Читать книгу 30 Properties Before 30 - Eddie Dilleen - Страница 10

My response to this experience was a bit different from most kids'. Growing up in poverty definitely made me more financially aware than most. You need money to survive. You can't buy food without it. I didn't want to end up on the dole and just continue living hand to mouth like everyone around me. I didn't want to be stuck in this shitty cycle forever. For me, how we were living was all wrong. And the thought that one day my own kids might be stuck in the same rut was even worse. So how could I fix the situation?

I started asking questions about money and property at age seven. We'd go to church, then visit one of Mum's friends in Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, a nice area in the hill district of western Sydney. I remember they had a big flat-screen TV when they had just come out. I was blown away. They had all kinds of nice stuff in a really nice house, and the drive home from their house to ours left a deep impression on me. We'd drive from an area of big, beautiful, family-friendly homes with manicured lawns towards shabbier and shabbier houses and front yards, until we'd pass a house someone had set on fire. I remember that so clearly. And the neighbourhoods had completely different atmospheres. I knew where I wanted to be.

Visiting these people, I became obsessed with the idea of a different life. I told myself that one day I'd own one of those nice houses. I was determined that when I grew up I would make enough money so I'd never have to worry about it again.

When I was a teenager and started getting more interested in property, I realised that people who create wealth and live in nice areas usually own their home, and some owned investment properties too. At the very least they had steady jobs. No one in our family owned any property. They'd worked for 30, 40, 50 years, and still hadn't been able to lift themselves out of the same rough neighbourhood. I knew I couldn't do that. I had to do something different.

I should note that I felt more mature than other kids my age. At 12 years old I didn't feel like a child. By around age 13 or 14, I recognised that some of the financial decisions made by my parents weren't good decisions, and I knew I wanted to do something different. I felt like I was growing up really fast because I had to parent myself to some degree. I was probably a difficult teen. I don't know if I was rebellious exactly, but I thought I knew better than my mum did.

I certainly got into a lot of trouble in high school. I went to a very rough school that was infamous in western Sydney and beyond, not least for a TV documentary, Plumpton High Babies, that was filmed there. We had day care so girls as young as 14 or 15 could bring their babies to school. The school was the best my mum could manage, but I knew I wanted a very different future for myself and for my own kids one day. Because my family and close friends never went to university, that wasn't on my radar. I thought university or college happened only in America.

As a teenager, I would go visit my father a few times a year. He lived in the Adelaide suburb of Glenelg. When I stayed with him, he would spend a lot of time reading the paper and checking on the stocks he owned. It gave me an interest in stocks, and I did try them at one point (which I cover later). When I was 18, Dad was already 63 years old and had contracted cancer. He passed away at 71 years old, when I was 26. It was heartbreaking losing him so young. He died with no financial assets to his name, no properties, no stocks of significant value — they'd all been used up paying for his retirement and medical bills. For me, this reinforced the fact that a person could work extremely hard their entire life and still be struggling financially right to the end.

It was a hard, deeply sad lesson that only added fuel to my fire. I was determined to make money work better for me so I could create financial security and wealth over time.