Today, I want to take the time to tell you a little more about my story and the journey to where I am now. It’s a bit longer than my other posts, but I felt it was important to share for two reasons. The first is so you know a little more about my back story as I continue to write. I believe it will help give some context for future posts.
The second reason is that I hope you’ll find parts of my story relatable and perhaps some moments inspiring. Or maybe not. Either way, here we go…
College, Teaching, and Years of Debt
I earned a bachelor’s degree from a large university in performance and music education back in the first decade of 2000, graduating with approximately $45,000 in student loans.
Oh my God, we are already in the third decade of this century. Whaaaaaat?!
To answer your question, Robin, it's 26 years past Jumanji's release.
Also, isn’t it messed up that I find it more shocking that the year is 2021, rather than the crazy amount of money I owed for my undergrad?
Right out of college I was hired as a part time elementary/middle school music teacher. I felt very fortunate about this, given that my graduation occurred right around the start of the great recession. I worked two days a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, teaching grades 3-4 general music and 5-8 band.
The other four days of the week I taught private lessons. During the course of my undergrad, I built up a private studio of around 20 students, half of whom I inherited from a friend who decided to move to a new city for grad school.
I had a few performance opportunities, subbing with local orchestras and playing in orchestra pits, but these gigs were not consistent and were few and far between.
On top of this, I offered to video record student recitals at the music school. I charged $120 per recital for a two-camera recording. Each month I had a handful of students hire me as their videographer.
I was earning enough to pay my bills, but I wasn’t saving anything. If I had any extra cash, I’d quickly spend it on electronics: an HDTV, a new cell phone, video games, etc.
Me going to Best Buy to get a new video game.
I signed up for a 30-year income-based repayment program for my student loans. Because of my low income, I owed $0. So I paid $0 each month and let the interest grow.
During my second year out of college, I became anxious with my elementary/middle school job. At the end of each day, I would leave the school with one of two thoughts:
I have the best job in the world
I have the worst job in the world
There was no middle ground, and it became too much of an emotional rollercoaster for me to handle. I also wanted more performance opportunities. Because I was quickly becoming the go-to person for video recording recitals, no one was asking me to perform with them. They wanted me to record. Because of this, my performance opportunities were limited.
Grad School
I decided to go to grad school to focus on my performance career. The teacher with whom I was most eager to study also taught at the school that offered me the best deal financially. I received a full ride, with a substantial monthly stipend.
I spent the two years of my graduate degree focusing on performing. I stopped offering video recording services and taught only one or two students. My stipend covered my expenses. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment by myself. The second year of grad school I started to lease a new car.
Because I was in school, I was able to defer my undergraduate loans for two years. Even though I had the cash to pay off a good chunk of the principle, I continued to pay $0 each month and let the interest continue to grow. At this point, the interest was growing around $200 per month.
I decided my money was better spent on food and beer.
During my master’s degree, I co-founded a contemporary chamber ensemble. We began to tour around the country and commission new music.
College Teaching
The summer after graduating with my master’s degree, I found out about a last-minute job opening at a small, two-year college. I was offered the job as an interim professor. Two weeks later I packed up and moved my belongings half-way across the country.
I loved my job that year, working with amazing students and colleagues. However, the small town lacked performance opportunities. Every few weeks I jumped on a plane back to the city of my graduate school to rehearse and go on tour with the chamber group I was still playing with.
I finally started to pay off my student loans, but only paid the minimum amount due each month. Any extra cash I had went towards buying instruments and travel. My salary was almost twice as much as my stipend in grad school, yet I wasn’t saving anything beyond a small amount going into a pension each month.
Halfway through the school year, the dean of the music school offered me a tenure-track position at the school. Against the advice of many of my mentors, I turned the job down to play and tour with my chamber ensemble. I figured if there was ever a time to try to make it with a band, this was it.
Nothing rocks harder than contemporary chamber music.
At the end of the school year, I moved back to the city of my graduate degree. I moved into a house with three friends. My rent was $300/month.
Touring Life
I met and rehearsed daily with the chamber ensemble. We went on tours, sleeping on the floors and couches of friends and colleagues. After a year or so, we were able to pay ourselves each $500 a month. For us, this was a huge victory. We were on the right track.
To bring in additional income, I started offering to record recitals again. I emailed all of my contacts at the music school and let them know about my services. Almost immediately I was recording a few recitals each month.
I raked in enough money each month to continue paying the minimum amount due on my student loans (the same amount I was paying the previous year). Over half of my payment was going towards interest, but I was slowly chipping away at the loans.
Each member of the chamber ensemble also had an administrative position within the group. My role was to handle digital marketing. I put together promo videos, managed our social media accounts, built Facebook ads and managed our website.
A few months into this, the future Mrs. FIM contacted me for the first time. She was a new doctoral student at the university, and she needed someone to record her first degree recital.
Ten months later we were engaged.
When you know, you know.
Burn Out
Meeting Mrs. FIM flipped my life upside-down in the best way possible. Up until that moment, I didn’t care about saving money, or paying off debt. I was okay with being a poor musician who couch surfed with my friends.
But when I met Mrs. FIM, I started to think about my future. I changed my priorities. I didn’t want to spend weeks on the road away from her. I didn’t want to live off of ramen and Kraft mac and cheese. I wanted more stability in my life.
Oh Kraft Mac and Cheese. You are my weakness.
I was burnt out on practicing/rehearsing 40+ hours each week and traveling 20 hours by car to play a contemporary chamber concert to a half-full hall who would greet us with golf claps and post-concert comments like “That was interesting music...”
The Stress of Bands and Business
At that same time, a friend and I had recently taken over a small business that made music related products. It was a well-oiled machine that didn’t require much effort to keep operational. Before taking over, all of our predecessor’s manufacturing partners agreed to continue their partnerships with us. However, the moment we took over, nearly all of them "changed their minds" and ended our agreements.
Orders for products were coming in, and we had no one to manufacture. I was scrambling to find contacts who could recreate our products while simultaneously traveling on the road with the band.
The only thing that was positive in my life was Mrs. FIM. It was difficult to get out of bed every morning. I dreaded each day. I hated the path my career was heading.
As my priorities slowly shifted, our band started to go through conflict. Months of tough gigs and uninspiring music-making led to disagreements on the plans for the future. Ultimately, three out of four of us decided to quit. It was a typical band break-up.
This pretty much sums up how I felt.
Marriage and Green Cards
Right around that time, one of my friends who works in arts administration told me his organization was hiring a full-time digital marketing coordinator and that I should apply for the job. I followed his advice and was hired because of the years of experiences I had through self-taught skills of videography and digital marketing.
As I began this full-time job, Mrs. FIM was finishing up her doctoral degree. Right before we met she had moved to the US from Europe to pursue her degree and was living here on a student visa. Because of this, her income was limited. Fortunately, her tuition was covered, and she also received a significant stipend during her three-year degree.
We wanted to have a beach wedding and decided to get married in Cancun, but we didn’t want to make our families pay for an expensive trip, so we offered to pay for everyone’s flights and for the housing. We also knew that Mrs. FIM’s green card was going to be expensive, between lawyer and application fees.
Because of these expenses, I tapped into multiple streams of income. Beyond my full-time job, I continued to record recitals and expand my videography side hustle. I had regular gigs with several community orchestras in the area. I taught several private lessons each week, and I drove for Uber and Lyft whenever I had free moments. Our goal was to save $20,000 in ten months.
Taking Back Time
We successfully saved up for our wedding and Mrs. FIM’s green card. During this time, my videography side hustle grew. I no longer had time to drive for Lyft and Uber and I eventually walked away from the symphony gigs. While I did enjoy playing with these regional orchestras, the weeks I had these gigs proved very stressful due to spending nine to fifteen hours in a car traveling.
I would work my full-time job 9-5, drive 90 minutes straight from work to a three-hour rehearsal, 90 minutes back home, sleep, wake up and repeat three to five times a week. One day I realized that if I could book two gigs recording concerts, I could earn the same amount of money in a fraction of the time. This epiphany was enough for me to walk away from the orchestra gigs. It also sparked the idea in me that my time is my most valuable possession.
Through all of this, I was still desperately trying to save the company my friend and I had taken over several years back. We were still struggling to keep up with manufacturing. With my new found respect of my time, I decided to walk away from the business. I’ll talk more about that experience in a different post, but needless to say, it reduced my stress levels significantly.
Meanwhile, Mrs. FIM was out of school and not allowed to work for a year, due to her pending green card. She decided to use her time to start a social justice art festival, which has since turned into a non-profit organization she runs.
Once her green card was approved, she was finally allowed to work. She resumed her performance career and applied for a development position at a local arts organization. Similar to myself, she was offered the job because of the work she had done establishing her festival the year prior.
Both of us had full time jobs and side hustles. For the first time in our lives, we had money left over at the end of each month. It seemed obvious to us that the next big step in our lives was to buy a house.
Luckily, I had a conversation with Bill first.
Buying a House Destroying our Debt
I’ve mentioned Bill in a few of my other posts. He’s a really smart guy with three degrees in music and two degrees in math. In December of 2018, we were catching up over the phone and somehow the conversation pivoted towards money. I mentioned that Mrs. FIM and I had some disposable income and that we were saving up to buy a house, but I was also potentially interested investing in the stock market. This idea of hand-picking stocks was introduced to me by a musician I was regularly playing with in one of the regional orchestras of which I had been a member. It was intriguing and I thought it could be a good place to put some of our "disposable income" (what a dumb term). I knew Bill was investing so I asked for his advice.
What Bill said next changed my life.
Bill simply told me to read The Stock Series by JL Collins. I followed his advice and was immediately hooked. I spent a few hours that night reading the first half of Jim's series. It was so relatable. That same night I ordered his book The Simple Path to Wealth. A few days later my entire perception on personal finance had changed.
Or maybe a better way to put it: Collins was the first person to ever explain to me how and why I felt the way I did about my financial situation. If you haven’t, you should read the book yourself. But in the meantime, here are the main points (simplified) that changed my perception:
If you have debt, you are a slave to that debt.
You won’t be able to grow wealth until you are debt free
Getting out of debt should be your top financial priority
Invest in index funds* (more specifically VTSAX). By doing this you are investing in the entire stock market, which over time ALWAYS goes up.
Save up enough “F*** you” money. It will empower you to take chances and make changes in your life.
After 10, 15, 20, 30 years you’ll wake up, check your bank account, and realize you never have to work another day in your life.
As I was devouring his book, I kept telling Mrs. FIM, “You have to read this book!”
Mrs. FIM would respond by looking at me like this:
I talked about ditching our plans to buy a house and how we should put every extra penny we had available towards paying off my student loans. At this point we still had around $35,000 in student load debt. She couldn’t understand why I had suddenly done a 180 on our future plans.
A few days later I realized why Mrs. FIM was skeptical when she asked me, “Where is that ‘get rich quick’ book?
To her defense, it makes sense that someone could interpret “The Simple Path to Wealth” as “get rich quick”, especially when English is your third language. However, I quickly told her that this is the opposite of that. This is “get rich slowly.”
She started to read the book and within minutes was sold on the idea. She looked at me and said “we need to pay off your debt immediately.”
Starting our FI Journey
It was January of 2019. We made it a goal to pay off all of my student loans by the end of the year. We knew it was a stretch, but we were up to the challenge.
It turns out it wasn’t as much of a stretch as we thought. In September of 2019 I paid off my final loan. Throughout 2018, Mrs. FIM increased her gig work as a musician and my videography business continued to expand. We hadn’t accounted for or anticipated any kind of growth in income. We would deposit the checks into our bank account and immediately put the money towards one of my loans.
We were shocked at how fast we paid down $35,000. For the first time in my adult life I had no interest accruing. It felt so liberating. We looked at each other and asked, “What’s next?”
We dove headfirst into the FIRE movement. We started to read blogs and listen to podcasts. I reread Collins’ book again. And again.
We agreed that we wanted to be free to live whatever life we wanted, and in order to do that, we needed to be financially independent. We thought about what a music career could look like if money wasn’t a factor, and the idea was intoxicating.
So we changed our life style.
We started to track our expenses. We knew we were spending too much at restaurants so in 2020 we made a resolution to stop eating out. We learned how to cook. We reduced our monthly bills.
Simultaneously we worked to advance our professional careers. We both received promotions at our full-time jobs and pushed our freelance careers further. We attacked our savings from both sides: reducing our expenses and increasing our income.
And here we are in the beginning of 2021, with a list of goals/resolutions that will take us to a new level in our quest for financial independence.
So that’s my story. The key point I want you to take away is that we didn’t even start on our journey to financial independence until January of 2019. It was only two years ago that we were over $40,000 in debt (this includes $5,000 of credit card debt I didn’t even mention). Up until that point, my financial life was full of mistakes and missed opportunities.
I could look back and say,
“I should have started paying off my student loans sooner.”
Or
“I shouldn’t have walked away from that tenure-track teaching position.”
It’s so easy to live in hindsight, but I also know I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without the choices I made. And I can say without a doubt that I’ve never been happier with my life than I am right now.
No matter where you are in your life, no matter how old you are, how much debt you have, how much income you bring in, no matter how trapped you might feel, you have the power to make change. Take that first step today. I promise you'll feel happier and more confident.
Don’t dwell on the past. Learn from your mistakes and use them to guide you in the future.
Finally, remember that all of this is about the journey. Enjoy the ride as you work towards a bright future.
Did any of my story relate to you? Let me hear about in the comments!
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