How my story started... The foundations
So, it's 1988, a coldish day in May, in the beautiful city of Pretoria when this little fellow is born. Yup, this little fellow is me.Now, you might be asking why the hell I'd start off a blog about success, riches and the pursuit thereof with a story of me as a baby?
Well, this is where it all started. Back then both my parents had steady incomes, a side hustle that did phenomenally well and everything seemed peachy! (Ok, maybe I was born with like a little silver spoon, but it got taken away quickly 😋)
You see, the success of my parents' business, was selling success. No, literally, the education system they were selling was called "Success Motivation International" or SMI for short. They were giving people the tools to become rich!
So how the hell did I end up a primary school kid, living in a poor family?
Well, let's keep a long story short and say that my parents did not hire the right people to help them grow, and expanded their living standards to match their income, and surely enough the business came down like a house of cards, spiraling us out of riches, into rags, and my father went into bankruptcy! Oh dear...
Luckily, my parents were and still are very resourceful and made it work. They focused back on their normal careers, my dad in the military, and my mom in the police, so not rocking massive incomes, but able to raise their 2 kids without being too over stressed.
Fast forward a couple of years...
So, a lot of things happened in the meantime. (I can write a book on this alone, but here's the short version)
My dad left his job to become a fulltime farmer, my mom left the police to help on the farm and start a cheese factory. All perfectly acceptable progressions.
The problem was that being a small scale farmer in the 90's in SA did not pay well, in fact we ended up at the precipice of being homeless, after a dear friend of my dad bought the farm we were renting out from under us...
Now there's quite a lot that happened during my childhood, from staying in a makeshift house made from curtains in a barn, to living without electricity, having to walk to fetch water, etc. but all these experiences made me a better, stronger person.
Let's just say it sometimes sucked watching your friends have and do stuff that you cannot, but it was also a hell of a lot of fun, but tough as nails for my parents, as they tried their level best to give us a good life, even though they were struggling to keep their heads above water.
Graduating from high school, I managed to get a bursary to study Theology, a full ride. Unfortunately some things didn't go as planned, and I decided to throw in the towel after the first semester... What a loser! 😱
This was however only the beginning of my journey, and awakened me to the real world. The world you don't get taught about in school. The world where if you work really hard and do a good job you get all kinds of promotions and bigger titles, corresponding with bigger loan offers and fancy credit cards...
Yup, I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker! I was a slave to credit, taking out loans to pay off other loans, using my credit card to cover my living expenses until payday, spending anything left over on booze, girls and cars. I was loving it! My finances less so...
So where did it all go wrong? Why was I not making provisions to ensure my future wellbeing?
The answer is simple.
I was so used to not having these types of luxuries that I spent all my money chasing it. Until 2016...
In 2016 it all changed for me. I was newly engaged to my now wife, but up to my eyeballs in debt. Things had to change, and drastically too...
So I went nuclear! I registered for debt review and reduced my monthly debt expenses.
Great idea, right?
Nope, not so much.
I ended up paying so little on my debt, that some of my debt actually started growing, instead of shrinking! So, after about 8 months of this insanity I got a court order, reversing the debt review process and went back to the drawing board.
It was also around this time that I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which significantly changed my view on money.
What we came up with was a simple strategy, but it worked like crazy!
I saved up as much money as I could each month, and put all of that surplus into my highest interest loan, until it was completely paid up, then taking everything that went to that loan, plus my monthly saving, and rolling that into the next one, and the next one...
I finally had control back, and was quickly making a dent in my debt baggage! What a relief!
Unfortunately, this relief was short-lived, as my employer started talking about retrenchments, since the construction industry was not performing well... Oh no, I just had a handle on all of this debt stuff, what if I get retrenched!
We decided that it was time to be proactive, and started a property investment company, called RPIC!
We borrowed initial capital from friends and family, enough to buy our first piece of land and obtain a building loan to develop it. And the rest...
Well the rest is a work in progress, so please come back for the next installment soon...
