My Story

Good evening everyone and welcome to my path to financial freedom. My name is Georgi, I am originally from Bulgaria, currently living in the UK.

So what do I mean by ‘from zero’ ? I mean that 3 years ago I was in an absolute stagnation- I was smoking weed all day and not really doing anything productive in my life. My only income source was my mom’s allowance of 5 levas a day. Lev is the currency in Bulgaria and 5 levas are about 2.5 euros.

Yes, you heard that right – I was living my days on less than 3 euros and what was worse, had no intention or idea how to change that. The only extra income I was making for myself was from shady activities. My days were a deja vu of the days before for quite some time. I was surrounded by my ‘friends’ and we were all living in that same lifestyle. We spent the majority of our days in the neighbourhood smoking weed, drinking, going to clubs/bars and doing absolutely nothing productive. And that continued day after day after day- same old routine which we were almost uncounsciously doing without really thinking what are we actually doing with our lives. 

As the time was going by I was starting to feel more and more that I need to change something and I need to change something drastically. I had to go out of that comfort zone get out of that circle of ‘friends’ and change my perspective about life.

So I started a job. I was working in a logistics center doing manual labor loading and unloading trucks full of bycycles and baby toys. As you can imagine that wasn’t the best, nor the funniest job in the world. But it was definetely better than my life before that. I was working quite a lot and didn’t have the time to spend what I was earning. And most importantly with less free time I had less time to think about silly things.

I kept on working there for almost a year while I was kind of going to uni and then I started to realise that this is not the long- term solution to my problems. I still had no real perception about who I really am, what I really wanted to do in life and all those important questions.

So I realised I need to change my surroundings and start my life completely from the ground up- no friends, no relatives, no people calling me in the middle of the night with stupid ideas and no more meaningles life. I wanted to do Something with my life.

And so one day as I was going home from work I saw offers for seasonal jobs in England on a poster near home. I wrote down the addres for the job-expo kind of thing they were organising, and was ready to give it a chance. I went there one Saturday morning and had a chat with a couple of people working for the agencies recruiting people. So they offered me a job in a warehouse.

As you are expecting it wasn’t the best job, nor the best paying job- otherwise they wouldn’t be coming to Bulgaria to look for unskilled temporary workers. But I didn’t care as all I wanted was to change my surroundings and spend some time with myself. I had just enough money saved so I can buy the plane tickets and pay my two weeks deposit for the house I was going to live in.

The job was starting in two weeks so I quit my current job, said goodbye for now to my family and had one last night out with all my friends. After two hours of sleep I woke up and went to the Sofia Airport, massively hangover with a little perception of where was I actually going.

I was completely on my own with just enough money to survive about a week, pretty broken english and I didn’t even know the name of the city I was going to, let alone the place where I was going to work, or the house where I was going to sleep. Fortunately in the plane I met another guy from Bulgaria who was going to work at the same place and we were going to live in the same house aswell.

So we moved in the house- me, the guy from the plane, his cousin and a random Indian guy who was working in IT in Warrington.

The house and the job were both as low as it can possibly go. The house was at least 100 years old and the job was hard manual labor for minimum wage. As we were hired primarily for the strong Christmas season, we were working at least 70 hours a week.

Weirdly enough I loved it. I loved the fact that I’m alone with my thoughts and plans and started to realise what I actually wanted. I was able to save quite a lot of money for my standards very quickly as I barely had any expenses and was working a lot, therefore making decent money. I started researching different financial instruments and how to put my money to work. I was fascinated by the compounding effect and the passive income possibilities.

At first my goal was to save enough money to buy a house back home and rent it out. Everything was going to plan until one day I was offered a job in Sheffield. It sounded amazing- I was going to be a sales rep. and as per the guy who was interviewing me I was about to make 6 figure income by the end of year one. Boy was I gulible. I moved to Sheffield and started working that ‘dream job’.

It consisted of promoting the broadband provider TalkTalk to people in shopping malls and city centres. The job was commission only, which I didn’t really know until I had already moved to Sheffield.You had to work about 90 hours a week mostly in the freezing cold weather in January in small cities around Sheffield, promoting broadband to random people.

As you can imagine that didn’t work out great for me. About a month later I found myself with no money, as I had to pay for all my expenses myself- all the traveling every day, food, rent and so on. So of course I had to quit this ”job”.

So it was end of January and I had no job, no money and no one which I knew in the largely unknown for me town of Sheffield. I started looking for jobs, only to find out that there are not a lot of companies looking for staff in January, especially for unskilled people with barely any experience like me.

I opened the job sites and found a total of 30 job ads from the whole of Sheffield in all the different industries. As I didn’t have much of a choice I applied to every single one of them. They called me from two- the first one was door to door charity fundraising and the other one was from a local pub as an apprentice chef.

The interview for the chef job was in a couple of weeks so I took the job as a fundraiser, so I can atleast make enough money to pay my rent. I worked there for a couple of weeks and that was harder than I would ever expect it to be. You had to walk 10+ miles a day in the freezing cold and rainy weather around Yorkshire in early February. During my three weeks there I got sick once with pneumonia and went into the emergency in Barnsley with my back hurting so much that I couldn’t even walk.

I still managed to go through this, pay my rent and go for the interview in the pub for the chefs job. As an apprentice the salary was below minimum wage, but at that point in my life that actually seemed decent. I had my interview there and got the job – after all not that many people would like to work for about 150£ a week.

But it turned out I actually enjoy cooking and was pretty decent at it aswell. Within a couple of months due to weird circuimstances I was actually running the whole kitchen for one of the busiest pubs in Sheffield. I started reading about cooking, watching documentaries and researching the possibilites ahead of me. After one year I finished my apprenticeship and got my qualification. Shoutout to all the amazing people in Sheffield, who supported me and had a great time together.

So, after I finished my apprenticeship it was time to start thinking about my next step. As Sheffield doesn’t have that much of a cooking scene I decided to move to London. I had friends there, so I moved in with them. I worked various different jobs, until I started in a five star hotel as a commis chef. It’s been about seven months since im there and I feel like im learning new things every day and getting better and better.

So what do I mean by ‘to freedom’ ?

I mean to financial freedom – a place I want to be as soon as possibl. I don’t like the word retirement because I don’t want to retire. I just want to have the stress out of having bills to pay and having to work every day despite if I like it or not.

I just want to have my time for myself- after all there is only so much time we have left in our lives. I just dont imagine myself having to work until I’m 70 years old or at least not for someone else. I want to create my own projects and follow my own path.

I guess this is my story so far. I apologise for any grammatical mistakes, after all english is my second language. I am trying my best to try and avoid any mistakes, but cannot guarantee that I am not going to miss something every now and again. My main purpose is to tell my story and hopefully inspire other people to chase their plans and dreams.

After all, three years ago I didn’t have a dime in my pocket and barely any skills or knowledge. Don’t have rich parents either so everything in life I have to fight for and grab it myself. So to everyone who is complaining that life is unfair can follow my posts and see how that turns out.

All comments are appreciated, be so negative or positive.

Stay tuned and keep your head high as no one will keep it high for you.