The Origin Story – Part 1

My origin story starts in 2010, I had just graduated from university with a degree in Civil Engineering and a diploma in Technology Management and Entrepreneurship. I was motivated, ready to get out there and make a name for myself. I was lucky enough to be leaving school with only about $10,000 in debt split between a line of credit and student loans and happened to find a job that started immediately after graduation.

Ms. Flip It was in about the same situation and had also gotten a job in the same city as mine. So we did what all new grads do, we had jobs but no way to get to them, so we bought some cars. Fortunately for us, we didn’t go too crazy, Ms. Flip it picked up a brand new Hyundai Accent for about $16,000 and I bought my grandfather’s old Impala for $4,000. Now that we had wheels, it was time to find a place to stay. We looked at a bunch of apartments before finally finding one we liked, we signed a one year lease at $1,000 a month plus utilities.

We thought this is what you did, at this point we had never heard of financial independence and as far as we were concerned we were being far more responsible than many of our peers, who had elected to go with the new F-150 right out of school. In hindsight, we didn’t do that badly, sure nowadays we probably won’t have purchased a brand new car, but that car hasn’t given us any problems and is still going strong 8 years later. We probably should have found someplace cheaper to live, but we felt like we deserved a nicer place after having slummed it for the last four years at the end of the day, it didn’t really make all that much difference.

Now we were all settled in and we started to actually go to these jobs that were going to pay for all of the things we had just bought. We both started out with entry-level salaries in the $45,000 to $55,000 range. I was working a 9 hour day and commuted 45 min each way well, Ms. Flip it was working a regular 8 to 5 and only had a commute of a few minutes. We both signed up for our company RRSP match as soon as we were eligible. I was getting a 4% match and Ms. Flip It was getting 5%.

Ms. Flip It really liked her job, she was being challenged and was working with people that were intelligent and driven. I, on the other hand, new quite quickly that my job was not for me. After the initial honeymoon phase where you are meeting new people learning about the work and are just excited to be doing something different, I settled into a deep boredom. It turns out that I had little to do at this new job and a mandatory 9 hour day with nothing to do for weeks on end should be considered a form of torture.

The silver lining is that this is when I was first introduced to the idea of Financial Independence. I was talking to a co-worker who was in a similar situation to me and was asking how he was putting in the days, he said he was reading a lot of blogs, I had never even heard of blogs. He kindly volunteered to send me a reading list and one of the blogs on that list was Canadian Dream: Free at 45 This wasn’t necessarily my lightbulb moment, but I found the blog extremely interesting.

As it turns out I was very good at doing nothing and was given a $3,000 raise four months into the job. It was at this point that Ms. Flip it and I had to figure out what to do with all our new found money. We decided to get serious about paying off our debt we set a goal to have all our student debt paid off within the year. So we started to dump any extra money on to our student loans and we actually didn’t find it that difficult to meet our goal. We felt like we were killing it, student debt free one year out of school.  eventually, I could no longer tolerate the boredom at my job so I found a new one, the money was about the same but the position came with a company truck and gas card that I was able to use for personal use. Sadly it took many years for me to realize how great of a perk this was.

My new job was far from boring and I hit the ground running, quickly moving up in the company within the first year and becoming a manager. This came with a nice $10,000 bump in pay and a nicer truck. We were now making, in our eyes, a crazy amount of money for two 23-year-olds and our lifestyle started to creep. I don’t remember eating many home-cooked meals during this time of our life, as we frequented the restaurant scene in our city.

We also decided that our apartment was really too small for us and we really needed a backyard to properly enjoy life. So we decided to buy a house. Probably our biggest financial mistake to date and something we are still dealing with. We quickly saved up the minimum down payment, found a realtor and looked at every house in our price range in a single day. Picked the one that we liked best and put in an offer. I don’t really think it happened this quickly but it sure felt like we didn’t spend nearly enough time researching and evaluating our options. We were lucky in that we wanted a fixer-upper, definitely watching way too much HGTV around this time, and didn’t spend a crazy amount of money on the house.

Life just kind of continued on at this point we were both working hard at our jobs, doing house renovations and living our lives. We were still saving a fair amount of money but without any real purpose, it was mostly just building up in TFSA accounts in cash.

To be continued ………………..