From $0 to Millionaire in 7 Years (w/ Amy Greene)

is your goal to break generational patterns of poverty or financial struggle or is it you know like for me it's like i want to have summer vacations with my kids do you want to leave a legacy you know what is that why behind behind it and that's going to fuel you to keep going and to keep working i love talking about increasing your net worth this is our barometer for wealth building success today we're going to speak with an investor who has grown her net worth to over 1 million dollars by age 44 amy green is our guest today amy lives with her husband walter and her two children in new jersey and when she's not building wealth for her family she enjoys working out and taking a good nap welcome to the show amy thank you so much andy it's great to be here great to see you as well we we met at a conference i think a year ago now so it's nice to nice to see you again and have this fun conversation so looking back amy when did you start to really care about improving your financial situation right so i actually have always cared about personal finance but i didn't get serious with acting on it until about seven years ago so 2015 i'm married with a baby and i get introduced to dave ramsey and so that whole plan just lit me on fire and so that's when we started to follow the baby steps and get out of debt and really really make traction on our net worth that's awesome so what kind of debt did you guys have when you started off so we had a lot um i owned a condo that i bought all wrong in 2008 and so that we sold that that was about 200 000 of debt we cleaned up a bit more so we had 245 thousand dollars that we cleaned up in two years oh wow okay excellent yeah yeah you did quite a bit of quite a bit of work there and then from the investing side of things did you start investing right away how did that go so the good news is that both my husband and i had been contributing to our 401ks for many years you know so i started the minute i could with my very first job out of college and so and my husband too so we kind of came to the marriage with about equal 401k balances and so but we had debt so the debt kind of it negated what we had so i say we started with you know when we started in 2015 our net worth was basically zero and so but yeah it's just been um something that we've grown since then so yeah just always investing so in seven years then you guys went from zero to over a million now yes wow yes that is incredible that's incredible growth that is that's that's very cool well let's talk about uh you guys how you grow this so what do you and your husband do for income so i am a financial coach and so i'll tell you that during our debt-free journey i got let go from my job at the time and so you know and it's only been a blessing in disguise so now i get to help people with their money because we were on this plan it was it was just a smooth transition to stay home with my my kid at the time and um so i am a financial coach so i work with families to help them create a plan for their money so they can break through their limitations and live and leave a legacy and my husband works for an insurance provider here in new jersey that's awesome very cool okay so uh now that we understand how how the money comes in can you talk to us how you guys break down your net worth because i know that that can be different for other people so tell us what that consists of so people understand so about 61 62 is in retirement and so that's it's actually it's kind of sad because i looked at it the other day and it's it's down but the market's down we just ride the wave so 62 percent is in retirement about 29 is equity in our current home and then about 9 left over is both in cash i'm a big fan of sinking funds and emergency funds and then also our children's 529s which we sometimes don't count towards our our net worth but today i am counting them yeah i hear ya it's depending on the day of the market you might want to include them or not i mean it is it is in your name probably until until then it is until they use it so that's how i look at it my husband's like no it's not our money like it is it is actually funny enough my wife just went back to school and we were looking at hey what's a smart way to pay for this and we look we we utilize zoey's 529 because it's money that you can be used for education and um she's like all right as soon as i get my new career going i'll just put the money back in and uh and replenish it but absolutely it is in your name and it's your money yeah very cool so talk to us about the investing side of things because that is a large chunk of your net worth so what is in that retirement bucket and then how did you start investing to grow that so so large right so you know when i was younger i didn't really have a plan for the for the retirement i just i just picked funds and worked on it that way i think a lot of us get defaulted into those target date funds which are there's nothing wrong with them um however now knowing what i know now um and i have worked with a financial advisor for quite some time so even before we found dave ramsey and started the whole plan i was working with a financial advisor who really helped to guide us and grow our money and but i want to caution people because one of the mistakes we made was we trusted him with with everything oh if you think it's a good idea let's do it and so i'll there's a small investment we can't get out of right now and it's not performing well so there's pieces that you know we have to pay attention to so um a big part of it is finding a financial advisor that will work with you and i am not afraid of risk so we keep our a lot of our investments in growth and growth and income mutual funds definitely more mutual funds than anything else and they tend to do really well i mean it's they might not reach super highs highs but i mean we've had some pretty good pretty good years over the past couple of years and um and so yeah you just want to mitigate you mitigate some losses too so we've been doing really well with that that's great and you know diversification is is important as well how do you guys diversify knowing knowing that we're having kind of a down time in the market right now talk to us about that a little bit yeah so we really i follow exactly what dave ramsey teaches with the four um mutual fund types so growth growth and income aggressive growth and international and so that's where our money is played out those percentages have kind of shifted over time in my husband's 401k and we eventually i'll go back and kind of tweak them but i look at like how are they performing is it time can i wait international is the wild card so we just kind of you know choose what to do there but um yeah so we look at all kind of aggressively growing mutual funds is where we want to put our our money um for now yeah that's great yeah and obviously it's working out well it is it is very cool so how about the debt side of things we talked about the assets do you guys have any other debts uh in your life right now the only debt we have is on this mortgage and that's not that's not included in this in this calculation like we just took the equity and to calculate our net worth got it got it yeah that makes sense so is is paying off the mortgage something that you're interested in doing on later on or is that or do you guys see it as a low interest debt and something you're just going to hold on to no i really want to pay it off i i used to have a goal of paying it off by the time i'm 50 however we are looking to upgrade our home um in the next year or two so that will probably be pushed out because that mortgage will get bigger but yeah definitely something i want to pay off um before you know within a reasonable amount of time but something up to pay off a little bit more aggressively yeah you guys have a pretty low interest uh loan right now anyway yes yeah yeah that's great yeah but what a great market to have a mortgage and at this at this point so uh talk to us about you know during this process of seven years when going from zero to over a million million dollars in seven years were there any windfalls or inheritances that contributed to this not at all um no no inheritances no windfalls my husband does get a bonus but that's part of his compensation package so i don't look at it as a as a windfall you got it yeah i hear ya and in most most cases as you know uh being a ramsay um a person that uh you know they did a lot of research and found that most people in this situation didn't have an inheritance or a big windfall that contributed to their situation and if they did it was something minor uh you know 30 000 10 000 things like that uh that that helped out so i just wanted to wanted to help people out for that story uh so talk to us about you know during this process as you're going through were there any i guess tips or tricks that that worked well for you that maybe you thought would that could help other people on their net worth building journey sure i mean for us it was really you know it was getting on a budget and i used to budget but reactive budget and be like oh look how much i spent and now i know that we have to plan ahead and tell our money where to go and i think that there's such beauty and simplicity in that and saying what do we want most and so those things of what's important to us gets put on the budget and so for me it's family vacations and because it's not something i got to do a lot when i was growing up we just did not take family trips so we're putting that as a priority but we're willing to say i don't need as many clothes or to get my nails done or whatever those other pieces are to it and so it's just looking at what's important to you and making sure that those are are on your budget we value um eating healthy and organic so that our grocery budget might be a little bit higher than someone who's not doing that and that's okay like you just start to prioritize and so i think that that's a huge piece to to where we are today is just making sure we're intentional with where our money is going on a monthly basis wow that's great yeah absolutely having some intentionality now knowing that you're in the ramsey camp do you guys use every dollar as your budgeting tool or we do yes we do and i love the simplicity of it it's just clean and simple yeah absolutely that's a great tool yeah we've got i'm a big mint fan i've been using that for a long time but i just did a uh i did a video about mint versus every dollar just kind of seeing the differences yeah my one of my favorite uh differences with every dollar is the ability to share with your spouse uh more than mint it's got it's more individual than it is a couple are family focused so that's that's one thing that i really like about every dollar is was there a book uh on your on your journey that was uh influential to you as you were building your your financial acumen that uh that helped you along this way yeah it's gonna be no surprise it was dave ramsey's total money makeover um that's really what started it you know i checked the book out from the library and then i got into the to the radio show the podcast and that i just dove into the deep end with the podcast and that that was it i love it yeah dave was huge for me in the beginning of my journey too uh actually i got total money makeover right behind me right here yeah uh but yeah simple easy easy way to go um it just for people to understand generally do you have an income range that you could share that could help to understand where you guys were in this journey was it you know that just so people understand because seven years that's pretty quick that's pretty quick um i mean back when i i mean we could go all the way back to when i graduated high school i made like 29 000 or not high school college but when we got when we started our debt free journey we were making about 165 000 i lost my job so we were down now to a hundred and you know and then slowly over time like we're now over over 200. that's cool or just right around the 200 mark right that's awesome so i mean in order to do something like that you're saving i don't know 40 half something like that a lot of your money in order to throw at your retirement accounts things like that is that right yeah i mean we are currently doing seven percent so we're not quite at that 15 that dave says but you know we live in new jersey and it's a very high cost of living state and so when it was time to turn on retirement we just weren't able to add to to that and now that our focus is on on the next house we've been really saying okay let's just throw money into this mortgage um and getting this house ready and you know planning for the next step and then we'll turn on you know we'll increase retirement as as we progress so it's just that's just been where we are with that but yeah we have we have good savings on a monthly basis for sure very cool yeah so so make good money uh live below your means invest a good portion of it and and that this can happen too so this is fantastic very cool talk to us about where you guys uh are now what is what excites you now that you you're in your early 40s you guys have had a net worth of over a million dollars you have no debt outside of your mortgage in your life what what are your financial dreams right now well like i said the next stream is really moving towards a home upgrade we are a little little cozy in this house here in new jersey but i call it our million dollar house and so we're gonna camp here for a little bit longer but you know then i'm working on growing my coaching business as as um our little kids go to school and as we start to just really you know continue to move on and grow it's it's expanding my coaching practice to increase our income and and being able to you know do the things that we want to do in life that's great i love it so more vacations upgraded house grow concentrate on growing your business that uh gives you personal fulfillment and you can help people along the way which is which is which is very cool so let's talk to the person who's listening right now and they're saying you know what i don't make a hundred and sixty i don't make you know i make i make i make probably just a little under 100 between me and my spouse this millionaire thing or even just growing my net worth in general just seems very difficult for me at all what would you say to that person i would say that first you know know that you're worth it you're worth being wealthy and if you look into some of the research on millionaires most don't make over six figures in their entire lifetime and i i'm also coming from a state with a high cost of living so we tend to have higher incomes so there's and just know that we spend a lot of money in property taxes and tolls and others so it's it's almost like we make half so we'll just throw that out there but know that you're worth being wealthy and you're work worth the hard work it takes to get in control of your money and to and to do the daily grind of slowly steadily moving your finances in the right direction because it's just this daily compounding of your daily habits that will lead to and that's all we did we just kind of focused on here's what we're doing today and this month and you know and then it slowly kind of went into a good direction and then we had a huge like coven was really good for the stock market so we that was really like we we that was like the jet stream that kind of pushed us over the edge second i want you to be clear on on your why as to why you want to build wealth it's possible for everybody and anybody and so we there's stories of of janitors like leaving eight million dollars when they pass away and so there's a lot to it and it takes time compound interest is a lover of time and so the sooner you can start the better but you know you know is your goal to break generational patterns of poverty or financial struggle or is it you know like for me it's like i want to have summer vacations with my kids do you want to leave a legacy you know what is that why behind behind it and that's going to fuel you to keep going and to keep working and then just know it's possible it is so possible and that's kind of where i am like that's where i'm just like we all can be millionaires if we just choose to and it doesn't take a lot of money per month it's like 100 bucks a month if you start at age 25 to 65 but if you're already older it's just gonna take like 250 bucks a month you know it's not going to take a ton of money and that's a cable bill you know it's not something that's extravagant it doesn't take you know windfalls and you know millions of dollars of winning the lottery it's it's possible to do a lot with what you currently have i think that's a great message amy thank you so much for being here talk to us about where people can connect with you if they want to maybe get a financial coaching session with you or just learn more about what's going on with you absolutely so i am on facebook and instagram at amy green with that extra e f c so amy green fc um and you can find me at linkedin i'm at a e green lots of e's in there um so make sure you get them all um or you can email me at amygreenfc gmail i love it we're going to capture all the e's we're going to capture all the green and grow our net worth amy thank you so much for your time today i really appreciate it oh it's my pleasure thank you for having me on andy [Music] you

Channel: Marriage Kids and Money

Views: 11,271

Keywords: millionaire, how to become a millionaire, how to become a young millionaire, financial independence, becoming financially independent, become a millionaire, becoming a millionaire in your 30s, millionaire mindset, financial tips, how to organize your finances, how to automate your family finances, family finance, Andy Hill, how to build net worth fast, net worth millionaire, million net worth, millionaire lifestyle, how to make a million in net worth, net worth 1 million

Id: l33iipEQxW4

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 13 2022