I’ll show you exactly how I paid off debt and built wealth.

Among acquaintances, friends, and co-workers, my thoughts on money seem extreme. I don’t have many among those groups to share and discuss with.

I’ve been devouring books about money my whole life. I was soooo happy when I found the world of FI, real estate, and investing blogs. I feel like there is a community of people out there that understands me.  They understand how important it is to payoff debt immediately.

When I was in college, I got a job at Fidelity Investments as a stockbroker. It was a 3rd job, a side hustle to payoff my student loans. It was a great introduction to the world of finance. It made sense for someone like me to get a job like this. I’ve always had an interest in the stock market.

If I have to summarize what I learned from being at Fidelity for a short year before I joined the military, it would have to do with what I noticed about the accounts of wealthy people vs. the rest. I got a chance to peer into accounts of all sizes during the time I took trades over the phone.

What the wealthy do that’s different than the rest of us is simple.

Wealthy people don’t do anything tricky, and they don’t have secret investments that are reserved for the super-rich.

Here is the big secret:

Typically, they invested in a mix of 10 to 20 well-known stocks or a few mutual funds, and rarely trade. They hold for the long term. What they did do often was add money into the investments they already had.

That’s all.

(Big letdown)

Wait, that’s not sexy enough!

It is not how they invested their money, but how much they invested. How much they saved. Saving is the point.

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Something that happened to me a lot in my job at Fidelity was people assumed I had some type of inside knowledge of the market. People that knew me wanted statements about where the market was headed. Friends and acquaintances always wanted me to share inside tips with them.

            If I want to make money, what should I buy?

It’s the wrong question.

It doesn’t matter so much what you buy. It matters what you save.   Figuring out what to buy is less important.

I’ll tell you later.

Most people’s problem is they want to invest, but they are deep in debt, and they don’t save. You don’t have to worry much about an investment strategy until you payoff debt.   Even when you are debt-free, the right investment strategy should be simple and not require paying someone fees.

From my time working at Fidelity, I can also tell you what unsuccessful people did in their accounts.

They called me everyday and asked what I thought of different stocks. I wasn’t allowed to answer this, and some of them knew that, but boy did they try!! They would make me check lots of stock prices for them (before it was simple to do on the internet or smartphones).

They traded often based on hot tips, newsletters, Wall Street Times articles, gut feelings, panic, and over-confidence. It the long run, they always lost money. Their balances got smaller and smaller, and they were pissed off.

When you trade often, you are gambling.  In both cases, you always lose money in the long run.  You can bet on that!

RoM

There are no quick fixes or “neat tricks” that get you out of debt faster than the tried-and-true old fashioned way.

You have to systematically payoff debt the old-fashioned way! (No fun!)

Find a way to live your life where you can put a larger and larger portion of your paycheck away every month as savings, and eventually, investments. Yes, easier said than done.

The financial world makes a fortune trying to sell people on complicated strategies, timing the market, and deciding what stock is hot.

Everything they sell is useless in my opinion. The strategy you use is not nearly as important as the fact that you do save as much as you can.  High savings rate is the secret to success.

The old advice of putting away 10% for retirement is absurd and not even close to what you need.  You should be shooting for saving at least 50% of your income.  It’s possible to go even higher.  I know you think I’m crazy.

I’m telling you, lots of us crazy folks do it!

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey is a good book for getting out of debt.

To payoff debt and putting your finances in order, Jim Collins’ new book is the best out there.

His book, The Simple Path to Wealth, explains how to payoff debt, then covers how to invest once you’re there. If you are too cheap to buy his book, read his blog.

My two cents on how to payoff debt.

The first thing you need to do is make that life transition from consumer to saver. Stop spending and start saving.   This needs to become a way of life, although you will be able to ease back on it once you are debt free and have some wealth built. This was easy for my wife.  She’s anti-consumer.  She’s naturally a saver.  Harder for me and many others.

One of the first steps is establishing an emergency fund. Common sense. You need cash sitting around for a rainy day so you don’t take a credit card advance or a payday loan to fix your transmission when your car brakes down.

Systematically payoff debt. I’ve heard of systems where you  work on the smallest balances first to give you a sense of accomplishment.  I considered which loans had the highest interest rate, then prioritized.  We systematically paid off our student loans and credit cards, starting with the highest interest rates first.

If you work at McDonald’s, this method might take you 80 years. My point, you have to combine paying off debt fast with finding a way to boost your income.  Side hustle.  Tons of blogs on this.  For my wife and I, it was taking 2nd and 3rd jobs to get student loans paid off quickly.

After you payoff debt, you need to save for retirement next (This comes before normal investments in a brokerage account).

That’s what we did.  We maxed out our Roth IRA’s every year and contribute the max to my military TSP account, which is roughly the same as a normal workplace 401K. That ends up being quite a bit more than 15&% of my income.

This is easier to do once you are debt free (including mortgage). While you are still in debt, 15% is a great goal.

Keep in mind, I’ve been saving for retirement my entire career EVEN THOUGH I will probably end up with a military retirement, which is one of the best retirements out there.

Why???

Just to be extra safe. Now if I do get that great military retirement, the rest of my retirement savings is just gravy. I don’t need it to survive, I just get to live comfortably in retirement. I have more choices, which translates to freedom. It gives me the option to TRULY retire at the 20 year point of my career if I want to.

Once your consumer debt is gone, and you’ve got a system in place for 15% of your pay going to retirement, then you start a college investment account for each kid. There are tax advantages to doing this.  We set it up at our bank, USAA. It was easy. Do it.

I love this next step that I took from Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover, because it blew my mind when I read it, and it goes against what most people building wealth would do. The get-rich-quick people would definitely skip this step. I’m also pretty sure Donald Trump would laugh at you for doing this.

PAYOFF YOUR HOME MORTGAGE.

Wait, what!! OO, you mean eventually pay it off!

No, I mean pay it off before you invest in other things!

O, you mean 15 years instead of 30???

No, pay it off as fast as you can!!!!!!

I have to admit, when I read this, I was against it. I wanted to start buying stocks and getting rich. I wanted to flip houses and buy properties no money down and be a real estate mogul highly leveraged with massive debt and have a yacht and a Porsche, just like the info-mercials.

Maybe the girl too.

NO NO NO!

Debt is not a tool. You might be ok if you ignore this advice. You might become rich faster than others. But on average, the chances of running into trouble are much higher with debt. There are more fees, more risk, and more headaches.  Ever seen the little disclaimer at the bottom of infomercials “Actual results may vary.”?  They vary a lot!!

Anyway, easier said that done, but we PAID OFF our primary mortgage in six years, and it was one of the coolest things we’ve ever done!! It was a surreal experience to call the bank and tell them I had the remaining $5k and I wanted a payoff statement. They gave it to me, I sent in the money, they congratulated me, and my loan was gone.

Forever.

Talk about how to payoff debt!  That’s how you do it for real!

I cannot begin to tell you how much faster you build wealth when you:

• Don’t have a mortgage payment
• or car payment
• or payments of any kind each month

It might seem like a faaaaar off goal, but it’s attainable and worth it! Some will do it faster than me, some slower. The important thing is you make it a priority and start doing it today. Use me and my readers (I have 10’s and 10’s of them) as well as the readers of more established blogs as people to reach out to as you encounter struggles. There is an entire community here cheering you on that knows you can do it.  You can payoff debt.  All of it.

YOU CAN DO IT!!!

Just do it. Tell me when you do.  I want to hear about it.

By the way, you think paying off your primary residence is awesome?? What about the day when you have a rental property paid off!?!!!?!?!

I paid cash for my first rental property, and then rented it out. Talk about boosting your wealth building again! Not to mention, when I bought the house for cash, I signed two documents. When you buy a house with a mortgage, you sign maybe 50 times and look at 100 pages? Avoiding that was awesome.

Once you’ve paid off your primary residence, it’s time to build wealth. How to do that?

So now you really know how to payoff debt.  You are truly debt free, and you are starting to pile up some cash.

What to do now?

Open up a brokerage count and put your money in low cost index funds.

You heard me right.  Just index funds.

I recommend using the S&P 500 Index funds.  The lowest fees I’m aware are from Vanguard.

Jim Collins would recommend The Total Stock Market Index (VTSAX), also from Vanguard, similar to the S&P, but a larger sampling of the U.S. stock market.

The difference between these two is probably not worth arguing too much.  If you put them side by side, they would very closely mirror each other.  The important point is, you are far better off investing in the market itself instead of trying your luck at beating the market by guessing which stocks, sectors, or hedge funds are going to do well in the short, or even long term.

Once you’ve invested in your brokerage account, you may end up doing what I’ve done.

Real Estate

I’ve been drawn to real estate since I was a kid. My grandfather was a general contractor who was in charge of building large developments of single-family homes throughout Southern California.   I loved the smell of the houses as they were being built. The fresh wood, drywall, and fresh paint excited me.

I remember at a young age being so proud of the houses he was building. I also remember thinking to myself when I was around 8 years old how rich I would be if I could buy property at that time, and keep it until I was an adult.   I remember thinking at the same age how smart it was to own houses and collect rent from the people living there. It wasn’t until I was 29 years old that I would be able to buy my first property.

I now own 20 single family homes debt free.

If you’re interested in an in depth look at how I invest in real estate, look at my Complete Guide to Real Estate Investing.

Want to see a more in depth look at how I pay off debt and exactly how I invest my money?

How to Invest Your Money and Retire Early

What do you think about how I payoff debt?  Invest in real estate?  Do your thoughts differ much from mine?  Comment below.

Rich on Money