Paying It Forward, From Me To You

A personal story.

As a young adult I wasn’t very good with money, I hadn’t heard of delayed gratification, had a lot of debt, and was regularly spending more than I earned. To put it lightly my financial life was a disaster. I was interested in becoming wealthy, but no one had taught me the ”rules”.

There were times in my life when I couldn’t even put $15 of fuel in my car. Experiences like that had a profound impact on my behaviour with money. I wanted to change, I just didn’t know how.

Fast forward and the pandemic hits, this was the catalyst I needed. Over the years I had become a voracious reader and was consuming anything I could on personal finance, investing, and building wealth. My Uncle always said to me, ”the young you needs to look after the old you”. Now was the time to take action and remove the uncertainty around my finances. The end goal, freedom.

To start, I found what truly made me happy. I realised it was okay to spend on things that brought me joy, but I’d have to be ruthless on the things that weren’t improving my happiness. Next, I needed to determine how much I could save and I kept increasing my savings rate until I truly knew the limit of what was possible. I started with a modest savings goal and ended up saving beyond what I thought was achievable.

Now that I was saving I could turn my focus to how to put this money to work. The biggest risk is doing nothing at all, so after a lot of research and conflicting ideas I determined that I needed to buy assets and the asset class that suited my temperament and personality was Shares or Stocks.

With shares I didn’t need to take on debt to get started and shares instantly provide a positive income stream. This suited me fine. I’m not a stock picking genius and am happy to get the market average over time (which is around 9.2%) all we do is buy low cost broad based index funds.

With investments time carries most of the weight. We save and buy every month and have been doing this through the ups and downs of the market. This is called dollar cost averaging and is a strategy where as soon as you have saved enough buy more shares no matter what the market is doing. Up, down or sideways just keep buying.

This strategy is simple, but not easy– It requires consistent effort over time. This strategy has given us financial strength beyond what I thought was ever possible. If we can do it so can you!

Taking this path has led me to where I am today. I would have never started writing a blog, never found my love for business, never discovered my love for learning, never knew how important curiosity is in life, never prioritised health, never prioritised self improvement, and I feel like I could go on forever about how these simple steps have changed my trajectory in life.

People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom and for me not worrying about money tomorrow is worth more than whatever you could buy today.

Thank you for reading.

J.H.Repetto