If I had to pinpoint an exact moment in my life which spurred me towards getting out of my 10-year financial rut of inactivity and when I really started putting my money towards saving and investing, I would have to say there’s no real moment. It is more a confluence of different events and factors which eventually lead me to money freedom.
My journey started with a man. His name is synonymous with the self-help industry and how changing one’s thinking can lead to whole new set of profound results. His name is Bob Proctor.
I started with his You Were Born Rich program and ended up finding myself sitting in his 5-day intensive Matrixx program.
More specifically, I learned how my thinking had been limiting how far I went in life. In other words, I became aware of my thinking and how it keeps imprisoning me. Over time, I slowly learned to free myself from those self-imposed bonds. My money life started changing, too.
I’m a believer that money is just an extension of our beliefs and value systems. It’s a reflection of our success. The more money we have, the more successful we are at this game called life.
The Ten Year Loop
I knew I should be investing. Except, I wasn’t. Every now and then, I’d log onto my bank account and see that same surplus of funds sitting stagnant in my checking account. Each time, I would think to myself: I really need to invest this money.
I was so financially illiterate I didn’t even know to put my money into a savings account. I was losing money to inflation without even knowing it.
I did this on and off for the next ten years.
Sure enough, at some point while staring at my bank account, I’d suddenly feel very motivated to invest. I had taken a retirement planning class through my employer several years ago. Learning about the power of compounding interest, along with why sometimes stock investments are better than real estate investments, I had a basic idea of what I should be doing. It’s just that I wasn’t doing it.
I’d get on the phone with Merrill Lynch Bank of America, expressing why I am investing. Of course, I’d say those things to the representative loudly and with conviction, likely because I really didn’t believe in them at the time.
This is something I slowly learned over time: Those who believe in the conviction of their beliefs need not tell other people about them. If you find yourself telling your friends in a tone of voice filled with pride, assertiveness, and most of all the loudness of conviction, stating your purpose to do something, chances are you don’t quite fully believe yet. Chances are good you will not follow through.
It’s the same thing if you expressed in a similar manner what you learned to other people. You don’t quite believe in what you’ve learned. So you say them loudly in front of other people because you want to feel right and good about it.
Just Decide!
If you’re going to do something, you just do it. You don’t need an accountability partner or any of that folderol most goal-setting and goal-achievements gurus seem to advocate. You truly decide and then go after it. You just do it. You don’t need to tell people about your progress on a daily basis. People who do that don’t really believe in themselves or that they can do it. So they tell others, in part to remind themselves and to shame themselves into action.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: Shame doesn’t propel us into action. It keeps us down in inaction.
Of course, the forms from Merrill Lynch to initiate the funds transfer would arrive in the mail several days later. By that time, the fire inside had died. Logic and rationality had regained control of my emotional brain. That’s how I liked to think of it…that I was being irrational and acting emotional at the moment I got on the phone to state my intentions to invest.
Sure enough, those forms would sit unopened. The days turned into weeks, and the weeks soon turned into months. From time to time, I would see those forms sitting there, collecting dust, and think about how I really should fill them out and get my financial life in order.
Of course, I never did. I continued this pattern for the next handful of years. Each time, the pattern was the same. I would look at my bank account, see that I have a bunch of money laying around, then think about how I really should invest that money. I would feel a fire burning intensely inside of me, get on the phone with whomever I happened to choose at that moment, and tell them the same thing I had been telling the previous banks.
A different set of forms would arrive, only to sit there and once again gather dust through the months and the years.
Fear Still Kept Me Prisoner
What was going on this entire time? Fear had retaken control again and again. I had a story that investing in the stock market is not unlike gambling. Another story was that I never had an immediate family member, someone who knew what she was doing, teach me how to invest. How then can I trust all the books and classes I was taking?
I was acting in defense of what I did not want instead of what I wanted. The part of me which always assumed the worst-case scenario and would only look for the bad things had once again regained control.
It’s human nature to look only for the bad stuff, even when a hundred things went right during the day. This likely came from living in the wild, when a single mistake like getting cut and having that wound become infected could cost us our lives.
The Matrixx
Paying to attend the Matrixx was another event which helped me to eventually let go of my fears and invest. The amount I had been trying for the longest time to invest was a measly $10,000. It had cost much more to attend the Matrixx. Part of my journey was learning how to let go of a large sum of money without any expectation of anything in return.
I didn’t immediately jump into investment mode right away. It would be several more years before I internalized the lessons taught at the Matrixx. In case you’re wondering, the Matrixx is a variation of Napoleon Hill’s seminal book Think and Grow Rich, condensed into a 5-day intensive workshop with 74 other people. On the sixth day, we even got to see Bob’s house. It’s also a terrific way to network with 74 other people.
The year I attended the Matrixx marked the eighth year of my financial rut. At this point, I was still reluctant and fearful about investing. You might think this is the first time I’ve ever spent this much money at once, but that’s not true. I had bought a house and a car. The Matrixx was one of those things where you didn’t really know what you were getting yourself into and if you would even get what you wanted. Yet, the two years following the Matrixx would be marked by massive growth and evolution as I began to transcend my own bullshit.
I had taken a huge leap of faith going to the Matrixx. When I still wasn’t getting the results I wanted, I got mad. A few years later, it dawned on me that I had effectively paid for a shortcut.
No Shortcuts to Success
There are no shortcuts to success. The path to success consists of many forks in the road. More often than not, we take the wrong fork and have to double back. In short, success is boring. It consists of doing the same things on a daily basis, sticking to a system that works.
Notice that I said “system that works”, not “what works”. Successful people understand that the road to success is paved with failures. They are willing to fail a hundred times, following a system that works. Another thing is successful people give up much later, after failing several hundred times, compared to less successful people, who might give up only after tens of failures. This is what differentiates successful individuals from unsuccessful ones.
This same concept applies to saving, investing, and becoming financially independent. I realized there are no shortcuts.
I eventually took a job and moved to the Bay Area. This was after two long years of struggling in a fruitless job search. Prospective employers rejected me, or I would turn down the jobs myself.
I was engaging in self-sabotage during these job interviews. During the course of the interview, I would invariably say something I knew would cost me the job. I was too comfortable where I was, afraid of leaving the safety of the high desert and the security of government employment. In other words, I was afraid to take a chance.
It would take most of those two years to overcome this paradigm. I was unsuccessful because I was not willing to let go of what I had. My faulty belief system and my unwillingness to change were keeping me prisoner.
There was something else going on here, too. In essence, I was afraid of rejection. So I rejected people before they could reject me!
I would eventually learn that the place I had called home for the past ten years was not the crowned jewel and safety mecca I had assumed it was. In fact, the city in the Bay Area I now call home is much safer!
Another lesson learned here, best described by the Persian poet Rumi:
Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.
When I started looking at what I wanted rather than what I didn’t want, things changed. Before this point, I was still running away from something rather than running towards something. There’s a huge different between the two.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
In year 10, I learned there was a difference between a broker and a fiduciary. Merrill Lynch, with whom I had been talking, is a broker. Brokers do not have to make decisions in my best interest. For example, they can buy and sell a stock a number of times to earn commissions even though it does not benefit me any to do this. A fiduciary, on the other hand, cannot engage in such activities, as this would not be in my best interest. It would also be illegal for them to do so. Working with a fiduciary lessened the anxiety I have around entrusting my money with them.
Eventually, I found employment with a Silicon Valley startup. At around the same time, the people at the Matrixx gifted me an audio program called Magic in Your Mind, starring Bob Proctor and Mary Morrissey. As I would soon discover, the timing of this gift was serendipitous. I had just moved out of my house and was staying at an extended stay hotel. Housing in the Bay Area proved hard to find. At nights, I had lots of free time so I would listen to the program whenever I was in the hotel room, in my car or at the office.
I would soon find out it seemed like I was moving down instead of up. I had just packed up 10 years’ worth of life and moved out of my house that I owned. For a time, it seemed I would have to go back to living in an apartment, something I have done for the first quarter-century of my life before buying my house. I vowed if I can help it I would never again live in an apartment. I did not enjoy listening to my neighbors’ music and their heavy footsteps on my ceiling.
This was not my ideal situation. I was moving down. Many years later, I still remember the story Mary Morrissey tells in Magic in Your Mind of the single mother who wanted to move her family into a house but could not afford it. Mary asked her pupil to imagine looking out the kitchen window while her kids played in the yard. Instead of damning her circumstances, the single mom started to think about what she really wanted. In the process, she was able to do just that…move into a house!
I was in a similar situation. With the Bay Area housing crunch, it seemed hard to find something I could tolerate. I really didn’t like the idea of living in an apartment. So, what I started visualizing living in a place where I could look out the window of my kitchen and bathroom. This meant it was a house of some type.
The magic in my mind was coming to fruition. Some two months later, I found myself living in a house! To this day, I am very grateful for the Magic in Your Mind program and how it’s changed my life.
Finally, I Invest!
About a year after starting work with the startup, I soon found myself sitting in the offices of Edelman Financial, talking to a financial adviser. Soon thereafter, I started investing!
My ten-year financial rut ended. I am now on another journey. I still constantly study how our paradigms and mindsets keep us stuck. Just because I’m better with my money doesn’t mean I’m great. There are still walls I find myself running into, not realizing I’m stuck.
During this period, through my studies I discovered another advisory firm called Personal Capital. In particular, their net worth calculation tool enthralled me.
All I need do is give the passwords for each individual account I wanted Personal Capital to track. It did the rest for me. Needless to say, I was uncomfortable with giving someone else the passwords to my accounts. I started by giving information for an account I didn’t care much for, just to see how it works. Once I understood things better and understood that even people working at Personal Capital do not have access to those passwords (they are stored offsite on another server) and the system limits what they can see in my accounts, my comfort level went up.
Impressed with their toolkit, I eventually became a Personal Capital customer. But it wasn’t without first going through four-months of sales calls with one of their advisers. I was once again balking, being too comfortable where I was. Even though their investment methodology, tools, and lower advisory fees impressed me, I still hesitated. I would eventually jump ship but there’s another lesson here: Strike while the iron is hot!
Conclusion
I’m happy to say I am still constantly investing my money. There are times when I do catch myself with a surplus of funds. That’s when I dump the excess into more investments. If I keep the course then I’m well on my way to a good retirement.
That doesn’t mean I stop once I get there. I still plan to invest my money into other ventures along with the stock market. Most everyone complains they wish they had saved more. No one ever complains about saving too much.
It really helps to check your accounts on a daily basis so that you can keep track of your financial goals. Doing this also helps you catch suspicious activity before they get out of hand.
Resist the temptation to change things on a whim. The stock market is by nature volatile. Even though we’ve been in one of the longest bull markets as of this writing, periods of high are still volatile.
Success is boring. It means the same things and sticking to a system that works. That’s how you eventually achieve financial freedom.