Summary: Mark Baird believes lifelong financial health is possible for everyone — regardless of their income level. If you’re like most Americans, you probably don’t feel financially secure. In fact, money might even feel like a daunting problem for you. Mark hopes to change that in his new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Riches-Strategies-Catapult-Financial-ebook/dp/B073QXGM2K" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rules to Riches</a>.<br> In this episode, you will learn a few simple steps that you can take this week to improve your financial future and start building wealth.<br> <br> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Riches-Strategies-Catapult-Financial-ebook/dp/B073QXGM2K" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a>Get Mark Baird’s book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Riches-Strategies-Catapult-Financial-ebook/dp/B073QXGM2K" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rules to Riches</a> on Amazon.<br> Learn more at <a href="http://rulestoriches.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RulesToRiches.com</a>.<br> <br> How did Mark Baird’s financial journey begin?<br> My wife and I had great jobs in Houston, and this is back in the 80’s. I would say we were living a mediocre financial existence like I said, we did have – we both had great jobs and more money than we had ever made before. We both grew up on a farm so it was a big culture shock when we moved to a large metropolitan city like Houston.<br> You know, the mortgage payments and the car payments and the thinking about kid’s college expenses, started to do a lot of interplay in our thinking. We kind of got bogged down with the debt load and with the obligations that just come with normal everyday life.<br> But in my heart, and to my wife’s heart, we knew that there was a better way. We were ordinary but we wanted to become extraordinary and I knew we could do that because I’ve seen people around us do that very thing.<br> We became very interested in being better when it came to money. While money is not everything certainly, it allows you to get to the next step or the next level of life that you want to be. I remember it very clearly.<br> <br> I got invited to one of these “free” seminars and everybody knows what free means, it means that there’s probably a course or a video seminar workbook that you’re going to be buying, or that they’re going to be at least selling. I don’t even remember who gave the talk but I remember a few other points very distinctly and I walked away from that seminar and I started to implement those.<br> One of them was a systematic savings program and at the time, IRA’s had been around for a while, but I had not set up one and my wife had not setup one.<br> <br> When did you officially start building your wealth?<br> We were just married, so we were probably 25. We started an automatic savings plan in an IRA. We started very small and I remember exactly the amount: it was $25 per month for both of us, but we watched that continue to grow.<br> It was revolutionary to me when I heard the guy say, “You know, you could make extra principle payments on your mortgage,” and I’m like, “Wait a minute… I signed up for a 30 year mortgage, how could I make extra principle payments?” He said “Yeah, you can make extra principle payments.” He said, “Go to your bank,” – at the time, you know, you had to go to your bank – “and get an amortization schedule. which lays out a 30 year stream of payments for every month.”<br> It was a document that had 360 lines on it and it showed the balance, the payment, the amount of interest in that payment and the amount of principle. And sure enough, you’d look down that list and we started to make extra principle payments.<br> Each and every month, we would send in an extra $100 or whatever we could afford, and I would start to take off extra month’s payments. We whittled that down and paid that off in under 10 years.
