Former financial advisor Joe Saul Sehy revealed that while he was earning six figures solving his client’s money problems, he was personally floundering in devastating debt and hiding from the tax man
Financial influencer and creator Joe Saul Sehy often recounts his “money disasters” to his followers as a sign that there is light at the end of the tunnel if they manage to break their bad money habits. In a recent episode of the Afford Anything podcast, the former financial planner took it a step further revealing how debt and money issues can happen to anyone as at the height of his career he was, ironically, at his lowest point bordering on financial crisis.
He explained to host Paula Pant how he had accidentally ended up in the financial advisory business, walking in with a creative writing degree among a slew of business majors, but also put his sales skills and logical, problem-solving brain to great use for his clients. Unabashedly, Joe admitted he was “killing it” and made around $200,000 (£151,000) his first year in the business, adjusted to today’s inflation rate.
However, he also confessed that at this time in his life, he was a “spendaholic” and managed to fly through his money as quickly as he earned it, avoiding using any of the advice he gave his clients. He shared: “I was just paycheck to paycheck then the first bad thing would happen and it was done…I was the rising star and my own financial picture is in shambles.”
Believing if he could “just make more money” his financial problems would be solved, Joe avoided telling his wife until the phone calls from his debtors started coming in. With the way taxes work in America, Joe was also meant to be setting aside money to pay his tax return at the end of the financial year, something he had no idea was about to pull the rug out from under him.
The Stacking Benjamins founder shared: “The money came in and I’d say; ‘I’ll set money aside for taxes later because I need all of this now’…I get advice around April 1st, taxes are due on April 15th.” His advisor revealed Joe owed $12,000 (£9,000) in taxes but the content creator confessed: “It could’ve been $75 (£56), I didn’t have it. I had no credit, no money, no recourse. I had hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees.”
Joe decided his only choice was to avoid paying his tax bill and didn’t file tax returns for that year or the two following years before the IRS caught up with him. When the letters started coming through, the finance expert knew they had the ability to “put a lean” against his property and garnish his wages to pay back his debt.
If this happened and his company found out he would be barred from the financial services industry. All of the stress and strain from the last three years came to a head for Joe when he was on his way home one day and ran out of gas in his “rusted-out minivan” in the middle of nowhere.
He recalled: “I walk a mile to the nearest gas station, the dude doesn’t want to give me a gas can cause he thinks I’m going to steal it. I had found like 85 cents (65p) in change underneath the car seats. I put 85 cents (65p) worth of gas, drove home and barely made it. That was the day I cried. That’s the day I was like; ‘I’m done’.”
When he got home, he confessed everything to his wife and the couple put weekly meetings in place to discuss their finances. This helped Joe curb his spending completely “because I knew she was looking”.
He also decided to confront the IRS upfront and, despite the common misconception, couldn’t stop singing their praises: “They were so compassionate and so good, I was on a payment plan like that. I could have done that two years earlier and not paid the stupid tax of ‘if I don’t look at it it’ll go away’.”
He also came clean to his company, with his boss revealing: “Had I not gone to him, if he had heard it from anyone else, I would’ve been gone.” But now was the time for Joe to start implementing some of his own money advice.
The former financial planner changed the people he surrounded himself with and looked up to, opting for a less materialistic group and “divorced myself from my income” so money and spending were no longer his top priority. He also organised payment plans with all of his creditors so he could be debt-free in five years and began stocking his emergency fund to have that foundation he had been lacking. All in all, the influencer shared: “I went from being this guy who was digging really fast to a guy on a rocketship by not using the shortcuts.”