Getting Personal with Mr. Refined: 7 Interview Questions

Q1: Please tell us a little about yourself.

I am a 36-year-old, single, Christian, millennial father and foster father, currently of two. I have a couple of degrees in Physics, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineer and have carried a day job in various engineering disciplines since I graduated. I am passionate about investing and growing wealth.

Although I have never earned a six-figure income for a regular day job, I tripled my investable net wealth in less than a year by applying the Pillars of FIRE and investing wisely. Others started asking a lot of questions about how I did it. That’s when I stumbled on a passion for blogging about personal finance with an emphasis on the FIRE movement at RefinedByFIRE.co. For those that are not familiar FIRE stands for Financially Independent Retire Early. It is a system of cutting expenses and increasing savings rate so you can retire in an incredibly short working career, in many cases just 5-15 years.

I am on track to retire on plan, in 10 years. I now own my second small business and I am currently looking for my first real estate investment property. I love volunteering in my church and community and lead a few mastermind social groups in my home city. Whenever I can get away, I love getting out in nature to backpack or hunt. I hope to do a lot more of those things in my next mini-retirement (sabbatical) as well as my official early retirement when I graciously dismount the hamster wheel and exit corporate America.

Of course, life for me was not always this blessed.

Q2: You have an interesting journey through college, changing schools. Tell us what happened.

I went off to college not sure what I wanted to do professionally. I was never a great student but I was willing to study hard. As a teenager, all I knew was that I wanted to get away from home and the oppression of parents. In reality, they were not that oppressive I was just seeking a higher degree of freedom and independence. I love you mom and dad. I also knew I was good at math and science. I had a good ACT score and decent grades. l looked for schools that were reputable in the sciences.

Unexpectedly, I was accepted to a school called Colorado School of Mines which ranked second to MIT that year for math and science majors. It had a 99.9% job placement ratio for graduates and an average graduating income of around 60k. So basically, unless you were the worst out of a thousand students you were going to have a good-paying job if you survived to graduation. That was a no-brainer, so off I went to the Rocky Mountains to study physics and engineering.

College Lifestyle

In high school, I dated a college girl so I had high expectations of the fun lifestyle improvement I expected in college as compared to living with my parents. After settling into my new school, I was rather surprised to find that the lifestyle I expected didn’t exist on my chosen campus. On the weekends, instead of thousands of young adults looking for socializing and mutual enjoyment of libations, the campus was a ghost town. The college streets where one tumbleweed short of your favorite zombie apocalypse deserted town movie scene. I guess the “wild west” was further west than Colorado?

Unbeknownst to me, the “NASA boot camp” as we called it, that I choose for school became deserted as fellow nerds abandoned their graphing calculator collections in the dormitories and fled from campus to the less socially anxious environment of their parents’ houses. Those brave souls that stayed on campus typically secluded themselves in the dormitories behind the bunker walls made of stacks of videogames and homework to see them through until the next week’s classes began.

If you are thinking that it would be easy to stand out from the crowd in a nerd factory like that, and easy to win at the girlfriend game in such a completion pool… you would be mistaken. To make conditions less hospitable the male/female ratio was 5 to 1.

Although I was able to join a fraternity and even become the social chair of my class, this overall experience still worked out to be a low overall quality of life for me. It felt like a four-year prison sentence of solitude. Often, I would talk to friends that went on to state schools and the amazing times that they were having in college and all the interesting people they were meeting and friending. I envied them. I envied the opportunities and lifestyles that they had of playing intramural sports and socializing with friends and going on exciting road trips during weekends and breaks.

No Looking Back

I decided to abandon this great education for an opportunity to live a better lifestyle while I was in college. I reasoned that with good grades and negotiating skills I could still land a great paying job after I graduated and all the while enjoying my time in school. This was one of my first lessons that enjoyment of life was more than a large assured income. Despite only making $40k after graduation, I never regretted this decision.

I transferred to another school, the University of Wisconsin which of my friends who I was talking to was attending. It worked out that I could go to school there for a few thousand dollars a semester between scholarships, financial aid, and merit-based aid. That saved me tens of thousands of dollars per year in tuition costs. I now call this geoscholastic arbitrage.

After figuring out the savings and realizing that I wasn’t going to graduate from my current school I figured it was a better idea to transfer sooner rather than later. Halfway through that semester, I decided to transfer on a rather hasty decision not expecting to stay at the University of Wisconsin long but rather use it as a stepping stone to a better school.

Settling Down and Living it Up

After moving there and settling in the school quickly grew on me and I began to enjoy my time there and settled into a double major program. The school had a great Lacrosse team, easy classes, and a great social life. Eventually, I graduated and moved on to the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology to take on yet another degree, Aerospace Engineering. Since I was so content with my intentionally designed college lifestyle, I didn’t mind continuing to study, perhaps indefinitely or at least until I had a doctorate. I reason that then I would be able to afford a lifestyle of success and one that was not available to me as a child.

Burberry and Blackberries

By now many of my friends were graduating and landing professional careers. I watched a drastic lifestyle change in those that did! Their income went up 5X overnight and their time commitment was cut in half! After the grind of the college curriculum and resume-enhancing extracurricular commitments, a mere 8 hours of work and no homework was quite an attractive proposition.

The text chatter on my blackberry (an archaic communication device that preceded the existence of the modern-day iPhone) exploded every day at 5 o’clock. My friends congregated at the happy hour hubs downtown. They got together every day for half-price drinks and h’ourderves. I always wanted to meet up but often had too much homework or extracurricular activities to do.

The few times I was able to join they talked on and on about their new professional Burberry wardrobes, high-rise loft apartments they found downtown or off-the-lot cars they were leasing. They would buy rounds of drinks at a rate I never felt I could reciprocate. And the most envious aspect was that they had no other responsibilities to attend to that evening. They could simply libate and eat in their fancy professional attire then return their shiny, newly leased cars to the concrete parking lots in the subfloors of their spacious downtown high-rise lofts, then collapse on the new fresh leather scented furniture set they recently bought to garnish the flat-screen TV while overlooking the downtown skyrise with envy instilling views you may recall from movies scenes like in “Pretty Woman.”

All of the sudden, I wanted to graduate and land a job at a Fortune 500 company downtown in the city that just-so-happened to have the most Fortune 500 company headquarters. And that is exactly what I did.

Q3: After college, you got a great job and had a horrific thing happen to you. Talk about that as much as you care to share.

I graduated in 2008 during a difficult job market with just under 100k of student debt thanks to a far less than financially optimal path through the collegiate corridor. Three universities and 6 years of hard work and all I had to show for it was a couple degrees and a mountain of debt. I was lucky that one of the companies that I interned for offered me a good position at a Fortune 500 company that I quickly accepted.

I was surprised by the news that my college sweetheart was pregnant. Exciting news but unfortunately it happened out of wedlock, sorry mom. When my college sweetheart was 9 months pregnant my vehicle died a sudden unexpected death, a cracked engine block. I frantically scoured the city for a suitable replacement to acquire as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to be without a car weeks before my son was due to arrive.

Eating Life’s Lemons

I bought the first suitable used Honda Civic that I found for $4,500. I bought it in a desperate time, not form a position of strength, research, careful consideration, and thorough inspection. Later, I found out it was a partially repaired salvaged vehicle and needed an additional $1000 of electrical work to solve the short circuit problems resulting from a prior accident. They say your vehicle is a projection of your personality. A serendipitous foreshadowing of the calamity to come, I suppose.

Two weeks into my new job my life took an unexpected turn. I was almost fatally assaulted. My injuries included: abrasions down to the bone, bruising across my face, significant blunt force trauma, chest kicked in, broken ribs, a punctured and collapsed lung, and many others. Approximately 20 guys thought I would be good exercise as a punching bag. They took turns switching out when one of them got tired working me over. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Later, I learned that most of them were training buddies for the minor league MMA fighting circuit.

Q4: While in the hospital you had several other things happen and left you with a huge hospital bill. Tell us what happened and how you dealt with all of that.

During my month-long stay in the most expensive hotel in the world… the US hospital system. I found out I have a rare bio-chemical immunity to pain medication. They had to start surgery without pain meds. – possibly the worst day of my life …. Ha-ha, oh wait not even close, keep reading.

The nurse accidentally turned off my breathing machine one night that kept my lungs inflated via 5 tubes wedged between my ribs into my chest cavity. I contemplated suing the hospital for malpractice but through my glazed-over eyes, I could still see the genuine fear and regret in the nurse’s eyes that she nearly killed me and would certainly lose her job. She completely admitted her mistake and took full responsibility. I chose the moral high ground and let that one go.

Pressure Check

My new company called me in the hospital to “check on me” aka assess when I would be returning to work. They put the pressure speech on me saying they never expected such a long absence…. Well, funny thing, neither did I. I had to cope with the additional pressure that they may be looking for a replacement for me while I was recovering.

When I asked about the healthcare benefits they were quick to remind me that I had not completed the vesting period to activate benefits and that insurance would not be effective for another two weeks and did not cover prior “conditions.” Such a nice thought, the “condition” of being assaulted. In other words, go ahead and consider yourself screwed!

While in the hospital my car was hit while parked. At this point, I didn’t really care I was just glad it was not my body that was getting hit. I dismissed it as something I could do absolutely nothing about in my condition so what was the use of worrying about it.

A Date with Pain

In the fourth week of my hospital stay, I was told my college sweetheart was in another hospital going into labor. The next day I got to watch my son’s birth …via skype on a laptop the nurses brought in. I have never felt so powerless laying there in the hospital bed on my back miles away watching my girl endure as much pain as I was and there was nothing I could do for her, not even hold her hand.

It is hard to write this without tearing up. Retelling it is in a small way like reliving it. I watched my sweetheart go through labor as I drifted in and out of consciousness through the waves of pain. As I watched her scream from the pain of contractions I wondered who was feeling more pain, me or her? I felt terrible that I couldn’t be there for her, by her side encouraging her. At that moment I realized a funny thing. I realized that if there was any possible way, despite all the pain I was dealing with, I wished I could take on the pain she was feeling so she didn’t have to suffer it.

Meeting My Son

A few days later I meet my son for the first time. My college sweetheart brought him from her hospital to come visit me in my hospital before they went home. She set him in my arms and everything changed for me. I felt how warm he was and I felt how light and fragile he was. His little lip quivered a the slightest jostle. I knew this little guy counted on me to toughen up and get out of this hospital. I knew he depended on me to provide for him, to teach him how to throw a spiral football and cast a fishing rod. This little blessing needed a father around.

Mark Twain said “There are two important days in a man’s life. The day he is born and the day he finds out why.” That day I found out a much deeper reason for my life. I knew I had to grin and bear the pain. I knew that my new family counted on me to be there for them and support them. I knew that while weak men are defined by their circumstances, strong men are defined by their commitments. I was committed to supporting my family.

That’s when everything changed for me. I stopped focusing on the pain and started focusing on the goal of recovery. When I looked up, I realized every nurse on the floor was gathered around my hospital bed, including the doctor. I asked how soon until I could go home. The feeling in the room was indescribable. After a few seconds of silence, the doctor said that I could go home today but that I would have to remain on a portable breathing machine to keep suction on my lung while it healed. And someone would have to dress the hole daily where the tube entered my chest and a few other wounds where tubes had been removed from my chest. The three of us, my college sweetheart in one wheelchair, myself in another wheelchair and my son in my lap were wheeled out of the hospital together, holding hands.

More Adversity for Good Measure

While I was recovering one of my student loan lenders claimed bankruptcy and the bankruptcy settlement attorney came to collect the amount owed in full to settle the bankruptcy case. If you can imagine being in my position at this point, it as laughable that I would be able to pay the loan back in full. I remember laughing aloud before the despair of that letter set in. I had to get an attorney to represent the fact that there was no way I could pay in full at this point in my life. My attorney was able to absolve me of all remaining amounts owed. I couldn’t believe it! I had agreed to pay back the balance at a slow and steady rate but because the bankruptcy settlement attorney couldn’t collect in full in light of my financial circumstances, she wrote off the remaining balance as uncollectable.

Bedside Robbery

This is when the medical bills started rolling in. The first bill came in from the hospital around $10,000. I though fwweeewh that was not as bad as I feared for a month’s stay. But then another came in for the anesthesiologist. Wow! they get paid well, and another from the surgeon and another for the ER, and another for “medical supplies,” and another for nurse expenses, …I guess flipping the switch to off on my breathing machine was a lot of work? I thought as I shrugged my shoulders.

I was charged separately by each service provider. I asked for an itemized bill to see exactly where all this money was going. The hospital bills all together came in at just under a $100k. Just enough to make you lose your lunch. And if it is a hospital lunch, that jiggly Jell-O, and dry cardboard cracker will set you back $35 a meal! The hospitals are embarrassed to admit what they are actually charging you for everything, so they try hard to obfuscate the detailed itemization. I had to keep pushing.

Why can the medical system in America get away with this hospital bed robbery? Because you have no other choice but to accept treatment when your life or health is on the line. You will spend your hard-earned life savings if it means your life. The medical system has figured this out.

The Medical Bill Loophole

One of the nurses mentioned that I could apply for financial aid and get some assistance with my medical debt. I did just that and realized that I could negotiate the bills. I told them my financial position and my income and how long I had been out of work and a lot of the service providers were willing to write down the debt and negotiate with me on both the amount and repayment schedule.

Through financial aid and significant negotiation, I got the total medical debt down to around ~$12k that I had to pay out of pocket. A big chunk of my student debt had been absolved in the lender’s bankruptcy settlement as well. Now the total amount I owed felt achievable. It felt like something I could tackle.

I buckled down and pay off my student and remaining medical debt in less than 5 very committed years living a low expense lifestyle while I watched my friends buy houses and new cars.

Q5: After coming through all of that, paying down your debt, you were planning to marry your college sweetheart. You bought a house and more bad news came, right?

One year later I finally had enough cash stashed for a down payment for a house and a wedding ring. And it was time to get my house in order, literally! I am more than ready to turn this nightmare into the American dream. I Landed a great paying job in a very low cost of living state at a fortune 30 mega-cap company.

My life finally felt back on track! I found a big house for a growing family. I was able to get a foster license and quickly had a foster placement in my home. A beautiful little blond girl that everyone mistook for my very own daughter. Things are finally looking up. I am designing a beautiful custom engagement ring. I find the dream house (thanks to a stellar credit score from paying down massive debt) in the perfect family neighborhood in a great school district. My offer gets accepted. I close on the house and I wish this is where I got to say I lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, this is where my story gets difficult.

Downpayment on the American Dream

I carry my college sweetheart across the threshold for the dream house, crack a waiting bottle of wine, fill two wine glasses, propose a toast to our future lives together …only to find out she has been having an affair for the last year with a coworker who apparently has a black leather jacket, motorcycle, and “stacks of cash.”

She leaves me, she leaves the house, she leaves the white picket fence, she leaves the two kids, she even leaves the dog. A week later I find out she has an apartment, a new life with a new man, and even a new dog. I have known this girl for a third of my life and I learn everything we had was rather expendable to her. DSS threatens to take away my foster daughter after learning my relationship fell apart even though I am the only dad that my foster daughter has known and she has been with me for over two years at this point.

True Pain

I am an emotional wreck! My heart has been hand-torn from my chest, spiked like a football onto a bed of nails, ninja chopped into a thousand pieces and left for the crows to fight over. The rug has been swept from under my feet. It feels like everything I have been working towards came unwound. The one Jenga block that was holding the towner from tumbling down has been yanked from the base. I am having trouble focusing at work. It feels like I have a constant stomach ache. My mind is racing faster than her “new man’s” motorcycle. For some sick sadistic reason, I am imagining the things she is doing with her new man.

How I am going to raise two young kids as a single father? How am I going to fight DSS to keep my little girl? How I am going to make do thousands of miles from my family and support network? I quite all my extracurricular activities. I can’t fall asleep with the mental anguish of crushing anxiety. I literally write my top five priorities on my bathroom mirror (which are still there to this day) just so I can stay focused. It takes all my strength to manage my job, kids, and house, and to stop myself from bursting into tears in front of the kids. Oh, and at this point of the story my mega-cap company’s stock price gets cut in half and goes through massive layoffs and I lose my job.

Dejected, alone, abandoned, emotionally crushed, unemployed, a single income house and up to my eyeballs in expenses and solely responsible for two young kids, a dog and a new house which is way too big with way too much yard. Lucky for me my story does not end there.

Q6: A lot of people would have crumbled under all of this tragedy. How did you survive? What turned it around for you?

To be completely honest, I almost did crumble under all the pain and pressure. I have never admitted this, not even to my family but I might as well confess it here…. I will never forget the pain I felt in the hospital. All other physical pain in my life, including all the bones I broke in lacrosse, is laughable compared to what I was experiencing in the hospital. One day the pain was so unbearable that I decided I would pull the plug on my nurse alarm machine then on my breathing machines and slip quietly into the eternal night. I prayed for forgiveness of my sins and during that prayer, for some reason, I was completed to hold on just a bit longer. I gave God an ultimatum, ha, as if I could. I agreed to hold on for three more days but if this pain did not relent by then it was lights out. I simply was at my breaking point, the threshold of pain in life where life is not worth living anymore. I hope no reader ever get there.

The next day was the day that I got news that my college sweetheart had gone into labor (in another hospital) One of the sweetest hearted nurses brought a laptop computer so I could watch him be born on Skype. It was a violation of hospital policy to have video of any kind due to hospital liability if anything went wrong but she bought the computer anyway. She admitted she did this from time to time for women that had soldier husbands fighting overseas. God bless her soul for putting humanity above corporate hospital policy. I wish I knew who that angle was so I could thank her one day.

Inflection Points

One inflection point was realizing that my son counted on me to pull through anything life could throw at me because he needed me to get him through life as well. Another major inflection point happened after I found out about the affair. I was so broken and dejected I was humbled enough to commit to change anything about my life that lead me to this low. I just wanted to try anything else in the world than the series of decisions that lead me to where I was.

The day after I found out about the affair was Easter and I went to church. I spent the entire sermon in tears. I was a complete wreck. There was an invitation to pray with someone near the end of service and I responded. I did my best to tell the poor guy that had to listen to me in that state. I ended up surrendering to Christ that morning. I committed to living for something greater than my own success. I felt as though no matter what I tried I would never be successful by my own efforts. No matter how smart I was, how good of a job I held or how hard I worked.

I had for the first time given the full tithe to the church. That was right before I was laid off. I was unemployed I felt financially exposed. Giving so much away right when I needed it the most left me feeling like a fool. I prayed that God would revile himself to me and show me that I was not a fool.

Cashing Checks

About a week later I check my bank account and couldn’t believe what I saw. At first, I thought the bank had put the decimal in the wrong place when they enter a value. As I looked closer into the details I realized that four of the biggest check of my life had been deposited in my account. I had a severance payment, a DCFSA that deposited for $5000, a full tax withholding returned since I have a zero effective tax rate, and despite being laid off, I had earned a large bonus check from the previous job. That meant I was financially secure for a while.

I took the rest of the summer off to enjoy a mini-retirement. I was able to appeal the removal of my foster daughter. That summer I spent quality time with my kids every day. We played ball, went fishing, and became regulars to the housewives at the community swimming pool. I spent a lot of introspective morning on my porch slowly eating a hot breakfast while thinking about the future direction of my life. And what I wanted to achieve with the next chapter of my life.

I found the FIRE movement and tripled my investable net worth in less than a year, found a new and lower stress job. And I adopted my foster daughter (second most expensive decision in my life behind the house. She cost me more than all of the vehicles in my life added together, but worth every penny.) Now I blog about personal finance, FIRE, investing, motivation, eliminating tax liability, and building scalable side income into businesses.

Q7: What would you tell others in the midst of crisis? What encouragement would you give them?

Weak men are defined by their circumstances, strong men are defined by their commitments.

A life disaster does not have to devastate your life. You choose exactly how much power life holds over you. Your life is not controlled by the things that go wrong but rather by your reaction to the things that go wrong. Sure, a fair definition of life is adapting to things that don’t go according to plan, but you get to choose your attitude about everything you endeavor to endure or concur in life. The exact same scenario, no matter how difficult, can be a deviation that you wallow in as an excuse for your glass ceiling of collective failures for the rest of your life or it can simply be the next challenge that refines your growth and strengthens your intestinal fortitude. It can be another skill for you to master and add to your trophy case of contoured adversity.

From the utility of Iron to the elegance of Dimond, elements that prove valuable are refined by heat and pressure. So too is the countenance of a man refined in trials by fire and pressures of life. Those that have lost little have lived little.

“Living in the past produces regret. Living in the future produces anxiety. Living in the present produces happiness.”

Your Past Doesn’t Define You It Refines You

Your past does not define your future it refines the person who creates your future. Your past got you to where you are. From here, you can choose to go anywhere you want to be. We learn far more from our failures than our successes. Your past or present trials do not define you but rather refine you and remind you of what you commit to in life. You will be exactly as successful in life as you make up your mind to be. My hope is that you will dream much, much, bigger than you currently are. Your imagination is the only limit to your success.

We used to say the sky is the limit but in 1961 man broke that barrier and entered outer space. Wherever you pretend the limit is there it will be for you, but not for others that dream bigger. Look through your mind right now and from your memory draw any name of someone that exemplifies success. Guess what, that person achieved that success in their lifetime. If they can so can you.

Except for a tiny fraction of trust fund babies and remaining lineages of royalty, everyone achieves their own level of success in their own lifetime. Why chose to be anything less than the great men (and women, of course) that have gone before us.

One More Day is the Fine Line Between Failure and Success

No matter what life throws at you, anything is possible. Catch that ball, role through the imbalance and keep running. The game is not over because a few plays don’t go your way. Anything that goes wrong in the first half can be overcome in the second half. Never say I can’t. Rather say How can I? 

Look not to the storm that surrounds you today but rather to the tales of trials you will mock and recount after the storm settles. You never know how few the days are between the storm clouds of today and the well-watered green pastures of tomorrow. The spoils go to the one who endures and does not give up. A trial that you give up on or give into is called a failure. A trail that you endure is a testimony of growth and success. You only have to get up one more time than you are knocked down in life to be successful. When you want to give up, get up.

I was prepared to give up on life three days before I meet my son but when I met him for the first time laying on my back in the hospital I chose to get up. I chose to make a future for others not just myself. All that success you read about in the intro. would not be possible if I went one more day without meeting my son. Sometimes all success requires is that you get up one more day than you think you possibly can.

Keep the FIRE burning my friends.