Revealing My ACTUAL Net Worth

what's up you guys it's graham here so i felt like doing something a little bit different today and instead of the normal investing related content i'm gonna be using myself as an example and breaking down in detail my net worth for every single year that i began working going all the way back to high school this is something i haven't seen anyone do on youtube before to this extent so i figured why not i may as well do it and yeah i know this sounds like one of those super scammy i'll teach you how to be rich webinars but honestly there's no ulterior motive here and there's nothing you need to buy but oh for real i've always been the type of person to learn by example and when i was younger geez even now today i'm really interested to learn how people did it and where they started off in fact most of the time i'm even more interested in what a person did before the point where you see them today i just think stuff like that is a lot more relatable and it's something i wish a lot more people were open to talking about discussing so i may as well just go ahead and start and i'm going to be covering every single year beginning at the age of 15 years old how much money i make how much money i was worth and everything i did along the way hopefully it's helpful to see how i was able to do it and maybe you could implement a few of these things in your own life as well or at the very least i hope it's just entertaining so of course if you appreciate this type of openness and transparency because i don't think i've seen any other youtuber go into this level of detail before in a video like this if you wouldn't mind just destroying the like button for the youtube algorithm that's it it takes just two seconds it's really easy to do and if you get any amount of value from this at all just doing that would greatly help me out i really appreciate it okay so with that said i'm going to sit in my chair over here and we'll start here all right so let's get the counter started over here and by the time i was 17 years old i had a net worth of maybe 5 000 that might even be pretty generous and i'm probably rounding it up a little bit higher than it should be because i don't exactly recall how much it was but give or take about that amount now that was the result of working four years part-time throughout high school at a marine aquarium wholesaler and my job was to go in and photograph the inventory as it came in i would help categorize it for their website among a whole bunch of other random stuff now it sounds like a super random job and it is but i absolutely loved it and i was obsessed with saltwater aquariums back then before i got this job i would spend all my time after school on a website called reefcentral.com where people would go and share tips and tricks about keeping reef aquariums it was actually through that website that i was introduced to the local fish community and that's that's actually a thing and then from there i expressed interest to one of the fish store owners about being able to work there part-time because i enjoyed it so much that's what ended up turning into my part-time job and i'm super fortunate and lucky to have supportive parents who were really encouraging of me working like this and they would pick me up a few times a week and then drive me into work until i got my driver's license so i was super lucky now at the time i didn't really know what to do with my money i knew i should save it and that's about it so all the money i made just went straight into a savings account even back then in high school i was super frugal with my money and i would avoid spending it unless i absolutely needed to but that paid off and i was able to have a savings of about five thousand dollars by the time i turned 18 years old now 18 years old is where things started getting interesting and now we can update this net worth tracker over here to 30 thousand dollars a small consequence of working throughout high school was that it made me realize i did not want to stay in school i didn't care for tests and homework i just wanted to go out and make money ultimately that caused my grades to suffer a lot because once i got my driver's license i would intentionally go and skip school just so i can work instead basically my grades were so bad my test scores were so low that i didn't get into any colleges and that combined with another short-lived job i absolutely hated led me to wanting to get my real estate license i ended up using my savings throughout high school to go and pay for the licensing requirements in the online school so i was really thankful i had my money saved away to be able to pay for that and wanting to be a real estate agent was a bit of a random choice but my thought process was that i wanted to be my own boss i wanted to make my own schedule and most importantly i wanted to do something that didn't require a college degree so i thought well my real estate license fits into that perfectly so of course i went to google to figure out how to be a real estate agent and then through that i started taking all of my classes online and because i didn't know anybody in the real estate industry i would go to open houses every single week just to meet with other agents and introduce myself and then ask for their advice of course i would purposely pick the most expensive open houses i could possibly find in los angeles because i figured if i was gonna go and do this i may as well start at the top and like that's what i found the most inspirational most agents that i met just would completely brush me off as some annoying kid who went up and would just talk their ear off but after doing that for a while one agent was really encouraging of me getting in the business and we ended up talking that day for probably an hour or two and at the end of that conversation he ended up offering me a spot on his team where basically i would go and somewhat work for free and then whatever business i would bring in we would split it 50 50. that's the point where i began working about 8 to 12 hours a day seven days a week and i just had so much fun doing it like i really felt like i had found my calling because it was fun i started off by photographing his lease listings and then putting those pictures up on craigslist and then prospective tenants would call me and i would show them the place for rent and if they rented it me and him would split whatever commission i made 50 50. then i remember there's a point where he didn't have any more lease listings for me to post on craigslist and i wanted to continue posting more release listings on craigslist so what i did is go to other agents in my office who had leases and i offered to take free photography of their listing in exchange for them allowing me to post it on craigslist and potentially represent a tenant if they called me if they ended up renting it out on their own then i didn't get anything but they got free photography and if i end up renting it well they still get free photography and i get to represent the tenant that ended up working really well for me and i was gaining some momentum and actually starting to make some money typically those commissions were anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars depending on the price and term of the lease and i was able to do a few of those every other week because at the time we were in a housing crash and a lot of people were not buying houses but instead they were renting i would say in the first nine months of me doing that i made about 38 000 and that was from me working about 9 00 a.m to 9 00 p.m almost every single day and for me 38 000 at like 18 years old that was a lot of money now i didn't have any idea of what to do with that money so all i did is i just threw in a savings account and that was it it was also at this time that i needed a better car to show clients around in because i was driving it was a 1997 ford explorer with about 150 000 miles on the clock the seats were kind of tearing up a little bit the bumpers were all dinged up and scratched and there was like paint scuffs everywhere so i went and spent about seven thousand dollars to buy a used 2006 toyota prius and at the very least i could be a bit more presentable when i was showing clients around or pulling up in front of a listing within a year though things began really picking up and by 19 years old i had a net worth of about eighty thousand dollars some of this may have been a bit luck but i really believe the more you put yourself out there the more opportunity can come your way and this was no exception and here's what happened i would hold open houses as a real estate agent every single sunday without fail typically in the summer it would be from two to five pm and in the winter it would be from one to four pm but after a few weeks of doing that i thought to myself wait a second all the open houses are during the exact same time so if i wanted to get more people on my houses what i would do is just start an hour early and then end an hour later and that's what i did and after about eight months of holding extended open houses every single sunday eventually a buyer came in looking for a three million dollar home now keep in mind this price point was about average for the area i was holding open houses in and i never grew up in an area like that by the way i would drive 45 minutes every single day just to get into beverly hills because that's where i wanted to work and that's where my office was but anyway after months of holding open houses this buyer came in and i ended up closing that buyer on a 3.65 million dollar home shortly afterwards after all commission splits and everything it worked out to be about a 40 000 commission to me which was insane like that was more money than i had ever seen in my entire life now going and closing on that deal actually gave me a lot of confidence as a real estate agent that i actually had what it takes to sell a home and just two months after that i ended up closing another home for 1.2 million dollars from someone who i met from craigslist who was originally looking to rent a house but then later decided to buy something instead at the same time i was still leasing places by posting them up on craigslist so a lot of my work was beginning to pay off and i wish i could tell you guys that i saved all the money but honestly i spent about 33 000 on that buying a used 2006 chrome orange lotus elise which was my dream car maybe that wasn't the smartest purchase for me to have made at the time especially because i didn't really have anything invested and i just went and bought a car but that car ended up getting me into the car community where i met some of my best friends and clients even to this day plus in hindsight the car didn't end up losing any value whatsoever by the time i sold it so it actually turned out to be a relatively good purchase now when i was 20 years old i had a net worth of about 150 000 this i would say was the peak of my workaholism and i was just in a really weird spot in life i had very few friends and besides meeting up with people in the car community for the sunday morning drives i just felt really out of place everybody i worked with was at least like 40 or 50 years old and in a totally different place in life and i could not relate to them socially but on the other hand everyone my own age just felt super immature in comparison and i was in this weird in between spot where i was just really lonely because of that i just poured myself into work and that gave me really good motivation to take on as much as i could because it just kept me going i just hated being alone not doing anything because it made me realize that i have no friends to go and hang out with but on the bright side i ended up making way more money because i took on all the business that no one else wanted and i had all the time in the world to do it i would work with the really difficult clients that no one wanted to deal with i would work with the small deals that weren't worth anyone else's time i would work with deals that didn't even lead to a sale because i just wanted the practice but that wound up working in my favor because some of that business ended up leading to more sales and more business to me as an agent and it was that year that i was able to cross a hundred thousand dollars in income almost all of that was from a few sales and rather large lease commissions but it made me feel as though i was working towards something and it felt really good to start seeing all my hard work and efforts beginning to pay off by 21 years old things really began accelerating a lot and i was able to build up my net worth to about 260 thousand dollars this is also the year where i ended up selling one of my largest homes ever at five and a half million dollars and that buyer is actually someone who reached out to me in the very beginning from one of my craigslist lease postings and then by the time this company ipo'd he ended up using me to represent him on the homie purchased and that commission is really what i ended up using to go and buy my first property see at the time i was really stressed out with the inconsistencies of real estate commissions and the way it works is that i found myself working non-stop for months on end without earning a single penny and then randomly a few months later i'll have a few deals all closing in one week i really didn't want to have to constantly rely on the next deal to bring in my income with no idea when or how much that's going to be so that's really the point where i started taking a very active role in investing and trying to get my money to work for me so i ended up using all my savings and even selling my lotus elise to use all of that money to go and buy real estate in san bernardino that would eventually end up making me about three thousand dollars a month the first property was bought for fifty nine thousand five hundred dollars the second one for seventy two thousand dollars and the third one for a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars each of those properties were lightly fixed up and by the time i turned 22 they were all rented out at that point i literally had no cash in the bank i was completely broke like i would be lucky to have a few hundred dollars sitting in a checking account and that's it and i'll never forget how motivating that was to me to know that i had nothing to fall back on now with my bank account and that just served as more fuel to go and close more real estate deals by 22 years old those properties were beginning to go up in value and my income was increasing as a real estate agent and that's what led to me having a 320 000 net worth i would say this was the age where i began getting really interested in investing and i spent a lot of my time browsing the internet learning about investing in real estate how to increase my credit score learning about how to open up a roth ira learning about what a 401k is learning about how to increase my credit score you name it i think really once i saw my money firsthand working for me it was all i could think about it was also at this age where i discovered what's known as the fire community or financially independent retire early and it was this whole community that believed exactly as i did they prioritize saving money investing consistently and then living frugally so you have more time left over to focus on what you enjoy the most that also really shifted my mindset away from how much money do i make every year to instead how much money does my money make me every single year and then i counted that as my income for example if i made a hundred thousand dollars a year after taxes i would not see that as a hundred thousand dollars a year instead i would see that as eight hundred dollars a month from a rental property every single month that i would not have to worry about with a hundred thousand dollar investment and if i could just do that every single year over 10 years then that would mean eventually i would have 8 000 a month coming in from rental income and i would never have to worry about money ever again and that gave me more of a purpose and an end goal to work towards rather than just aimlessly saving money to save money at least this gave me the option to then not have to stress about whether or not i make a sale that month or if i wanted to do something else i could or if i wanted to travel i could without money being a factor in that decision and i'm really thankful to have learned that at 22 years old all thanks to reddit and the financial independence community but in terms of my work here my income as a real estate agent steadily began increasing and i think that year i did about 120 000 in commissions my past lease clients were beginning to buy homes at this point so i was a lot more busy working on home sales rather than leases and that of course helped me make more money now for the time that i was working now by 23 years old i had my property values going up and my income increasing and that led to a net worth of about 440 000 a lot of this was due to the property values going up i was still working the same hours as a real estate agent that income was increasing a little bit to about 120 000 a year and i was investing in an s p 500 index fund this year for me was really just a lot more of the same i began getting a little bit more comfortable as a real estate agent i started taking on a little bit more business and more clients were using me to represent them on their home purchase this is also the point where i began spending a lot of my free time on reddit reading up on the financial independence subreddit reading up about investing your money and tracking everything on mint.com i really just made it a priority to save as much money as i possibly could i would try to build up my credit score and then when i had enough money i would use that to go and invest back into buying another property and by 24 years old through all of that work my net worth was able to pass 560 000 my business was becoming a lot more consistent as a real estate agent and a lot of my past clients were then referring me more business which meant i could kind of scale back on some of the lease listings on craigslist and even though i really didn't have much of a life outside work i was still really happy with the way everything was going however i did start to feel like around this time i was plateauing in terms of what i was able to do as a real estate agent i was just starting to feel like no matter what i did or how hard i worked my income was not going up as much as i expected it to i just felt like i would see every other agent in my office surpassing me selling these mega mansions for these huge commissions and especially as the market was going up everything was flying off the shelves and i really just didn't understand why i was working harder than them and doing more than them and working more hours than all of these other agents and i was not getting a similar result so it was really around this time that i began to re-evaluate my business and take a very close look at who i was working with and what i was doing to try to figure out either how i could improve or what i was doing wrong now at the same time as that the rental properties were continuing to go up in value and i think for several years in a row san bernardino was one of the areas that had seen the most appreciation year over year in california which is just a bit lucky the rents didn't really change much because they never raised them but at least the property values were going up and that helped me out then at 25 years old there were a lot of changes but by the end of that year i had a net worth of about 750 000. this is the time where i ended up making the switch to join the oppenheim group which is a real estate brokerage here in hollywood and just that mental shift alone really opened up so many doors for me and that was the first time ever where i grossed about 250 000 in commission and a lot of that shift i really owe to re-reading the book the four-hour work week where i got to the point about the pareto 80 20 principle which suggests that 80 of your income comes from 20 of your clients and i got to say that was a big wake-up call for me to re-evaluate my entire business i realized that i was spending so much of my time chasing these really tiny deals that made up such a small percentage of my income where instead if i just focused on the highest yielding clients and trying to get more of those i can make more money while having more free time to focus on other things i decided to cut out most of my business i would only focus on the high end and i would only focus on what works the best which for me at the time was leases on craigslist over eight thousand dollars a month i really started to become a lot more diligent and strict about where i spent my time and that's what finally broke me past that plateau and then also of course in addition to all of that the rental properties kept going up in value so that helped out this number as well but then at 26 years old i had an amazing year in terms of commissions and then buying a property that i fixed up and that took my net worth to one million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and i'll never forget what it felt like to cross that one million dollar net worth mark i've always diligently tracked everything on mint.com so i would go and check it every single week and just see the numbers go up and up and up and up and then i remember as soon as it crossed over one million dollars i called up my friends and i asked if they would be interested in going to happy hour sushi that night so that's what we did i went to happy hour sushi and i treated myself to a sushi roll or two and that's how i celebrate these things even now today anytime i cross a big milestone or anything like this it's usually rewarded with happy hour sushi so not much has changed anyway i think my total gross commissions for that year as an agent was about 320 000 and then i used those commissions to go and buy a property in west la for eight hundred thousand dollars that i then fixed up now that was a really significant one for me and that home purchase meant so much more to me than just going and buying a home and it was in such a good area in the middle of los angeles just not too far away from silicon beach which those property values had skyrocketed by then and being able to buy a home like that at 26 years old was something i never thought i would ever be able to do and then here i was to do it and so something like that to me was just such a big accomplishment and of course as usual as you would expect i celebrated closing that one with more happy hour sushi at the same time as all of that though the other rental properties were going up in value a lot the market was really on fire at this point and everything was going well and this was really the point for me as a real estate agent where i started to feel a lot more competent in myself and just being able to represent clients this was also the same year at the very end of december in 2016 where i posted my very first youtube video that changed everything youtube was always something i had wanted to do and i was watching youtube since like 2010 and for me youtube was my form of television because i never watched tv but i would watch youtube so i've always wanted to go and make youtube videos since back then but i always felt in the back of my mind like who would watch me on youtube i'm just i'm going to make a fool of myself i have no idea what i'm doing it's not worth it no one's going to watch me so i may as well just not try but after years of telling myself that i am not cut out for youtube that no one would want to watch me i just thought screw it let me make a video i'm going to post it to youtube sharing my experience about how i got started in real estate and real estate investing and then i'm going to post it because if i don't do it now i'm never going to do it so of course i ended up filming something and then i didn't know how to edit it so like i looked up imovie tutorials on youtube to figure out what i was doing and then i posted the video and i swear like just something immediately clicked for me once i posted the video i'm like this is it i had so much fun i'm going to keep doing this now by the time i was 27 years old things really began to pick up quick and my net worth accelerated to 1 million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars now this was the best year i've ever had in real estate in 2017 i did just over 22 million dollars worth of sales as a real estate agent mostly from clients who started off as the lease clients who ended up referring me more business who ended up giving me more business who ended up giving me more business and that just ended up compounding to a really good year and i think i did about 500 000 in commissions i also bought a duplex that year and fixed it up which i documented here on the channel but i picked it up for dollars i 585.000 it up and by the time i was done with it i got it appraised in a cash out for finance at 850 000 leaving me with a 200 000 profit tax-free at the same time almost every single night after work i would get home and work on youtube videos from 7pm until about 1am i just had so much fun with everything that i was doing that i was almost disappointed to go to bed because i just wanted it to be the next day already so i can go and get back to work like my schedule was pretty much waking up at 8 o'clock in the morning showing homes until 5 pm then going to the gym eating dinner and then working on youtube videos sometimes until about 2 o'clock in the morning and it wasn't about the money either i think my entire year of 2017 on youtube i made 26 000 which was the equivalent of working a part-time minimum wage job compared to what i was doing as a real estate agent but i just had so much fun making youtube videos that i just made it a priority to never miss an upload and always post three times a week by 28 years old things really began to accelerate and i was able to build up a net worth of two and a half million dollars 2018 was the time where i started taking youtube a lot more seriously because my views were picking up and i just realized wait a second maybe i'm onto something here so i doubled down on youtube even though at the time that was making me significantly less than i was earning as a real estate agent i still worked the exact same hours so i was ending about one to two o'clock in the morning almost every single night so it was a really long day to be able to get everything done but everything i was doing was just fun and it never felt like work to me if that makes sense i just enjoyed it so much and there was nothing else i would rather do i was also able to go and buy another duplex that year which is again something i documented here on the channel and during all of that all of the property values were still going up significantly i think all in all that year i made about 260 000 from youtube and then about the same as a real estate agent and that combined with appreciating property and investment values brought me to about two and a half million dollars by 29 years old youtube just went crazy and my net worth boosted up to about four million dollars 2019 was really the year i started taking youtube very seriously and i started getting more views than i ever thought was imaginable and i realized i had a rare window of opportunity that i was not sure i would ever get again in my entire life so now is my chance to make it happen so instead of spending 80 of my time in real estate and then 20 of the time on youtube i just switched that i started spending 80 of my time on youtube and then the remaining 20 on real estate sales i think people could tell the difference because once i made that shift the video quality ended up going up dramatically i had time to create the second channel i ended up making two programs and i started to run this channel more efficiently now at this point by the end of 2019 youtube was consistently earning anywhere from 150 000 to 300 thousand dollars a month through ad revenue sponsorships affiliates program sales you name it i have a whole video breaking down all those details by the way in another video so if you want that the link is down below in the description if you want to check that out but of course as usual i tried my best to save as much of that as it possibly could i also used this time to refinance my mortgages because property values went up interest rates went down i was able to get more money out of them save more money on my mortgage and have more money in the bank to invest with but the combination of a really high income combined with appreciating property values led to a pretty significant increase in net worth now with 30 years old all of that work and income has compounded into a six and a half million dollar net worth this was due to a combination of factors like i completed a renovation on one of my units i ended up buying another property the property values of the other six places ended up continuing to go up in value i did a cash out refinance to lower some of my mortgage rates to save even more money and youtube income has continued to grow beyond my wildest imagination although income breakdown at some point of how much money i make with 2 million subscribers on youtube so i can give you all the details but it's consistently been over 250 to 350 000 a month which is crazy i know it sounds really hard to believe like i wouldn't believe it either but i'll go over all the details in a future video so if you're not already subscribed now is a good point where you should probably subscribe and then when i post that video you're gonna see it now at this point i really think it's no surprise that youtube is my largest source of income just because of how massive it is and even with six rental properties three of them being owned outright in a stock market portfolio i mean youtube is just so substantial at this point that everything else pales in comparison i'd never tried to hide that and i have no idea how long this is going to last for but i have no intention of stopping and i'm in it for the long run this is really one of those opportunities that came along where i knew i had to make the most of it while i could it's always been a dream of mine to be able to do this and talk about the topics i'm really just genuinely interested in talking about and i get to nerd out about credit cards personal finance and saving money and investing and i get to feel like i'm making a positive impact and helping people just make personal finance and saving money interesting so it's really unreal to help grow awareness around those topics and just talk with other people who are as interested in it as i am but lately everything has grown way more than i originally anticipated and i'm just doing my best to navigate it as best as i can so for that i want to thank each and every one of you for watching my videos and supporting the channel because at this point it's way more than just me it's each and every one of you that makes this channel what it is and all of this possible i'm always going to be as open as i can about topics like this and do my best to try to simplify complex financial topics or anything out there investment related that could hopefully make and save you more money hopefully that gives you as much value as you give me by watching my videos and smashing the like button for the youtube algorithm and if i've learned anything over these last 15 years it's the importance of saving money investing consistently and then whenever you find something that works stick with it and also always operate from a place of integrity i think people really respect that and even though it might be slower in the short term it's going to work out much better in the long run and also most importantly i think it's so important that you enjoy what you do just trust me when i say this there's no way that i would have been able to have worked so many grueling hours if i didn't thoroughly enjoy it and the fact is me working these crazy hours was because i enjoyed it it would be the equivalent of someone going on like a three-week vacation in hawaii and being like oh where did all the time go that felt like it went by in a matter of days that's how it feels like me with work i could work like 12 hours straight and in my mind i'm just in the zone and it feels like two three hours went by and i really believe when that happens and you're in a zone like that that's when you do the best work and also practically when it comes to making more money it's essential that you could do something where you could leverage your time for example here on youtube it takes me the same amount of time to make a video to reach one person as it does one million people same with working as a real estate agent looking back what i should have done is hire someone else underneath me to take on more business and then i get a percentage of what they make kind of like how i first started out where i was splitting my commissions with another agent that's something that never really clicked with me until i started doing this and that's how i was able to increase my income to some very mind-boggling numbers right now but anyway i digress i really hope something like this is helpful and you're able to get some value from it i never mean for these videos to come off as braggy or anything like that because i get it some of these videos could be really cringy to watch but it's also hard to convey some of the details of these things without going over the specifics and the numbers so i hope i did an okay job at that and maybe this could help you on your way to achieving something similar and of course i have to say it smashing a like button for the youtube algorithm so what that said you guys thank you so much for watching i really appreciate it make sure to also subscribe and hit the notification bell also feel free to add me on instagram i post it pretty much daily so if you want to be a part of it there feel free to add me there as my second channel the gram stefan show i post there every single day i'm not posting here so if you want to see a brand new video for me every single day make sure to add yourself to that and lastly if you guys want two free stocks use the link down below in the description weeble is going to be giving you two free stocks when you deposit 100 on the platform with one of those stocks potentially valued all the way up to 400 so if you want your two free stocks use that link down below thank you so much for watching and until next time

Channel: Graham Stephan

Views: 987,704

Keywords: investing, investing for beginners, investing in your 20s, how to invest, how to invest in real estate, how to invest in stocks, stock market investing, stock market investing for beginners, stock options, robinhood, robinhood app, best stock trading app, how to be a millionaire, how to be a millionaire in 3 years, credit score, credit score explained, passive income, how to build wealth, how to build wealth in your 20s, revealing my net worth, graham stephan net worth

Id: RDuwpY5LXyM

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2020