Welcome to Money Life Leaders!

This is a blog about money and how it can make or break your life.  I am not saying that money should be the most important thing in your life but having money allows to focus on those things that are the most important.

My current goal is to retire by the time I turn 45.  I know 45 might seem too young but the more I look at it the more I think it is attainable.  I am already changing the way my family lives and changing the definition of retirement for my family.

I wasn't always this focused on retirement:

Every year, on my birthday, I look back and try to figure out what my main accomplishments were.  Somehow my mind has decided that aging one more year is ok as long as I ended the year better than I started.

For most of my twenties these accomplishments revolved around physical fitness, saving money, and acquiring more “stuff”.  If I ended the year with a lower net worth than I began I would be ok as long as I had something to show for it.  I’m not saying that this was a smart way to save but I was young and it made sense to me at the time. 

The first few years where I did not meet my yearly goal was 2008-2010 and the stock market did not behave the way I wanted.  I was still a newbie investor but I had enough invested for the crash to hurt me.  After that I made the best decision I could think of and I doubled down and made some risky trades.  I figured I could make huge gains that would not only erase my previous years losses but also make even more money. 

Every trade I made I pictured the best possible scenario and what things I could buy with the new money.  I would always tell myself that I had done the math and assessed the downside but I never focused on it as much as the upside.  This allowed me to trick myself into thinking that these trades were good ideas.  I ended up losing my shirt on those moves and decided that I had to stop, especially when I was risking my family’s future.  

It took each one of those experiences to bring to where I am in today.  I have realized that there is no magic formula for saving for retirement.  You can’t bet your future on your ability to pick the next Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook.  You also can't just put money under a mattress and hope no one finds it.  You have to find a way to make money, spend what you make efficiently, save as much as possible, and let time and compound interest work in your favor.  

This blog is way to document my change of thinking, find like minded people to share this journey with, and hopefully teach/learn at the same time.