A Military Member with a Massive Financial Turnaround | The Incredible Cash Dummy

In today’s episode, Cody and Justin bring you a story that's just beginning. This interview with The Incredible Cash Dummy steps through a life quickly changed by having a child in high school and joining the Navy soon after. He then went for years with no financial direction.

A recent military move was compounded with his wife getting pregnant again and her losing her job, he had a major light-bulb moment. A little over a year ago he discovered the financial independence space and has become hooked. Tune in to see how he is correcting his path and taking ownership of his finances.
Episode Summary

* Grew up in normal middle class family where they weren’t rich but didn’t have to worry about money
* Then during his junior year of high school he gets his girlfriend pregnant and had his son at 17
* At this point all he knew about finances was trying to avoid impulse purchases
* He continued living with his parents and graduated high school and working part-time at a steak house
* The Cash Dummy realized college wasn’t for him so he decided to enlist in the Navy
* He was clearing $800 per month and paying $155 per month of child support
* His housing and food was covered through the military and he lived on base so he was able to save
* His first investing was through the Thrift Savings Plan which is the military’s version of a 401k where he put in 7% of his check monthly
* Realized he should take his finances more serous  around 2010 when he heard everyone complaining about their stocks and the recession
* He then noticed he had been investing unknowingly into nothing but the G fund which is government bonds that are basically just a shelter against inflation
* He mentions being lucky that he worked with other sailors who talked to him about finances and walked him through how all the funds work
* Gets stationed in Japan and where he receives some extra location pay and benefits from the yen conversion
* At this point he is more conscious about investing but still not a great saver
* He mentions how the military culture and surroundings of the base can be troublesome for young enlisted and their finances
* He talks about the need for military services to make financial training an annual requirement
* At 20 he started using credit cards which he struggled to use responsibly
* While he struggled with credit cards he never fell into the fancy car trap
* He ended up with $10k in credit card debt
* He got married in 2013 after 8.5 years in the military and was now an E-6
* When the finances got combined their total debt was $15k
* They blew all their extra money on eating out and travel and only saved the 7% TSP
* He got promoted to E7 and had to move for his next military assignment
* His wife was pregnant with his third child and she was going to have to quit her job
* All of this led to his light-bulb moment in 2017
* She took unemployment for 9 months
* His child support has now increased to $900 per month
* A coworker introduced bigger-pockets to him and showed him the quad chart video from Brandon Turner
* He dove in hard to bigger-pockets including the forums and podcasts
* That led him to all the other members of the financial independence space
* He sat back for a couple months trying to understand everything before he acted
* It then took a few more months before him and his wife were both on the same page
* At this point he went from 7% to TSP to 10%
* He borrowed against his 401k to pay off high interest credit card loans
* He also took on a second job for a while at $16/hr to pay off loans doing janitorial work
* There was a fear that all of this would negatively impact their lif...