My path to wealth began with six figure debt and living paycheck to paycheck. One day, we had back to back snowstorms in Colorado where I live and my office was 40 miles from my house. At the time I was driving a Honda Accord, and I called my boss to say it felt like a risk for me to drive. She said if I didn’t come in I’d be fired.

As I thought about what that would mean for me and my life, I realized that if I didn’t have a job I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills, and my life as I knew it would come crashing down.

There I was, thinking I was successful– I had the house, the car, and the lifestyle- but when I examined it more closely, what I really had was a mountain of debt and a stressful job. When someone asked my, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, where will you be in five years?”, my answer was, In the same place.

Lately it was getting harder and harder to make my credit card payments. I wondered how much debt I really had. I had been doing “mental accounting.” You know, never writing things down and never really sure how much, if any, I had left over.

I did make it to work and back that day, and when I got home I got out my credit card statements and added up my balances and discovered I had $67,000 in credit card debt. Horrified, the next day I called my financial advisor, thinking surely he could help.

After listening to me explain the situation I was in, working 60-70 hours a week with five figure credit card debt, he asked me how much more money I wanted to invest each month!