What this gay couple is doing to be winning at retirement
How this gay couple is winning at retirement? Find out here on this episode. Then download your FREE Queer Money Kickstarter, a 9-step Guide to Kickstart Your Journey to Financial Independence.
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How is this gay couple winning at retirement?
On this Queer Money®, we’re sharing how this gay couple is winning at retirement. We went from buried in debt and living in a basement apartment to serial entrepreneurs with a $1.3 million net worth for our “How Gays Retire Fabulously” bonus series.
When we first got together, we didn’t talk about money. We were forced to talk about our finances when we talked with our realtor about buying land and building a modern vacation home. The reality was that we were financially and physically living in a hole. We had $51,000 in credit card debt and lived in a basement apartment we rented from a friend. We have 15 years of experience in financial services between the two of us. We were talking the talk but not walking the walk.
We had to ask ourselves, why? This question took us several years to get to the truth. It took a lot of soul-searching. Ultimately, what came down to it for us, and we know a lot of other gay folks, was we came from a time and place where it wasn’t okay to be gay. When we finally became adults and lived independently, we needed to prove to the bullies that we were something by overcompensating with our buying. We felt the best way to prove this to them was to buy designer clothes and go on amazing vacations. On the flip side of this, we were not only addressing the bullies, but also we were part of the gay community, and we felt we had to do everything we could to fit in. We had to have the right jeans, go to the right places, and attend all the right galas and parties. These two insecurities helped put us in our credit card debt.
How did we start to change course? We had to take that first step. We came up with a five-step process that we used to get us out of $51,000 in credit card debt. We called it The Debt Lasso method. We didn’t use the snowball or the avalanche methods, which are the more popular ambiguous strategies for paying debt. We devised our own method because we recognized that our top priority was quickly paying off credit card debt with the highest interest rate. If you would like more information on The Debt Lasso method to help you use this method and apply it to your own life to help you get out of credit card debt, we encourage you to download the free copy of the Credit Card Debt Slasher Guide here.
Getting out of debt inspired us to envision a bigger life and consider what we truly wanted. We created a system not only to build wealth after paying off our debt but also to generate the kind of money that would enable us to live the life we desire, particularly in retirement. We call the system the Wealth Builders Pyramid.
How is this going to happen? Once we paid the debt off, we decided to increase our future lifestyle by investing in 401K and started building our real estate portfolio. We also launched our business and podcast and, more recently, Living Not So Fabulously podcast and video podcast with Yahoo! Finance. We want to share these systems and tools with you to help get the conversation started about finance, to help inspire you, and to provide you with valuable resources. We want to help you prepare for retirement. Learn how you can pay off your debt with a diversity of income. You can put together the infrastructure to help you achieve the retirement of your dreams. We want to get these conversations started sooner rather than later so more LGBTQ+ folks can achieve the retirement you want. We will explore these systems further as we progress through the series.
How are you securing your retirement? For the resources and to connect with our guests, get the show notes at: https://queermoneypodcast.com/subscribe.
Previous Bonus Podcast Episodes
- Are Gays Losing at Retirement?
- 7 Most Affordable and Diverse Cities for Queer People
- 7 Most Affordable LGBTQ+ Friendly Cities for Professionals
Click below to listen to this bonus episode.