This is an amazing story! I promise I didn’t pay them anything for the very kind endorsements. I’m just honored to get to be a part of their amazing story. Here’s an enlisted success story of “Frugality, Flooring, and Freedom”:

Newly Married Full of Love and Spending

Starting out as a newly married couple on an enlisted paycheck was rough, but we were able to stay out of any major debt on the advice of my awesome leadership. We had “beater” cars everywhere we went, bought or saved for used furniture/appliances, invested 10% in TSP, kept credit card debt low to build credit, and paid off debt before spending tax returns.

We were doing everything right to avoid the mistakes all our friends and coworkers warned us about, but we were still living paycheck to paycheck and one bad day away from financial ruin. There was no budget; if we had money, then it was spent, and when we had none, we ate ramen and kept the AC off.

You’re Only One PCS Away

We PCSed to new environments and had the chance to start over, and I was lucky enough to be in the same unit as the Enlisted Money Guy himself!

He would shame me for bragging about how much I spent at the bar last weekend and eating cheap processed food to make up for it until payday. He shared some resources to project what some easy life changes could do for my financial independence and calculate our necessities and luxury expenses.

A Switch to Savings

Using that, we were able to create and work towards our savings goals. We started with a goal of $5k in high-yield savings, passed that within our first 6 months, and just kept aggressively saving to see what we could get to during our time overseas.

Yet we still had our fun, traveling and eating out much less often but still enjoying the hell out of ourselves while we could. We surprised the hell out of ourselves when, after over a year and a half of saving bonuses, tax returns, and some of our side hustle earnings, we had almost $30k saved up!

The Next PCS Only Gets Better

Using that, we put a down payment on a house after our PCS, bought down our mortgage rate to $200 below the BAH rate. We saved that money to put into repairs and improvements on our home investment. Then we refinanced and sold our house at a profit with over $60k worth of upgrades (flooring, cooling remodeling, appliance modernization, patio extension, whatever we could do ourselves for cheap or contract out to greatly improve the value) to get back over 95k!

No Tricks and No Big Salaries in Sight

All this is on a married, one-child E-5’s paycheck. No cheap tricks, no lucky stock exchange breaks, no rich dead uncle, just an honest self-assessment, hard work, long-term planning, and financial advice and resources from the “Enlisted Money pilot program.”

Where We Are Now

So, to recap, our success story is being lucky enough to have the Enlisted Money Guy’s financial magical sage wisdom, then using that knowledge to budget for our future, save $30k toward an investment, focus, and build on that investment through 6 years of hard work and planning. That investment worked out to give us a huge next step for our next investment.

My wife and I are extremely lucky to have found the advice and resources from the Enlisted Money Guy’s years and personal experience to get to where we’re at now: financial freedom, a 790 credit score each, zero debt, TSP compounding, and almost $98k in high yield savings for our next big plan: our forever home.

***Break***

Enlisted Money Response

The highest compliment for any Leader is to hear they made a tangible impact on their Soldiers. I’m glad we crossed paths again, and I get the unique privilege of being a small part of your life. To be clear, you did ALL the work! I’m very happy for your growing family and very proud of all you’ve done for yourselves and our great nation. Thank you!

Btw, I will deny “shaming” anyone, I only “highly recommend” different courses of action 😉

Not All Bad to Start

I want to highlight that even though you were living paycheck to paycheck and felt broke, you were still saving something for retirement. Saving even what you felt may have been very little is undoubtedly paying huge dividends now – both figuratively and literally. My Roth IRA from the same timeframe has more than doubled with no extra investment on my part.

So, give yourselves a POB (pot-on-the-back) for getting started somewhere. Great job!

Recognizing an Opportunity and Taking Action

I’d like to point out that you didn’t just keep drifting through life. You took decisive action to get yourselves in a better financial position. You started saving aggressively, and it’s paying off in a large way!

One of the things people overlook is the importance of your savings rate. Making $100k per year and spending it all is not better than making $50k and saving $10k per year. One of the two will put you in a better place financially.

In other words, it’s not what you make; it’s what you save. With a higher savings rate, you really can “punch above your pay grade.”

Using Sweat Equity in Real Estate

I actually remember having a conversation with you about purchasing a home and “pocketing” the difference in BAH. My suggestion is always to put that money away for repairs and to have money to bring to closing if you sell when you PCS. Houses are also a much bigger time suck than most people realize.

Not everyone wants to be or should be a landlord. That’s why it’s important to have cash saved up so you don’t end up being an “accidental landlord.” You took the route of building some sweat equity while you lived there, which can be a lot of fun and very rewarding too.

Taking Advantage of Bonuses and Other Pays

You mentioned using some of your bonus money and side hustle income to help build up your savings. This is a great way to jumpstart your journey to financial independence! If you leverage these “extra” bits of money, you can stack cash away pretty quickly – which is exactly what you did!

Building Up a Six-Figure Savings Account

You left off in your story with “almost $98k” in a high-yield savings account—nicely done! You don’t give an exact timeframe, but I know this had to happen in less than seven years because we didn’t meet until about mid-2017. That’s over $10,000 per year stacked up!

Luckily, high-yield savings accounts are paying pretty well right now. I’m not sure when you’ll need this money, but letting it earn some interest until then is smart. Good luck purchasing your “forever” home!

A Huge Congratulations to Both of You!

It absolutely warms my heart when someone I’ve worked with comes back with a story like this! I give a lot of advice (both solicited and unsolicited), but I have no clue how many people actually implement it.

I also think you’re giving me a little more credit than I deserve. Although I may have helped plant a seed, you did the work. I really appreciate all the kind words, though.

Overall, you’ve done a lot of hard work and saved a ton! I just want to give you my biggest congratulations on all your efforts. Your financial decisions will positively impact your family for decades, probably generations to come. Well done!