, do you have a degree in finance? The easy answer that I give is like, well, my background is in journalism. You know, and I think people kind of understand that a little.

They're like, oh, okay. So your skill is understanding a topic and then communicating it to the mass market audience. Right. You know, and that's a different skill than finance specifically. But I mean, but beyond that, you and I both think about money every single day. And when you have spent the past four to seven years thinking nonstop about money and forming friendships with other people around the basis that you guys both think about money a lot. And sort of when your entire life and your brain, it just revolves around that, you come up with some insights. at least I think, I hope.

Yeah, I hope so. You know? Yeah, like if you, yeah, it's all learning, taking in and processing and obviously like the more you spend on any topic, you know, sex, drugs, like, well, it doesn't really matter. Like, you're going to learn like a ton of info. Exactly, exactly. It's like think about it. Ours just happens to be money.

Yeah, totally. It's like if you went to a dinner party and somebody was like, hey, there's this random thing and I've spent the past 200 hours thinking about it and here's what I've come up with. Like, you're going to listen to that. guy at the dinner party who says that. Right, right, right. Exactly. If you're smart, you'll, you'll pay attention and ask it an awesome bunch of good, like your top 10 questions, so you don't have to spend the 200 hours and you can just learn real fast. Yeah, exactly. Well, talking about, like, why we talk about money and why we think about it. Like, Paula, tell the people, you know,

about your blog, like, how you got started. Like, it's afford anything.com. And for those who don't know, Paula, you know, why you started and what your general, like, purpose of is, you know, online or on this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. So travel back in time all the way back to when I was in college. So I've always loved traveling. That's probably my number one passion in life is traveling all over the world. And when I was in college, I really wanted to study abroad. But those programs were prohibitively expensive. They were $15,000 to $20,000 for a semester. And so I thought about it and I was like, you know what, I don't actually want to study. I just want to go abroad.

And so it seemed like the cheapest way to do that. I mean, hey, let's be real. Yes, good. I'm glad you're being real. So the cheapest way to do that, I figured, would just be to graduate and then go overseas. That was so much cheaper than actually paying for a study abroad program. And so that was sort of what I did, except that when I graduated, I didn't have any money. So I had to get a job.

And so I got a job at a newspaper and I worked there for three years. And the entire time that I was there, I was like just fanatically saving money. So I started, I had a starting salary of $21,000 a year. Yes, real numbers. I love it. Thank you. No problem. It's my favorite.

Yes. Keep going to be transparent as you can. So I started at a salary of $21,000 a year. And I put 15% away for retirement, which sounds impressive, but like 15% of 20% grand is not a whole lot. Yeah. Still good though. Thank you.

So yeah, I put aside 15% for retirement and then I lived on the rest of that money. And then in the evenings and weekends, I would write freelance articles for magazines and newspapers. And I made anywhere from at the low end, 50 bucks an article to at the high end, 50 cents a word. Wow. And what would that turn into, like roughly? on like $500 or something? Yeah, so for an article, like, you know, for a, at the 50 cent a wordmark, I was writing about 300 to 500 words in length.

So that would be like, you know, $150 to $250 per article. Right, right. That's awesome. So, yeah, I did that in the evenings and weekends and saved up all of that money after taxes. All of that went into a travel fund. And so after three years of doing that, I had $25,000 saved. And I realized that. that if I went to countries where the dollar exchange rate really worked in my favor,

like Thailand, Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, Vietnam, if I stayed in those countries rather than going to England, I would be able to stretch that out for, my goal was two years. So my goal was to live on $1,000 a month over the span of two years. And that's exactly what I did. I started off buying a one-way ticket to Cairo. This was before Egypt's Arab Spring Revolution. And yeah, and I just sort of went from there. I spent six weeks in Egypt and then went to into Israel and then over to India. And then, you know, traveled around Southeast Asia.

And at the very end for the last 10 months of what ended up being about a two and a half year trip, for those last 10 months, I went to Australia. and staying in like hostels was just prohibitively expensive, so I camped for most of that time. Wow, you're a hardcore. Awesome. And the number one question that I kept getting throughout this entire trip was, how can you afford it? Every single person said that. And I was happy to answer that question, but the concern that I had was that so many people were saying it with this intonation of,

I would love to do that, but I could never afford it. That was like this limiting belief, this self-defeating prophecy that I kept hearing people say. And that, I mean, if I earned $21,000 a year and, you know, as my like full-time salary and still managed to save up 25 grand over the span of three years, yeah, I firmly believe that anybody could do the same thing. Anybody could save $8,000 a year if you really put your mind to it, you know, and anyone can track. If traveling is your passion, and I'm not saying that it needs to be, your passion can be like playing the violin or whatever, you know, like anything. But like whatever your passion is, you can pursue it. And so I started to afford anything really around that idea that you can afford anything, but you can't afford everything. Bam.

I know that's like what I use that line of yours, like at least once a month, whether talking to clients or blogging, like it always stands out because it. it's so, I don't know, it's like obviously like catchy, but it's so true, you know? And that's the thing like people, oh man, people are always dreaming and talking about all these things, right? And then they don't do it. And it's like they don't, like they want it, but they don't want it bad enough, right? Like you want it, like you work three years nonstop to get the money and then you did it. Like most people can't go like three months because it just gets tiring, you know?

So I didn't know that about you actually. That's really fascinating. Thank you. Yeah, I was committed. I hung. I had this big map of the. world that I hung up in my bedroom and I would just lay in bed and look at that every single night. Oh, that's awesome. Well, and the thing, too, the thing about your stuff, which I like too,

we talked about before, but like when people think of retirement, right, most people think work 40, 50 years, get old and gray, retire, go on the golf course and you're good for however long you live, which is the majority of what people do. And I thought that too. And then like I stumbled across this like early retirement thing and financial freedom, you know, and people like Mr. Money mustache and mad scientists. They're all, you know, extreme and hardcore, I guess most people say, but, but like everything makes sense. And they're like, hey, save enough, get enough money banked or invested and you can retire, you know, your 30s or your 40s, you know, you don't have to wait that long. And so that was like my two things, right? Well, I can retire earlier

or be free or wait to the end, right? 60 or 70 or whatever it is. And then you, when I started in your stuff, you're like, well, there's actually a lot of like middle things too, right? like what you did like you worked hardcore for three years and then you like took off for like two or three years you know and then you assuming you went back to work and started hustling right because you ran out of money or whatever whatever um and so you bring like you have these ideas of mini retirements or you know temporary retirements or semi-retirementes like i know you have these words for it um but that's what i love about like there's no like one thing only right you don't have to work 40 or 50 years and then retire and then like quote yeah exactly

Exactly, exactly. I always refer to it as mini retirements. So sprinkling these little mini retirements throughout your life. Or the other, the, the, and that's hard to do. The phrase that I've recently come up with was retire early and often. Nice. Yeah, I don't, like, I don't even, I guess I've never wanted it that bad, but I can't even, like, it's, when you talk, it seems like so simple and so, like, easy. And then, like, I'd probably leave, like, how the hell do I do that, right? So hopefully over the course of this podcast, you'll be dropping all your secrets and tips. And in the meantime, I guess we could read your blog. Well, the one other thing that I want to say, I guess for the listeners who don't know me,

is that after I started to afford anything, the blog and my life started taking on this kind of new direction where I started getting into the idea of financial independence. And so financial independence, as I define it, is when you have enough money from your investments, that you never have to work again. You can choose to work. And in fact, I'm like a serial entrepreneur. I love working. I love launching projects.

I don't think I'll ever stop doing that, even if I had a billion dollars in the bank. You know, you can choose to work, but you don't have to. That's where that freedom comes in because it's just a whole different feeling in the morning when you wake up and you're like, I'm doing this because I want to,

not because I have to pay the bills. Yeah, hell yeah. And that's like the ideal position. Even those people love to work, because that's like early retirement. That's like the first thing, right? Like, well, I like my work. I don't want to stop working. Like, that's not for me that stupid.

Which is fine, like you said, you can choose to work. But the point is like, I mean, early retirement is pretty much saying you're financially free. You don't need to do anything for money anymore, but of course you still can. You probably. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Warren Buffett and Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. I mean, none of them are going to work because they're worried about covering their mortgage payments. Right.

Exactly. That's a great way to put it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so that's my life in a nutshell. Oh, and so then for the people who don't know me, so when I came back to America, I started buying rental properties. And I've developed a little bit of a reputation as I don't want to be known as a rental property blogger or like a real estate blogger, even though I do talk about it a lot. Because I've developed, that was how I developed financial independence was by investing in real estate. So I tend to get a lot of attention around that, but really my message is not real estate specific.

it's financial independence. And it's that, just that concept of being really deliberate about how you spend your money in your life and your time. Right. And I love that you say that because so you, that's another place where we're different. Like you love, understand, no, the real estate game. Whereas myself, like, I'm like anti-real estate, but I'm like, that's like the worst thing I've ever done in my life.

And actually, that's, this is a good smooth transition. That's why I started my blog because I, man, my fiancee and I at the time, like, we We needed a two-bedroom apartment. Like, we were in a one-bedroom that probably cost like a thousand bucks. And we're in the D.C. area, that's actually really cheap for where it is. And then we're like, no, we need a two-bedroom, you know, because we're getting married, right? Everyone's upgrading their lifestyles. And this was in 2008.

And so we went looking, this was like even before, like, GPS. Like, actually, it's good that we did have GPS. So I got lost. And I stumbled, we stumbled across this, like, townhouse. And it was like for sale, right? We didn't, like, know anything about buying. Like, we were renting a two-bedroom. And we found the, and we found the, you know,

this house for sale, we're like, oh, that's kind of neat. Maybe we should just call the realtor and just go check it out, right? Like, because we just thought it would be fun. Man, 48 hours later, like we had signed contract, like no money down. Like, we just dropped, I think it was like $360,000, right? On a whim, you know, because that was like the American dream. Everyone that I knew were getting married, getting a house, you know, and this is different than your real estate stuff, but this was like my first intro into owning any piece of property.

Right. And I come from a military background, so I'm used to moving every couple of years. And the idea of settling down, A, I didn't really like anyways, but B, I thought, well, again, like I'm getting married. I'll probably have kids one day. I should probably start doing some of this stuff. And it was so easy to get a place. Like, we zero.

I think we were like approved for like half a million dollars or something ridiculous, which is crazy because they don't check your, I mean, they check finances, but they don't know what your budget or your lifestyle is, right? And, of course, they want you to max out your loan because everyone makes a butt ton of money. Right. And so we bought it. And then, like, the market started, like, I think that market had gone down a little bit and then stopped. And we thought, oh, we'll get a good deal.

And then, like, it crashed and burned. You know, like, literally, like, the next six months or even a year, our place won from 360 property value down to, like, 300,000, like, within, like, a year. And it was crazy. And granted, that's not, like, the reason I hate real estate as much. What I learned over time was that it doesn't, like, fit my personality. Like I'm becoming like more, I guess, trying to be like more minimalist. And these ideas that like this property is out there that could explode or problems or anything at any given point of time can happen. It just drives, it just drives me crazy, you know, because any phone call you get, so we use a property manager now.

We're out of that place. We're renting. But any phone call we get, it's always bad, you know. Yeah, nobody ever calls you with good news. Yeah. And I'm not even like dealing with it one on one. Like I have a property manager and it's still annoying to me. you know so yeah so that's how like once i bought the place i thought you know what i should have

a budget you know i'd never been bad with money but i like money but i was never good at it right and i did the same thing everyone else says you get a job get paid more than you've ever gotten paid in your life started buying you know car and and upgrading lifestyle and and partying more and like like i never like bought girlfriends like jewelry or anything you know like i'd take him out and i think i was a fine boyfriend but but then when i like got like a 10 thousand dollar raise at work. I was like, oh, I think I should go shower her with like $500 worth of stuff. You know, like a complete like what I just didn't do that stuff. But like lifestyle inflation, I kept spending more than more I got. And I was always thankfully breaking even more or less.

So I said, you know what? Like let me look online and see if there's any like budgeting like help out there. And I kept coming across like all these blogs. I didn't even know what a blog was. And people are like, hey, here's my net worth. Here's my savings. Here's my debt. And I'm like, holy shit. Like no one ever talks about this in real life. You know, it was so fascinating to me, like a real life story about someone's money. And then, oh, and then here's, like, how I did it or how I got in trouble, like, avoid it. Right.

And I was, like, so fascinated. So for, like, six months, I read and I read and then I started creating my own budget. I started, like, kind of paying attention to this stuff. And I was telling everyone that would listen, like, all about, like, money, even though, like, no one cares. You know, and then I thought, man, I wonder if I could, like, share my story with money. Like, I don't have any, I mean, I, like, at the time I didn't know my real estate one was, like, that much of a mistake. So I thought, like, I don't really have a story, but, you know,

everyone was like, you know, suit and collar, kind of talking about money, like, no cursing, no, like, I mean, it's personality. It was interesting. It was just, you know, I thought, well, maybe I can try and keep it real, you know, as they say. So I, like, got on, like, blogger back in the day, and I was thinking of names and Justin Timberlake's, I'm bringing sexy back song was on the radio. Like that just dropped. I thought, yeah, I like that. I'm going to have sexy in my name, right? because that'll bring a lot of viewers. You know, I didn't think, like, how pissed they'd be once they get there, and they're like, oh, this is nothing to do with sex.

Like, I'm out of there. But literally, even to this day, like, sex topics, like, I should, one day I should just go down the list of all the search words people are typing in. It is crazy what people look for. And even crazier that they end up on my site, you know, but. I know this guy, Kyle, who writes the blog, Amateur Asset Alligator. Oh, my gosh. And he gets so much.

traffic from people looking up amateur ass. That is so funny. Well, actually, what's even good about that name is that it starts with A. My second line of thought, which is why I went with budgets are sexy, was because this is when my blog roles are really popular. And I thought, oh, like, I need to have one closer to the top. So that way, when people are looking at blog rules, mine will stand out faster and then they'll click on the link.

So the amateur one that starts with A would be the same thing, which is also good. And now everything's like, keep people on my site. Don't ever send them away to get resources, right? Like the whole strategy, how to turn a blog into becoming wealthy and doing what you want to do for your life, that kind of thing. But anyways, blogging in its natural sense is just, hey, I'm going to write about a topic and start a community. That's what I like about. It's like a diary. So budgets are sexy for me started as a way to like talk about money, have fun, like just a hobby, you know.

And then hopefully in return, like it would keep me account. Right. Like that was like the first thing I did like here's my net worth. Like I didn't even know what that was really. I just put it together, you know, my savings, my debt, my investments. And that like one thing alone that I did probably was like the biggest game changer I've ever done. Like, A, tracking my network personally, but then also putting it out there because again, that's what a lot of people kind of resonate with. You know, they can understand real numbers. Yeah. And I love that you do that. Like I love that I can go to your site and see your exact net worth. That's rare. Not a lot of people do that. And so when you're sharing real numbers, it's like it's real. It's really, really. Yeah, and that's the thing. So, like, a lot of people will say, well, like, I don't know who you are. Like, you have a mohawk.

Like, you have a fake name, right? Like, how can I trust you? And I'm like, you don't have to trust me. I mean, you know, if you don't like me, then obviously don't read, you know. And I get that, you know, people love or hate me. Like, there's not a lot of middle ground sometimes. But then, you know, I say, well, here's like what my net worth is, right? And like, right now it's like 491, I think it is.

Right? It's good. You know, not the best. It's not bad. Right. But over time, like in the beginning, it was like 20,000, you know, seven years ago. And so over time, as it increased, like, that hopefully helps people say, well, you know, he knows at least somewhat what he's doing. Like, I mean, you can accidentally make that much money.

But, you know, still, like, you know, no one's to have kids. Like, there's plenty of months where, like, my network would drop, like, I think the worst of drop was like 40 or 50 grand in one month, you know. And it's just like, it's just life. like it mimics like my life exactly and there's sometimes I'm doing great just like normal people and then sometimes it's going down you know I mean hell like like like I went from three years ago so like so okay let me back check a bit so I started the blog didn't know you can make money all of a sudden I figured out you could make money I still wanted to do what I do but I kind of was like half hobby half business in a way yeah and then I was like well you know it my ultimate goal is to do this full

time for a living I don't know how but I'm going to try and I think after two years I did it So for the last four or five years, I've been self-employed as a blogger slash person who makes projects online. So it's all been fun and great. I guess what I liked about blogging, and especially for anyone that kind of wants to start one, is like the opportunities that are out there are crazy because you don't ever know until you just like have your stuff out there. Right. You know, like you never know what emails are going to come. You never know who you're going to affect.

You never, I mean, it's just so crazy. Like it's so unlimited online. Right. And that was like my like, wow, like this is something. And obviously the internet is like here to stay and is going to keep evolving. So if you can do anything online related, you know, that you're excited about that also can maybe make money, I think that's, you know, a nice alternative to the rental property stuff like you're doing, which also has its own set of pros and cons.

Yeah. Tell the story. I love the story about how you left your previous job when you became a full-time blogger. Will you tell that story? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I'm really bad at making decisions. and sometimes I have to get them forced on me sometimes.

But anyways, when I realized like, all right, this blogging thing's kind of going well, let me see if I can start saving money and try and do it full time. So the first thing I did, right, and I'm very conservative. As crazy as I sometimes appear, I'm very conservative, especially with money. And I'm not like that much of a big risk taker either, unfortunately. And so I had the full-time job like you did, right? So I had my income, and I think at that point I was making $60,000 a year. and I was 20, I'm 35 now, so that was, I must have been like 26 or 27.

And so it's fine. You know, I was trying to, you know, I was working for a startup. The money that I made from the job paid the bills and, you know, then I spent the rest. I didn't really, wasn't that good at saving except like maybe a little 401k. When I started realizing there was money, like I started making money on my blogs and then, like, I buy up other blogs that were going out of business. I didn't even know you could buy other blogs. Like, there's a whole underground market.

Like, probably like out of 10 blogs that you read about money. A third of them have probably been sold at some point and have different owners that when it started. It is crazy. At least the bigger sites. Anyway, so I did the same thing you did is I said, my dream was to do this full time. So I just banked every single penny of it. My goal is to get like $50,000 banked so that way I could pull the trigger and quit my job. Right.

And so that was a goal. I got to like $40,000 and Christmas time was coming. And I thought, you know what? like maybe this is a good, and I think my blog was, all my, all my blogs together, we're probably making around 45,000 or 50,000 a year. So not as much as my 60, but enough for like I can comfortably make the switch. Right. And break even, right? That's like your first step. You need to like have this, your side thing making money. You don't want to just like quit your job and start a blog from day one. Right. You get the money, just like you're traveling. You know, it was like

Christmas time. I think it was like the week before. And I said, all right, I'm going to, I think today's day like I'm going to go and I'm like I'm going to go put in my my notice and I'm out of here right but I was super nervous and I was late to come into work I was actually on the metro in DC going downtown and I checked my email and it said like very important like come see me from the boss like the moment like I get in like like what the email said and I was like what is going on like with this whole thing right like like something's weird's happening I get in and everyone's staring at me and I'm like oh god everyone knows about to quit you know I'm like I'm I started thinking to change my mind.

I go in the office and the guys like sit down. Like we have to let you go. And I'm like, what? Like I knew at some point that was going to happen just because of the way our job was going. But to be on that same day where I was like so close to putting it in. Like just blew my mind. And I thought, you know what? Like this is perfect because now there's no more what ifs.

There's no like, oh my God, what if this startup becomes like the next billion dollar company? And that was it. And like so I left and I smiled. I was smiling the whole time and the guy was like, why are you smiling? I said, I was thinking about putting in my week in two weeks today. So I leave. And a friend of mine had an design firm and she said, hey, there's like a desk here. So I boxed up my stuff.

And I went to her place up in Bethesda and I unpacked it within like an hour. And I was like a full time blogger. Right. And then like two hours later, the boss had just fired me as if I could help them with projects. And I was like, I'm confused. I'm like, you know, and he said, well, well, maybe you can contract for us. Like, what are your rates? I'm like, I don't know my race. Sorry, you just hired me. And by the way, like, they hadn't paid me in like two weeks. Like, paychecks were delayed. Like, you know, the crap was going down. And so, like, I think I came with some crazy number. And I said, I had happily to do this as long as, like, you give me my paycheck first. Right. That's like a normal response. Like, pay me, pay my paycheck in two weeks ago. And then I'll do this on this. And then I'll do this on this. side, sure, I'll do that, right? Like, we're fine. And then, like,

he said, yeah, sure, and then, you know, we took him to court, never got paid. Actually, six months after that, the people that didn't get fired worked for six months and didn't get paid a penny. No paycheck. And then finally, they went under, and we took them to court and won, but there was, you know,

there was no money, so it didn't matter. A, it was good that I went on my own. But B, it was good because I wouldn't, you know, like, without the blog, I would have stayed there until the end. and I'm very trusting. Right. So I would have worked for six months without pay and then woke up and like,

oh, why did that happen? Right. Even though like a normal person could have seen that coming. Right. So anyways, the point is like the world works a little differently. And when you have these ideas and these things you want to do,

try and work on it or put the plan in. And then along the way, like nothing ever goes as plan. Right. I didn't make the 50,000. 40,000 was still close. Right. I would have fired anyway.

So thank God I had some kind of plan. Mm-hmm. And then here we are. know, five years after, you know, four or five years after that day, I'm doing it for a living. And thank God, stuff still works. Yeah. You know, so, yeah, so it's some, you know, that's just saying, like, the online world, you just never know who you're going to meet or what opportunities.

Like, sometimes you'll get, like, a publisher reaching out, hey, you should do a book or a radio show or all this stuff that you never really knew until you just put your words out there. So, yeah, so that's how this blog starts. So, you know, like, there's months last year. You know, so when I went full time, I went from making, what, 16. at my job, let's say 50 at that. So around 110,000, which is a lot of money for a single person. Then I dropped down for the next year, two years, to like 50 to 75,000, right? Because I got rid of the full time. Right. So yeah, great. Like you're a self-employed blogger, but you're still getting paid like the same or less, you know?

Yeah. So this is one trade off or another. And then I went from like, yeah, like 75,000. Over time, it kind of went up to like 100. And I think the most I had was three years ago, 150,000. Then I said, you know what? I'm a workaholic. I'm having a kid coming out. You know, like something needs to change. I sold a lot of my blogs. I condensed. It's been two years.

Last year I made like 50,000 with two kids supporting a family of four. And then this year I'm probably going to be back up to like 100, 150 somewhere around there. So, you know, it fluctuates. But as long as you know generally what you're doing with money, you have the opportunity to make these choices, even if it's going to be mean zero money or a ton of money. Right. So I have more freedom now, you know, and then, you know, financially my net worth hasn't like skyrocketed because, you know, I made choices.

Right. Well, you know, I was thinking like your story about getting laid off, like getting laid off when you've got 40,000 in the bank versus getting laid off if you had like four bucks in the bank. I mean, that just. Oh, hell, yeah. Yeah, like that. You were smiling the day you got laid off.

Hell, yeah. Yeah. And that's like largely because of, um, And, you know, you were already in that position where you're like, I've got money saved, you know, so I'm not worried about my day-to-day expenses for the next couple of months. I've got that runway. Right. And I've got multiple streams of income. And I'll also say, too, like, knowing, like having a general plan, like, plan A, plan B, right?

Like, plan A was to figure out how to blog for a living, you know? And I told my wife, like, if this doesn't work out, like, give me, like, three months. And if it doesn't work out or we start taking a dive, I'll go back and I'll look for a job. Like the option to always look for a job is always there forever, you know, like obviously the economy and it's not always that easy. I know that. But like the worst case scenario is you go back and you get a normal job. And it's not even like that bad because that's what you were doing before. You know, so if you can comfortably swing that timer gets bad, fine.

So everything was like baby steps. And fortunately, I didn't have to do that. But you know, I'll tell you like honestly right now, like if someone said, hey, like here's a cool job and I loved it. and the pay was fine and it made me happy, I would do it. Like I have no problem. Like for me, my whole, so going back to like financial freedom and what makes you happy just in life, really, I mean, for me, it's just I want to wake up and like you said, do whatever you want to do, right, regardless of money.

Right. And for me, even though I am not financially free like you are, like I don't have any qualms of going back to like the nine to five world if it made me happy, right? It's all about happiness. is if you change, if you do everything, whatever is going to make you happy or your family, I don't care what you're doing because it doesn't matter because you're happy. You know, like that whole point of life, you know, right? So I get that question a lot.

Like, oh, do you ever go back to like working for the man? And I'm like, you know what? Like, I already work for like, yes, like I'm self-employed, but you have advertisers. You have partnerships. Like you never ever not work for the man unless you like build, you know, I mean, you're good with your own products and that kind of stuff, which is different. But you still, your clients are then the man. Right.

So anyways, yeah, you go all goes back to being happy and doing in a perfect role to do what you want to do every day. Yeah, exactly. And I think it just comes down to having that freedom and that flexibility and, you know, like the ability to make choices. Yeah. And I think for so, like, I think at least for me, like, that's my, what I like, that's my point of wanting to do the podcast with you and just with podcasting in general.

As I want people to know, there's like, A, there's options to change your life for the good, a ton of them, you know. Yeah. And hopefully if we do our. job right, it's to show you what kind of different options there are and the pros and cons and how you can achieve it, right? And then generally just get like your financial like shit in order and where you can make all these decisions that you want. And again, it doesn't matter like what decision it is as long as you're like constantly choosing it and not like just not paying attention.

I can't imagine anything worse than not liking what you're doing because you spend so much of your waking hours at work. Right. Yeah. It's like one of my goals with, you know, why I blog and why a podcast and just, you know, I want people to enjoy what they do every day. And I want to be able to, like, help people create the space and the opportunity to make that happen. Because I'll tell you, like, when I was in high school working at the McDonald's drive-thru, that kind of sucked, you know, like, that really sucked. I thought you were going to say you didn't mind it because you were making money, but.

No, it totally sucked, you know, and, and so, to like, I've had that experience of having a shitty jobs that you hate. And so, you know, the fact that I get to wake up and do something that I love, you know, that I'm choosing to do, not even for the money, but just because I'm really fascinated by this project. Like, you know, this is, again, going back to that analogy from earlier, like, I imagine this is, this is what Elon Musk must feel when he's, like, working on SpaceX, you know, where he's like, I'm going to put a million people on Mars.

Why? Because it's fun. Yes. And he's super brilliant too. But yes. Normal people can do awesome stuff. I know. I'm not comparing myself to him.

I'm just, you know. I'm just saying I, the idea of like having fun with your job and having fun with what you do every day. That's what inspires me and that's what I hope I can share with other people. Yeah. I like it. It's a good rap. I like that. How long we've been talking 45 minutes?

45 minutes. like email us or texts us or tweet us, whatever, and let us know if there's something you want us to cover or if you have questions or someone you want us to interview. We're totally just going with a fly here and just get people thinking about this stuff. Yeah, so we have no idea what we're doing, but we're doing it. Exactly. Yeah, and that's another good point, right? Like, if there's something that you want to do and you keep talking and talking to research and research, all that's fine, but at some point you have to do something. And you learn in the real world and I'm sure people are like, this podcast is lame.

Like, you guys don't even know what the hell is going on. I'm never going to listen to it. which is fine, but hopefully you come back later and we're better. But that's the point, learning, experimenting, trying things out, having fun, and hopefully stumbling across something brilliant. Well, with that being said, I guess J Money, I guess this is our sign-off. I guess so. That's weird.

We need a cool sign-off. I know. Yeah. So this is my first time ending a podcast. I don't know how to end one of these things. You should say one, two, three. Bye-bye. All right.

So count up three. I like after you say three. Okay. One, two. three. Bye-bye! We'd like to thank our sponsors. Nobody!

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