We were finally on the path to saving our 6-month emergency fund. We decided to look at some funds Joseph had received in an insurance claim that was paid following a severe injury in high school.
He’d invested it as wisely as possible. Went to a family friend who was a long-term financial advisor. Joseph was 18-years-old, and invested $12,000.
After we’d been married a few years, we looked at that investment, it was almost 8 years since it had been invested. It had not grown at all.
We reinvested that money through the same financial advisor. A few years later, it had hardly grown at all.
Finally, we took the tax hit and withdrew that investment money. Now, we took that and what we’d saved for a six month emergency fund, and bought our first investment property in 2017.
We’d already been debt free, struggled to establish habits that allowed us to save, and finally, we took the first step towards financial independence and investments we could control!
FIRE with Family 
[…] to invest enough to retire. It was a discouraging and sobering realization. We’d done some investing in the past that had been poorly managed, but even as we began managing our own investments using vanguard […]
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