My name is Tanya and I decided to launch this blog on my birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
But why? Who am I? And what brought me to this point of starting a blog! Well…
I did everything right.
I budgeted. I saved. I sacrificed. I invested. I planned a very healthy retirement.
And it still went wrong.
I got hit by not one, but three major financial events which threatened to take me down and ruin my retirement plan.
How will I re-build? Will I be able to retire? Follow along as I start over financially and make my life flow benjamins. Again.
Before I go into how I came to find myself in such a predicament, I have to explain why I decided to start this blog on my birthday? Because…
- Birthdays are an awesome chance to start anew and a good way to track progress over the years.
- To document my journey. It’s easy to lose accountability and miss markers of progress unless you’re keeping track!
- To inspire myself and others facing any kind of adversity that they can get back on financial track
- And finally to show that it’s NEVER TOO LATE to start over.
The backstory: I did everything right
Let’s start with a little backstory. I did everything right. Budgeted. Saved. Invested. Planned. What happened was something I could have never predicted. Thankfully, I was prepared. My retirement plan became my life saving parachute during a set of major financial calamities. I’m so grateful I had done everything right because it gave me something to fall back on.
But how will I re-build? Will I have enough time? WIll I be able to support myself? Will I ever be able to retire?
In my early twenties I had figured out that I wanted to retire with half million dollars a year in passive income. Is that a lot? Maybe. But when I dream or set goals I tend to GO BIG. During my thirties my then spouse and I started buying real estate. I had read thirty books on retirement planning and real estate investing and knew setting up a passive income was the way to get us to our goals. We bought our first house which quickly doubled in value and so we bought another property, and then two more until we had four.
Then 2008 hit and we hit the pause button on buying more property – and we held on as carefully as we could. We managed to hold onto everything but not without some sleepless nights. As the economy improved so did our stress level. Our income grew and more than covered our expenses and we were living comfortably. The real estate we had acquired was meant to enhance our 401K savings and other tax advantaged retirement planning we had done.
Over time the properties would be paid off and I had basically achieved our goal and set up $500k per year in passive income! Once everything was paid off we would be financially essentially set for the rest of our lives. And we were just in our forties! So, we decided to go for more and try doubling that goal.
Everything changed
Except, unbeknownst to us, a few surprises were headed our way. Any one of these events could have the potential to level a family. We had three. In the same year.
A job loss.
A brain tumor
and sadly a divorce.
As I said, any one of those events could level a family. But to have all three of those events in the same year created a major financial calamity.
I’ve already decided that this moment will not define me or my life. I will be the architect of my world and it’s time for some serious re-invention.
But what do I do now? How will I recover?
I have to think fast and work smart. My plan is to create a current income for now and a passive income that will sustain me for the rest of my life. I’ve got a three pronged approach.
Current income plan: Launch a major job hunt
Passive income plan: Start buying mortgage notes and start blogging
I plan to take my 20 years of experience in buying investment properties and start buying non-performing mortgage notes. Never heard of those you say? That’s ok, follow along and I will explain how I plan to set up passive income for the rest of my life by buying non-performing mortgage notes aka becoming the bank.
I also plan to build up my blog and teach others how to blog and monetize their blogs by following my progress and advice. As I try and learn new things which are working for me I’ll share them so you can learn them too! In the meantime I’m grateful that I had prepared well and because of that I’ve been able to use my retirement plan way earlier than expected as a parachute to financial safety as I rebuild my life and, eventually, my new retirement plan.
The average millionaire has seven streams of income. I will set about building my multiple come streams one by one.
Follow along on my journey. I promise to share the ups and the downs and all the tips I learn along the way!
Hi again! If you – yes you! If you found the information here helpful please look at the top of this page. Do you see that little grey bar and that pink button? That’s where you can subscribe so you don’t miss out on any of the fun! My subscribers will have access to exclusive information on flash sales from my favorite affiliates plus access to exclusive content I won’t be publishing anywhere else. I promise not to spam you and you can usubscirbe at any time.
