Homeless

I remember, when I was about 8 or 9, my parents got a divorce and my pops "moved" out of the house. Technically, my mom threw him out, because she caught him cheating....I think. I knew he was cheating, but I'm not quite sure if THAT was the reason they finally divorced. What I do know, is that he was paying the mortgage on the house and those payments stopped once he was no longer living there. 

My mom wasn't used to paying ALL the bills on her own, not to mention being a single mother of 2. Naturally, we were evicted from our home despite my grandma sending us what money she could. Now that I think about it, we were evicted pretty quick so we were probably already behind on the mortgage.

So here we were, my mom, little sister and I, with no place to go. In St.Louis, there are plenty of vacant houses (vaco) to squat in. My mom had the clever idea of packing everything up and "acting" like we were moving out. After that, we just squatted in our own house. Surprisingly, that worked and it took the bank a long ass time to officially remove is from the premises. We eventually found a way cheaper house in a way cheaper neighborhood. We were technically homeless, if only for a short period of time.
 
Lately, I've been thinking about becoming homeless (temporarily) once again. I take my financial growth very seriously and the main resource I need to acquire the kind of wealth I want is retaining more of my cash. I've already cut my spending to just the basics, got a promotion at work and moved some money around to take out half of my debt all at once. Even with all of that, I could still use more cash flow. The only unnecessary expense I have yet to cut is my rent.

As a truck driver, I'm rarely home. After doing the math, I calculated that I only spend between 4-5 days at home in the average month. My rent is about $800/mo and is about to rise, because I haven't renewed my lease. All of my monthly expenses add up to about $2000/mo. After all my expenses are paid, I have very little disposable income left. That's means I've been spending almost 40% of my income on something I only utilize 16% of the year. That math was all I needed to make my decision.

As soon as I can end my current lease, I'm getting rid of my apartment and putting all my things in storage. I've been playing around with the idea of being "voluntarily homeless" for awhile, but I kept making excuses not to pull the trigger. The main cons with being "voluntarily homeless" is that I'd have to reroute my mail and I'd no longer have a bachelor pad to go back to when I wasn't on the road. After weighing the pros and cons, the only thing I had to do was get over the fear of being uncomfortable. Even though I had technically been homeless before, I still had a place to call "home."

At this point in my life, I don't have the luxury of time on my side. Whenever an opportunity presents itself, I have to jump on it immediately. This is my chance to completely get out of debt and start investing my money. Since this is voluntary, I'll always have the option to change my mind, so my risks are minimum. I'll make a follow-up post and keep all you guys updated.