David,
I feel truly blessed and privileged to be sharing my story with you today.
Six years ago I met my soul mate. When we met he was in the process of divorcing his first wife and I had been divorced for three years. He had a very good paying job and had been with his company for twenty some years. I had been employed with a school district for ten years. First as a teacher and then as a counselor. After a year of dating we decided to tie the knot. Our combined income was around $110,000 a year.
Because I had a wise colleague advise me early on to invest in a 403b plan through my employer, I didn’t realize I was “paying myself first”. And every year instead of spending my raise I would increase my contribution to my 403b and live on the paycheck I was accustomed to living on. Yes, I lived paycheck to paycheck but I also had piece of mind knowing that I had something tucked away for a rainy day.
My husband on the other hand was starting from scratch. He lost half of his retirement to his ex-wife and inherited most of their debt.
Needless to say we were in the hole as a newly married couple. At the time of his divorce he was only contibuting the minimum 2% into his 401k.
I first heard about you on the Oprah show. After the show I logged on to Amazon.com and purchased “The Automatic Millionaire”. I read it and convinced my husband to look at our Latte Factor. He reluctantly agreed. We pin pointed some things we could do without such as his a.m. coffee purchase at the Cirkle K, his sports car that was costing us about $600.00 a month plus $300.00 a month in gas, and he began to brown bag it to work. In addition, he agreed to make a call to his employer once a year to increase his contributions to his 401k. We did more cash purchases than credit card purchases. With my excellent credit history we managed to juggle around some of the higher interest rate card balances to those that offered 0% interest rates or 1.9% introductory rates. We also adopted the idea that if we didn’t have the money, we didn’t buy it.
My husbands 401k earnings have trippled in the last three years and so have his contributions. (He will be making that annual phone call in January.)
In that period of time we continued to pay down our debts while investing in a second home. Currently these homes are being rented. My husband got a promotion and his company now pays for our housing. We recently purchased two lots. Both lots sit side by side in a very exclusive part of town. If we turned around and sold them today, we could profit at minimum 25,000-30,000 on each lot.
A year and a half ago we opened a 529 College Savings Plan for my now 12 year old son. (We are doubling his contribution to make up for lost time.)
Our Church contributions continue to increase as well. We now are able to give more every month and for the last few years we have sponsored a twenty turkey giveaway for Thanksgiving. It gives us great pleasure to be able to feed twenty needy families during this special time of year. And for the first time this year we wrote a $1,000.00 check out to the youth program at our church.
I wanted to spread your good word so, I gave away my “Automatic Millionaire” to a good friend of mine, I bought “The Automatic Millionaire for Single Women” for my sister and purchased the “Automatic Millionaire for Couples” and the “Start Late, Finish Rich” book for my husband and I. I plan to put a copy of Automatic Millionaire in my kids treasure chests. I want my kids to start early rather than late. My husband says I’m the best thing that ever happened to him. I think it’s the other way around.
Thanks for making a huge difference in our lives.
Letty from Texas
