I'm sure I'll forget a number of things here but this should serve to give my reader the gist of where I'm coming from. As for my roots, let's just say that I didn't exactly start from a place of wealth growing up and it's been a lonnng journey just to get to where I am now.
•Work: I was a math tutor at age 15 and had done a couple of odd jobs on occasion prior to that. I started working at Washington Mutual (now Chase) as an intern at age 16 in 2004. At age 18, I moved to Las Vegas, NV to work as a loan officer at Moneytree and eventually took a second job as a lease processor at SONA Financial. At 23, I resigned to begin working for myself, dabbling in a number of industries.
•Investing: My personal investment experience started with a $1k CD and small savings accounts when I was 16 and started putting my earnings away. I started investing in stocks in 2017 to try to get a better rate of return as well as some diversification. In recent years, I've been diving progressively deeper into learning as much as I can about methods of growing my nest egg.
•Money management hurdles: A handful of the big - at least at the time - expenses that come to mind that caused my current savings to take significant hits: medical costs like essential dental work and other personal matters, mistakes in romance such as having a savings account with $1.5k wiped out and overdrawn by an untrustworthy ex boyfriend at age 16, covering partial rent payments and living expenses off and on for family that couldn't manage it themselves, buying a house at age 22, getting married at age 23 (not the marriage itself but the welcome YOLO feeling of being high on life that came with it), paying off my Mustang in my mid 20s, and buying more cars in cash for various reasons. Occasional bouts of poor discretion with spending didn't directly hurt my savings and investment accounts much, as such expenses typically came directly from my paychecks, but they're worth a mention as I could've saved significantly more in those accounts if not for them.
•Education: Due to test scores, my middle school made the controversial decision to send me to college for math at age 12 or 13 while continuing my other studies at the middle school. I continued earning college credits til after high school graduation, funding my education with my wages from work, until work's demands interfered with school hours, causing me to be dropped from classes and make the tough decision to drop out altogether. Though I was somewhat resentful over that defeat as well as ashamed of being described as a "teacher's pet" throughout my school years - an image I'd tried earnestly to abandon, my love of learning prevailed and I've decided to once again embrace it in recent years. Since, I have been self-taught, utilizing whatever tools I can get my hands on to achieve my goals.
Note: The text above is an edited excerpt from a Facebook post I made, originally written as a self-introduction, inspired by an affinity for overcoming those things which I'm most clueless about and filling the gaps in my knowledge to gain control of my financial future! It is posted here to serve as autobiographical data.
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