Courtesy of Michael Quan
Michael Quan and his family.
- Michael Quan retired from the IT consulting company he founded, and later sold, at age 36.
- Quan lives in San Diego, California, with his wife, who is a school teacher, and two children. Their current net worth is over $2 million.
- In his spare time, Quan manages a personal-finance blog, Financially Alert, and a Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) business. They also earn passive income from real-estate investments.
- For Business Insider's "Real Money" series, Quan tracked his family's spending during a typical week. They spent about $925 on groceries, meals out, bills, and a church donation.
- Want to share a week of your spending? Email yourmoney@businessinsider.com.
It's been six years now since I retired at 36. Early in my career, I started and operated an IT consulting company in San Diego, California. After ten years of growing the business, my partners and I sold it to a larger company with a nationwide reach. I exited the merged company a year and a half later.
After retiring, I stayed home with my young daughter who was a year old at the time. We welcomed our son just a year later and I fully embraced life as a stay-at-home dad.
In my spare time, I started a blog, FinanciallyAlert.com, about financial independence and early retirement (aka FIRE) to discuss the various paths - saving/investing, entrepreneurship, and real-estate investing - to reach it. I also became a financial coach because I love helping to empower people with their money and mindset. In between all of this, I kept investing in real estate and started an Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) business.
My wife is a high school teacher and earns $101,773 per year, before taxes. She has a masters degree and is maxed out on professional development credits. We earn an additional $1,816 per month in passive income from real-estate investments, and $1,197 per month in dividends and interest. I also earn $1,929 per month from the blog, Amazon FBA business, and financial coaching.
We currently have a net worth of $2.13 million and most of this is in the form of real-estate equity (65%). The remainder is a combination of stocks, bonds, and cash (35%).
I track and share our personal finances on my blog because numbers like net worth and cash flow are important metrics to master. I believe that you should know how to calculate your net worth, but you should never value your self worth by it.