I deleted this on Medium from the days when I would document my journey on there. I wrote this on Feb 15, 2022. I am now republishing it on here, however, I want to update this blog post at the end to current times as some things have changed and this blog is more current to my life than my previous posts from years ago when I use to document on Medium.
It started with $3.59 staring back at me as I walked through the dimmed lit aisles of my local grocery store, where you could usually find cheap meats and soda pop on sale in the weekly ads.
I didn’t even have bus money so I couldn’t make a better trip to the local Walmart. Times were hard and I often had to choose between doing laundry or bus fare. If I had to choose bus fare, it was laundry in the bathtub for the month.
$3.59 and broke AF.
If only I had a dollar more, I thought, as I placed a package of $0.99 pork, beef, and minced chicken hotdogs in the basket. Another $0.99 for sliced bread because it was cheaper than actual buns and five packages of high sodium ramen that were on sale 5 for $1.00.
This time around, I didn’t even have enough to buy something to drink so we could have something else in the house besides water, and all of this was supposed to last two people for five days until payday.
That wasn’t the last time I had a moment like that, there were a few more, but now as I lay in bed typing this up on my phone, those times seem so distant.
Yet, not distant enough to forget the constant hunger or wonder how things would come about at the end of the month.
I suppose this is why I don’t mind being frugal, knowing that a dollar saved is still a dollar saved.
I often tell people that if you went to the store and ended up short on a dollar, and no one stepped up to help you, suddenly, that dollar would hold a lot more value to you.
The want for financial security started in childhood.
You can find some of my childhood background here, but with more than five kids in the house plus two adults, money was often tight, especially when an illness took over one of my parents.
Food banks became a typical run after hopping off the school bus, and money for new clothes was non-existent. Chase became a prevalent name around the “dinner table” and hushed conversations.
I use the word dinner table loosely because we never really sat together. Still, Chase became an invisible person around that time, representing the bank calling about the late mortgage payments.
There are other moments that I can recall that led me to want to find a path to build financial freedom, but these are the ones I am reflecting on for this article.
My introduction to learning about money.
It wasn’t long before I started learning the concept of compounding and looking up stocks and how to invest once I had the funds to do so. But, of course, that didn’t last long, given the environment I was in.
But even as I ventured off the path of learning about investing around the time I was a teenager, I still held it in the back of my head.
It wouldn’t be until my mid-twenties that I picked it back up and erased all doubts and fears that said it couldn’t be me because nobody on Wall Street looked like me or came from where I came from.
Funny thing if you ask me – is that I learned wall street is actually the one place you want to avoid as a long-term buy-and-hold investor, so it should have never mattered in the first place.
Still, when you come from a particular environment or are a person of color, you have the effects of systemic and systematic issues that constantly tell you that something isn’t for you.
I found that I had a knack for finance and spent two years studying.
In 2018, I started to pick back up on finance and read multiple blogs and articles on the concepts of investing and the difference between personal finance, making sure that I understood what it meant to have both taken care of.
I always knew that cash flow was the thing that mattered when building your financial freedom and that debt was an absolute no.
I always had it in mind that if you couldn’t pay for it in cash then you couldn’t afford it.
Also, the hassle of debt that I witnessed my parents go through when the last one standing fell ill with cancer, left imprints on my memories so severe that I avoided debt like the plague.
To the point where I dropped out of college because I still was unsure of my path. I was under the impression I getting close to having to take out student loans if I wanted to continue. (I also had to put personal obligations at the front making dropping out was the right thing to do – time has proven this.) With everything taken into consideration it didn’t make sense to continue and debt wasn’t a gamble I was willing to take on an unsure degree path while a personal matter was mounting.
Growing up I had seen the ugly side of it.
Debt collectors don’t care if you are dying of cancer, they want their money, and the utility company doesn’t care if you didn’t pay due to chemo treatments, they will still turn off access to their services.
I am convinced that if it wasn’t unlawful and morally wrong that these very same people would stand over your casket and still try to snatch whatever they could out of your hands after harassing grieving family members.
Now, don’t get me wrong, now that I am more educated about finance, I realise that debt could be great to take on when you have actual assets, and don’t want to use your own money.
This is how some of the wealthy continue to build their wealth. They don’t use their own money.
For example, if you have $20,000 in stocks and want to start a small online business for $5,000, but you don’t have it in cash, instead of selling shares of companies that continue to increase in capital, you can borrow from the bank.
This way, you don’t risk the capital growth of your own money.
The worst-case scenario would be that if the business fails, you could pay it off by selling $5,000 worth of shares + whatever interest that was on loan, or you would come up with a payment plan to pay off the loan.
The latter option would leave your assets still in tack and you wouldn’t have risked capital appreciation.
However, if the business succeeds, you would pay back the loan through what’s left of the profits, and then once the loan is paid off, you will reap the entire proceeds of your business.
Hard times taught me never to take our financial situation for granted.
Although things are better off than they were, I still reflect and ponder upon those times, so I don’t make the mistake of thinking that they’re forever gone amid false illusions.
Because people have been known to do stupid, foolish, and irrational things when coming across financial success.
Through investing in the stock market, my household has come to appreciate the subtleties between the intersection of building wealth and hardships; there isn’t a massive gap for someone like us.
We are still on the path forward, saving and investing every dollar left over.
You just happened to catch us in the middle of our journey, where I hope you too find a way to join sometime, so you no longer have to worry about money being at the forefront of all things.
Life has an amazing way of working out when we allow it and don’t flutter away in active desperation by writing all things off.
The path of wealth is accessible for those that can save a penny or two each time one is spent and has a working market exchange; it doesn’t take much to invest.
Contrary to the belief that those who come from money are the only ones getting richer through the top half of the stock market. There is some truth, but it is not the whole truth.
As true as it may be that things could be better and tax policies could be reinforced in some areas and the forever expanding of the wealth gap continues to hover over us like a shadow, it does not mean that you and your family are stuck with picking up crumbs.
Each year, self-made millionaires come out with their financial success stories through investing in the stock market, increasing their income, building their skills, and leaning away from overconsumption of products that aren’t needed.
Nothing is special about these people, or myself, we just found a way to not have to worry about money when it works for us.
Ordinary everyday people have found themselves better off due to their investing habits over the years, including my household. I sleep better knowing that we have our accounts stuffed with cash and cash flow, different from when that $3.59 was staring back at me, and it was all I had.
Don’t let others stop you from making better financial decisions for yourself and your loved ones.
One of my neighbors is a die-hard socialist, and I respect her for her politics, views, and beliefs, but when I told her I was invested in the stock market, her response was, “You don’t fight fire with fire.” meaning that we shouldn’t partake in the stock market, however, if I had listened to her words, our household wouldn’t be better off.
Side note: I believe that we could do better within our structure of capitalism, too many people have fallen through the cracks through no fault of their own. This is why socialism has been on the rise, can you really blame people for wanting different? Does this make me a socialist? No, but I understand and can hold empathy.
In fact, we would still be stressed about money and drowning in sleepless nights, so don’t let people deter you from making sound financial moves for your family due to their limited thinking or understanding. What is right for them might not be suitable for you and vice versa.
My household is far from being millionaires, but if I were to lose all sources of income, we would be able to stay afloat while I figure things out, and that is all the comfort I need and confirmation that investing has been right for my household.
Now to current day 7.16.24 and where I stand after writing this post.
Inflation has happened since writing that article. I have since had to rebuild cash reserves. I returned to college now that those considerations no longer weigh heavily on my life. I am sure of my degree path. I don’t have to worry about student loans for awhile – if ever. The personal obligation is no longer a pressing matter.
Currently I am surviving as a broke college student because everything is higher on the pricey side especially groceries and I still try to save and invest any dollar I can.
I have since then started my own investment fund from the bottom of the barrel and right now I only allocate $50 to it each month. It’s all I can afford right now, however, my goal is to have it hit $1,000 end of year by 2024 which means I am finding ways to be more frugal in my shopping habits for groceries.
Even though I am not a traditionally broke college student I still have to live like one if I am ever going to climb up the social mobility ladder.
I’ve been low income my entire adult life and I am working towards putting an end to that chapter of my life which means making the hard decisions and sacrifices. Such as not purchasing the now $6 Oreos unless on sale for $2.99 or certain household items/brands and living like a broke college student even on financial aid.
I often write about frugality on here and it’s no different to what I am doing while being a college student who is broke in the sense that if I don’t watch what I spend I will inevitably end up burning through what cash reserves and investments I do have. Because inflation has climbed which means our purchasing power isn’t worth as much as it was once before.
Wrapping up, I republished this post on here because besides the fluctuation of cash reserves and the financial security from then to now all else in the article is intact and represents my financial journey through the years.
The Broke College Student 
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