6 Financial Takeaways You Could Learn From JD Vance

Many people believe to be rich, you have to have been born rich and that achieving wealth status is difficult to do. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, building your wealth isn’t easy, or everyone would do it. However, you can make strategic moves to improve your financial situation, and eventually, maybe even hit millionaire status. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance is a perfect example of this. Having grown from humble roots—he grew up in poverty—he’s now worth millions and his story could serve as inspiration for others.

We did some digging into Vance’s background and the money moves he’s made to achieve financial independence.

He Invests

Vance is a venture capital investor and has invested in more than 100 private companies. According to his financial disclosure reports, most of those holdings sit between $1,000 and $15,000 each.

Investing is a surefire way to build your wealth, but it’s a long game. Speaking with a financial advisor can help you pick the avenues that work best for you, depending on how much time you have left until retirement.

There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Solution to Life

There’s a lot of talk about the path to success, and how it’s important to go to college to land a good job. However, that’s not the case for everyone and it shouldn’t be pushed as the be-all, end-all.

Vance broke this so-called path by instead enlisting in the Marines.

Having (The Right) Support Matters

Not to say that you can’t succeed on your own; you certainly can. But sometimes, having the right support can inspire you to make decisions you wouldn’t otherwise even dream of.

Vance got this support when he moved in with his grandmother as a teenager. He was afforded a different set of opportunities, and that’s when his life started to change.

Your Start Doesn’t Define Your End

It’s very easy to get caught up in the “woe is me” mentality and believe that because you were born poor, you were destined to remain that way. The opposite is true. You have the opportunity to make different decisions than those of your guardians.

Using Vance as an example, he grew up in poverty in the Appalachians. In fact, he wrote a whole book about it (more on that later). But today, he’s worth between $5 and $10 million and he’s running for the next vice president of the US.

He Put His Creativity To Work

If you have a creative streak, put that to work for you. That’s exactly what Vance did when he wrote his book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” That book, despite its controversy, or perhaps partially because of it (we love a good bit of drama), has earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But it gets better, too. While in the Marines, he helped pay for his grandmother’s health insurance by playing (and presumably winning) poker online.

Discipline Matters

Discipline is more than just about how you behave, it’s about your spending habits, too. Being disciplined in your financial life means saving money rather than blowing it.

Vance credits his financial discipline to his time served in the military, where he not only had to be on his best behavior, but learned fiscal responsibility at the same time.