- Steph Gordon and Den Mathu planned to save the majority of their day job income and retire early.
- But a year ago, they realized they could make more money working for themselves.
- They quit their corporate jobs and now make up to $19,000 a month creating personal finance content.
Steph Gordon, 26, and Den Mathu, 27, had a set plan to achieve financial independence: They both landed jobs at “Big 4” accounting firms in their early 20s, had been gradually climbing the ladder, and were methodically increasing their savings rates with each raise.
Gordon was working in HR at PricewaterhouseCoopers, while Mathu was a consultant at Deloitte.
The Toronto-based couple worked their way up to saving and investing about 60% of their income, they told Insider. They planned to continue stashing most of their income and set the goal of individually becoming millionaires by age 30.
“The exact number of $1 million isn’t the most important part; it’s more that $1 million represents building wealth,” Gordon emphasized in a video on her and Mathu’s YouTube channel. And, for them, wealth equals “freedom, time, and financial security in the future,” she added.
Their plan changed course in the fall of 2021, when they quit their day jobs to turn their side project — making YouTube videos about navigating their careers and finances — into a full-fledged business.
While they still wanted to build a seven-figure net worth, they realized they might be able to do so quicker by working for themselves rather than for somebody else — and, so far, they’ve been right.
It’s been about a year since Gordon and Mathu left the corporate world to go all-in on content creation.
“Overall, what our business brought in was more than our combined salaries from our jobs before,” Gordon told Insider. In 2022, the couple earned up to $26,000 CAD (about $19,000 USD) a month, according to documents viewed by Insider.
“Our goal moving forward is to amplify that even more,” she said.
Paying off student loans and saving up to 60% of their income
Gordon and Mathu met in the summer of 2017 while interning at the same company. A year later, they graduated from university and moved into an apartment in Toronto together.
While Gordon graduated without debt and got a head start on saving and investing, Mathu took out a $41,000 CAD ($30,000 USD) government loan to pay for university, which Insider confirmed. He also took out an $8,000 CAD private loan to cover tuition, he said, putting his total debt at $49,000 CAD ($36,000 USD).
“It felt like this dark cloud that was hanging over me and I wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible,” he recalled of …….