I invested during the 2007 recession and grew my portfolio to over $1 million in 10 years. Here's how I got by.

3 weeks ago 9

Brianne Garrett

Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 10:07 AM 4 min read

Bola Sokunbi saved $100,000 successful 3 years connected a $54,000 salary, aft graduating assemblage successful 2004.
She continued to prevention and invest, adjacent during the 2007 recession, and started Clever Girl Finance.
Sokunbi said during pugnacious economical times 3 tactics helped her proceed gathering her investments.

This as-told-to effort is based connected a speech with Bola Sokunbi, a certified fiscal acquisition instructor, writer of the soon-to-be-released "Clever Girl Millionaire," and laminitis of Clever Girl Finance based successful New Jersey. The pursuing has been edited for magnitude and clarity.

I graduated from assemblage successful 2004 and saved $100,000 successful 3 years connected a $54,000 salary. Then, successful 2007, the recession happened.

A batch of radical stopped investing, but I had been speechmaking "Smart Women Finish Rich," 1 of my favourite idiosyncratic concern books astatine the time. I retrieve the guidance: The banal marketplace is connected sale. Buy what you tin and conscionable thrust it out. I thought, "I'm young. I don't request this wealth anytime soon." So contempt the panic, I'm going to prevention and invest.

I was fortunate capable to debar getting laid disconnected from my consulting job, and I was side-hustling my beingness distant with my photography business.

Off the heels of redeeming that archetypal $100,000 and starting my company, Clever Girl Finance, I've been gathering an implicit $1 cardinal portfolio for the past 8 years. Making this hap — adjacent successful pugnacious economical times — isn't arsenic hard arsenic you'd think. Three tactics person helped maine put and build.

You ever request to person a currency buffer, meaning you person wealth acceptable speech to screen your expenses — kids, food, housing, mortgage, unexpected location repairs, that benignant of worldly — without having to currency retired investments.

When I transitioned retired of my full-time occupation to physique Clever Girl Finance successful 2017, I acceptable an volition to prevention 18 months of my wage beforehand. Even if my concern didn't marque immoderate wealth oregon I needed to spell backmost to work, I inactive wanted to person capable of a buffer.

I ever archer radical to unfastened a abstracted slope relationship that they don't person casual entree to. If they're employed, they should physique an automated transportation from their payroll into this account

It's besides truly important, adjacent if you're moving afloat time, to person different sources of income. People volition accidental to me, "Well, I'm not business-inclined." Well, you tin get creative.

I person twins, and 1 mode that I brought successful other wealth towards their savings was to merchantability worldly arsenic they grew done each signifier of their lives. They outgrew their strollers, truthful I sold their strollers. They outgrew their cribs, truthful I sold those too.