I was a high school drop out, failed third form (year nine). I hated school.
My second job as a 15 year old in 1970 was in a petrol station pumping gas. Take home pay $18.85. I was never any good with money and used to live from week to week on my pay, no savings, often borrowing a couple of dollars the day before payday.
Every available opportunity between serving petrol I went into the workshop to see if I could help. I had a love of cars. From there I learnt enough to get jobs as a lub attendant. This was basically an unqualified spanner that used to do grease and oil changes.
From this I learnt enough to confidently apply for mechanics jobs. From here I went on and became qualified.
I still live from week to week on my pay. When I met SWMBO at age 28 we both had nothing. (She is six years younger than me)A year together we then both committed $100 per week(nearly 50% of pay) each from our pay. In twelve months with 10K we purchased our house. 10K was not enough deposit on a $65,000 house so we had two loans, one at 12.5 % and one at 17%!
At the same time be got married. We then put tenants in our house and lived in a caravan at my parents place for three years. SWMBO worked two jobs, I did a few car repairs at home and we paid off our mortgage in three years. This was not easy but I look at it as three years of pain for long term gain.
I am far from rich but we are very comfortable. If you have bothered to read my story you will see that I went from an uneducated nothing to an uneducated something from a lot of bloody hard work.
We did this too without any government hand outs. There was $1,000 available for first home buyers, but as we were renting our place we could not risk it. Also back then if the bank found out they would have increased our interest rate by 1%
