I struggled with where to start this blog, so I will start it at the beginning of my wealth creation journey, on September 14, 2016, when I opened my first brokerage account at Fidelity. I was 31, newly employed after years of graduate school, and brimming with excitement – about the job, sure, but mostly about receiving stock as part of my compensation for the first time.
Beyond the account being logistically necessary, it represented the first time in years that I was making money and, together with my spouse, more money than either one of us had ever made before. And I knew that I had to break the money cycle.
Breaking the money cycle
You might be wondering just what I mean by this exactly? Well, just in my 20s I had already experienced two cycles of having money and having no money:
Cycle #1
Having money: I worked on Wall Street immediately after undergrad, and despite being there during the worst of the Great Recession, by my standards at least, I was paid handsomely for basically being a kid. It was common, even then, to spend $195/each on an Hermès tie or $800+ on the quintessential banker loafers. Even with the expensive consumption habits that I considered the price of entry to “fit in” on the Street, I still found ways to save money here and there, either by having multiple roommates or trying to make a $5 footlong last over multiple days because I knew I wouldn’t be there forever.
Having no money: I wasn’t on Wall Street forever not because I was part of the massive layoffs of the time, but rather, I quit in late 2009 to pursue my first entrepreneurial venture. With over $50,000 in savings and still in my early 20s, I figured I had enough cash for two years of super-scrappy living in New York City hustling hard to get my business off the ground… how wrong I was! I was squarely out of money by mid-2010, paying my employees with credit cards, working at least two side jobs, and living on PB&J to float the venture that I ultimately shuttered in 2012.
Cycle #2
Having money: I went back into the work force as an employee to lick the many wounds and repay the many debts I picked up between 2010 and 2012. I was making money again, but I might as well not have been because every dollar I made either went to repaying credit card debt or to consumption (embarrassingly, also on my credit card – not a great strategy for wealth creation). I was living paycheck-to-paycheck not for the Gram (I was a late-adopter) but perhaps to hide from other people and from myself that deep down I felt like an abject failure.
Having no money: Soon after going back to work and realizing that job was not going to be a long-term fit either, I went to graduate school, to learn, I suppose, and to further hide those failure feelings. Despite working internships and side jobs to soften the blow of student loans, broke was the name of this game (again, not a great strategy for wealth creation!).
Now in my 30s, I was tired of the financial ping-pong. I was tired of:
- Spending money on status signals to assuage those failure feelings I still struggled to shake.
- Paying bills and wondering where in the world all my money had gone.
- Counting down the days until my next pay day because I needed the money.
I was tired of the cycles.
What money cycles in your life are you ready to break?