A 26-year-old making $200,000 a year and building a $150,000 tech portfolio crashed head-on at 30 mph in a cheap Volkswagen Passat. Unharmed physically, but the accident triggered a crisis: his father had died in a car crash at 28. It forced him to rethink everything.
And I peaked my corporate career around $200 grand in my mid-20s. And I didn't have, I wasn't married. I didn't have a house. I was used to being broke. So I just invested it all. I paid off $84 grand worth of debt in a single year, $150 grand in a Vanguard account. I just picked tech companies that I knew would win. And I say know in quotes because no one really knows, but I understood tech. Yeah. And tech was booming at that time in '20 after '08, like on. And Then I got in my car accident. That's the third thing. 26, my fault. Head-on collision, 30 miles an hour, which is 60 combined. Yeah. The lift-kitted pickup truck went up and over my car. So everyone was okay because I was driving a 2004 Volkswagen Passat because I refused to buy a depreciating asset. So I was like, I'm just gonna buy $5,000 cash. And that car totally saved my life. I used to call it the tank. German-engineered steel trap of a car, super safe, totally saved my life. And no one was killed because it would have been my fault, which is great. So physically, we were okay. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, though, this is the second chance my dad never got. Yeah. Because he died in a car when he was 28. I'm 26 at the time, just questioning my existence. That's when I— that was 11 years ago. And that's when I found personal growth, personal development, self-improvement.
