My Story

Welcome to The Growth Focused Guy!

Hi. I’m Gio, born in the States and raised in the small island of Haiti. Yes, I do speak French and Haitian creole – on this note please pardon my expressions that you’ll read occasionally. I came back to the States for College and have been here in New York ever since.

I currently live in the Capital District NY, with my wife and our two great joy and pride.

A quick disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, all content is for informational purposes only.

PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG

I plan to document all the steps I will be taking to achieve my Financial Independence goal. You will see the tools I’ll be using, my portfolio, the good and horrible choices that’ll serve me as a lesson.

With that being said this site is about:

+ Investing in the stock market
+ Earning from side hustles
+ Learning new skills
+ Saving for emergency and projects
+ Documenting my journey

CORPORATE WORLD

When I initially started working in the corporate sector, four years after graduating, I had no idea what a 401k was. The 401k, according to the little description I received, is a retirement savings plan. That wasn’t enough for me because I couldn’t predict what the appropriate contribution number would be without going overboard.

Depending on who you ask, some people were unconcerned with the plan, while others advised merely contributing to the employer’s contribution match in order to have extra cash on hand. As a result, I opted for the employer’s contribution match option.

After a few months, I realized the potential of compounding. My 401(k) savings account was increasing at a higher rate than I had anticipated. Keep in mind that I had no notion that was all linked to the state of the economy. At that moment, I raised my donation to the maximum allowable of 15%. That was huge, especially since I was still living with my parents and didn’t have any significant responsibilities.

NOW A FAMILY MAN

I married the love of my life in 2007. We lived in my parents’ basement for a few years in order to save money while she was still in college and working part-time. We were able to save $10,000 in just two years with two incomes and a debt-free household. We would choose a country to visit or plan a road trip every year. In 2009, we welcomed our first child, a daughter.

In 2010, to celebrate her first birthday we decided to take a trip to Haiti where we both still have close relatiIn 2010, we decided to take a vacation to Haiti to celebrate her first birthday, as we both had close family there. Our budget for the trip was roughly $500 for two weeks because we only had to pay for our plane tickets. Everything else was available to us.

Unfortunately, the day before the birthday the country was struck with a magnitude of 7.0.

THE WAKE UP CALL

In 2011, I was let go from what I thought was my dream job, exactly a year after the earthquake and days In 2011, exactly a year after the earthquake and only a day before my daughter’s second birthday, I was fired from what I believed was my dream job. This was the last time I I ever took a nine-to-five job seriously.  Working for the man alone is not a good way to live. I realized the value of investing in myself and having side hustles when we only had our funds to fall back on, and they weren’t cutting it.

During the process of moving out of the city and into the countryside in 2015, we had our second child, this time a son.

Fast forward to present; I no longer wanted to live paycheck to paycheck by the end of 2019, so I had to make some internal changes. I’m not usually one to make New Year’s resolutions, but this time was different. In January 2020, I decided to resume some of my old habits, create an investment strategy, start new side hustles, and stay on track with my objectives.

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