Transcript
Mindy Jensen (0:00)
Today's Finance Friday is a guest hoping to retire by the age of 35. Sarah has had financial odds stacked up against her from a young age, but by conventional standards was building an impressive portfolio. Then her circumstances shifted again when she became financially responsible for immediate family members, which shifted the goalposts of her fine number. How can you achieve fire with additional financial obligation? That's the question we're going to answer in today's episode. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always, is my beef jerky loving co host, Scott Trent.
Scott Trench (0:42)
Thanks Mindy. Great to be here. And we're looking forward to helping Sarah have her financial situation cured. Bigger Pockets has a goal of creating 1 million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when where you're starting. And if you're on the journey and doing a lot of things right, we can hopefully help you accelerate it by a few years. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us here on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast today.
Sarah (1:08)
No, thank you. It feels such a pleasure to be here. I am a huge fan and an avid listener of the podcast.
Scott Trench (1:14)
Awesome. We love the show too, so thank you so much. No, really appreciate your, your, the, the very nice note that you sent me here and, and couldn't be more excited to get into the, the details here today.
Mindy Jensen (1:26)
Sarah, let's look at a quick look money overview. Let's talk about your journey and how you got where you are today.
Sarah (1:33)
Yeah, absolutely. So I immigrated with my family to the US when I was very young. So you know that that's not where my money journey started, but it's just a little background. I think the background is helpful because as a result of my parents being immigrants, you know, it was bit hard for them to find jobs. They worked menial, like minimum wage jobs. So growing up we didn't have too much. I mean, resources were pretty scarce. But I think where my journey took a pivotal turn was when my brother was born. At that point my mom actually stopped working and she became a stay at home mom. And as a result that did put a pretty big crunch on the family finances. And I think at one point we had to move out of like the apartment we were living in and move into my uncle's house just so we could save a little bit on the rent and just help make that financial crunch a little bit easier. But that was also around the time when I was, you know, getting ready to apply for colleges and get that whole process started. And again, you know, my parents didn't really know much about the process in terms of, like, applications, financial aid, and all of that. So that was something I kind of had to navigate all on my own with some help from my guidance counselor. I didn't really qualify for good financial aid either. And just taking out loans to go to college, especially when I already didn't feel super confident that I could repay it, depending on, you know, I couldn't tell what would end up happening in the future. But also, I didn't want to put myself so far behind, especially when I felt like I was already pretty behind in terms of finances. So I ended up going to community college for my first year. And in hindsight, I think that was one of the best financial decisions I could have made in my early years, because, one, I didn't have any loans, and two, I didn't have to worry about that after I graduated. And so I spent one year at community college and I got my associates, and then I transferred over. And I know there's a lot of guests on the show who have, like, you know, applied for scholarship and used that as one of their avenues to fund college. But I think my philosophy was, you know, I could apply for all these college, college, like, scholarships, but there was no guarantee that I would get them. And so I didn't want to put the fate of my future in other people's hands. So I just went and got a job. And I worked part time, but I consistently worked, I think, about 30 to 35 hours a week. So I was almost working full time with the full course load. So it was, you know, I was busy almost like every hour of every day, like, everything was accounted for. So I had to be super diligent, make sure, like, you know, I was on top of all my deadlines, on top of all my shifts, and I worked as a. Primarily as a server for three to four years. And it's funny because I've listened to, like, David Green come on the podcast, and he talks about serving and how it was such a great job because you kind of. It's like your own little business that you're operating, right? So I really like that. And you know, what he said is true. You really can make as much as you want to, right? There's always people who's willing to give up shifts, always people who want to leave early and want you to take care of their tables and their last customers. So that was actually a really great way to make money and I was able to, you know, fund myself for the most part all throughout college with just working as a server part time.