My new obsession is Undercover Billionaire. The first season from 2019 pre-pandemic follows Glenn Stearns who begins in Eerie PA with a hundred bucks and a pickup truck. His first week we watch him eating Top Ramen and sleeping in his truck on a snowy cold night, and he becomes so dehydrated he makes a visit to the ER. His goal is to create a million-dollar business in 90 days. Amazingly, he opens Underdog BBQ in exactly 90 days.
Okay. Stearns didn’t meet his goal. Underdog was only evaluated at $750,000. But my gosh, a $750,000 business in 90 days?! My biggest aha—my biggest takeaway—money doesn’t matter, people matter. My second biggest aha: if you don’t have enough money, your problem is not a lack of money but a lack of imagination.
That being said, I am always broke. I’m not sure I’ve known anything different, and I’m exhausted trying to figure out how to pay rent. I mean, I manage, somehow, but I have no real idea how I manage.
I’ve thought for a long time, a budget was the answer. But a budget is not the answer.
When I first started teaching at Great Bay Community College, I was getting under two grand over three to four months per class. Pretty typical, I learned, of an adjunct instructor for anyone in the United States. I was okay with this number because I planned to “pay my dues” and be hired full-time. Yet, almost nine years later, even though I’ve received raises, I was never hired full-time. I remember having a conversation when I first began that I should consider food stamps and Medicaid and rental and heat assistances as a part of my salary.
Rent, eight years ago, was $1700 a month. Every two weeks, my wife Mary and I sat down with our bills and our checking accounts to figure where the money was going, which bills we could put off, which bills needed immediate attention, whether we were going to visit the food bank or not.
We had a budget. We still have a budget, and though we’re not visiting the food bank anymore, we are still constantly broke, and a lot of our income leveraged toward medical bills, credit cards, and a car payment.
By the way—this is the first car payment we’ve had in over twenty years! Our old car did not pass inspection this past March. To save cash, I drove the thing illegally until the end of August when it finally lurched into the driveway for the last time and died. The rear brakes so chewed, when you touched them, they crumbled into dust (wasn’t just the brakes that was wrong).
Still, I feel like we are living beyond our financial means.
I tallied our monthly expenses. To pay our basic expenses, we need 4246.25 a month—this does not include credit cards medical bills.
| Expense | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rent | $1900 | It’s gone up! |
| Life Insurance | $27.61 | In case I die they can bury me under a tree |
| Cricket Phone | $116 | For 4 phones! unlimited everything |
| Renter’s Insurance | $44.34 | Gonna talk about this on Tuesday! |
| Breezeline Internet | $29.99 | Was $165 through Comcast. |
| CBS Paramount | $10 | Star Trek is important. |
| Spotify/Hulu | $9.99 | Hulu is free with Spotify! |
| Netflix | $10 | I remember the DVDs by mail! |
| Amazon Prime | $14.99 | This one I probably don’t need, but…. |
| Eversource Electric | $300 | Varies |
| “New” Car Payment | $266 | Ugh. |
| Auto Insurance | $228 | Double ugh! |
| Fuel | $250 | Varies |
| Auto Registration | $11 | Don’t want to get pulled over. |
| Groceries | $800 | Includes cleaning supplies & city Garbage bags |
| Salon/Barber | $70 | Have you seen my hair? Snazzy! |
| Pet Supplies | $100 | My cats are almost more important than my kids |
| Drugs & Prescriptions | $58.33 | Diabetes… don’t eat the sugar! |
I see stuff I could let go: um, mainly the TV. I’m spending almost fifty bucks a month on TV. Let’s be honest though, I’m not going to get rid of CBS because Star Trek. Mary has to have her news and Wheel of Fortune, and Hulu is where I watch Undercover Billionaire. Besides, Breezeline is a HUGE reduction in the overall entertainment bill—Comcast charged $165. For the needed Internet connection and the television, I’m only paying about 75 bucks as opposed to the over two hundred in combination with Comcast.
After living expenses are taken care of, after we dive into the credit card and medical bills, we are left with lint in our pockets, or sometimes we are left with less than lint and have to borrow from future paychecks which leaves us playing catch up for months.
On top of this, our cash flow structure is weird. Every semester, Great Bay Community College treats me like a new employee. I’m often left waiting on the semester’s first paycheck anywhere between four to six weeks. Between Christmas and the tail end of January, I have zero money coming in. Summers, I’m lucky if I teach one course. Then, to boot, Mary’s hours are cut in the summer as well, and her paychecks end up smaller.
(The awesome news here is that in fall of 2024 this wait on money will completely change thanks to the SEA Chapter 32 union bargaining unit’s recent contract negotiations with the Community College System of New Hampshire administration, which was a synthesis of good-faith problem solving.)
Our problem is not a budget. Our problem is income generation. We’re simply not making enough money.
This not enough money has been one of the reasons why getting my real estate license and working with Keller Williams has been such a boon.
Have I made a lot of money from real estate yet? No. I have been admittedly moving too slowly, or just figuring out how to run a real estate business in the first place.
But. All of those are excuses. For example, in Underground Billionaire, Stearns opened an award-winning barbeque restaurant from day one and had zero barbeque experience. Had even less restaurant experience as he relegated himself to dishwashing. In his first week of the 90-day challenge, he set a goal to earn enough to cover his living expenses for the three-month challenge.
I don’t have to work that fast; I have September’s rent covered. I am worried about October, November, and December. So, this is my goal: for the month of September, between teaching, real estate, and whatever else, I need to generate $12,738.75. And. I’m going to blog about it. I will publicly report to you every day for the month of September.
Links to the entire Undercover Billionaire blog series:
- The Undercover Billionaire in Me
- Wealth 2.0: Harvesting Passive Income Side Hustles Like a Billionaire
- The Undercover Billionaire Kool-Aid
- Stacking Tranches: My Billionaire Epiphany
- The Real Life Billionaire Challenge
- Breaking Down the Billionaire Mindset: The job behind the sale
- Beyond the Business Card
- The Billionaire’s Setback
- The Billionaire Brick Wall
- The Billionaire’s Deal
Listen, you know how scary it was to publish this post? To put all that personal financial information out there in the world and encourage people to take a long hard look at my wallet? Like damn.
