Late Starter to FI series #11 – Early Retirement Earl

I got off track there, sorry, I am passionate about my steaks. The point is, I may opt to work longer to support a more indulgent lifestyle. I will decide when the time comes. That is the great thing about FI – the ability to choose!

OK, so before I get to what’s next for me, let’s address the elephant in the room that I glossed over earlier. Yes I was homeless. Twice. I don’t really like to advertise it but it is a big part of what made me who I am so let’s get to it.

My Dad left us when I was just a baby. My mother raised us alone with help from her mother. Dear ol’ dad contributed just about nothing. So I didn’t really have any excess growing up. We didn’t take vacations. If I wanted a new bike, I got a paper route and worked to save up for a new bike. I was delivering newspapers at 7 years old. Times were very different in the early 80s.

We didn’t have much but we lived in a decent size house with a huge backyard. Unfortunately for us when I was 10 years old, the man we rented from just sorta stopped paying his mortgage and out we went. I can’t even imagine how that must have been for my Mom. To make things worse, my grandmother, who went to live at a friend’s house had a heart attack and died a few weeks later. That was my first experience of having no home and also my first experience losing a loved one. All within the same month at 10 years old.

The second time I had nowhere to live was when my Mom died. I was 19 years old. Lucky for me, my older sister took me in so I wasn’t really homeless but still a pretty shitty situation to be in. It wouldn’t last long as I would take the little amount of money that was left to me by my Mom and use it to get an apartment on my own. A little one bedroom with hand me down furniture but it was mine.

I had spent my entire youth being responsible. Delivering newspapers to earn money. Taking care of my Mom when she became sick. And venturing out on my own after she died. Being forced to have so many responsibilities at such a young age and never really having any money to splurge led to me being reckless in my 20s and 30s. 

Some highlights:

I took out a personal loan for a motorcycle.

I would go out drinking after work every night. I mean every single night. $100 bar tabs nightly. What a waste.

I started smoking. I have since quit and what a money savings that was.

I once put a trip to Cancun on the credit card.

It got so bad that I wound up with no credit cards, living pay check to pay check and when my car broke down, I had to borrow money from a friend to rent a car just to get to work.

There were times when I would sell of part of my old baseball card collection just to have enough money to pay the rent.

It took me several years to get that out of my system. When I did, the bill came due and it wasn’t easy but luckily I knew how to be responsible. I hadn’t racked up much debt because I had no credit cards but I had a car that barely drove. I was living paycheck to paycheck, digging for spare change that last day or two before pay day, and now developed a dirty and expensive habit of smoking a pack of parliament a day. 

During these years I had purchased my first condo so I had made at least one good decision. Problem was, I was so busy spending money on leisure that I fell behind on the mortgage. My wake up call came when my cell phone rang one day while I was drinking alone at a strip club. On the line was my mortgage lender asking me why I was behind as I “make more than enough money”.

At that point, I knew I was being irresponsible and needed to make some changes. It didn’t happen all at once. I slowly began taking back control of my finances. I got caught up on all my bills, applied for a few credit cards, started a little savings fund. It would take years before I could finally kick the smoking habit but by the time I did, I knew exactly what to do with the newfound money I would have from not spending 10 bucks a day on a pack of smokes.

I think I am blessed for the experiences I had and I feel came out the other end a better man. I feel I am a more dedicated father because I chose not to have kids for so long until I was ready. That was a conscious decision made by a guy who understood the level of responsibility it takes to be a father as he had watched his own father fail at it. I also saw the financial burden that it had put on my mother.

I know what it is like to grow up without a dad and what it is like to grow up poor. I will not allow my children to go through that. I would shovel shit onto a plate and eat it if that is what it took to keep food on the table for my children and a roof over their heads.

I have been through a lot. I understand I am not alone in that and many people have it worse which is why I don’t choose to broadcast my past very often.

I am proud to call myself a success. I am a millionaire who was once homeless. If my story can inspire even one person who is like I once was, then I feel I have done my duty. 

As a society through schooling and parenting, I feel we fail miserably at teaching personal finance and financial responsibility. I feel those that make it owe it to the next generation to pass on what they have learned. Nobody taught me about compound interest or the 4% rule when I was younger and it pisses me off. So I will do what I can to pass this information along to others, especially my own kids.