BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 193: Building a Business After Homelessness, Addiction, and Debt

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Part of the mission of the BiggerPockets Money Show is to share journeys from all walks of life. Our guests show that no matter where you’re at, you can reach financial freedom and enjoy your life on your terms. Today’s guest, T Christopher Colton, is a shining example of pulling yourself out of the depths and into the light. Chris never liked school, and was spanked all throughout elementary and middle school for failing to pay attention in class. He was told he needed to go to college, but didn’t have the passion for higher learning that other classmates did. He ran away from home multiple times, ended up being homeless, and addicted to drugs. He had stints as a car salesman, before going into carpentry. With the help of his wife, Chris was able to get off the streets and live a stable life with his full time income. But, he wanted more. He became an electrician apprentice and started doing side work to help pay off the $100,000+ debt he had accumulated. Thankfully, he found out about financial independence through Dave Ramsey, putting him on a path to reject consumer debt, go hard on retirement accounts, and bring in more income. In This Episode We Cover The financial danger of buying a new car, and the costs that come with it Selling everything to get out of debt fast Moving states and reducing costs of living dramatically 401(k)s, IRAs, and Roth IRAs for retirement Starting a side business and having your W2 pay for your everyday expenses Getting your children on a path to success with early financial independence And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter WECA Apprenticeship CarMax The Ramsey Show Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/moneyshow193 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, show number 193, where we chat with Chris Colton and hear his very different journey to financial independence. And the moment that that all happened, right, everything shifted because suddenly all that money that I've been working for, saving, grasping with my little fists, is gone, right? And it took a big shift in my mind to realize it's not gone. It's just sitting in this new safe deposit box, right? That has a roof on it. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my Blather Skite co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks for always keeping me in line with these intras, Mindy. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone,

no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate. your own business, lose 100 pounds, completely rebuild your financial position, or pay off $144,000 in debt. We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so that you can launch yourself towards your dreams. Okay, in the intro, we said we want to introduce you to every money story, and today's guest definitely has a different story than you've heard before here. Chris Colton is a 49-year-old electrician who dropped out of both high school and college and spent

some time as a homeless drug addict until figuring out that that might not be the most productive life path. His newfound faith helped him turn it around and become a responsible husband and father. Dave Ramsey and his Baby Steps program helped him shed almost $150,000 in debt, and now he is on his way to financial independence. In his words, I corner every young person on every job and give lectures about retirement. I hand out total money makeover books like their tick tax. Scott, I am so excited to talk to Chris today because we haven't had this story before. and Chris is, he's led a pretty interesting life. Yeah, I mean, this is just a incredible financial journey.

And, you know, we bring in folks from all different backgrounds and different, you know, journeys with money here. This is the most amazing money story, you know. Maybe, maybe Tony Gaden's episode where he lost, what, like, 150 pounds, maybe more than that. 200 pounds. 200 pounds. Yeah. And, you know, was working the night shift at Walmart.

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Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listened. to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth.

Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Chris Colton, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I cannot wait to share your story.

Let's jump right into it. Where does your journey with money begin? So my personal finance starts off with a personal note because I am a recovering addict. And so we have to start off there. When I was a young man, I ran away from home, sleeping on the streets, just kind of got into the whole drug thing. And that lasted quite a long time until I met my wife now, Tana. It was a whole thing of selling cars. I don't know if you know anything about car salesmen, but they have a little bit of a sinus problem.

Can, right? So when I woke up one morning, 3 a.m., there was a poker game in my living room. I'd moved away to Chico to try to get away from the drugs. And there was a poker game, a mountain of cocaine, and I was just, I can't do this. And I called my girlfriend then, who's now my wife, and she was in Santa Cruz. She got in her car, drove down there, and pulled me out, saved me. I mean, drove me back with her. And that kind of changed everything, right?

So when I got back to Santa Cruz with her, I sold my skateboards, my snowboards, my wakeboards, all of my toys and bought some bags. And when I was in one of the meetings, right, one of the 12-step meetings, somebody said, yeah, you need to walk into a hiring hall to if you're looking for work. And so, you know, me being the genius that I am, just walked into the first one I found, happened to be the carpenters. And just like that, I became a bridge builder. Got sold on my stuff, bought my bags, got my tools, and started working.

So now I've got actual income from actual work. I'm like selling cars from before. Selling cars is, it's make-believe money. It's you show up Friday morning broke, and you've got a couple thousand dollars in your pocket that night, you know, or the next day. And so it just, it flowed like water through my hands. I mean, it's amazing how much money I made selling cars and how little I had to show for it. I mean, nothing. How long did that, like, when did you kind of leave, when did you run away?

and how long did this part of your life story go on for? All right. So my dad died when I was real young, and then I was six when he got murdered. And I started acting out at school. And I'm old enough that they were allowed to hit me back then. So I got spanked in every class since third grade. So I kind of had a low opinion of education facilities, the system. So I started running away from that when I was 13, run away from home when I was 13,

started just never went back, right? Met some guy who gave me a beard, met some guy who gave me a joint, met some guy who got, yada, yada. So that started then. Now, I have the joy of being a high school dropout and a college dropout because when I got to high school, it just, it was clear that I didn't want to do this anymore, so I just dropped out. I went off to Yosemite and we were camping there, And I walked into their office because I saw all these people in line and said, what are you doing? They said, we're getting a job here.

I said, well, Yosemite is gorgeous. I'm going to live here. So I got a job working in Yosemite. And all of those, all the kids that they were hiring were college students off for the summer. So they're coming over from Louisiana, from all over the world, actually. And so girl I met, goes, you need to get back into school. You can't be a dropout, you know, because these are all college students. I'm like, all right.

So I went back to Sacramento, walked into. to the junior college there, right? All I got to do is take a test. They said, okay, you're fine. I'm good at tests. Tests are my thing. Going to class every day and doing the work, that's a different story. So I took my test.

I got in, and right away, it was high school with cigarettes, essentially. Same people, same thing, same silliness, right? It wasn't serious. And so I just, so I dropped out of that. But right after I dropped out of that, that's when I kind of needed some money. And that's when the car sales thing came in, walked into a Chevy dealership. How old were you? How old were you around this time?

20, 20, 21, something like that. So you're selling cars and making just the most ridiculous money ever, which sounds a lot like waitressing. When you said I would be broke and walk in and walk out with, I didn't walk out with a couple of thousand dollars every night. but I could easily clear $200 on a Friday or Saturday night. And when I was waitressing, this was 100 years ago. We're the same age, Chris. So I also got spanked in third grade because I didn't do my work either. We have some similarities in our background.

So I think that it's very interesting that you said, I made all this money and I have nothing to show for it. I have nothing to show for my waitressing years. And I could have had a lot to show for my waitressing. the years. I was living with my parents. You said that you ran away from home. When did you leave home permanently? It sounds like pretty young. Permanently, I'd say 16, 17. But there was a, there's a lot of yo-go back and forth, right? I'd show up, you know, at my mom's door and say, hey, I can't do this. You know, because has an addict, and every addict will tell you, they're always fighting to get free. You're always fighting to

get free. And you know it. You know what you're doing. It's the maintenance program. It's like when you, when you start getting the first one you're getting high, the first few you're getting high, but then you're like trying to maintain after that. You're just trying to not go down to that low level when you're just down. So it's always a maintenance program. And eventually you can't, you can't control it. So then you crash, right? So then you can't go to work for a week. You can't do this. You can't do that. So there's a lot of that yo-yo stuff. But permanently, yeah, 17, 18. I was out. gone. And where were you living? Or who were you living with? How did you support yourself? So the first time I ran away, I was sitting in a pizza joint, sleeping in their booths,

until they'd throw me out at 2 a.m. when they close. This is in San Jose. And a girl from church drove by recognized me and grabbed me, but threw me in the back to the car and took me home, put me in her, her sister was gone to college. So she stuck me in her bed. And then in the morning, she woke me up and went down and told her mom, I've got a new brother. So I stayed with them for six months. And that really helped me get back into school a little bit because they had different expectations from me. And so, you know, that was a good time. So then eventually my parents moved to Sacramento and said, you need to come with us.

You can't live with this other family forever. Okay. So I went out back with them. And then within, I don't know, within six months, I was back on the streets running around. But there's a lot of couch surfing. There's a lot of sleeping out in parks. I know that, I know to stay warm. A good place to sleep is in a recycle bin underneath all the papers and all the newspapers

and, well, back then newspapers, now it's cardboard, right? It's a good insulator. You just burrow in. The only problem with that is mice, you know. They like to snuggle up with you. But, I mean, that was then. That was a different life. So, you know, fast forward hearing a couple years, it sounds like there's a,

a variety of ways that you're kind of living and going about things for this period. How old are you? And let's fast forward to that moment where you went back to Santa Cruz, it sounds like, and kind of began pivoting. All right. So like I said, tennis saved me. She's my saving grace all the way around. And we've got the, she's going to school there.

She's going to UC Santa Cruz. And so we got there. I started working. And, oh, working. This is new. Okay, so I got a job at the Carpenters. I walked in my first day, I was holding motors up in the air with a whole two arms. And when I got off work that first day, I was so sunburned and so tired.

I couldn't walk all the way from the car to the house. I sat down in the driveway, just rested. I'm new to work, actual work. And so that's when that came along. So I went through that program. We popped around. Santa Cruz was kind of expensive. Even in the early 2000s, we kind of knew that we weren't going to be buying.

a home because it was just something outside of our range. Before we get into that, what was your financial position at this point? As I understand it, in some cases, when you're kind of just getting back into things like this, there can be debts or other things that are associated, you know, that you've accrued over the years. Were you kind of broke or did you have a little bit of savings or did you have some debts? Or how did that look? So I had zero money, absolutely zero money. I did not realize how much did I have. In my mid-20s, I got married. We had a son and then I got divorced right away. And she rightfully left and took

my son with her, right? Our son. And I haven't seen him since. I had a lot of debt, a lot of child support, a lot of just car repos that had come along, things that popped up later. And I didn't realize how much it was until later on in our journey when we, when we discovered Dave Ramsey. and, you know, what happened was my grandpa died and left me a little bit of money, $12,000. Not enough to do anything with, but I also knew I didn't want to just flitter it away. So I was keeping my ear open for something to do with finances. What do you got? So then I ran into the Dave Ramsey on the radio.

And so I listened to the podcast. I had my earphones in at work, and I'm kind of laughing at these suckers. I mean, they're calling in, oh, my goodness. They were nutty. They were goofy. And then I said, how much debt do I have? And then I started thinking about it. I started thinking about the child support and all that back stuff.

And I added it up. And all of a sudden, my heart's pounding. I can't breathe. I'm standing on a ladder. I'm getting kind of dizzy. I'm like, oh, my God, I have $144,000 in debt. Okay. Now, that's our debt.

Because by now we're married. She's got a little bit of school loans for some reason at some point in time. And this is awesome. But I just want to, I'm having trouble following the timeline here. Okay. You're having this moment of debt discovery. after you're working and and after we're married so when we moved to Santa Cruz I had nothing zero dollars in my pocket she was going to school taking out some school loans I had some back

child support going on I had some repos going on we had credit card stuff going on and then we got married and I kind of bopped around I noticed this when I was a when I was a bridge builder on the weekends I'd have weekends off but those electricians they would leave and they would come back every Monday morning with like $1,000 cash because they were doing side work. And nobody was asking me to do side work. Nobody said, hey, Chris, I need you to come over to my house and help me build a bridge in my backyard. Nobody said that. And so I jumped ship from the carpenters and I jumped over to the electricians and I went through that apprenticeship. So now the apprenticeships for the trades don't cost you anything, right? That's my saving grace right there too. It does not cost you to become an apprentice.

You can walk into, in my case, I walked into the union hall for the carpenters, for the electricians. The union was, they said they were full. I said, okay, I went non-union. There's options out there. And they pay you, whatever your wage is going to be. They said it, you know, so your first year apprenticeship, I went from $33 an hour as a carpenter down to $13 an hour as an apprentice electrician. That was kind of hard. So then I was doing other jobs, too.

I was doing, I was serving samples at Costco trying to make money on the weekends just to keep it going. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. They're, you know, you sell that. I'm sorry. I just have a couple of things to get back to the moment you're in time that you're at right now with your story. What year do you move to Santa Cruz? What year do I move to Santa Cruz? 2005. Did you get that? Thanks, Tanna. Nice. Yeah. Okay. So 2005 is a big turning point for you, it sounds like.

Big time. Big time. With this. And when, what year do you kind of have this Dave Ramsey moment where you discover how much debt you're in? Okay. So Dave Ramsey, 2014, because Ivan was just born. Okay. So there's a period of time here.

There's a period of time here between nine years where your life is improving, but you're not, you're not getting ahead financially. It sounds like after you, you know, after you got married and that kind of stuff. Okay. So we got married. She graduated. We moved from Santa Cruz back to Sacramento. know, I was, you know, making, like I said, $33 an hour as a carpenter. And then we did that change. She was a, she went and got a job with the state. Hated that. She did. I got on with the electricians.

They bought me around. I started building hospitals. And then I ended up back in the Bay Area. So, what is that? 10, 12. We're back in the Bay Area. She gets a job as a supervisor at Hold foods and then we get pregnant. So that's when... Oh, go ahead. So you get pregnant in 2012, 2013. Yeah, 2013, 2014 is when he was born. And that was when my grandpa died and we got that little bit, the little inheritance. Now by this time, we were both making pretty good money, right? She's making money there. Plus she was making, she was working at the Whole Foods. So have you ever shopped at Whole Foods?

Well, with their discount, you can afford to. So that helped a lot. Whole paycheck, right? Yeah, right? I've heard that joke. They give you 25% off. And so we were able to eat well. Plus, that was applied to any sales that were on.

And so she would know what was on sale so we could do that. So it kind of saved us a lot of money on the food stuff. And then, yeah, then my grandpa died. But by then we went ahead and we felt pretty good. about life. We bought a car, right? A one-year-old car. So, you know, it's kind of a high payment. But, and then I, oh, I was driving my truck. I was looking out the window, staring at a hardware store, and chainsaws were on sale. And so I was staring at that, and I rear-ended some poor woman and just totaled my truck. So naturally, we had to go out because now we're making

both pretty good money. We had to buy a brand new car. We bought a brand-new Nissan Rogue. and, you know, with the payments that came along with that and the appreciation that came along with that. So now we have a brand new vehicle. We have a one-year-old vehicle. We've got a bunch of credit cards that were going on. I got all my back-cold stuff. She's got her school loans. And that's when Dave Ramsey, you know, said his thing on the radio.

And, you know, like I said, I was always listening for something new. Kept one earbud in and just listening to those suckers who kept calling in with their $30,000 debts, you know. $40,000 debt, and I'm just laughing at him and going, how could you do that? And then I added it up myself and said, how could I do that? And, you know, I ran, I mean, ran full speed at the debt, too, didn't I? Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you for set to stage with that. So we're in 2014. We've got, we're, we, we, we, we, we've discovered Dave Ramsey and, and this concept of how much debt you have. You have this pit in your stomach. What changes about your financial behavior from that point forward? Like, how do you, how do you begin approaching it? You mentioned you, you, you, you want the

sidework. But, but. you know, are you starting to be more conscious with spending? What do you do with the 12,000? How do things change from that moment in time? Okay. So exactly what Dave Ramsey says, don't do. I did do. I ran home and said, we're getting out of debt. We're selling everything. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What are you talked about? So we, yeah, we had to talk that through. Now, that 12,000 was so helpful because we were able to, we put the cars up for sale. I sold the Hyundai to a guy in town there.

At this point, we're living in Santa Rosa, or Willits actually, north of Santa Rosa. I sold it to a guy there in town. The brand new rogue, we couldn't get rid of it. Not one interest, right? We put it on Craigslist, we put it on all the things, nobody. So we took it down to CarMax,

and they said, this is what we'll give you for it. And luckily, I had that money, so we were able to pay the difference, right, which is $2,500. So I paid $2,500 to sell that car. Because your debt on the car was bigger. Yes, we're up that down. $20,000 in debt on a $17.5 car, whatever it was.

Almost exactly the numbers, too. So we did that. So now our 12 is down to under 10. We take that. We go when we bought a $165,000-mile ACRA MDX, which we still have. It's got 270,000 miles on it now. But it's a Honda.

It's an Accura, right? We just change the oil, keep it going, right? Every time something breaks, we think, is it time? Is this the one? Is this the one? Well, you know, it's only $800. $800. Okay, no payment.

Okay. So that's one of the changes we've made. We sold those. So now we're down to one car. And how much does that change your payments by? Oh, goodness. That's out of actions. $700.

I think the car was $300, right around there, and $450 or so for the, the rogue plus insurance because you got to have full coverage insurance on all that stuff. You don't need full coverage insurance on a 200,000 mile car. You know that? That saves you a little, that saves you a penny or two. I want to stop right here. Yeah, you're easily saving $750,750 a month after making these decisions. And you made the investment to pay $2,500, which is only like what, like a three, four month

payback to sell one of those cars, give rid of that payment and get a cheaper one. That's outstanding. The $2,500 was to get rid of the card. Now, the MDX cost us $6,000, maybe $5,000, 5,000 or $6,000, right? But worth every penny, right? Because now we have no payments. Then we closed off the credit cards. We did his whole snowball thing, right?

It started lowest to largest. And just started paying things off. And we kept that $1,000 in reserve, you know, like DR says. And I mean, I'm volunteering for all overtime by the time. also because when the baby came along, she quit her job because we discussed, you know, what does that look like? You know, do we want to pay someone else to raise our child? No, I want to stay home and be a mom.

Great. You know, I want that. I want you to stay home, you know, with our child and get that good bond so that, you know, later on in life we don't say, oh, where did the nanny go wrong? You know, now we got, you know, we can blame ourselves, right? I love it. So walk me through. And I want to just kind of keep learning more about this turning point in your financial journey,

because do you remember when in 2014 this was, to get even more specific, middle of the year, early part of the year? Spring. Spring. Okay. So spring 2014, where you're making these changes. How long does it take you to make the moves with the cars, for example? Over the next month.

Right. Once we decided. So you moved really quick. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm an addict. I'm all in on everything.

And how are other areas? areas of your spending impacted in addition to the cars? Other areas of our spending. Okay, so well, that's one of the things. So you quit going out to eat, right? Which we did a lot. So that went away right away. We just, we quit vacationing for a month there.

We used to go camping all the time. You know, they're always renting a house here for, you know, the weekend or whatever. We didn't do that anymore. That stopped right away. No more, no more anything. We just shut it down. Now, DR talks about gazelle intensity. I didn't get that.

I was more of a put my head down and plot through it, right? I didn't get that intensity that they talked about when they said when you're building up until I got out of debt, right? And that took four years. I took four years to get completely out of debt. Okay. How do you stay the course during this four years of payoff where you're not going camping and you're not doing anything fun and you're not going out to eat and you're not, not not? how do you stay on track? I don't know.

We were living up there when we made the decision. We were in an old hunting cabin that somebody converted and we rented that and we were just surrounded by trees out in Willits, right? You couldn't even see the next house. It was gorgeous. And so we just, we didn't have cable. We didn't have any of that stuff. We just kind of sat outside and read, you know, we read books and just talk.

And we had a newborn. So there's that. All right. I guess that's a little bit of work there. Yeah. And it's also a lot of planning on what we want to pass on to him, right? Because the day he was born, I was, you know, oh, the day he was born, they give you those masks you ought to wear inside the surgery room.

And they're made a paper. And so I'm crying thinking nobody can see me. Well, it hit that blue paper and exploded, right? And I don't know this until I leave the room. And they're like talking about it. And she's laughing. And she's like, oh, they can see you crying on that. I did not know that.

I'm holding this baby. I'm holding this child. And I'm saying, you know, I'm going to teach him everything I know about electricity. And she, and Tanna's, he doesn't have to be an electrician. He doesn't want to. I said, no, no. But he's going to walk out the door when he's an adult with the ability to make $100,000 a year. That's my gift to him because we're older, right?

At this time when he was born, we're 42, you know, I'm planning. I'm thinking through my head. What am I going to do? I'm a geriatric dad. He's going to want to say, let's go play ball one day. And I'm going to have to get my walker. No, hold on. Let me catch up to you, son.

So that's my gift to him because at this point, we don't have anything, right? We're just starting our getting out of debt, you know, that big numbers ahead of us. So that's, I can't, you know, I'm not building a college fund for him. I'm going to give him the tools to make however much he can make and work his way through school, which turns out to be a pretty good thing because I, you know, those are different podcasts in different books, right? Kids who work through school, their GPA tends to be a little bit higher. Their time management skills are something to be a little bit better.

And these are the things that I'm hopefully, you know, hopefully instilling him a child if he decides to go to college. Now, he's six now. And if you ask him what he wants to do, he wants to be a worker like dad, which makes my heart grow three times every time he says it. Right. So, yeah, that kind of helps, you know, just knowing that we're moving forward. Now, with volunteering for the overtime that I do, I work a lot. So that kept me out of trouble. I go to work with an empty wallet so I don't spend any money at lunch.

With all this context that you just shared, can you just walk us through one more time? You were building bridges, but you couldn't, and that was your skill set in the sense in the world of carpentry, right? Your carpenter who worked on bridges, a speciality. and that made $33 an hour or pretty decent money. But you said, I want to earn more on the side. And so you dropped to an apprenticeship program and then we're able to go from there. Can you walk us through that journey again? So in California, the apprenticeship program is called WICA, Western Electrical Contractors Association.

And I walked in there and you got to have a high school diploma. So I had to go back to get that test that I took and get that and run it over there, show and prove to them that I could do it and take the test that they give you. Now, here's an interesting thing. They give you a sample test of the trigonometry on their website. And so I went through with one tab open looking at the questions, another tab open, looking for the answers trying to figure out the formulas, okay, you know, because it's been a long time since I've seen this.

And so I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Pythagorium Theater. Okay, oh, yeah, yeah, we're doing the triangles. We got the hypotenuse. I got it. Okay, I'm back, I'm back. So I go inside and I take the test and I sit down. And the test was the practice test, verbatim, right? Not one letter changed.

And I'm looking at this. And so by the time I get done with the test, I'm not even looking at the questions. I'm just looking at the answers. That's the answer, right? That's the answer. Then, you know, I went back and double-checked it. Sure, right. Aced it.

Got 100% on that one. And so that's what got me in there. Now, they have a set schedule for how much you make. And so they, $13 for the first year, 13 and a half. And it's like $16 and something. and then it's, you know, 19, and it's 22, and then you top out at 30 or something like that, up through the fifth year. So that, you know, that first year was hard. The 13 was hard.

But Hannah was working. She'd gotten out of school. We've moved to Sacramento. And what year is that? Is that 2014 that you're making the 13th? Nine. 2009, I think. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So you, sorry. So this income change happened prior to your dedication to paying off debt. And getting, okay. The debt came along, the day Ramsey came along in 2014. So by that time, so 2010, 2014, by that time I was a fifth year, so I was making $25 an hour. And it was a lot more doable at that rate, right?

Plus, since we cut back so much, it was all right. It was, like I said, doable, you know. When we finally left and the baby was born and that cut our income, we, The hospital was working on the guy lived in Nevada, the foreman. He lived in Nevada. And he said, I need you to come with me up here and help me build this hotel. And I said, Nevada, are you kidding? Nevada's brown.

They don't have any trees there. I'm not moving to Nevada because we're living out in the woods. I mean, literally there was sunshine was a commodity there. If you cut down a tree and had some sun in your yard, people would come over and stand in it because it was just, you know, there's such shade everywhere. And so now I'm out. He goes, come out here. You'll love it. just shut up.

So I came out here, and the hotel he was building was up here at South Lake Tahoe, literally 200 yards from where I'm at right now here at the Hard Rock Cafe. And so we moved to Nevada. And it took a lot to convince Tanna because Tana's, we've never lived when all the bopping around we did, we've never lived more than an hour from the saltwater, right? When we lived in Willits, we were 30 minutes from Fort Bragg. We live in Santa Cruz. We could hear the breakers at night when we went to sleep over there on Clinton Street.

You know, we were near the ocean. She loves the ocean, right? That's one of her things is when she'd get off work, she could go sit and listen to it. She likes the tide poles, the tide pools. And then I brought her up here to the desert. And the only way to convince her was to bring her 20 minutes from our front door, your toes are in this, what's essentially an inland sea that is Lake Tahoe, right? This big, giant bottle of water.

And she goes, okay, I'm willing to. to go if we can live that close to Tahoe, right? And there's trees too. And there's trees. That whole area is surrounded by trees. Oh, absolutely. Those of you who haven't. You know exactly when you leave California because the trees stop.

And I think that's what they did when they were first mapping it out. This is, well, there's the last tree. Okay, that's the edge of California. No, that, that's awesome. So in 2014, you're making $24 an hour. Is that right? Yeah, 20. I can't remember what year I was in the apprenticeship.

I think it was in my last year of apprenticeship. So it was 24, 25, somewhere around there. And at this point, are you able to start getting that extra work of the overtime, the side gigs and those types of things as well? Okay. So once we left there and we came up here, a couple of things happened. One is we left California and all of a sudden my income got an 11% increase because I wasn't paying California income tax.

So that was a boast. Two, we were not living in the Bay Area. So suddenly our apartment that we rented here, right, two bedroom, two bath was only 875 or 850, something like that. I mean, it was ridiculously cheap. And so that helped. And then once I got up here, this hotel from day one was overtime. Lots and lots of overtime.

And periodically throughout that, I would get sidework, right? Someone wants you to hang a fan or, you know, fix a switch. So I was doing that off and on. And I didn't start doing that heavy until three years ago. Now, three years ago, four years ago, we got out of debt, right? We paid off that last debt. Oh, here's a fun thing. The apprenticeship that I went through, they go ahead and they start a retirement fund for you.

Okay. So, and I didn't know this. And what, and they just got to do it. And then when you get to the, they keep it to the side, keep it the side. And then when you get to the end and you graduate out, they present you with, okay, you have this. What do you want to do with it? And most guys cut a check, right?

They keep 20% for the taxes and they cut a check and most, yeah, grimace, most guys go buy a truck and, you know, or whatever. And that's that. Since I had been working so much overtime and been volunteering for so many jobs and was willing to travel out of town for anything that they had, instead of a $30,000 on average check is what most guys got, I had $67,000. And so right away, I knew I didn't want to mess with that. So I rolled it into an IRA. So now, boom, right? This is beautiful. I got $67,000.

We paid off a bunch of the little ones. We're working on, I don't remember which step we're on, or which one of the debts we're on, but I do have a child support debt looming, right? It's there. I know it, and I'm going to have to pay this. This is, you know, child support, when you get behind on it, they charge you 10% interest.

And so I was behind. over the years 27,000 and with the interest over that whole time it went up to 60-something thousand dollars so the minute I rolled that money into an IRA it triggered the attack the liens and it went to her as it should and went to him right and then hopefully because right about this time he's 17 18 years old and hopefully this is going to be his college money, right? Like I said, at the time when we had that baby, I was not a good person. I was not a good father. It was not a good husband. And she was right to take me away. And I understand that. I accept that. But hopefully that money came in at the right time for him. Okay. So that helped with

a debt a lot. And that was your last and biggest debt. Is that right? Yeah, but it came out a sequence because we weren't ready for it. So then after that, we started working on her school loans. Now here's something funny. The first school loan that we paid off was $1,200. And we sent it in. And she said, you know, that's exactly the amount of money I borrowed 10 years ago. And she's been paying every month on it since. Right.

So when we finally, yeah, when we finally paid it off interest only for 10 years, right? What's still there? Well, the whole principal. Yeah. So then we started chunking money at that. And then by that time, I'm up here. We're up here in Nevada. We're living in Minden, just south of Carson City.

20 minutes from South Lake Tahoe, and I'm doing stridework. And I'm a lead guy. I'm running cruise. I put into my boss, I say, I think I need to get into foreman training because I'm ready for it. And he goes, absolutely. And so they dangled the carrot. He said, oh, we've got you on a foreman's list. Next time it comes available, we'll talk to you, right?

There's my carrot. And I'm like, no, because I'm doing foreman work. I'm making orders. I'm running guys. I'm running cruise. And really all I wanted was a truck. I wanted the truck that they give you, right? I don't want to pay for gas anymore.

And they dinged that. And I get a call from a guy that I worked with, you know, for a few years. And he goes, hey, I need you to come over here and take a look at this company. They need you in their service department. I said, service. What do I know from service? I'm a commercial electrician. I've been building hospitals.

I've been building hotels, right? You know, what do I know from service? I'm going to somebody's house. He goes, yeah, it's all right. It'll be fine. And so I go over and apply another. This company was union, so I had to join the union, which is fine. You know, I'm not pro-union.

I'm not opposed to the union, because here's what I know from working in both. You've got good guys who want to do good, and you've got guys who suck and can't do good. And they're both, right? They're either, you know, so the whole union thing is, you know, when, but a lot of people buy into it. I say, oh, because you're union, electrician, you're better. I'm exactly the same as I was when I wasn't. So I went into service over there. And then the moment I got into service, they were really against overtime.

No more overtime. No, no, no. We don't want to do overtime, right? We don't want to keep our costs down. At the end of the day, you're done. Okay. Well, I had to make that up. So I started doing a lot of side work.

And I put it out on Facebook. I said, hi, I'm a electrician. I'm kind of bored. Does anybody need anything done? Boom. Oh, my goodness. It blew up. It went from me making a few hundred dollars here and there.

Right, you know, to thousands of dollars. And I said, oh, the IRS is going to catch one of this. So I went down and got my license, right? Yeah, I don't want the Gestapo coming after me. And so I got my license. I went ahead and got my business name. And God bless, I got some T-shirts made. And so C2 Electrical was born.

And that one post kept me busy for six months. And this is 2016, 17, 18? What year is this? 17, 18. And you're rounding out. the last of your debts, you're paying off your last kind of very large debts after this, after applying the snowball for three years? Is that right? Yeah, I'd say, I'd say we were snowballing for four years and then 18, we paid off the last one. And we kind of took a breath there

and just kind of relaxed for a second. It was fun. But then the moment I put that post out there on Facebook and either the end. So this is right after, this is right after your achievement of paying off all the debt. Let's go back to that for one second. How'd that feel to pay off? that last debt. Oh, that was cool. That was cool. That was amazing. You know, he talks about how great weight is lifted. It was. I mean, my shoulders just kind of slum down. The tension I didn't know I was carrying, it was just kind of relaxed out of me. It was cool. I mean, it's just, but by this time, we're also committed to the way we're living, right? We don't, it's just, it's normal now, you know. Somewhere along the line, well, okay, when you, when you quit doing

drugs, there's something that happens to you physically. And a lot of guys get really fat. And I did. So I'm now, I went up to like 325. And so being the guy that I am, I sat down and said, what is the science of a fat burning? What kills a fat cell? And so I looked it up and then I fell into keto. Right. So the ketosis is the byproduct of a lipid, you know, trickless right breaking down and the lip is burning through your system and that's that's the byproduct of of it so we fell into keto so then we started doing keto i started a blog then i did that for a while and i was just doing all this and now with this difference in our food and the way we're eating i know this is not finance but it is finance we now have to we look at all the labels right everything has sugar in it everything's

got sugar in it i'm borderline type 2 at this point and uh type 2 diabetic we're borderline i wasn't that quite there but it's pre-diabetic and And so we're reading everything. So now we can't buy all the things that we were buying. So we have to change what our intake is. So now we do basically just the perimeter of the grocery store is the foods that we're buying. Like the vegetables over here on this side, the meat's over here on this side, the cheese is back here on this side, and then we're out because everything else has got sugar dumped into it.

And so we're trying to get away from a lot of the carb loading that we were doing. And I lost 100 pounds, over 100 pounds. So same question. I always come back to this, but when did you kind of get to 325 and what timeline did it look like when you dropped all this 100 pounds? So, I don't know, 325, probably eight years ago, six years ago. And then I burned down, I lost some weight. I got it down to 250, 265, something like that. And that's when I, you know, I was always bad.

And now I'm still jiggly, but I'm not fat. Like my pants are 33. I think you look great. I jiggle when I jump. That's what I tell people. My pants are down to a 33. That's something I had in high school. And that was amazing.

I couldn't believe it. So that's when I started that blog and I was writing and taking pictures and just, you know, documenting my journey. This was 2000. When I started a blog was 2017-ish. Yeah. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more

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And so we're not, like, this is not a, uh, an event sequence here. This is a, this is a continuum, it sounds like, where there are defining moments and events where you figure out like, oh, here's how to burn fat and here's how to get out of debt and those types of things. And it, but then there's years long slogs that you're basically going all out. You say, you're saying, oh, I didn't do gazelle intensity. Yeah, you did. for four years, you kind of, you kind of did for a lot of this stuff to grind it out,

in my opinion, right? I mean, this sounds like an intense journey on the finance and the weight loss front. Is that right? Yeah. So there was also finding faith in there, too. Because when Tanna, when Tana came along and showed me value and me, I started looking for existential things then, right? And that's when I found, I found my faith.

And I started going to church, we started that whole thing. So everything I do, I do entirely. So I jumped into the apologetics, listening to the arguments for and against God and this and that. So I learned all that. So every aspect of the way, there's a big change. I jump in all the way. So I jump into faith all the way. I jump into the debt all the way.

I jump into the diet all the way, trying to understand what my health is, trying to understand what that was. The intensity, the gazelle intensity really came along when we paid off that last debt. Right. And I put out that post. and all of a sudden there's hundreds of people who just, you know, need this, need that. And so that's when I really turned it on. So I haven't had a day off or two days off in a row in the last year and a half, right, until now, right? It took yesterday off.

I took today off and tomorrow I'm going to go do a panel change. On my house, on my house, the house I bought, I'm doing a panel change. That's when the intensity really kicked in. So now I'm making really good money because with each step up, and changing the job, right? Like the union out here that is $40 an hour when I was doing the service work. And then a guy called me and said,

I want you to come work for my company. I go, you're non-union. You can't compete with the money. He goes, absolutely, I can. I'll give you $2 more. If you keep it $2 more, then there are your hikes, I'm good. So I went over there.

Now, he caught on to the fact that I liked at work, that I started my own company. Now, this is last summer, and I'm working crazy. I get off work. I immediately go home, drop off my van, grab my tools, my hand tools, throw them in my truck. Oh, I had to buy a truck. I had throw them in my truck, which has got 250,000 miles on it.

I don't know if you kept track, but the mileage of my truck and her vehicle is enough to get you to the moon and back. There are lunar vehicles. Nice. So, yeah, I come home, I jump in my truck. I drive, I go, I work for four hours at night, right? So there's 12 hour day. And then, you know, if I'm lucky on the weekends, I can get 10, 12. hours, 14 hours a day then, right? And I'm doing remodels. I'm doing everything. And we're just

all the money for that business, my side business, went into a business account, doesn't get touched. We're living on my 40 hour 40 hour W2, right? So the 1099 money just sits in the account. Don't touch it. The only thing, the only thing that comes out of that account is when I go buy materials for the next job that I'm working on, right? So by default, it's a profit and loss statement, my bank statement every month, right? Because the only thing that comes out is expenses for the business. The only thing that goes in is profits from the work. And then at one point in time, I put out a second post on Facebook, and that's all I've ever done. And it's just word of mouth. There, I've got like, I've got a group of people that somebody says, is there an electrician in our area? There's like

10 people who just, here's this number, call them, right? And that just keeps me flowing. And I just keep working. And even when I want to take a little bit of time off, the calls are coming in, the texts, you know, the messaging on the messenger there, that's when the intensity really kicked in this last year because now I have a goal. I meet a girl. She's got some property. She's an income investor. And I'm talking to her about saving a house because my goal then was to buy a house and just chunk money on it. You have a question? I was just going to chunk me. Well, yeah. No, yeah, I wanted to get into that, but I wanted to transition this from the, you pay off the debt, you're feeling great about it. How does things evolve from there so we can get set up for the house and the income investing?

So, okay, that's where, that's where she comes in. She's a real go-go-go-go-go-go-her. She takes care of her stuff, right? She goes in, and like a lot of people, I can change that outlet. I can change that switch. And three-way switching is a little bit more difficult than a normal switching because there's different wires involved and none-da-da-da. And so she miswired it. And so I get called in to fix this little bit of a problem.

Her carpenter that was there that day asked me if I did side work. I said, sure, I do side work. You know, he tells her she calls me on my personal phone. And she said, I have some investment properties I want you and take a look at. I said, okay. And so then I go and take a look. And then while doing this work for her, she lays it down that Brandon, it should be her husband because she loves bigger pockets, right? He doesn't know it, but Brandon should be my husband.

right and uh right it's so and she's awesome and so i started talking to her and then started listening to it's okay i'm always listening for something new and this is this is 2018 or 2019 last year this is the beginning of last year well okay it was the end of 2019 before we get to this moment you're paid off all your debt are you then approaching the third baby step which i think is the emergency reserve yes of six months emergency reserve Yes. Yes. So, okay. So we saved that up, right, by that time. And by the time I met her, I think our emergency fund was in place. We were pretty well stabilized at that point, right? So you were in perfect position to begin investing, but hadn't really accumulated a lot of cash yet to begin investing with.

So that's when we made that plan. That's a perfect time to meet an investor. Yes. Right. And she's awesome. Like I said, so I'm always, I'm always keeping my ear open for something new. She mentioned bigger pockets. So I go ahead and start listening to, you know, to those guys, right, Dave and Brandon. And, okay, all right, you know. So the idea evolves away from Dave Ramsey, right? In my personal life, I'm 100% with the guy, right?

I will not carry any debt. At this time, this is what I'm thinking. I will not carry any debt. I'm just going to, you know, okay. But when it comes to buying a house, okay, we're going to do something a little different. But I'm still a little, I'm still wary, right? Because it was a hard lesson to learn, right, with that $144,000. So we decided, okay, let's do the whole save up a bigger down payment, right?

We got, so this is over the next year. It brings this up to the end of the year. We're close to 12% down if we can find a house where, oh, I'm thinking, I'm good. We'll get a 50 grand down, right? I'm good. And, you know, 12% houses start shooting up. As we all know, right now, it's nuts. And so we had put an offer in on a house.

Gone. We weren't even close. They told us, oh, yeah, yeah, you were like the lowest offer. And we were five grand over. We offered five grand over what they're asking. We were the lowest offer. Oh, my Lord. So the next one, we offered chin over.

And finally, we found this one. You know, I didn't even look at the house. And I went and saw it. He said it's a perfect house for a rental. Because by this time, I'm saying out loud while I'm driving. And I talk out loud while I'm driving a lot. Right. I'm saying I want to be an investor.

I want to own real estate because I'm looking at what our retirement's going to look like. We're fairly well broke, but I had been investing. So I had a 401K at the old company that rolled into an IRA. I had started the Roth IRA. We're putting in $1,000 a month, $500 for me, $500 for my wife. now I'm doing a new 401K to work now

but so that's all growing and it's nice but it's small you know and there's like I said we're a little older so we're getting started late in life so I need to do something more something bigger and that's when my shift and my mind happened with

why don't we buy something that will cash flow readily right so if we're looking at 20% down on a house that should, right? And most markets be a cash flowing house and allow someone else to pay down that mortgage while we go to the next one and do the same thing again, right? We need help if we're going to get to a retirement where, you know, we're not dependent on, on, you know, the accounts that are going to be small. So that all happened, yeah, a little over a year ago. So I'm doing the work with my company, C2. We're piling up the money. I'm working like

crazy and it's intense it's intense it's 12 14 hour days every single day and then we put in this offer and we offered 350,000 and 26 dollars and the and the appraisal came in at 350,000 dollars so we we paid what it appraised for and I'm okay with that because this house has a brand new roof it has a brand new windows has a brand new floors it has a brand new furnace right every all the appliances are brand new it the only thing it's wrong with this house is it's got very bad electrical. Hello. Let me have it.

I'll take that. I'll take that. So that's what I'm doing tomorrow. It's changing that fuse box off of the building. We had, as you know, you have to get homeowners insurance before you can, you know, buy the house. You get it in place. The mortgage company wants to see that.

We went ahead and did that. They have you take pictures of everything and send it to them because COVID. They're not going to come out. So we sent pictures. And we got a notice in the mail thing that they're canceling the insurance. because of the fuse box, because it doesn't have breakers. This house is made in 1961. And so we call them, say, hey, we've already got the permit pulled.

I'm getting the materials together. They said, it doesn't matter. You have until May 11th. So I've got two more weeks to get that thing changed. So I'm going to change it tomorrow. And I'm so excited because I get to tear open the walls and run all new wires to this entire house. This is my job. I'm going to do a $10,000 upgrade to this house basically for a weekend to work.

work, you know, because I know what I'm doing. And it's awesome. You know, the change from where I was back when all I had was my mouth, gibbered to make money, and then I'd run off and bitterer away in drugs and God only knows what else, till this point now where I'm crawling under people's houses, I'm crawling in addicts, I'm providing a service, a real service to them, right? I'm bringing value to other people that they're afraid to do or can't do, don't know themselves and this is another big step in point in my life too because now a lot of the piece that

I found is in service to other people right and when I come when I come to somebody's house and I'm able to do something that they're afraid of right it's awesome and it pays well right when I when I when I quit taking so much from everything and started doing more to give back it paid it paid it I get so much more personally than I ever did when I was out trying to and get it, right? There's, we have, we have the little old money, the little old lady money. So whenever a little old lady called me says, I need to hang a chandelier for me. Okay. So I go over there. Now, I don't charge, like, the widow, the widow woman, I want, not going to charge her any money, but she's going to pay me something because she wants to, right? And I don't say what it is.

I just, I'll take whatever it is. I'm happy. Thank you, you know, because she wants to, she wants to, she wants to pay for the services that she got. So if I go hanging the chandelier, she, you know, gives me $50. Okay, great. You know. Thank you. I appreciate it. But I never tell them, you know, what my wages are. And it's always, they always need less. And that's fine. We just kind of keep that cash, right? That's actually what we're spending right now is the cash that we get from those little little lady jobs because they have a, like the first lady, she has a walking group. He tells one of the other ladies in her group. So she called me over, can you do the same thing

for me? Yes. Oh, you hanged a shal there? Uh-huh. She gave you $50? Uh-huh. Okay, can I give you $50? Oh, yes. You can. Right? You know, so there's like this small, group of ladies that I just kind of just do work for and they just give me a little bit of cash and it's kind of builds up and that's really nice right it's awesome it's good feeling you know just hanging sandal there's that right you know my husband died seven years ago you know let's talk okay let's talk right and i have a great time i'll spend two three hours just hang in a light right just to do that sort of thing but then when they when they pass on my name to you know their neighbor

right this guy wants a spa put in okay let me come over there. I get in there. I, you know, I jump in the attic. I crawl across. I do my stuff. And people are just really appreciative. And it's a great feeling to be able to give back to that in that aspect. This is just incredible. I mean, your story and where you are right now, it's just amazing how much income you're bringing in, how much wealth you're building. You said you're bringing in, how much you're helping people, how much your life seems to have improved with all that kind of stuff. you're the emotion that you've you've brought into this and how how clearly like it's just

amazing to see you react to you. Hey, my son now wants to be like me growing up with with all that kind of stuff because of the great work you're doing. I mean, thank you for sharing all of this with us and congratulations and just the enormous amount of success you've had and and where you've gotten with all this. Yeah. Did you hear how excited he got when he started talking about being an electrician? You know, he's telling his story. and it's going along, and then he talks about being an electrician, and he's so excited. I want to highlight that for a minute because I feel a little bit uniquely qualified to discuss this.

My father-in-law was an electrician. We do our own electrical work because y'all don't answer your phone. I cannot tell you how many times we have called contractors, and you guys just let it ring. It goes to voicemail. I leave a voicemail. You don't call me back. Blah, la, la, la. So we just finally ended up doing it ourselves.

That's how we got started doing it ourselves was we called a plumber. He's like, yeah, I'll be there on Saturday. Saturday comes, no plumber. But we still have this big old cesspool underneath the crawl space that isn't going away and we need to fix it. I think the tub was like directly depositing right under the house. It was awesome. So my husband went down there and figured it out.

Without YouTube, it was all with books and stuff. But what you're saying is, I heard you in the beginning of the first. show say, I didn't like school. I acted out in school for various other reasons, but school was not a place that you enjoyed. When we were in school, when we were in middle school, well, you got to do good in high school so you can get into college. You were going to go to college. That was how it went. You got up in the morning. You got dressed. You brushed your teeth. And when you graduated high school, you went to college. There was no other option. They didn't talk about trade school. We didn't talk about anything. So for you to go to college because the people at Yosemite are telling you to go to

college, did you enjoy that at all? It was exactly. I went to junior college too. It absolutely is high school with cigarettes. Yeah. So I had the same pressure. My mom got remarried. I have a stepdad. He's my dad now. He's straight at my dad. And he used to always say, if you don't go to college, you're going to end up digging ditches. And I think about those words every time I'm digging a ditch. And, and I smile, because I'm only digging a ditch from here to there, and I'm done, right? But it's also paying me $50 an hour. You know, this ditch, this ditch brought me $400. He was a programmer, you know, so his, his mentality towards education was a little different. I call him trenches. Trenches, yeah.

That's good. You're in the trenches. Yeah. So, sorry. But, well, I mean, that's then, every once in a while still dig. But usually at this point, I say I'm too old. I'm not digging anymore. You know, I'm, I'm, the knowledge that I have now is better used to put into running your wires and getting everything done right. And we'll, you know, we'll find a kid with a strong back who can dig us a ditch now. But yeah, when I was growing up, you know, acting out in school, I was always the kid that they took and put them up and put my desk up next to the teacher's desk, facing the wall away from everybody else. and so that's when I stole the,

I swiped the Bill Bow Bagan's off of her desk, my teacher's desk in third grade and started reading because I'm not paying attention to anything anyway. So I started reading The Hobbit, right, in third grade. And, oh, that ignited books, right? And I have read voraciously ever since. There's never, there's never been a time that I wasn't reading. And when I was in high school, I would skip class

and go hang out in the library and just read books. and for whatever reason I was stealing them to and then I'd bring it back because they would only let you check out three at a time and I'm not doing that. I took seven and I'd step in my backpack and go home and I'd read all weekend long, right? And I'd bring them back and I'd put them back on the shelf when they didn't know. And so if that just, but it's always fiction. It was never anything that improved in my life.

It just improved my lexicon. That's the only thing I got out of that. But an imagination. Now I'm reading all of these nonfiction books. Well, I'm not reading anymore. Now I'm listening to them, right? when I pop in audio books because I'm always driving, I'm always working. My education is books now, right?

It always has been. Everything I've learned, I've learned from listening to this, listen to that, go trying it. Go try, fail. That's how you succeed, right? Go try, fail. Go try, fail. And then, boom, suddenly you succeed. And a lot of that's just from the education from learning from the books and the reading and all that.

So, like I said, what I expect from my son is going to be a little different. than what was expected of me, but it's exactly what you said, Mindy, that school was expected of you, right? So, I don't know. When I got there, it was just such a letdown. How, how could, do you, do you mind, would you mind sharing a little bit about, you know, how much you're saving per month nowadays and, and maybe like a, like a ballpark of where your net worth is sitting today? Okay. So my, my wage is $42 an hour, right? Which, that 40 hours of week, but you out right around 85,000 a year. Okay.

My boss, I started a new company last summer, last September, and he caught on quick, the fact that I like to work. So he's always throwing overtime at me. So that pushed last year's W-2 income up to 95. And then on the side, my C2, I think we paid taxes on 35 on that. So that pushed us up to around $130,000 for the year, which is good. That's awesome. Yeah.

Especially since that 35 was not touched and just felt. Now, like I said, I'm always keeping my ear out for stuff. Last year, oh, we shut off the cable a long time ago, right, to save money. So I don't have a lot of media input. So I'm immune to a lot of things that gets other people wild up. So I didn't know about COVID for a long time. I just noticed that there wasn't any cars on the road when I'm driving to work. Right?

And then I'm asking, what's going on? They're like, oh, there's a lockdown. Oh, there's a lockdown. Okay. You know, there's a disease floating around. Oh, that's terrible. And I just kept working. It never really bothered me.

But I started thinking, look at all those cars at the airport, man, the enterprise cars. There's a sea of enterprise cars just sitting there. And I go, I wonder what the stocks are doing. So I look at the stock market. It drops. And I try to buy stocks in enterprise. Well, they're not private. They're private.

They're not publicly traded. So I ended up buying something for Carnival Cruise Line because I read somewhere that they were 80% of the market, right, in cruises. And I said, this is a perfect opportunity, right? Stocks are down. That means they're on sale, right? So called my wife. I said, I want a couple thousand to invest. So we invested everything I read.

My stock broker, right over there at Edward Jones. He goes, oh, no, what did he say? What do you say? He goes, I feel the market. It's still volatile. I think we should hold off. I said, yeah, okay, I appreciate that. I don't care about volatility.

I'm not trying to time the bottom. I'm trying to do anything. I just think that a couple grand is loseable, but I think that that company is going to come back, right? They were $60 a share. They were down at $10 a share when I bought them. They kept going down. They went down to seven.

My wife's like they went down to seven. But, you know, it's okay. We're at 29 right now, right? And in June 1st, when they open up, I bet you money. Well, I'm betting money that it's going to double again, right? It's going to be right back up at 50. So the savings that we had was building up. We had, you know, 40 or 50 grand for the house, right?

That little two, $3,000 that we invested turned into 10 now, I think. That was, you know, so like I said, that's our savings rate. That's the only side stuff I did. The $1 a month that we're saving into the IRA, the 3% that's going into the 401K is also the savings. And, uh, And then we live off of the 40 hour a week, W2. So all overtime from the W2 goes into savings.

And I think we also have some savings rate on the 40 hours a week. There's a little bit that we're still saving there. So the biggest expense that we have besides our rent, right, is food. Because when we went to keto and we stopped buying all of the process stuff, Oh, it got expensive. Now we buy fresh food, right? And it's much more expensive. We do eat at home almost exclusively.

So that saves a lot of money, too. So that helps with the savings rate as well. Did I answer that question correctly? So awesome. No, yeah. And then you're now investing, like, my guess is between, if you're putting down, if you've got a fully funded emergency reserve and you're putting down 50 Gs on rental properties nowadays, that you're well past the 100,000 net worth market.

or do you have any kind of inkling there? Okay, so the money we had for the down payment, we got to, we got the offer accepted, we got into it, and then all of a sudden somebody said something like, hey, you're a first-time buyer. You can pull some of the IRA money out without a penalty, but you'll have to pay taxes. I said, oh, okay, so, you know, I sent him a text and hey, what do you think about this? And he goes, oh, yeah, absolutely, you know, you can pull out $10,000. I said, oh, awesome. You know, just let your CPA know and you'll do the taxes next year.

I said, okay, well, 50 just went to 60. Well, I was in the union for a bunch of years, so I called the pension. They said, well, there's a COVID relief program. Did you ever lose any hours? Yeah, I lost hours. Then the dip there, the first two weeks, we lost hours. And you go, okay, so you lost income. You can pull out some.

How much can I pull out? You can pull out either up to the $1,000. $20,000. I said, okay. So I said, what do I do? Fill this out. So they sent me 14,000 because they kept 20%. They said to go to taxes. Right. Penalty freeze. So it got a little bit of pension money. All of a sudden now, I'm within spitting distance of 20% down on this house. So that 50 just turned into 70 something. We pulled out from a little bit more from our savings than we wanted to. So instead of having 20,000 saved as a backup, I think we're down to 10 plus that plus those stocks that we can sell, right?

So that's going to keep us right around the 20 mark. But that got me to the $78,000 that I needed for the closing cost, which I volunteered to pay, and 20% down in the house. And the moment that that all happened, right, everything shifted because suddenly all that money that I've been working for, saving, grasping with my little fists, is gone, right? And it took a big shift in my mind to realize it's not gone. It's just sitting in this new safe deposit box, right? that has a roof on it.

And so that, that, that's when, that's when we kind of, okay, so this is good. Now we can save it for the next one. So now I can take a year to save up the next 80 grand or the next 20%. Who knows what it will be in two years, right? Whatever 20% will be. But once I realized that, that PMI, right, when we were sitting down with the mortgage lender, oh my God, that gives me high of someone. I'm like, I don't want to pay that.

I don't want to pay insurance for somebody. else that's ridiculous so i decided i'm allergic to p m i and i will only buy houses when i can get 20 percent down and that's that's our new goal going forward oh but i forgot to mention this we are we now have a credit card they uh they threw a big fit about us not having a credit score you know because that's what happens when you don't have any credit right i said but look at all the money is what dave says he's like he says yeah i don't have any credit because he doesn't have any credit cards or anything like that. And he's like,

I can't rent the apartment building. I can buy the complex, but I can't, I can't rent the, you know, a unit in the complex. Exactly. I like,

I have got, what's my debt to income ratio? Awesome. I mean, come on. I don't owe anybody either. How would I not pay you? No,

no, no. You need a credit score. So we got a, we got a secured card, you know, for the $1,000. And then we've got a real card with Costco and,

you know, and immediately, immediately the money starts flowing again. And so we're going to, I don't know, leave that at home. I don't want that thing on me at all. I like walking around with my $20 in my pocket and my bank card, my debit card.

Because that way, how you have a list of what's going on. It seems to flow easier. It has debt. Nope, makes sense. Well, this has just been fantastic. Thank you for sharing all this. Thank you for the incredible story and journey you've been on here. Mindy is right.

You do clearly love the electrician piece of things. Oh, yeah, I lost 100 pounds. Oh, but then I installed a chandelier, you know. It's just been so much fun with this. Go ahead, Wendy. The addictive personality can be used for good, too. Yeah. You left drugs behind and gained a bunch of weight,

but your addictive personality allowed you to stick to it and get rid of the weight. There's a lot of people who don't stick to it and get rid of the weight. It allowed you to save money, stick to the getting rid of debt phase that is so difficult for a lot of people. I am going to give you some advice because this is still my show, even though you're the guest and the star today, definitely teach your child how to do electricity because even if he doesn't go be an electrician,

he'll know how to do it. My husband didn't learn a lot from his dad and his dad passed last summer. And then he decided that he was going to finish off the basement. And so he's learning how to do electricity. We put it in his subpanel. He put it a subpanel. I did nothing.

I didn't even go by the parts this time. That used to be my job to go to Home Depot all the time and buy all the parts. But he put in a sub panel. He ran all the electricity. He did all the things, but it took him longer because he was still kind of figuring it out. He had a bit of an idea. But being in the trades, I bet you know a guy who does drywall really awesome. And I bet you know a great plumber.

And you can, when you have these houses that, because you're going to discover houses that are dumps. You're going to be like, oh, wait, I could buy, like, you have everything perfect except electric. That's fabulous, but have everything perfect besides everything. And then you call up your friend Bob the Roofer, hey, can we swap some jobs? You do the roofing on my job and I will come do the electricity on your job. And you call up, you know, fill the plumber.

They say Bob the Plumber. I meant Bob the Roofer. Phil the plumber. Call up Phil and be like, hey, let's swap. And just go on and on and on. And these guys are going to start becoming your group. You know who the good drywaller is and who the lazy bum is who never shows up on time. You know, being in the trades gives you such an advantage to your investing.

I bet next year, maybe two years because the market's kind of crazy right now. You're going to be sitting on this empire of formerly crappy houses that are now amazing and wonderful because of all the things that you know. That's funny. Reach out to those little old ladies. That's what Tanna says. She says, Yeah, reach out to those little old ladies. That eight hours you're working is what keeps us paying the bills.

But those others, that's what's building the empire. That's funny. When we moved into the house, I don't like porch lights, right? Because they're kind of getting your eyes. So I immediately removed the porch light and I put in some little puck lights up above. So the whole front of my house is lit. It's really pretty. It's got brand new paint.

It's light down. While I was putting those in, I had my poles in there. And all of a sudden, the pole goes shoot inside the house. What the hell? And I run up and put my head in the attic and there's my boy. He goes, oh, sorry, Dad. I pulled the wrong wire. That was the best day of my life.

He was up there pulling wire with me. For all, I'm crawling in the attic. He's standing up walking. And we ran all those wires together. It was so awesome. It was so great. So, yeah, I can't wait to teach him everything, you know. And it's starting now.

You know, he already knows what this wire is, what that wire is, you know. And, you know, we just, I throw quizzes at him whenever I can. And he can start earning money with you when he, He's, I don't know, 13, 14, 15. So, yeah, how early can you start paying him a W2 legitimately, right? So 10, 12 in a family business, something like that? Because I want to get an IRA started for him, a Roth IRA as quickly as I can. Because when I see those compound interest starts, that close my mind.

Yeah, he needs to have earned income. And I don't know how early you can start paying him. I do know that you have to pay him what you would be paying somebody else. So you can't pay him $6,000 to help you run wires in the attic for an hour. Yeah. But you can pay him $15 an hour if that's what you would also pay somebody else. Sure. I'll give him minimum wage.

I don't mind. I just want to get it started, you know. Exactly. Yeah. If I can get him something, pay a little bit of taxes and get a Roth IRA rolling. Oh, goodness. And then he would need to file. taxes.

Yeah. Yeah. He would need to file. But I think, don't quote me on this, I only know enough to be dangerous, but I think 12,000 is the minimum income that he would need to file and pay taxes. I think he still has to file taxes, but he doesn't owe any taxes because he's not making enough money. So when you, and his limit is $6,000 to contribute to the Roth IRA, just like yours is.

So until next year, when you can do, oh, wait, the Roth. is only 61. Is it? 7,000. I'm sorry. 50 is 1,000 for next year after 50. And then, but the 401k goes up,

I think, to 24,000 for you. So super excited to turn 50. Yeah. But yeah, you can, I don't know if you can earn income at 6 as an electrical apprentice. It's something like, in a family business,

it's something like 10 or 12 is what somebody was saying, but I'll talk to my CPA about it. Yeah. Yeah, talk to your CPA and ask, get the actual number. And then as soon as he does, boom, you've got an assistant who's earning income so he can contribute to his Roth IRA. Yep. I'm very excited about that for him.

I'm very excited for him, too. Well, this has just been, again, a fantastic interview. Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. Thank you for. Do you have anything else you want to add or any parts of your story that we should highlight before we get on? to closing out the show with The Famous Four? I don't know. The retirement to me looks a lot like me driving around,

taking care of my own rentals. That's the goal, right? To get enough of those that I can step away from the W-2, right? I have enough income there, then I can just, because I can never quit, right? I can never quit working. One of the things they tell you down at the union hall is like the number one killer is retirement, right?

retirement kills because guys go home, sit down and croak, right? So I don't want that. So I'm going to work until I can't, you know, until they haul me out feet first. Fair enough. So you're just going to keep buying rentals every year it sounds like, or more frequently if you can. Yeah. What's that book? How to Get Rich Slow? I don't think it'll be that slow for you based on what I'm hearing here, especially if you can find more properties that need electrical work. Yeah. Everything's due except for electricity. Well, great. Zero dip in my work hours for this whole COVID. In fact, it went up because everybody suddenly needed a spa.

I put in more spas this last year than I have in all the other years combined. Everybody sitting at home, why don't we have a spa? I don't know. Call the electrician, get some power put in. It's pain. That is crazy. It is. Okay, Chris, as wonderful as this show was, we are not done yet.

We still have our famous four, which is the same five questions we ask of all of our guests. The first one is, what is your favorite finance book? Without a doubt, the book that changed it for us was Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. We read that. I'll listen to the podcast. I buy them. He sells them every once in a while for $10 a piece. And so I'll buy $10 and 12 of them.

And I hand them out like tick-tax. If you're a young person on my job, you're going to get a strong talking to about retirement. You're going to get that book pushed into your hands. I had one kid. I gave him the book. And I could tell right away he wasn't going to open it. And so the next day when I saw him at work, I said, did you find that $20 bill I left in there?

And he said, what? And then the next day he came back to work, he goes, there's no $20 bill in there. Oh, yeah, but now you're looking at it. So start reading it, you know? That is by far the book that did it all for me. That's awesome. What was your biggest money mistake?

The new cars. I mean, well, okay, up into the drugs. Let's just say that whole, those three decades were a money mistake. after that, in a sober lifetime, the new cars, right? It was just so much money gone so fast, right? The minute they handed you the keys, it stopped being a $25,000 car and became a $17,000 car. Right? That was terrible.

Nope. Love it. Yeah. That's a great mistake. That's my favorite answer. What was your biggest money mistake? Well, as a former homeless drug addict, new cars. That is...

Everybody says new cars. And that is so true. If you were thinking about buying a new car, stop. Don't buy it. That is your biggest money mistake. And I'm talking like a brand new, what is this, 2021, brand new 2021 or 2022. Do they have 222s yet? I don't know.

I don't know how that works. But yeah, the brand new car, don't buy it. Buy a used car. Absolutely. Okay. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? besides don't buy a new car. Go try, fail. That is how you succeed. You have to try. You have to fail. You have to learn from it. And you keep going. And the other thing is, is it's never too late.

It's never too late. You know, being completely upside down. You know, we had a house's worth of debt when our son was born. So we had no value. We were negative, 100%, right? We didn't have a house to show for it. But now here we are. We have a house. I've got a savings. I've got a good, strong business on the side. I've got a beautiful wife. I've got a wonderful sign. He's so kind. And it's just, it's a, it's never too late. Go try, fail, start today. Thank you. That's really powerful advice. What's your favorite joke to tell a construction job sites. Well, okay, I've got, okay, it's a joke you've heard, I know, because you did a pirate off with some guy in the past, but many may not know this. So here it is. Are you ready?

What's a pirate's favorite letter? Ah, ar. You would think so, matey, but it's the sea. Love it. All right, a couple, couple pirate jokes here. What's a pirate's favorite sport? Hopscot. Archery. What's a pirate's favorite South American country? Argentina, yes. What's a pirate's favorite ancient grief mathematician?

Oh, no. Aristotle. Arr. Comedis. Arr. What's a pirate's favorite United States president? You've got them all right here on the tip of your tongue, too.

That's the best part of this. I don't know. It's Bill Clinton. Of course. But really, it's because he's from Arkansas. All right. Chris, where can people find out more about you? I'm in Carson City.

Come visit me. I'm on Facebook, T. Christopher Colton. And that's about it. I shut down the blog last year because I got too busy. So I'm paying money for this website, so I shut that down. So see Christopher Colton, if you want to look me up on Facebook. And I'm here in Nevada. Come visit.

Don't come here and buy anything, you know. And you're in our BiggerPockets Money Facebook group. Oh, yeah, of course. At Facebook.com slash groups slash BP money. And we actually found Chris because he posted something that got like one million likes in the group about his story. And that's how we came across your incredible story here to get you on the show. So thank you so much for posting that and for agreeing to come on and share it here today.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, this was a fantastic story, and I really appreciate your time. And we will see you around the Facebook group. Thank you so much again. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Okay, Scott, that was Chris Colton. What did you think of his story?

Like I said earlier in the intro, this was the mother of all financial journey. stories that that I've heard so far, um, or, or, or come across that the amount of debt, the amount of challenges he has in his background, the, the, the casual, hundred pound weight loss as part of that journey, um, the position of pride and joy and, and gratitude that he has today after achieving all of that. I mean, it was just, it's just amazing to see what's going on here. And now he's a real estate investor. I'm going to retire early, I bet. This is, it's just, it's just phenomenal and was so much fun to interview, Chris, today. Yeah, he was a really great person to talk to. And, you know, I want to point out that school was not his thing. And there's a lot of people who are our age

who were forced into school, go to college after you graduate from high school, and that's just how it goes. And I want to say to people who are listening right now, if you've got a kid that is just not getting it done in high school, It's just not his thing or her thing. You can just tell that they're struggling. Introduce them to the traits. Maybe their face can light up just like Chris's. He's talking about helping people and that's really where he gets his joy. When you go to a job and you know that you're horrible at it, you just, it weighs on you.

I've been in a lot of jobs where I was not very good at it. I knew I wasn't very good at it. Like, man, I just feel horrible. Chris, I can tell, has just the joy in his life when he's helping somebody. He's good at what he does. He enjoys doing it and he's good at it. Don't force your kid into some college that they don't really want to go to. It's going to be another slog for them.

There are other options where you can still make really good money. Did you hear him say $100,000? his kid is going to have the ability to make $100,000 right out of high school. His kid's going to have the ability to make $100,000 in high school just by learning the trades from somebody who so obviously enjoys it. And I am so excited for everything in Chris's life and Chris's son's life coming up. Just the possibilities that are opening up are just huge. And every aspect of Chris's story, I have heard people ask, how do I get started later in

life? How can I still do it? Here's a way that you can get started later in life. how can I do this if I'm getting ready to change a career? Well, here we go. Chris changed careers two or three times. How can I do this when I had so much debt? Well, here's Chris's story of paying off so much debt.

And it's just all these different things add up to all these. So many people are going to get so much out of this. And I'm so excited that he came today. I don't have anything to add there aside from just reiterating his last piece of advice in the famous four there, which is just it's never too late to get started on that. So, you know, he just got started and he has never stopped. He has not stopped in six, seven, eight, nine years now on his journey of just hustling and building a better life for himself and his family. Yep.

And he is now crushing it. And I'm so excited. Let's help out even more here before we exit, Mindy. So if you are in the Carson City, Nevada or surrounding area, Chris's company is C2 Electric. And so he picks up the phone and answers that. And so if you need anything done, you're having trouble finding an electrician, give him a call. And maybe we can help him get that next rental property just a little bit faster. Yes.

Chris clearly knows what he's doing. So give him a call. And he will. He said after we stopped recording, he said, oh, my slogan is I'll answer your call. I answer every phone call, which is huge if you have never tried to go. That's a good slogan for an electrician company. Yeah, for electrical company, it's hard enough to get them to answer. Yeah. No, go give Chris a call and see if, and give a chance to compete for your business. We don't usually plug businesses like this, but we'll make an exception here on this show. Okay, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it.

From episode 193 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen saying, next time, bring more cookies.