Hardway Finance Part 1

Hardway Finance Part 1

Recently, I started listening to a finance-themed podcast that basically stole people’s finance blogs and read them out loud.  It’s kind of what motivated me to write this short series of blogs on my own history and experience with personal finance.  The reason I am calling this “hardway” is its use as a slang term in pro wrestling.  Doing something hardway basically means hurting yourself legitimately.  For instance, getting a black eye from a punch in the face, or breaking one’s nose from a big fall or kick in the face would be getting those injuries “hardway.”  Ideally, they intend not to get hurt.  I’m not a pro wrestler or in the industry at all, but as a hardcore fan, the term has been introduced to me that way.  As you will see, it’s a fairly descriptive way to name my blog.

Around the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, I was starting to get serious about making the big jump from renting to owning.  The problem was, I had too much personal debt to make it work with the income I had.  At that point, I was in school (again) for engineering and spent my weekends going to independent professional wrestling shows.  To give you some idea of my situation, I had a brand new car that I had leased, substantial student loans from my business school education, and easily spent over $100 every weekend on wrestling.  At least once, I had attended three shows in three different states in one weekend.  Wrestlers actually recognized me.  I’ve met at least a couple guys who ended up being a champion in WWE, but before they were even on the WWE’s radar.  To me, that’s cool.

What getting a house meant, though, was that I needed to get rid of my debts and get money at the very least for the fees and down payment required to get a mortgage.  In order to do that in a reasonable amount of time meant raising my income.  To raise my income, I started doing overtime at work.  So, in 2009, with the exception of the very last week of the year and one other day, I was in the factory every day for 10 hours.  Conveniently for me, they were quite busy, but not busy enough to pay extra for me to work on holidays.  So, I worked every day, and I poured the vast majority of that money into three places.  I paid off my car lease early, I paid down $20,000 of my student loans, and I put the rest into savings bonds and a Scottrade account with stocks that I chose myself.

Every Friday, I would go to a restaurant in town and have a steak dinner after work.  I had made it to first shift just the year before, and felt as though I should do something on Friday nights since the option was now available.  Reading that last paragraph, it seems inconceivable that I was able to do as much as I did with what I had.  The car lease was at least $14,000 plus interest. $20,000 towards my student loans, and I think that my Scottrade balance was roughly $10,000.  Much of that was gains, though.  If a stock didn’t double while I owned it, it tripled.  Not everything, but much of it.  I didn’t lose on anything.

That’s what I was able to accomplish in one year.  Every day, I would get up early and start work at 5am and work until 3pm, or a little later in order to do a report.  Given a few more months, I was able to save up the payoff for my car and buy it outright.  From this excellent position, I was to make some decisions that you will learn about in part two.