I followed the typical American path through life…elementary school, high school, college, got a job, got married, bought a house, a dog and had a picket fence (but it was not white).

So far I’ve lived a good, relatively comfortable life. However, over the past 3 years, I slowly came to take stock of where I was financially.

There were some good things…my wife and I had invested in my 401k, I saved for my children’s college through 529 plans), had stable, well-paying careers….but some not so good things as well…

I had debt – lots of debt (credit cards, line of credit we took out on our house, a large overdraft balance on our checking account, etc).

I owned a rental house that was not covering the mortgage and had fallen into disrepair.

I had bought a house that I believed to be way too big and expensive for our level of income.

I bought that big ‘ol house by taking out a loan through my 401k. Wow, just typing that makes me cringe. What was I thinking?!

Hardly any cash savings (non-retirement accounts) to cover ourselves for even a few months of expenses.

I had been questioning what I had been doing with my life…what did I value? Was it things…the accumulation of ever more stuff? Or was it better to simplify my life, enjoy nature, improve my health, improve my mindset, enjoy friends, family…living more in the moment?

My wife and I were not on the same page when it came to debt, savings, our “big” house and almost more importantly…our interests and goals in life had changed (more on that later).

In essence, I was at a turning point. Something had to change. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know exactly every detail that needed to change, but I had a few basic ideas:

• I desperately wanted to drastically reduce or eliminate our non-secured debt.
• I needed to feel a bit more secure by having at least 6 months of savings for emergencies and ideally…..WAY more than that.
• The rental house that we owned – I needed to have the tenants move out, fix it back up and sell it…with the hope that I wouldn’t completely lose my ass on it (and by the way, I was staring at potentially an $80,000 shortfall of debt that I would have to pay off).
• Find some way to reduce what seemed to be ever-increasing monthly expenses (you know you are living beyond your means when you have a huge credit card balance and a huge overdraft balance).
• Try to work on my relationship with my wife so that we were on the same page financially and more importantly… on an emotional level. We had drifted apart while raising 3 boys and were not on the same page when it came to the direction of our finances.

I started small, saving/investing through my companies stock savings plan. This was a cash, taxable account (non-retirement), where I could have a certain amount deducted each pay, set aside and then purchase company stock at the end of each quarter. In addition, as an employee, my purchase price was at a 10% discount. Essentially, I was already up 10% on the stock from day one.

I knew this had to be where I was going to draw a firm line and start to turn my life around. I settled on $240 every two weeks, so $580 a month (we seemed to waste that much each month on all sorts of nonsense spending anyway, so make cuts on spending and save)

Fast forward a bit over 3 years later.

• I am now approaching $100,000 across my savings, investing accounts! Money that I could use right now if I needed it. Over time, I sold portions of my employer’s company stock that I owned and used it to invest and trade my way using a system/theme that I developed on my own to massively grow my account on a percentage basis.
• My rental house – I was able to get that albatross of my neck by almost completely gutting the inside (yes, it was bad) and doing most of the work by myself. I ended up being able to sell it at a very slight profit, instead of taking a HUGE loss.
• We had made an ok dent in our non-secured debt (the credit card balance had been reduced, the line of credit balance had been reduced, and my 401k loan (through automated monthly payments) had been reduced.
• My wife and I unfortunately have decided that our relationship isn’t salvageable and we are headed to divorce. I won’t go into all of the details here (will make a post about this later), but in essence, she is going to keep the house – refinance at a much lower rate, which helps reduce the monthly cost for her, and I am going to be “bought out” of the title to the house with the accumulated savings I mentioned.

So at this point, I am essentially going to be debt free, with a huge savings and investment portfolio (to me anyway). I have steadily worked on improving my mindset, change what I value in life, change my relationships for the better, change my outlook on life, improve my health by eating better, exercise (weight lifting and running).

I also have determined what I want in a future partner that matches my values, shares the same interests. I also know that I am going to be mindful of the relationship pitfalls that my marriage suffered so that I make every effort not to repeat the mistakes she and I had both made in the past.

So there you have it….that is snapshot “about me”.

I hope you can follow along my blog as I continue my journey forward. My main goal for this site is to help others, with a focus on investing and trading (which I love) as well as on overall self-improvement. I’m very transparent and expect that you will find that I freely share my mistakes and successes.

I think I have come a long way over the past 3 years (it is now January 2021 as I type this) and expect to continue in the right direction. I will document my progress going forward and hope you will find my site to be helpful, worthwhile and interesting.

Glenn