Who is Alex
I am a storyteller
Before that I was a real estate investor, and before that I was a broke alcoholic.
I began writing this blog in 2018 after a few years of learning financial freedom (through the FIRE movement and real estate investor community) with the hope that sharing my story transparently could be useful to other people as well. These days I share all sorts of wisdom about finance and philosophy that I think will be useful to you.
Why the fuck would you call it "Broke is a choice?!?"
Financial freedom is possible for everyone. All it takes is painful sacrifice, radical responsibility, and tedious patience. All of which are going to hurt far worse than a few uncomfortable words.
But is it true?
If you're an adult living in America and you're broke your situation will not change until you accept that you are the overwhelming source of the problem. Americans live beyond their means, they live on debt, and they overspend. You may say there are exceptions, and some people have extenuating circumstances, and that there are people who live in true poverty, and that life isn't fair, but none of those things are going to help you and they probably aren't true for you. If you're broke it's most likely because you make bad choices, and then you act offended because you want to deflect responsibility
Luckily, admission is the first step to recovery and once you realize that your financial situation is a reflection of your personal choices, you can very quickly make good ones and create financial freedom. This is a good place to start.
(It's important to note that over the year the only people who have taken offense to this phrase are the people who still abdicate their financial. Everyone who does take responsibility for themselves agrees with and loves the title.)
My money story
In 2001 I enlisted in the Army and saw a bit of the world, jumped out of some airplanes, and to the war...twice. The ordeal helped me grow up a little bit. Then I learned how to build houses with my uncle, I spent some time in car sales, went to college for finance, and then I spent nearly a decade as a drunk and a drug addict – which were not my proudest years.
In my early 30’s I began a journey towards freedom. Freedom from jobs I hate, tyrannical bosses, projects I don’t care about, and just the dull complacency of working for the weekend.
In 2010 I made some particularly bad life choices and ended up broke with no income and a lot of debt. I quickly realized that I had always been broke but never really understood how bad things were because like most Americans I avoided thinking about it or looking at my bank account and just assumed I was destined to be broke. This is when I realized an important lesson: humans really only learn when the lesson is painful, and when life is not painful we learn nothing at all.
This pain made me start learning about personal finance. I calculated my total net worth with a calculator online and it told me I was about 40K in the negative. I had zero money in savings, I had just lost my job, and I wasn’t broke because I didn’t make enough money I was broke because I misspent what I made. I had a nice car and nice clothes and went out to eat often. This problem was from me making bad choices constantly and taking zero responsibility. This is incredibly common and it’s why most people live month to month.
Luckily, I respond very well to pain.
I got fed up with constantly being stressed out over money, I was sick of being broke, and swore I would fix this problem forever.
I still remember distinctly what it was like to have my life choices guided by insufficient resources. Not being able to afford to quit a job I hate, not being able to move to somewhere with more opportunity, being tied to the wrong people due to financial limitations. So I began to sacrifice every single material thing in my life that to start paying off my debt and saving money, it worked, and I documented all of it on this site.
Financial freedom isn’t just not worrying about paying the bills, it allows us to design our entire life around what we enjoy, rather than what most people do which is work just enough to fund their already existing commitments that they aren’t really that excited about. This is a problem that can be fixed and it’s not too hard.
As I started getting better at this I realized that I really enjoyed my new found freedom, and I know others would enjoy it as well. I don’t have any desire to be the most successful investor on earth, I just want to live a life I designed, doing things I love, challenging myself, and helping the next person find the same for themselves.