About Me (a.k.a What Do I Know About Becoming a Millionaire)

Great! You've decided to finally put "CFO of Your Life, Inc" as one of your job descriptions. So, as the responsible CFO you are, you wonder, why in the world should you listen to this random girl on the internet?

Here is a 101 on me, Katie Sequeira:

Yes...my parents managed to find me a Cornell
toilet bowl cover after my graduation...

I'm 26 and graduated with "Honor and Distinction in all Subjects" from Cornell University in 2011. I majored in Business, concentrating in Food & Beverage (because its delicious), Finance (because numbers just make sense to me), and Consumer Behavior (because it was so freaking interesting).

But honestly, my resume really means little in the world of building long-term stable wealth.

Why? Because there are more than several of my fellow "Top 10% of Graduates" that are honestly "Top 10% Broke".

So to give you an idea of why I know what I'm talking about, I'll tell you the story of the beginning of my personal finance journey...





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It was April 15th, 1997. The day prior for my birthday I had received an American Girl Doll Personal Journal, titled "All About Me" and was quickly going through its pages filling it with drawings & descriptions of my thrilling life as a new-found 8 year old.

I came to the page where the journal prompted me to write down my biggest fear & what my mom/dad say when I have this fear (deep stuff for AMG I might say). After running to my mother for the latter, here is what I wrote (with corrected spelling):

"My biggest fear is...Having no money and having to live on the side of the road.  

When I have this fear, my mom/dad say...My Mom says the government will take care of me on taxes and welfare."

Quote in quote.

Looking back now, I can easily envision my mother doing dishes after a stressful day at work with a small blonde-hair Katie pulling on her pant leg asking what would happen if I became homeless, answering the above, and chuckling to herself about the sarcastic comment she thought I would forget come bed-time.

For me... the fear was real. I had heard my republican father rant "over my head" about how the government was inept with money and how social security would be gone by the time he retired. If I wanted to avoid being homeless, I needed to start NOW.
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I'll skip the years where I took "diversifying" to mean hiding allowance & babysitting money in different places around the house and skip forward to the Katie of today...

- I graduated under-grad with slightly above the average $26K in federal student loans, and paid them off completely in 60 days.

- Now 4 years after graduation, I have over $100K invested in tax advantaged retirement accounts, with a solid 6 month fully-funded emergency fund and another few thousand in a "for fun" investment account.

- I have sold no start-up to Yahoo, have no trust fund, and work a regular M-F job.


But what you, Mr./Mrs. CFO care about is this:

If I don't save another dime myself for the rest of my life, given the historical long term average of 12% growth for mutual funds*, I will become a millionaire by the age of 46, and will have 4 million dollars for when I retire.  

I am an every day Millennial going on Millionaire.

Sources:
* The Total Money Makeover. Dave Ramsey. September 2013