I’m just a 22 year old guy writing to tell you about my financial journey thus far even though it may be shorter than many of my peers I hope that my stories along with tips and tricks can better serve this community. I began my personal finance journey over eight years ago as a freshman in high school (Nerdy I know right?) with reading financial & real estate articles. Once, I found Bigger Pockets an online real estate investing forum that has developed over the years into one of the best real estate advice blogs I’ve come across (topic for another post).
Bigger Pockets began to pull me into not just the real estate investing (REI) but evolved into the personal finance community on how to best prepare my finances for my REI aspirations. From there I became an earlier follower of the Financial Independence or the Financial Independence Retire Early community you will see me frequently refer to it as “FIRE” which is where I got the inspiration for this blog. At first I thought it was common to be interested in personal finance but then as I started reading more & more things began to stick out in my daily life. It was easy to see that my friends, family and even my own mom were not making good financial decisions and/or investments. After, this realization I began to research why so many Americans did not have good financial literacy such as buying a car with a loan, purchasing too much of a house (house rich, money poor) and many other personal finance mistakes that would them down the wrong direction.
My goal for writing this blog is not to place judgement on my peers for having an enormous amount of students loans or spending far more than they earn to in other words “keep up with the Jones’s”. I too have made financial mistakes and will continue to because I by no means perfect. However, I aim to be a voice to hopefully inspire current generations of Americans to go against what many in the media write, to continue to push people into the rat race by getting the newest consumer good. I hope that my journey and posts can help provide you guidance and advice to avoid many of the money traps out there.
Peace out the The FI Guy!
If you have any comments or suggestions for future posts please leave reviews or reach out to me directly.