My Story

“One of the 10 Best Personal Finance Blogs.”

~Kiplinger Magazine

“The Best Money Blog for Twenty-Somethings.”

~Kiplinger Magazine

My name is G.E. Miller. This is my story. It may sound familiar…

The Best Years?

GE and wife My Story

One year and 300 applications after graduating with my bachelors degree, I hit the workforce, and started making $30k per year while working 50-60+ hours a week at a job that did not require a college degree. Meanwhile, the cell phone, cable, internet, utility, car, fuel, rent, insurance, credit card, student loan, and food expenses were eating all of my income. Is it any surprise? Few of us learn personal finance in school or at home.

And this 5 or 6 day/week debt/work treadmill? When exactly did it become the standard that the best years of our lives – our twenties (and even thirties, forties, and fifties), turn into the years where we work 60 hours a week to simply keep up with our bills? When did weekends turn into “free time” where we catch up on work we fell behind on during the week and chores around the house?

Feelings of stress and frustration about a lack of savings for the future started taking over my life. Time, was seemingly passing me by. My soul was being choked away by the hold of stepping in to line and doing what everyone else was doing – conforming into a corporate commodity in order to pay off ridiculous consumer indulgences. The prospect of 40-50 more years of THIS? Unthinkable.

Taking a Stand

I had to do something. I realized that if I were going to have any shred of enjoyment in life, I needed to veer off the comfortable path. But my finances were holding me back. So what did I do? I started hacking them.

I got married and had a cheap wedding that cost under $2,500. I sold my house and moved to take a higher income job. Instead of buying a bigger home, I bought a smaller one. I sold our second car to get rid of the payments. I sold half of my personal belongings. I cut my phone bill in half and cut my cable bill. I became vegetarian and saved money on groceries and stopped dining out almost entirely. I started biking to work. I maxed out my 401K. I stopped trading and started investing. I stopped paying for my company’s traditional PPO health insurance and switched to a HDHP and HSA, so that they started paying me. I found a number of products and services that saved me a lot of money vs. ones that only took money away. I was reversing the consumer accumulation life cycle. “Stuff” and status stopped mattering to me entirely.

As a result, my income started increasing, while my expenses declined drastically. I started saving over 85% of what I earned – 17 times the average U.S. savings rate of 5%.

Was I feeling depressed and deprived?

Quite the contrary. I felt excited, awake, driven, and determined. Instead of fear and resentment, I started feeling hopeful about the future. There was a fire burning inside of me to go even further.

Financial independence became a vision, not just a dream.

Murdock2 My Story

Today, I’m well along that path.

The downsides? I occasionally get teased by my peers for being cheap and I usually end up silent when others start discussing the latest movie that’s out in the theater or overpriced restaurants in town.

That’s fine with me. I take a certain pride in it.

I have a comfortable home, a great wife, a dog named Murdock and two cats. My wife and I home brew, we backpack, we couchsurf, we eat great food, we’re in good health, and we have zero debt. We’re not missing out on a thing.

Striving for Financial Freedom

Ultimately, my goal is to achieve complete financial independence so that I can buy back the asset that is increasingly slipping away: my time on this planet.

If you get fired up about:

financial independence & partial or early retirement
hacking your spending to extremely low levels (less than $10k/yr. per person)
anti-consumption and minimizing your impact on the environment
learning the basics of personal finance & sharing ideas with others
being healthy, wealthy, well-rounded, generous, and setting your own path

… then you should like it here.

That’s my story. That’s why I’m here. I hope to share that passion with you to inspire you to start getting your own head start on freedom. This blog really isn’t really about twenty-somethings (I kind of regret the name now as I know of retired people who follow the blog), it’s about fighting for the things that truly matter in life. If you can get a head start early, good for you.

If you are interested in taking or continuing along a similar path, you can start by getting new 20somethingfinance articles delivered directly to you (for free), both of the following options are available: