It was actually my divorce that started the chain of events that led to my “lightbulb” moment.
My nationality is Indian and I was sort of backed into an arranged marriage set up by my mother and relatives.
I was incredibly unhappy during my 7-year marriage and finally could not take it any more and filed for divorce.
My wife at the time became incredibly vindictive and made the 12 months of divorce proceedings quite contentious.
I estimated that I ended up paying over $300k in legal fees when all was said and done.
The divorce court split our marital assets with values tilting towards 60% in her favour.
My ex wife received the entire 401k (about $160k), a couple of condos we owned, as well as the majority of our savings account.
My net worth was therefore at its lowest, at around negative $850k, when the divorce papers were signed.
I was about to turn 40 and knew if I didn’t do something, I would never be able to retire, let alone try and retire early.
It is quite sad because, despite all the years of training (around 26 years) to become a physician, I never had one formal lecture on personal finance.
I decided I had to make a change and then began a quest to gain knowledge about personal finance.
I naturally gravitated towards other physician finance blogs when I first started looking.
I also stumbled upon the Bogleheads who helped me tremendously in my quest to achieve wealth.
Because of this, I became a fan of passive index funds as well as real estate (via syndications).
My income afforded me the ability to rapidly change my financial situation once I knew how to channel the funds appropriately.
I loved the concept of financial independence and knew that I wanted my money working for me and not the other way around.
I became debt free right right before my 45th birthday and have never looked back since.
Appreciate the opportunity to share my story. It truly is better late than never. Hopefully others will be inspired to achieve similar results
Great story, thanks for sharing. Divorce is a really serious financial setback, so I am glad to see you have been able to overcome it.
Agree time is short when you start later, gives a sense of urgency to the whole FIRE thing.
Your story gives me hope that FIRE is closer for me than it feels right now.
Thanks Xrayvsn and Latestarterfire.
A great and inspiring story!
I am reading this first thing in the morning and it certainly gave me the inspiration to go work another long day as an architect!
Looking forward to checking in and reading the Xrayvsn Blog!
Shaun