So I have a little space and a little life style inflation has set in. Now full well knowing that, I’m still happy with my spender purchase in 2020. I’ve purchased Invisalign braces. I’ve spent $3100, and committed to 9 months of braces for my personal appearance only. Not FI, but very much for me.

I’m a college grad, got a promotion at work, 7 years in my company and I’m fully vested in my 401k. Too bad I didn’t care about 401k and gave less than my company match. That vesting would have meant so much more if I had! Complacency sets in, I keep my head down work hard and stay with the company. I thought I could live beyond my means since I was a college grad and had a steady career. I maxed out another credit card, opened another to transfer the balance to a lower intro rate and ended up with 2 maxed out. Third dumb credit mistake was an store credit card to “earn 5% back and enjoy special deals”! By 30, I realized I was stuck in a dead end job, with no savings. There’s no upward mobility. I haven’t learned how to save money. Something had to change. My surrounding seemed like a good place to start. I decided to go to the place I thrived and took a job at a State Funded Public University and my alma Mater. The state “has a pension”, “great benefits”, and “you can retire happy”. The State job was a slow death by monotony and mindlessness. It did however have 2?glimmers of hope, the TAP or tuition assistance program and a blessing in disguise. First TAP meant University employees could attend any state university for $0 in tuition up to an annual max of around $5000/yr at the time. Here is where my inner FI comes out, I researched the cost per hour and how many hours a Masters program would be. I found a 100% online program for an MBA, where I could take 2-3 classes at a time over 18 months and graduate with only the costs of books (About $1000). I NAILED MY FI MBA!! Next was the pay cut. It forced me to trim all the bloat and make a budget. I’m still pay check to pay check but I’m dedicated to saving money anywhere I can. Can I get an Aldi amen? The silver lining came when 3 weeks before I graduated with my MBA I took a job (back in banking for around 13 years total now) making double what the state paid. Now the commute is an hour, the working hours are long and well over 40 hrs a week, and my family is often waiting on me to unplug. It took ALL THAT MESS, for me to find FI. My hour commute has taught me so much. I reached a $0 net worth within a few months of starting the higher paying job. I’ve stacked about $20,000 in cash and investments. I’ve got a full company match on my 401k but it’s definitely not maxed out. I’m still paying on 2 of those cards. Thank the Good Lord he gave me enough sense not to try the “open a new card trick” more than once. So that’s where I am today. Just starting out where many are already FI. That’s ok, I’ll bring you along from here on. We can look at the numbers, the life choices, and everything in between.

In 2008, I decided I wanted to go back and finish my Associates Degree. I love to learn and no one in my immediate family had finished college at that time. Also, I’m in banking and I see the big banks crashing. There is a good deal of job insecurity happening. I decided I needed to finish school or I was never going to. This was a way to create a sense of security (I thought). This is also around the time I got married. We did a very FI thing, we saved a little money, went to the beach and came back married. I had the white dress and beautiful photos, but no drama or stress! Everything is moving along in life and I found out I was having our one and only child. We did another very FI thing next. We bought a small home within our means. The owner was willing to 100% owner finance. We just had to pay an attorney to write the Promissory Note and Deed for filing. Much cheaper than a bank loan and a very modest rate of 4% over a 10 year amortization. So I am sitting very pregnant, in a community college with unmarried and not pregnant classmate on my “lunch break” and at night to cram this degree in before my due date. I even took out a few small student loans (around $7,000) to get me finished just before our son was born. So all the time I’m paying back student loans (as I’m working full time still) and they are in deferred status. Essentially it was a 0% interest rate. I didn’t make it, I had my son 5 weeks early and in the middle of my last term. God saw me through though. My teachers send assignments via email and I went in to take 1 test on Maternity leave. By goodness, I got that degree!!! I took a year off of school to raise my baby, but returned to work just 8 weeks after having him at 23. From 19 to 23, I had never negotiated my salary and saw minuscule “cost of living” raises. I was worried about how to provide for my new family and thought I could go for a Bachelor’s Degree and get a “better paying job”. I was still living pay check to pay check with the new expenses of a mortgage and baby. I had to finish my last 2 years of college over a 3 and 1/2 year period. Very FI like and paying out of pockets. One thing about being broke and good at school, the government will give you money instead of asking you to borrow it. I kept paying on the loans (again in deferment), keeping my accrued interest near 0%. In 2013, I was the first in my immediate family to earn a Bachelor’s Degree.

My money story really starts at 15. At 15, I got my first job. The going minimum wage was $5.15/hr and I thought I was doing good when I was offered $5.25/hr. I jumped in at 20 hours a week and saved for my first car. Now you’d think I’d pay cash for it. Well I sort of did. My family friend let me put a few hundred down and make monthly payments for the balance. Ohhhh the consumer debt keep creeping from there. After I graduated from High School, I found full time work at Walmart. I started going to community college on my own and began alternating between full time work and full time classes. I never stopped working full time to go to school. I worked every weekend and took all my classes during the week on my off days and before/after my shift at Walmart. I took a few terms off here and there to earn more money by working more hours, but as they say “when the wallet grows, so do the needs”. By the time I was 19 I had a maxed out credit card, had rent and utilities due, and was living pay check to pay check. I eventually landed a “good job” in Banking making $8/hr. After some honest talks with my now husband, he convinced me to call the company and see what I could do. I called them and they offered to freeze the line, reduce the payments, and have closed when I paid it off completely. I stopped going to school around this time and focused on building a career in banking. You’d think this is where I started on “the right path”. It’s not. It’s only going to get messier from here.

I’m 33, married, mother of 1, a career banker, and a hot FI mess. I’ve been in the financial industry for more than a decade, however, I’m just starting a FI path. That’s not to say I’ve made all my life and financial decision without some FI minded hacks. I find though that they have been perfectly counterbalanced with my natural spending heart. I’m a “gifts of affirmation” kinda gal. I decided that I can’t be the only one struggling with where to start, so my gift to you (told you!) is my story. I share with the hopes someone can learn from both my triumphs and my mistakes.

The path to FI is simple, but along the way… it can be messy.

This is the first post on any blog. If you’re wanting a real time look at the life of a FI hot mess, stay tuned for a real time look! Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates. Thank you for stopping by!

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.