Steph Gordon and Den Mathu quit their day jobs in 2021 to focus on content creation full-time. This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
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 his debt.
His loan provider automatically put him on a plan that would make him debt-free in 10 years and required a minimum monthly payment of a couple hundred dollars. But Mathu wanted to speed up the process. He evaluated all of his necessary monthly expenses and calculated that, based on his $50,000 CAD starting salary, he could afford to put a maximum of $1,300 CAD towards his debt every month. Mathu racked up about $49,000 CAD in student loan debt. He set up a $1,300 CAD automatic monthly payment and, after about two and a half years of consistently paying down his loans, he was debt-free.
While Mathu was prioritizing his debt, Gordon was gradually building her nest egg. She started by saving and investing about 20% of her salary, which started around $38,000 CAD, she said. As her income grew, so did her savings rate: “My expenses were already set — they didn’t go up every time I got a salary increase — so every single dollar from salary increases over time went towards my savings and investing accounts. I went from saving 20% every month to 30%, 40%, 50%, all the way up to 60%.”
By the time they quit their jobs in 2021, Gordon had about $50,000 CAD stashed away, Mathu had $30,000 CAD, and they had about $40,000 CAD in their business bank account, they said.Living together and splitting fixed expenses like rent, utilities, and groceries helped them save the majority of their paychecks. Plus, they found ways to cut back on their discretionary spending while still enjoying their 20s.”There are a lot of free or cheap activities in […]
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