I started this blog almost 3 years ago with the goal of sharing my personal finance story with the world. I took the dive not knowing if people will care, or worse, feel resentment towards my success. But through this blog, I’ve reunited with some old friends and I’ve been introduced to new ones. We all share the same optimism around our own personal financial success. Additionally, I’ve had the pleasure to sit down with some people to listen to their stories and understand how they have achieved the American Dream. It’s very humbling to learn about their unique challenges and how they’ve overcome them. These are the exact stories that are missing from today’s mainstream media but are silently happening every day.

I’m going to start a new series called “The American Dream” in order to spotlight your normal, everyday millionaires. My hope is to inspire anyone who is reading this that your life may not be perfect, but it’s still possible to become rich even in today’s climate. Are you ready? Standby.

In this story, I will tell you about the 20-year journey that my middle school friend went through to overcome his circumstances to become a millionaire before the age of 35.

21 years ago I met my friend in 8th grade. He was your normal, middle-class kid with a normal family and was a solid honor roll student. Let’s call him “Ryan.” The following year we both went to the best high school in Kentucky and got accepted to their magnet program, which is known for academic excellence. This is where he started to hit his first real obstacle in life. The material that he was learning in school became increasingly harder, and his family life was getting more chaotic. It’s fair to say that he went through a very rough 4 years of high school. He was no longer the honor roll student. And he was no longer happy.

After high school graduation, most of our friends had a full-ride scholarship to our state universities or went to the Ivy Leagues like Columbia, Duke, and Stanford. However, Ryan didn’t go. He didn’t go to college. He instead spent a year working at a UPS warehouse. His passion was at the intersection of art and computers. So the following year he had taken what he saved from his UPS job to go to a private art school in Georgia. Needless to say, it was very expensive, even by today’s standards. He had to take out a ridiculous amount in student loans, but was lucky enough to only spend 3 years studying to be a Graphic Designer. And like most of my classmates who graduated in 2009, he could not find a job.

He moved back home with his parents and took a respectable job at a local Department store. I mean, he’s got a debt to service!

One day, as Ryan was performing his job pushing carts, a mother walked by with her little boy and said, “that’s why you need to go to college, so you don’t have to push carts.” She was trying to teach her son to not be like my friend–it was just that she used the wrong method and wrong time to do so.

Ryan described this moment to me as him “hitting rock bottom.” 

Moving forward, he had several realistic choices he could make:

a) continue living day by day and shy away from thinking about tomorrow
b) continue to look for a Graphic Designer job in a recession
c) go back to school to enter into a different field

He ended up making the decision to go further into debt in order to go back to school. This time, he was determined to be an Electrical Engineer. He channeled his middle-school, honor roll Ryan and ended up doing very well at the state university. Around this time was when this long-lost friend of mine got back in contact with me. He told me he had a job lined up at a big tech company in Dallas. Knowing only some of his story at the time, I couldn’t have been more thrilled.

Each time we had a chance to see each other, I would budget half a day to catch up with him. And one of the most notable conversations I had with him was when he told me his net worth was $0. At the age of 30, he was finally on his path to building wealth. He’s been a student of personal finance and investing, and had been living way beneath his means. But to be honest, even though I knew he would eventually get back to 0, I just didn’t think he could do it so fast!

Fast forward 5 years later (age 35). I get a phone call from him and he tells me the news that blew my mind: “I’m a millionaire now!!” I was shocked, happy, but mostly proud. I was not proud just because he was a millionaire–I have plenty in my circle. But Ryan was the first friend who went from middle-class to poverty, back to middle-class, and is now a millionaire.

And he did it the right way. He didn’t steal or cheat. He didn’t give up when the mother called him out. He didn’t blame the system when the world went into a recession in 2009. He didn’t sit back and wait for someone to come save him. He was proactive. He was smart. He was consistent. And he was focused. 

He’s now happily married with 1 kid, owns a home in Michigan, has a high paying job, and is on his path to becoming a decamillionaire in the next couple decades. 

I’m proud of you dude!