“The little boy who was once selling bread” – Lauren’s Story

Introduction

I’m a 34 year old engineer and my husband is a 35 year old entrepreneur. We live with our two children (3 and 8 years old) in the suburbs of a large city in the US. My husband and I both have a passion for gardening and travelling. 

This is our story of how we have already reached financial independence at a relatively young age. It involves finding my life partner by chance, a deportation, and multiple trips to Guatemala. 

Background

Both my husband and I come from large families. I grew up in a small town in the midwestern US.  I’m the third of six children, raised in a middle class family. My father worked for a local university as a computer programmer while my mother stayed home to take care of all of us kids. Talking about money in our family was taboo. 

My husband is the 7th of eight children. He was raised in a small village in Guatemala. His childhood home had two rooms and a dirt floor, similar to the one shown below.  

His family was dedicated to subsistence farming, for which they rented small plots of land to grow crops to eat. Sometimes the only plots of land they could afford to rent would be hours away from their home by bike. 

At the age of 8, my husband began his first job outside of helping grow crops, which was to sell bread around his village. During his childhood, his country was still in a brutal decades-long civil war. One of his older brothers was killed during this time, and his family decided to flee. They took what belongings they had and fled to a more remote area of the country. Upon his 16th birthday, my husband was trafficked illegally to the US in order to work and send money back to support his family.