$100 to $100k in the US Navy
I graduated high school in June of 2018 and shipped off to boot camp that July with nothing but $129.10 in my bank account. I now sit at $107,349.62 invested 5 years later at 23 years old.
Roth TSP: $60,443.33
Roth IRA: $19,179.79
Brokerage: $15,635.83
I Bonds: $11,565.60
Crypto: $525.07
Origin story:
I never really worried about money for the majority of my life. My parents are both immigrants from a Third World country and they gave me the best life they could while I was growing up. Before I even started kindergarten we moved out of the somewhat dangerous city to a nicer neighborhood in the suburbs. I got everything I needed for school and was never hungry or anything, but I slowly did start to notice that I didn't have nearly as many "cool" things as the other kids. It never bothered me, but it was just something I had observed growing up. My summer going into senior year I got my first job at 17 years old. My brother worked at Starbucks and the manager liked him so she asked if he had any siblings. I hated asking my parents for money. But being a 17 year old going into his last year of high school, I absolutely needed money to do shit with my friends and buy computer parts. So I thought to myself, "why not?" There wasn't even an interview or anything, I just told my brother yes, the manager texted me to show up one day, and then suddenly I was an employed member of society. So I worked there for the summer and I finally had my own money. I'll never forget getting a check for a couple hundred bucks and thinking to myself, "holy shit I'm fucking rich now."
Summer ends and my senior year starts so I shift my hours to weekends only. At this time I am absolutely, 100%, dead set on college. There was never even a question about whether I was going or not my entire career as a student. I've always had good grades and I always knew exactly what I wanted to do. Being a computer geek I knew that computer science would absolutely be the move to make a shit ton of money doing something that I enjoyed. The military never even crossed my mind. That shit is only for idiots who can't get into college and I am way too smart for that. At the time my mother had not been working for a year or two because she had gone through depression. Tragedies within the family occurred and her job was too stressful so she had to quit in order to save herself. My dad had to pick up the slack financially by doing side hustles along with his main job working Monday to Friday (half days on Saturday) AND also trying his absolute hardest to help my mom out of her slump. I honestly can't imagine how tough that time was for him. He’s a fucking hero. I was just a kid at the time and I had honestly no idea what was happening. All I knew was that my mom was sad but other than that, nothing else changed and my future was probably fine. Thankfully my mom beat the depression and she's been okay ever since. She didn't go back to her old job because she was getting old, it was too stressful, and she was still enjoying not working (I now understand). But during that time I slowly started to realize that the financial situation within our household may not be as good I had always thought. My parents have never ever said that they were hurting for money (immigrant parent pride) and even during the dark times of my mom's depression, not once did either of them say a word. My dad quitting his job is what finally convinced me that we were, in fact, kind of poor. I know I say that both my parents quit their jobs, but I just want to point out that they had also been working at their companies for minimum 20 years each. After 5 years in the Navy I completely understand. I also said kind of poor, but I really meant living paycheck to paycheck. So basically early on senior year both my parents were unemployed and my older brother was already attending college on student loans. I started doing the math inside my head, "okay house mortgage + one college tuition + no jobs = holy shit..... I don't think I can go to college."
There had to be something else for me to do. My main goal was to completely remove the financial burden of my existence to help them out. After doing research, I discovered that the military is completely free (monetarily speaking, you sell your soul) and they also pay you. It was a win-win in my book. I was 100% set on the Air Force or Navy because there's no way I was going to combat and both branches have jobs for nerds like me. Thankfully, my high school happened to be administering the ASVAB (the standardized test you need to take to enlist into any branch of the military, it's like any standardized test with math, science, English and shit) one Saturday morning so I said fuck it and took it. Before I even saw my own results a Navy recruiter was blowing up my phone wanting to see me because I got a decent enough score. Once he had successfully lied to me about basically everything, I was convinced. Before Christmas of that year I had signed my life away for 6 years to do something that I had virtually no knowledge about. All I knew was that my parents wouldn't have to pay a single dime and I would actually be making money. I rode out the rest of my senior year, enjoyed my one month of summer vacation, and shipped off.
$100 to $100k:
My first almost 2 years in the Navy I was basically just putting money away in my savings and not spending that much. The only bills I had were the phone bill and the TV/internet bill for back home. The Navy paid for basically everything for me so pretty much my entire check was pocket money. I've always been pretty frugal so I never bought the Camaro or married a stripper (I fight the urges every day) and decided to just save. I wasn't investing in anything except TSP (military/government 401K) at 5%. The only reason I did that was because I was told if I did anything less than 5%, I would be giving up free money because they’ll match it. I didn’t even really know anything about it or retirement in general, but who would ever give up free money? After about 8 months in the Navy in March 2019 I found Ally Bank and started putting my money there because the interest rate was way higher than a normal savings account, which I guess was my first step to finding FI. After about 1.5 years in February 2020 I discovered this sub and /r/militaryfinance. That's when I started putting the max percentage of my pay (60% of my base pay which was not enough to max it out as a lowly E-4) into TSP. After a little more research, I discovered that the money in my savings account could be put into this thing called a Roth IRA and VTSAX and that Vanguard was the cool site to do it on. So in June 2020 I managed to slip in $6,000 for the 2019 tax year because it had gotten changed so many times due to COVID. This actually enabled me to put in another $6,000 in September for the 2020 tax year. Ever since then I've been slowing contributing.
2020 and 2021 were amazing years and I loved watching the numbers go up quickly and all the green. End of 2021 and almost all 2022, not so much. I remember that’s when I stopped opening up my TSP or Vanguard regularly because I hated seeing all the red, but I still contributed here and there. I also opened up a regular brokerage towards the end of 2021 because I figured that one day I might need money that I can access quickly. I also very recently discovered I Bonds and now plan on putting more money into that and basically using it as my emergency savings account. I have things planned in the next ~3 years when I eventually separate from the Navy where that money might come into play. Anyways, I somehow managed to be at over $100,000 and the funny part is I think I might have passed it maybe a month ago. I just never checked. Actually the only reason I decided to finally add up my numbers was because of the guy who posted yesterday about being 23 years old with $100,000. I thought, “fuck man he’s way ahead of me I need to see how far off I am.” To my greatest surprise, we're both in the same boat (get it?!?!).
Lost potential:
The craziest part about all of this is that I could have had even MORE if I kept aggressively investing into my TSP and Roth IRA. I actually dialed back my investments towards the end of 2021 because we were finally not on deployment and COVID restrictions were finally relaxing. I actually could use my money to you know... live. 2020 and 2021 I was on deployment half of those years not spending money and the other half I was stuck inside not spending any money because of COVID restrictions. So I basically had nothing to do but invest my money or else it would have just sat there. From the end of 2021 to the present day I've spent much more time on land than at sea and I've been enjoying my time living in Japan and spending my money. But I'm extremely happy exactly where I'm at right now and the money I have invested into fun was absolutely well spent... for the most part. If I were to nitpick I could definitely have saved some extra money at some points and put it into the market but fuck it, I've got to live at some point in my 20s.
Thanks to everyone here:
I mostly lurk here and never comment or post because I don’t really think I have anything to contribute that hasn’t already been said. But I hope that being an enlisted guy (officers in the military make a bajillion more for virtually no reason except having a degree) that joined with basically nothing at 18 will be interesting to some of y’all. The daily threads get me through deployments and it’s always a pleasure reading about everyone’s financial lives and just regular lives. There’s just barrrrrrrrely enough internet to load old.reddit.com/r/financialindependence. I remember laughing at one of the comments on one of the daily threads while on deployment talking about telling your boss that you aren’t showing up instead of asking. They would legitimately cut my balls off, make me walk the plank, then put me back to work if I didn’t show up without approved PTO. But anyways if y’all have any suggestions for me in the short term or long term feel free to let me know. Also if y’all have any questions about anything feel free to ask.