Millionaire Series: How I Achieved $1 Million Net Worth at 26, Chat with Peter Saddington

Yasi: Welcome to a Fast track podcast, Peter. 

Peter: Thank you. It’s good to be back. 

Yasi: Yeah, again, and this time we talk about money. Last time we talk about entrepreneurship. And I would like to ask you a few questions and I’m very happy that you are willing to be part of it and helping more people understand how to build wealth, how to manage their money.

I think financial education is absolutely important, but unfortunately it’s not taught in school. So here we are. 

Peter: Absolutely, uh, financial literacy, financial understanding, uh, financial knowledge is one of those things. Interestingly, That our educational systems do not teach us. And that should actually bring up a question on its own as to why our standard educational systems don’t talk about it.

Maybe it’s because they want us to become debt slaves. But I don’t, I don’t want to jump in that, to that too early, but I’ll, I’ll throw it back at you Yesi. That’s going to be here. 

Yasi: Yeah. Well, and also, um, I start with this question. Okay. Because it’s like a self-made millionaire series. So when did you achieved your 1 million net worth 

Peter: 26 years old. 

Yasi: Well, and how did you track your net worth all the time or do you just, 

Peter: when, when you’re singing, when you’re single and you’re grinding and you’re, uh, I guess you’re a single and you’re like me at the time. So I’m married now. Uh, but, uh, At the time when you were single, like me hustling and grinding, I always wanted to, I always had a personal goal of making a million dollars in liquid assets, not a million dollars in, in a, in a mortgage plus a car plus of some investments I always wanted to see, and this is just me, but I always wanted to see a million dollars in a bank account, a million dollars in a liquid liquid account that I could.

Spend if I wanted to. And at 26 years old, I hit that. And I remember, I remember that feeling. I remember reading it. I, if I remember correctly, I think it was like a million and like $600 or something like that. I just crossed over. And I remember it was just one of the most amazing moments of my life because that, at that, at that point, not only had I made in achieved a personal goal, But underneath all of that is the, the true reality that I was financially free.

So let me explain what that means. At least to me, what that meant is that I owed nobody, nothing. I didn’t have a mortgage payment. I didn’t have a car payment. I didn’t owe, uh, you know, um, massive amounts of student loans. I was completely free. All I had was an internet bill, a rent bill, cause I was renting at the time.

And I had, um, my cell phone bill, something like that. And so it was, it was a moment in life at 26 years old, where I literally felt like I was the most free and Unchained. 

Yasi: And where did you get this idea from that you want to accumulate 1 million ?

Peter: Well, the thing is, is that I realized early on, I think this is an important thing for many people out there trying to build wealth is that nobody remembers what you drove. That was something, what you drive. That was something that I, that for some reason always came up in my mind. Jase is that no one will ever remember the many, many years that I drove an 86, a 1986 Chevy celebrity junker piece of crap car.

Like I drove that thing forever. I lived in a small 10 by 12 room that I was renting from my friend. Um, it was basically like a closet and no one will ever remember except moments that I talk about it here, but no one will ever remember those times where I lived in squalor, I lived in a small shack. I lived in a small room and I drove a 1986 Chevy.

Like one of the things that constantly reminded me of the potential and future success that I could have is to not get bogged down on other people’s perceptions of my wealth. One of the things I also learned early on is that the idea is to be wealthy or to be rich not to look rich. And I grew up in a, in a world where many of my colleagues and many of my friends wanted to look rich, but they weren’t actually rich.

They had debt all over the place. And so for me, I wanted to buck that trend. I wanted to make sure that I was. Actually wealthy or moving on a track to be wealthy and to be rich instead of just look rich. And so for me, re remembering kind of the past and saying, no one really cares about what you drove or what you wore or what you, what you lived in it’s about being wealthy, not looking wealthy makes sense.

Yasi: Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, do you remember at what age you have that realization? 

Peter: Oh, uh, this was easily when, before I hit my twenties, probably in the late 17 years old, 18, 19 years old when I was starting my first corporate jobs, uh, for my first corporate internship at a large fortune 500 company, a large fortune 50 company, actually.

Uh, it was one of those realizations that, Hey, I mean, I could. I can I, there was all this stress of like, Oh, you’ve got a job. Now you can buy a, you can buy a Lexus, you know, or, you know, you got a job now and all your friends are buying these new homes. Um, and you’ve got a job now and Oh, you can, you can afford more stuff.

The fact of the matter is I really couldn’t afford those things because I would have to go into debt to be able to buy them. And so for me, the whole idea of building wealth is so that I could not. Have changed, not be, have bondage and not have a debt that I owe someone else. And one of the biggest things that I think it’s important for everyone out there to think about, and maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit later.

Debt. Isn’t a bad thing. It’s not, maybe it sounds like I’m saying that debt is a bad thing. And there are many people who are able to leverage debt really effectively. For example. In the real estate world, you have to leverage debt to be successful there. But for me, my mental model around debt is that it constrained optionality.

That’s the simple function that I had, the more debt I have, the more constraints options. And so for me, I always want to have as many options as possible as an operator, as an entrepreneur, I want to have access to networks. I want have access to people. And if debt does not enable me to have these access points or be able to create or build the wealth or meet the right people because of this debt that I wanted to remove it.

And so I always saw debt as a mechanism for constraining my growth rather than enhancing my growth. And 

Yasi: then start from age 17. Uh, T O H of 26, how did you actually build up your wealth? 

Peter: Well, I got, I got lucky. I got lucky, uh, in a, in a lot of lucky breaks, but at the end of the day, I’ve been a perennial entrepreneur for the last two decades have built multiple startups are coupled to acquisition.

And so, yeah. To be able to get to my first 20, uh, 26 years old. And my first million, I went through a small acquisition of my web development startup company at the time. And it was acquired by another, a regional company that needed a web based services, web development services. This was back in the early two thousands period.

Uh, of sorts. And so I just got lucky. I found, I found a company who wanted to purchase, uh, a lot of my, a lot of the collateral, as well as the assets of the, of the code that I’ve written, uh, so that they can leverage it for their clients. So it was really just an opportunity that came out of the blue and people were like, Hey, we can expand into Peter’s area because he’s got a large network of clients there.

And they basically, uh, purchased me for my intellectual property, as well as my network and book of business, essentially. 

Yasi: Okay. That’s the earning part. And then on the spending part, I want to ask, what is your money philosophy? How do you treat your money? 

Peter: Great question. When it comes to money, I look at it very simply.

You cannot afford it. If you cannot buy it twice. Now in cash. Now I know that doesn’t work for a lot of people, but I think for me in the way that I kind of, I grew myself up with when it comes to money and wealth is that if I can’t afford it in cash, like if I want to buy a $50,000 car, To be able to buy that car.

I would have to at least be able to have a hundred thousand dollars to afford that. And that was always a mechanism for me to be able to, to, to filter between two things. Do I need it or do I want it? And 99% of the time, I don’t need it. I really wanted it. And that type of type of model of saying, Hey, if you can’t buy it twice over in cash, you can’t really afford it.

For me that moved me towards the wanting section of my brain. A lot more than the need section on my brain. At the end of the day, I don’t really need anything. I need water, food, shelter, some clothes, and hopefully some nice relationships. But other than that, everything else is just, it’s just a want, 

Yasi: when you say times two, are you thinking like a future value of this money or Y times two?

I 

Peter: would S T times two times two, here’s the thing I’ve seen. And maybe you have, um, a lot of my, let’s say colleagues in university who, when they got their first jobs, they ended up getting like BMWs. It’s like, bro, your first job, you’re making 47 grand a year. You know, you’re making $50,000 a year. The car you just bought is 45.

I have thousand dollars a year and you’re paying on a monthly car payment of like $900 a month. Like you really can’t afford that. And so the whole idea of being able to purchase it or be able to afford it twice over two, two X for me was a great way to reign in my. Desires for my once and, and, and really realized that I just can’t afford it right now.

And frankly, it would put me back into a debt situation where I’d owe someone else. And that would constrain optionality, right. Especially as an operator entrepreneur, I need liquid capital in case I need to invest in my business, or I need to scale, or I need to hire a new employee, or I need to buy new licenses, or I need to.

Take a trip like this liquid cash, especially if you’re bootstrapping is absolutely essential for me to get to the next level, get to the next business opportunity. Getting the next break, build the next function or feature in an application that I’m building. But if I have all this personal debt that filters and that modifies my decision, my decisions, because I don’t have the money to be able to do what I want for my business.

And so for me, being business oriented and business minded first always helped me to make sure that I didn’t overspend in my personal life and mostly focus on building my own business. 

Yasi: Yeah, right. That’s, that’s a very good way to look at it. Uh, initially I thought the times two is from, I don’t know if it’s from Warren buffet or from someone like, imagine if you spent money today.

Yeah. But if you invest. In ETF SMP 510 years later, it doubles the money. So the future value of the money is doubled and today, but if you spend it, you will not have it. 

Peter: You’re absolutely right. And I’ve probably leveraged some saying from Warren Buffett or bill Gates and modified it to myself. So I maybe I didn’t give credit where credit’s due, but yeah, a lot of the ideas that I have didn’t come to me.

There were probably inspirations of other people that I’ve heard of money, money, gurus, or experts on money. For sure. 

Yasi: Uh, huh. Okay. Now we talk about the, how you evaluate, what is your wants and needs and the do invest. 

Peter: Yes, I do. 

Yasi: And what is the investment philosophy? 

Peter: So I’m going to say something that might not resonate with everyone out there.

Maybe I know. Okay. But in, in 2016, and I’ve actually talked about this on video before, but in 2016, I went to my investment advisor and I told him to pull out. All of my investments, my Roth, my IRA, my mutual funds, my money market accounts, ETF. I told them to pull everything out and I invested all of it into cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.

And I remember my money marketing, uh, my, my, uh, my accountant at the time, a money manager. I remember him calling me and being like, cause I’ve sent him an email. I said, I want to, I want to liquidate everything. I remember him calling me and he was like, Peter, it’s a problem. What happened is your business fail?

Do you need, why do, why do you need this money? Like, and he was like really nervous. And I told him, I said, I want to invest all of it in cryptocurrency, the future of money. And he was, and his literal answer to me, uh, Jase was. What’s Bitcoin. He was like, what are you talking about, man? I don’t, what are you doing?

What are you talking? And I said, don’t worry about it. I want to liquidate everything so long story short. All of my investments are in cryptocurrency now ever since 2016. So Bitcoin Ethereum, Ethereum classic, some other alt coins like algorithm, uh, H N T uh, icon ICX as well as a little bit of car Dano.

Um, so I could name those name those off, but yeah, most of my invest, most all of my investments now are in cryptocurrency. 

Yasi: Yeah, for the listeners out there. And the let’s see when this episode goes live, what, how much? One Bitcoin worth. 

Peter: Yeah, right. Well, right now it’s above 30,000. So if you, if you invested in 2019 or 2020, you are sitting very well right now in a great position, 

Yasi: but it’s a very bold action.

It’s I don’t think many people have this, not there to take all your assets and put into Bitcoin, maybe some, but not everything. 

Peter: Well, even, even in 2016. So in 2016, Bitcoin was still around a thousand dollars or so. And, and so for me at the time, uh, having been building applications in cryptocurrency and being a startup entrepreneur in the cryptocurrency world, for me, it made a lot of sense.

It’s and one of the, I remember having one of my conversations with my, uh, my money manager, my accountant. And I told them, I said, I can make more money in one week by guessing on an alt coin than I do in my money marketing account or my long-term Roth or my on my IRA. Like I can yeah, 15% in a week where we’re the, you know, a traditional account will give me 2% over the year.

And so I told them, I said, I would rather risk certain sections of my investments, only speculative assets with some really high upside. So real high returns, then having it sit there and earning 0.02% over the period of a year, at least I have more engagement and I’m more personally responsible for my value and for my investments instead of having an on autopilot.

And so for me, that was a big decision in life to say, I want to, I want to have more personal responsibility over my finances. Of course, there’s more risks to that. And I have to do more diligence and more research, but the rewards were worth it. And as you could probably imagine from 2016 to 2021, where we sit today, um, pretty much all of my investments in crypto are up, uh, actually not pretty much all of mine are up and so we can look at it and, you know, in 2020 hindsight and say, yeah, that was a great decision.

Was it. I guess so, but at the end of the day, every individual’s going to have to make their own decisions around their investments. They’re there, they’re the future of money for them. And for me, I think cryptocurrency will be the future of money in the future. And I, I, and I’m going hard into it. And, um, I’m, I’m bullish, I’m bullish on crypto and Bitcoin for sure.

Yasi: Yeah. And also I have to warn the audience that anything we discuss here is not a financial advice. It’s just purely personal opinions. You will do your own research. Yes. Okay. Then my last question is touching on family finance. Um, how, how do you manage wealth as a family? 

Peter: Great question. Wow. That’s a real personal question.

I think I really, I think I’m really fortunate. Yes. You really, really fortunate. And the reason is, is because I’m married to a woman who absolutely enjoys managing the household finances. Now you won’t find this in every marriage and you won’t find this certainly in every relationship. But I think I lucked out because I absolutely, if, if given the option, I would absolutely.

Prefer that someone else managed my money for me. And so I’ve, I have a wife who loves managing the household. She runs a very tight budget when it comes to the kids to school, to organic foods, to eating out, to expenses on, you know, cleaning the house and doing the yard. Like she’s really, really good at managing all of that.

And in terms of, in terms of any tips, I don’t know if I have any tips here, but if there’s one individual within a relationship, especially since the context of this question is family. If there’s one individual in your family who loves or has a more, uh, enjoyment in managing finances, let them manage it and trust them to manage it.

And that’s what I’ve done over. 11 plus years of marriage, uh, and giving it over to my wife and allow her to manage that and trust her that she’s going to make the best decisions in that. And when it comes to any type of big purchases, family purchase, we come together and we discuss, it’s very simple. We come together, we discuss it.

We say, Hey, is this something that our kids need or our family needs? And then we make the decision there, but, uh, TLDR in a nutshell, man, if you’re in a family, And you have a partner who loves doing the finances more than you do it. 

Yasi: Good for you. Uh, my follow-up question , I’m just curious that, for example, if you make your crypto investment decision, and then on the other side, you have family finance at those separate. Or the steel part of the whole family finance family, USF. 

Peter: And I think it’s actually, it brings up something that is important.

I, and especially when it comes to any investments, I’ve always, when it comes to investments, I’ve always lived by a very simple saying, do not play with your bread money. And what that means is your bread. Money is your money that you need to survive, right. To buy food, to shelter, clothes, right? These types of things.

I think a lot of people when they, especially when they get into cryptocurrency, They see the gains. They see the opportunities, they see the rewards at the end of the rainbow and they start playing with their bread money. The problem is, is when you start playing with your bread money, you start making more emotional decisions based on price, fluctuation and price action.

And so you always want to, you always want to siphon off from bread money to invest with money and investment money should always be considered as complete. Loss that, that you could wake up tomorrow and you’ve lost everything. That was part of the plan. And so when it comes to any type of investments, we have a very simple bifurcation.

We have bread money that allows us to survive and this stuff can not be played with. And then we have extra capital that we’re able to invest, take some risk and be able to hopefully make some gains off of. And so that really is the tip, uh, to this question is, is, has have two pots of money, bread, money, and then investment money.

Yasi: Right. And I think it’s quite important because once people start to learn about investment, they’ll get so excited, the loss of earning potential and they go, Oh, and then they forgot about their Bret money. 

Peter: Yeah. And then you’re eating ramen for the, for the day you’re eating for the next year, because that’s 

Yasi: how the market fluctuates.

And then you cannot sleep because all your life savings is dependent on the market. 

Peter: You sound like you’re speaking from experience Yessi 

Yasi: a little bit experienced from Bitcoin, but later I just, honestly, I think, you know, you have to learn from your mistakes. I mean the better ways to listen to podcasts like this one, but through personal experience, you really learn it the hard way 

Peter: You really do.

And, and, and, and I think that’s one of the tough things about these types of podcasts. It’s not, it’s not that you can’t. Uh, positively affect other people, but at the end of the day, everyone has to make their own mistakes. And what I, what we’re hoping, I think we’re hoping is we can give advice to people to say, Hey, there are better ways to make smaller mistakes and learn from those, then make bigger mistakes.

And so, yes, a common, a common, a common thread and a common theme that I see in a lot of investors that they get super excited. They start throwing in money that they can’t afford, or they start playing with their bread money. Right. And then they ended up having a huge loss and then they’re eating ramen for the next six months trying to make up for it.

So don’t, don’t be that guy 

Yasi: I will not. And okay, now that brings to the end of this podcast session with you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your insights, your tips, sharing your personal experience, and nice to have you again. 

Peter: Absolutely. It’s great. Great being on Yasi.