Good morning, my friends i mean kind of morning, i think it's uh 10 17 a.m over here. Usually, i'm recording these at like four in the morning, but it feels good to uh feels good to relax. What is up, everybody welcome to trace trades. We have technical analysis, some different stocks in the stock market, as well as potential buy holders, sell opinions on these given stocks.

I like your purpose by saying that i'm not a financial advisor nor experts, uh so take what i say with a grain of salt. This is going to be an atypical video. I just want to give you guys, and you know the reason that i'm making this is because i asked a couple of people. Uh and i've been told by a couple of people - hey you should you should give a little bit of a background on yourself.

You know i didn't feel comfortable doing that back when my uh, my channel, was a little bit smaller, but now that there's some people that are genuinely interested, you know and what's what's up where i come from my story, i wanted to walk you guys through this. Just so, i could give you a little bit of a background, and i don't do this in a way to brag right um. I mean to put out this story as a way to show you guys that anybody can do this and that it doesn't matter where you come from. You can be successful in the stock market.

You can turn a little bit of money into a lot of money and whether it means you you become a 10 000, 100 000, a millionaire, a billionaire right. We can all start from somewhere and and a lot farther than we started. So that is gon na. Be what we're talking about today before we get going? If you would not mind dropping a like on the video, it really does help support the channel and consider subscribing if you'd like to see more content like this.

Now we're gon na be covering my 30k medical debt story and how i got into investing so uh with that being said, let's just get right into the video. This picture is uh from the track season. I i was a runner in college. I ran all five years of college that i was in uh, but we'll get into my whole story in this a little bit.

So this is a little bit of my background guys. I was born on june 21st, 1997, the first day of summer. It is the longest day of the year, and i always love that, because then i can sit up real late sit outside by a fire or uh or on a beach and drink. A little bit of whiskey hang out with some friends enjoy and enjoy the day.

Um, it's it's a cool thing. I graduated from high school in 2015 from a little small town called royalton, and my class size was pretty small. There was 30, some of us uh that i graduated with. So i came from a pretty small rural community.

The town that i grew up in was called bolus. It's smack dab in the middle of central minnesota and we've got some brule some brutal winners. I always hated the winners here, but i will be moving soon. I'll touch on that a little bit but uh, i did grow up in minnesota.

I've lived here my entire life. I am 23 years old at this given moment and i will be moving soon. But since i was about five, i have been from this area and i have always been very attached to running and uh. The reason that i bring this up is because something about running, and the idea of self has always appealed to me.

If i had just wandered through life without a goal without something to chase without something to accomplish, i don't feel truly fulfilled or happy right, and i found myself in this position after i graduated college with an identity disorder, an identity crisis - i i just didn't know Who i was anymore, i was like man, i mean i've got the army, which is awesome right, but i need something that i can 100 give all of my effort and passion to again something that's gon na make me feel like i'm growing, and for me that Uh that next step in life was investing it was it brought back that competitive edge in me, it makes me feel like i'm winning again, it makes me feel like i've got something that i can work towards every day to better myself, and that is really appealing To me, that's why i bring up running because it's a lot of the same stuff so for running to be really good at running. I needed to every single day put in a little bit of work so that i could work towards an end goal right and for me that end goal was uh to be to be a good runner right and i was okay. I wasn't anything crazy. I think uh my best 5k ever was about 14.50.

My best mile was a 425 um. I i ran a couple of 20 mile runs and i averaged like 545 per mile, so i i was okay at it right. I was pretty decent and i wanted to take that competitive edge and that that mentality of a little bit of work every single day is going to lead me somewhere and apply it to something else. And for me, i've been applying that to investing and it has been working out very well and i i love what i'm doing with investing.

I love what we're doing with the community here at trades, trades and uh. That is why i think personally, i was so attracted to the idea of the market. It's because the upside is infinite. Just like the upside for me, with running was infinite.

I could go as far as i wanted to take it. I can go as far as i want with investing as long as i'm willing to work for it and do the homework take the time. Do the research learn how to read, charts, etc. So that's why i mentioned that.

I'm a runner uh! I graduated from high school in 2015, ran through high school, ran through college. I did go to college at st claude state um university in minnesota. I ran there for about a year on a scholarship and they cut their program for the the cross-country team or the track team, and i ended up transferring to st john's university, a small private catholic college in central minnesota. I'm not catholic, but i love the school.

It was, it was a phenomenal institution and i i contribute a lot of my personal growth to the community, my friends, the the track team over there, the rotc program uh, and i'm so grateful for the opportunities that are presented to myself at st john's university. So i ran over there through all four years of college. I did uh. I did join the rotc program, my second semester of freshman year and i ended up getting a three year scholarship, so my school was paid for and i'm very thankful for that out of pocket.

I only had to pay for my first year of school, which was phenomenal, i'm very very happy with that. It's a it's a blessing that i know a lot of people won't have the opportunity to walk away with, and i i'm definitely very grateful for that. So through college i was a runner, i did do rotc and i did have two part-time jobs, so i was a bartender and a server at buffalo wild wings. For five years i served and bartended over there up until i graduated college and commissioned into the army.

As a second lieutenant or an officer - and i graduated from college this last may in 2020 - and i will be working as an active duty - second lieutenant in the army. My specific job uh is to be an air defense artillery officer, and i will be moving out to fort bragg north carolina in june. I'll touch more on that a little bit, but i will be doing at least four years in the army as an active duty officer and uh. You know, if you guys are all i know.

I get a million comments asking me to cover different stocks, and i know that i can't always get back to you guys in a timely manner, but i hope that you guys do understand because i do work. A full-time job - i am doing things you know anywhere between six or seven in the morning, until three four five at night, so i do my best to keep up with you guys, but that is my current background right now. My second job that i had was an internship on campus and i got my undergraduate nutrition um. I had a nutrition internship working with the dining facility at uh.

The college that i went to so my job specifically was uh to do different inventory to order products to set up the menus on the website, uh to get the menus ready for the month to put those out for the cooks, etc. I would put up the nutritional information on the website and all that sort of fun stuff. I actually had a meme page on the tv out there. It was a lot of fun that was probably my favorite part of the job.

I put up different memes with nutrition, facts and stuff. It was a great time, but that's a little bit of my background and what i did before i got into the market. That way, you guys can understand that i've always had a competitive nature. I've always had this drive to work towards something, and that is what attracted me to investing.

So that being said, what was the medical debt? Why do i always mention this thirty thousand dollars of medical debt? Why would i? Why would i constantly bring this up? Well, i know that some people don't like that really long, intro right, but the reason that i mention that in every single video is because i know that they're going to be new people that are watching the channel or watching my videos right that don't know anything About me, and they might be beginners, they might have just gotten into the market right. They might have no idea what they're doing and they're thinking man there's no way. I'm ever going to be able to hit this there's no way i'm going to ever be able to, because i know that's how i was when i got to the market. I lost my first 10 trades when i seriously started trading in the market out of 10.

I probably lost seven or eight, and i say this because this is how i got out of my medical debt was through the market. So a little bit of the back story here i contracted something called bilateral anterior uveitis, and this is a severe inflammation of the eye and i had it in both of my eyes. I just had this meme here because i thought it was. I thought it was a funny meme peace and prosperity witnessing somebody eating pizza without pineapple, but anyways.

I i i was really swamped down. This was a very, very, very long recovery process. For me, i had flare-ups and uh tone backs flare-ups tone backs for about a year and to this day i still will have periods of time where you know for a week or a couple days or a month, i will have my eye or both eyes flare Back up so essentially, what this is this bilateral anterior uveitis is. It is an inflammation of the eye, and you know my doctor, my brother-in-law, the optometrist i'll talk about him later, his name's patrick um.

She can tell you more about this. You know it's hard for me to keep track of, but essentially what it did is it caused extreme light sensitivity. So, if i was outside, i couldn't see anything my eyes would water all the time my vision was always blurry. I uh to this day my my left eye.

I can't see out of very well. I couldn't tell you what my exact vision is my doctor could but um it's had a long, lasting impacting effect on my eyes right and the recovery process, and the financial cost to the recovery process was really rough um. To be completely blunt, i had a couple different credit cards that i used to pay for this right. I had uh.

I was not yet active duty in the army. I was still in college and in order for me to pay for this without any sort of real um stable health coverage, i had to pay for this out of pocket. Of course, i did have a little bit of help, but it ended up over the course of a year paying for all of my my eye drops and these eye drops guys were insanely expensive. They added up fast, like i would go through a bottle of these eye drops within a week to two weeks and every single time that i filled these up.

It would cost me anywhere between three to six hundred dollars to fill. These eye drops back up and you you had that up over the course of a year. You can see where i'm going with this. So if i just do the quick math on that and i'm going to lowball it and say that i'm refilling these every two weeks and if you divide 52 by two, you get uh.

I was never good at math. I think 26. So that's 7, 800 and then, on top of that 7 800 um. I of course had to pay for the gas to drive out to see my doctor and i had to pay.

I had to pay off the accumulating interest on my credit cards that i was continuously maxing out right and because i couldn't afford these eye drops. I also couldn't afford other things that i needed to take care of myself like like food, my car payments uh. My my insurance uh just basic needs, and over the course of a year and over the course of this lasted longer than a year, the year was the longest period of time in which this took place right over the course of a year. I ended up accumulating interest and debts upwards of 30 000 and it was really really tough, honestly guys.

I was in a really bad spot and i thought that i would never ever ever overcome this um and it's just still continuing to this day. So there are times when i have to refill a prescription on these eye drops these steroid drops. The dilation drops that i can see so that i can walk around without excruciating pain and if it wasn't for um the market and a really great mentor and family member member of mine, i would have never gotten out of that hole. So after that i accumulated this debt.

I thought to myself: what am i ever going to do to get myself back in the right place again right and thank god, thank god. So much if i believed in god i'd be thanking him right now i would. I would thank god for patrick williamson he's my brother-in-law. He was my optometrist, the guy who took care of me with my eyes with my medical issues and he was an investor and he didn't necessarily give me money.

He didn't he didn't. He didn't pay my debts, but he offered me advice that is so so timeless. He pushed me in the direction of investing. He talked to me about about real estate.

He talked to me about his investing strategies. He talked to me about different ways. He can make money, we sat over lunch more than one time and we would just drink a sam adams and eat a burger and just talk about different things, and i realized you know he is so proactive about his finances and at the time i was not Whatsoever, i i had all this medical debt. I couldn't afford to pay my medical debt, so my credit cards were maxed out, so i i couldn't afford to pay for anything else.

I couldn't afford to pay for my car, my car insurance, my phone everything was just accumulating and that over the period of a year to two years i was just getting myself in a huge hole and uh. He just pointed me in the right direction. He said. Look, this is, this is what i do.

This is how i make money. I take the money that i make from being an optometrist and i invested in real estate in the market, and i thought you know what that's interesting. I like to hear that so i thought to myself: maybe there's something to this, so i started to do a little bit of reading. I looked into you know how to get into real estate and, to be honest with you, that's not as clear-cut to me as investing i find investing easier to digest and to understand, so there might be something that i'm just naturally more inclined to enjoy, but it Caught my interest - and i decided to do some reading - do some studying on the market get into it, and i made a couple of trades right and over the last year, through both my active duty pay, and i will touch on that in just a second.

Both through my active duty, pay and honestly just getting lucky getting lucky in the market and hitting it off on some plays that that absolutely crushed all of my medical debt um. I am now financially free and people. Always i get people that bang on me for saying: financially free means you're broke right, but to me it's not like that. I don't care how much money i have, because i was in a place where i had negative money, and now i have an asset.

I own a house, i own, a house guys. I i have almost 30 000 in my portfolio. I have an emergency fund. These were things that i would have never dreamed or possible two years ago, because i was in such a bad place financially and where i'm going with this is, if it weren't for my brother-in-law, patrick williamson, the optometrist, the investor, the brother-in-law uh.

I would have never gotten out of that hole. He was one of the many mentors that made me realize the power of just taking hold of my own situation. I couldn't control the medical situation right. I couldn't control that.

I couldn't see anything that i was paying. Thousands of dollars every single month for for these eye drops right, but i could control. What i could control is what i do with my finances. Moving forward, i could be proactive.

I could decide. Okay, i'm going to take half of every single paycheck and pay off things and uh or invest, and what i did is i i invested a quarter and i paid off things with a quarter and i'm doing so much better now than i was ever doing before. So what i did is uh you know about a year and a half ago. I i remember this very clearly uh.

It was christmas break at college right and i had two jobs at the time. I was a bartender at buffalo, wild wings, and i was i was the nutrition intern at the dining facility on campus and i was working 70 hour weeks. The entire christmas break. I didn't go anywhere.

I i put in i maxed out my hours at buffalo, wild wings. I bartended and served as much as i could, and i was working 20 to 30 hours a week at this internship and every single penny that i made i was holding on to and i paid off the minimums on all my bills and i took the rest Of that lump sum - and i think that ended up being it was a really nice week. Um, you know bartending i mean it fluctuates a lot which you make with tips and stuff but um. I took all that money and i made a gamble in the market and i don't recommend doing this right.

I will openly say that i got lucky, but i got lucky and i made money and i was able to pay off my medical debt and get myself on a good foot moving forward and now that i have active duty pay. I can afford to continuously have that same. Investing strategy, invest half of my money every single month into the market into real estate into my emergency fund and take control of my finances. So i am very, very very happy with the growth that i've had and i i hope that this acts as some sort of story to you.

If you're in a bad place that says hey. It doesn't matter where i'm at right now, because if i am proactive and i nickel and dime every single day, i am going to be able to get out of this hole right, and i will openly say that i got lucky i got lucky. I could have lost all that money i made and that entire month of work and all that strategy could have absolutely derailed, and maybe i would have just given up. I don't really know, but everything that led to that moment.

Um brought me to where i am now and now i have a strategy now i know where i'm going moving forward. I am going to continuously invest because i could see the power of the stock market. I can turn you know. I started that 30k series about a month ago, a little less than a month ago.

Three weeks ago, i can turn eighteen thousand dollars into twenty six thousand dollars in three weeks in the market and if you have more money right, if that's, if that's a 160 000, that means that you turn it into whatever that comes out to 280, 000 right. So you you understand now the the compounding effect of the market, and you can control these things by just taking time to learn different strategies and push yourself in that way. So that was the way that i overcame my medical debt. I opened my first account in fidelity.

I bought my first property with some active duty pay and i will show you guys right now how much i make just to be transparent as an old one, a second lieutenant without bah, without per diem, without all the extra allowances that aren't taxed, i make 3 386 dollars a month and with those combined, i do make about 4 000 a month now i do have other sources of income. Now i i also do youtube. I uh. I i make a little bit of money from youtube every month.

I do have a patreon account that has a source of income coming forward. I do have different uh affiliate links in all my videos that people are so kind to contribute to, and all these things have really really helped compound my life and change. The way that i do things and my biggest takeaway for this is everybody - starts in different places and the control over our lives is a choice right. So we can choose to to sit here and say you know what i'm 30 000 in the hole.

This is never going to get better at this point, i'm just going to be happy to live life and coming from a running background, coming from a very competitive family um. That's just not the way that i saw things. I think i'm so thankful for patrick, because he absolutely changed my life forever and made me realize that i can change my situation. Um.

The market has infinite upside, but very little downside. So let's say that you put in ten thousand dollars into the market and you could just put it in absolutely speculative stocks and you lose it all. Well, your downside is ten thousand dollars right, but the upside. You can turn that ten thousand dollars into a hundred thousand a million ten million.

Who knows you know, literally, if you are longing in the stock market, the upside is infinite. You can you can gain as much money as you possibly want to gain. You can put yourself in a completely different situation than you ever thought was possible. I started my fidelity account after i paid off all my medical debt, of course, that thirty thousand dollar sum i started.

My fidelity account with about five thousand dollars three months ago and i have been putting in between 500 to 800 every two weeks and i've grown it to twenty six thousand dollars. As of now, it was twenty eight thousand dollars two days ago right, so the compounding effect of the market is infinite. You can make literally as much money as you want if you are willing to put in the work and willing to learn and willing to be a part of an awesome community and surround yourself with people that are like-minded individuals. And that is what i'm trying to do here at trades trades right, i'm never going to bs you guys, i'm never going to say, i'm never going to say anything.

That's not true regarding the way that i invest regarding my strategies, my wins my losses and the reason for that is to show you the ups and downs of the market, to show you you know you are in for a ride, but also to show you that You can do this yourself right. I don't want because there's nothing impressive about 28 000 portfolio in the grand scheme of things. I know that there are youtubers out there with millions and millions of dollars of you know portfolio equity right, but my strategy is not to show you how much money i'm making right it's to show you that you can do this too, and it's to do it As a community and it's to grow as a community, my ultimate goal with this channel is to eventually reach a point where we all know what we're doing and we're collectively coming together and finding place to make money and to change our lives and change other people's Lives and make people realize the power behind investing, and that is the major takeaway here. Is anybody can do this and i want you guys to all realize that too.

So that is my medical debt story. That is my background. I really hope that this wasn't a waste of time, for you guys, uh. I think that a lot of people you know have brought this to my attention and i was a little skeptical speculative about doing this, but if you enjoyed it, please let me know in the comments section, i really do appreciate the feedback and the support, if you Enjoyed the video please drop a like, it really does help support the channel and consider subscribing if you'd like to see more content like this.

That is what i have for the video today guys thank you for watching my friends, and i will see you all next time. Peace.