J. Money Socked Away $400,000 in 7 Years – Who Cares?

March 04, 2015

A friend of mine recently sent me a Forbes article with the following headline: “How Blogger J. Money Socked Away $400,000 In 7 Years.” My original reaction? WHO CARES?

I don’t mean to disparage J. Money (I think that’s great, for him) but when it comes to personal finances, I think the most important word is that first one: “personal.” J. Money has made a lot of personal decisions in his life such as aggressively funding his retirement plan (which dropped his paycheck to only $90) and working multiple jobs that have enabled him to reach a headline-grabbing amount in a relatively short amount of time, but J. Money is not me. Most of the decisions J. Money has made would not be decisions I would care to make.

Now I know this all sounds pretty obvious, but I actually do think there are important lessons we can take away from J. Money’s story. For example:

We are all capable of more than we believe.

1. One thing I respect most about the company I work for is that my boss believes that I am capable of much more than I realize. Take writing blog posts, for example. Never in my life would I have imagined writing in a blog, and yet I’ve been writing blog posts for almost five years.

2. My wife has been asked to lead a bible study for a group of women she meets with each week. While she may not feel prepared, I’m convinced that she will be more than great at doing this.

3. Last week, my daughter was spontaneously asked to stand up in front of a group of people to talk about her youth group. She nearly collapsed under the weight of her nervousness, but the truth is she did a phenomenal job.

In each of these three cases, the person asking them to do something knew the person was capable of doing it even if that person didn’t think so. In the same way, we are ALL capable of living on much less and saving much more, whether we believe it or not.

Just because you are capable doesn’t mean you want to.

As noted above, we are all capable of doing more than we think, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily want to. In reality, I could live in a much smaller home in a much less expensive part of the country, ask my wife to reenter the workforce, and keep my children out of school and sports activities so that I could retire early. I’m capable. It’s just not what I would choose to do (and I’m sure my wife and children are grateful for it).

It’s not about J. Money. It’s about you.

You may never be in the spotlight or have Laura Shin write a blog post about you (although I’d be happy to write about you), but that’s okay—you can write your own story. Here’s all you need:

1. What are your financial goals? J. Money knew he wanted to grow his wealth quickly, and he made decisions based on that goal. Decide what your goals are, and start planning around them.

2. Prioritize your goals. Chances are you have more than one goal so you need to decide which ones are more important than the others. As a rule of thumb, you may want to build up an emergency fund of at least 3-6 months of expenses as a primary goal. This will help assure you can stay on track for other goals should something unexpected happen along the way. Paying off high interest debt may be the next highest priority, followed by saving for retirement, funding college expenses, or maybe buying a home.

3. Decide on how quickly you want to reach these goals. In order to meet his goals, J. Money was willing to sacrifice time, energy, and lifestyle. What are YOU willing to sacrifice in order to reach your goals?

4. Live with the results. We may begin with the best of intentions but over time, things change. Also, there are some things beyond our control such as stock market performance. Whatever changes and decisions you make along the way belong to you so OWN THEM.

It’s nice to read about others’ successes because it can inspire us to reach beyond what we ever thought capable, but don’t use THEIR idea of success as yours. There are many ways to measure success. For me, it’s knowing that my wife can stay home, my kids can enjoy soccer, and someday I’ll be able to retire—”someday” being the operative word.

So what’s your story? How would you measure success? Feel free to share, and maybe the next headline will be “How Sally Jones Put Her Kids Through College Without Debt.”