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Posted over 4 years ago

Oops!! How I failed at FI and what's next

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I discovered financial independence by reading "Your Money or Your LIfe" by Vicki Robin.  It changed my life.  The key concept for me was to determine my cross-over point when I would no longer have to work a conventional job to cover my expenses.

I tracked my expenses and cut out the things that I didn't need. But the real break through for me was buying a house well under my means, selling it at the top of the market and moving into a small basement ADU while my husband and I decided our next step.

I like to work but I hate working for someone else.  It drove me crazy that I would have to sit in a cubicle 8 hours a day when I could knock out my work in about 16 hours and be done for the week. So after FI I knew I wanted to work for myself and I knew I wanted to flip houses. I also know I was tired of all of the cold, dark and damp that plague Seattle about 8 months out of the year.  So after we sold the house my husband and I quit our contract gigs, packed up the dog and went on a road trip looking for our new home.

We settled on Austin, TX the place we lovingly call Seattle, with sun.  Our plan was to buy a fixer upper, live in it for 2 years, sell it and decide what to do next.  Well suffice it to say our plan fell apart.  My brother followed me to Texas, then my parents decided if two of their 3 kids were in Texas they were going to spend the winte

rs down here with us.  My parents were concerned that if they bought a house too far away from me it would be a "burden" for me to keep an eye on it.  So they built a house on my property - oops - plan A shot to hell.  I can't sell the house and the 3 acres it sits on because the parents live here too.

New plan, I would get my real estate license and learn the markets in order to identify the best place to flip houses I didn't live in. I did that and did about 10 flips that I'm proud of but I didn't make a lot of money, in fact I kept getting deeper into the hole.  

I had pretty much decided my model wasn't working and I was actively developing a new plan when my sister-in-law and her husband convince my husband to let them partner with me in my company.  My husband thought it would be a win/win.  It wasn't, they sued us, put a lien on the property we were working on forcing a foreclosure and a bankruptcy filing.  

There's a lot to unpack in those paragraphs and I p

robably will touch on my mistakes and more importantly the lessons I learned in future blog posts or in the forums but for now here I am.  51 years old, bankrupt, with a job that pays $40,000 a year, a homestead property and a dream/plan to start over.

I have a 5 year goal to create $5,000 a month in passive income with a combination of rental property, note investing and income producing index funds.  This blog will document my journey.

Thanks for reading.


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