My Personal Finance History

Based on requests, I thought I would give you more information about my personal history. My life's choices has a lot to with my journey to financial freedom so I think its important to know more of my background to better understand how I got to where I am today.

I graduated with a BS degree in Computer Science in December 1998. I was just like any other college student, broke, but I was blessed enough to have the support of my parents to pay for my tuition and basic living expenses while I worked to get my degree.

Rather than entering the workforce like most of my graduating peers, I opted to stay and get a MS degree in Engineering. I was luckily offered an assistantship at the university which gave me free tuition and a stipend (roughly $12,000 a year). I was again blessed to have my parents agree to continue to pay my health insurance premiums during this time.

While in graduate school, I purchased my first car, a newly used Nissan Sentra. I put $5,000 down (my life's savings) and I received a loan from my parents to pay for the remaining amount (roughly $7,000).

In addition, while I was in graduate school, I started a dot com business with my brother. We spent several years and roughly invested $8k of my savings in the business which we finally shutdown and sold off most of our assets in 2004 for a sizable loss.

In August 2001, I finally entered the real world and have been working at IBM ever since. I began paying close attention to my finances after reading The Millionaire Next Door given to me by a professor towards the end of my grad school career. As I entered the workforce I realized my limited financial means at the time would limit my choices in the future and I wanted to do something about it.

Since 2001, I have made steady progress in my increasing my net worth. I paid off the car loan from my parents and purchased my 1st house in 2002. In 2005, I rented out my house and I am currently looking for a new home.

Here is a chart of my monthly net worth since I started working in 2001:








I left graduate school with a signing bonus and moving allowance that accounted for the majority of my $14k net worth in July 2001. As you can see I have been steadily improving this number to a more reasonable $216k net worth today. Hopefully this streak will continue for many more years.