In high school, I was an introvert.
And when I looked at successful people, they had a lot of friends and people around them that they were learning from.
So I spent a lot of time listening to podcasts, reading books about how do you genuinely care about people?
Because I want to.
People are awesome.
And the only way we can really grow as a society is to be very transparent and to work together on investments,
earnings, salary, on savings.
I'm Clinton Stamper.
I'm 26 years old.
I make $270,000 a year.
And I live near Austin, Texas.
I work two days a week here at home and then I work three days a week in the office in Austin.
And currently I'm working on tools to help us make decisions regarding some of our real estate.
I'm able to go to the office and they have gyms and cafes and food, etc.
And then when I get home, I can just spend quality time with my girlfriend and her sister who lives with us.
So when I was looking at Austin, I had to figure out, like, how my lifestyle and my girlfriend's lifestyle
could fit in to where we wanted to live.
And the city life was not completely what I was used to, growing up in a farm town.
I decided to buy here because growth is inevitable.
And when it grows outside of this area, this area then becomes part of the city and it should expand in value and
increase in price.
Buying a house here was crazy.
So we toured about 40 houses.
I put offers in in three of them.
We had to waive every contingency we could.
Basically had to open up our shirt and be like, "Here.
You can have whatever you want."
And even that sometimes wasn't enough.
Write letters.
We had to explain that we weren't investors.
And we basically had to bid $50,000 to $60,000 over list price.
So for this house, I ended up paying $638,000 when the list price was only $575,000.
The only stipulation that I had for that was that they need to be furthering themselves towards whatever goals they
have.
It doesn't have to match with my goals.
Just whatever they want to achieve, I want to see progress towards that.
They pay for their food and their drinks, their clothing.
And any other things that they want.
Open communication about finances is really key to having a healthy relationship.
And that's what I think I've tried to foster.
I feel lucky enough that I can afford this house and that I have the salary that I do, so they can accomplish whatever
they want to accomplish.
I grew up in Ohio in a little suburb called Rootstown.
My mom and my dad were there for about 6 years of my life.
They ended up getting divorced.
My aunt got cancer and my mom had to take care of her at the Akron Children's Hospital.
And that's where I ended up spending most of my time during my younger youth.
And I got to know a lot of the kids in Akron Children's Hospital.
Most of my friends had brain tumors.
So what I did is I planned on becoming a neurosurgeon so I could help with research and actually perform these types of
surgeries to extract these brain tumors in a way that would let more of my friends
live a wonderful life.
And not pass on like the reality that I eventually found out they reached.
I just felt like that was my purpose.
On
my phone, I have the Robinhood app front and center as well as my other apps Webull, etc..
And when I wake up every morning, I click one of the apps depending on the day, and I invest a certain amount every
single day.
Same for financial budgeting.
Every Friday or Saturday, I will look at Mint and I will go through my whole budget and I'll figure out how much did
I spend this week? How much do I have left for next week?
My biggest expense is my mortgage for this house, as well as the insurance that goes along with that and the property
tax. After that, my second biggest expense would be my car.
Meal delivery services are super expensive.
So what I do is I wait for coupons.
I'll act like I'm signing in and making an account and I'll leave and I'll wait for them to email me coupons.
And when I get those coupons, my target is for each meal to cost just under $5 a meal.
With inflation, that's gotten pretty hard.
But once I hit that mark, then I'll order whatever the meal is.
As part of working at Google, you do get help with your phone bill and with your Internet bill, and they don't cover
the full cost on some things.
But they do cover the full cost of one of the most important and largest expenses that someone could have, and that is
health insurance. Also at Google, a really cool perk that I take advantage of a lot is that they reimburse
portions of classes or trainings for you to acquire new skills.
I'm learning to fly a paramotor, which is basically a paraglider with this motor strapped to your back.
It's crazy. You're just, like, a plane flying through the air.
I'm still learning, but I'm so close to actually getting up in the
sky.
I learned a lot of things from playing video games, of all things.
I was probably about 12 or 13.
And of course, if you asked me at the time, I would have said, "I don't know.
I'm just playing a video game.
This is awesome. Like, I don't know about finances."
So my friends and I, we were competing in RuneScape, of all things, on who could get the highest fishing level.
And what I did is I found something that would play the game for you for cutting down trees.
And I was like, "Wait. They're very similar.
Fishing, cutting trees."
And I made it so that cutting thing could fish.
And then I released it as for free.
People loved it.
I took customer feedback, I improved it, and it got to a point where I could actually monetize it.
And I started selling versions of it.
While the RuneScape bot that I made did technically pay for my college, I took that loan money out
and I used that to pay for college.
And I used my RuneScape money to do other things and to, again, inflate my lifestyle.
I wasn't financially literate at the time.
I regret that, but I ended up paying them back later.
So it's okay. I went to college at the Ohio State University Medical
School.
I graduated in 2018 with a bachelor's in biomedical science.
During my junior to senior year of college, I ended up going to an internship at Amazon after my friend Alex
convinced me that I should use my coding hobby as a career and just try it out.
So at the end of my internship with Amazon, they actually extended it one month and then they offered me a full-time
position to come back the following summer after I had graduated.
It was because of this dip where I think my net worth went down to, like, -$40,000.
With signing bonuses and this awesome job, that just didn't seem right to me.
And the reason that happened was I moved to a house that was bigger than any house I've ever lived in.
And I didn't know how to appropriately handle that.
I spent way too much money on things and I overreached my budget.
I was trying to fix my financial situation because I heard so many horror stories of debt crumbling
people's lives. And I didn't want my student debt to do that.
So I got rid of all of that unhealthy debt.
And I'm hoping to accumulate more healthy debt.
Like, super low interest-free money in the near future when I buy investment properties.
I'm open to all possibilities.
I have my emergency fund built up.
I keep it at roughly, maybe two months worth of expenses.
And then I invest $1,500 a week in the stocks that I'm looking at that week or that I see that
are interesting or low in price.
So my investments currently are to self-fund this passion of mine when I reach
my 50's or 60's.
I want to fund a self-automated robotic pod where you could go into it
as an injured patient and without human intervention, you would go from being diagnosed to the surgery
or treatment to recovery.
So to fund that idea, I need to start saving now.
So right now, I'm waiting on approval.
My side hustle is going to be sharing information in a simple way.
And right now the plan is to do that through YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels.
I plan on covering everything from finances to just daily life things.
Things where you're like, "Wow, how the heck was I not taught that in high school or middle school?"
For the next year, I plan on just consistently investing every day and keeping both investments in
cryptocurrency as well as the stock market.
I also plan on keeping with my plan of investing in my 401(k) and my IRA.
The thing that I think everyone should learn, at least from my story, is to go find it.
And what I mean by that is if you have a problem, surround yourself with people who don't have that
problem because you're going to learn from them.
And you're gonna find the information to help make your life better.
Information is extremely powerful, and knowing that something exists is half the battle.
And that is something that everyone should strive to do.