About Me

My name is Tierney Logan and I started this blog as a creative venture during a mini-retirement from my corporate career.

I’m a personal finance enthusiast on the path to FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). I’m passionate about using smart money management to escape the 9-to-5 grind and live life on my own terms.

My Story

Although I was successful in my corporate job, I wasn’t fulfilled. I was overworked, stressed, and burned out. I had wanted to leave my high-pressure job for a long time—as evidenced by the handwritten plans with lots of red ink and circles for milestones to leave my toxic job—but fear and lifestyle creep kept me stuck.

Later at 32, I had saved and invested enough money to feel comfortable stepping away from my well-paying but stress-inducing job. The best part was that I got paid to leave my job. I used some of my six-figure severance payout to immediately hop on a plane and travel for 6 weeks.

Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K. was the final scenic stop of my mini-retirement travel. The 219 steps were less fun getting back up to the car park.

After returning home from the longest and most action-packed vacation of my life, I set up my website and began blogging during my mini-retirement.

Although, this website was actually started five years earlier, when I was at the peak of burnout in my corporate career. And for years prior to that (starting at age 24), I was sporadically jotting choppy bullet points into my Notes app about financial tidbits I had learned in my 20s and early 30s, with a vision of eventually sharing them in a personal finance blog so others could learn in an easier way.

The Beginning: Personal Finance Enthusiasm

I first became interested in personal finance at 18 years old when I took a required Economics class during my senior year of high school. That inspired me to major in Economics for my undergraduate degree. I even double-majored in Math, although I dropped the grueling Math degree four classes short and opted to graduate a semester early instead. I was broke, and I couldn’t wait any longer to start making real money.

I figured starting my career and working just one full-time job would be a dream compared to a full course-load plus working four part-time jobs by my final year of college. But it didn’t take long to realize that entering the corporate world would not be so enjoyable or fulfilling. My first job after college was a demanding, disorganized mess polluted with office politics. At 22, I couldn’t imagine living like this until 62—40 years of merely living for the weekends.

So to truly achieve freedom, I had to do more than only go to work. I needed to figure out what the rich do and copy it.

At 23, I wanted to invest in the stock market but didn’t know how or where to start. I discovered robo-advisors and joined Betterment, which offered a way to start investing without knowing anything about it. I simply needed to tell Betterment my risk level, then Betterment would automatically take my deposits and invest my money in a curated portfolio of U.S. stocks, foreign stocks, and bonds. They even promised tax-loss harvesting (didn’t know what this was, but sounded good to me).

I thought I was off to a great start, that investing would be smooth-sailing, and that there wasn’t much more I needed to know to best manage my money.

Trial by Fire—Learning Through Mistakes

Unfortunately, I made a series of financial mistakes.

Mistake #1: Around this same time I discovered IRAs. I initially made the mistake of going to Bank of America and opening up a Roth IRA there, which was making me no money because I didn’t know I needed to take the extra step of choosing the investments for my IRA deposits. I decided to transfer that Roth IRA to Betterment, so my money could be invested in higher-yielding stocks, completely managed by the robo-advisor.

Mistake #2: The other retirement investment step I took was setting up monthly contributions to my company’s 401(k), contributing enough to earn my company’s match. But I made another mistake early on—investing my 401(k) contributions into an overly-conservative target date fund. I didn’t know about ETFs, index funds, what “large cap” meant, or anything about stocks.

Mistake #3: After I earned my MBA (taking night classes while working in corporate) and job-hopped a few times to increase my salary, I even stopped contributing to my Roth IRA for a year because I thought if my income exceeded the annual contribution limits, I was simply out of luck. No one told me what a Backdoor Roth IRA was or how to do it. This was yet another avoidable mistake, had I only been introduced to this strategy sooner.

Mistake #4: After switching companies, I made another common 401(k) mistake: I left my employer contributions invested in declining company stock without realizing I could rebalance my retirement portfolio. My employer’s 401(k) match was automatically invested in my company’s stock. Unfortunately, my company’s stock was steadily declining for years—not exactly the next Amazon.

I didn’t know I could move my company stock into better-performing investments, like the diversified S&P 500 (large cap) index fund I had designated for my own employee contributions. It was only through a chance hallway conversation with a senior colleague that I learned there were no restrictions on swapping company stock for a different investment. Unfortunately, nearly two years of employer-matched contributions had already lost value, and I had to play catch-up moving forward.

And those are just a few examples of my mistakes, among many, many others.

Growing Wealth and Gaining Financial Freedom

It was in my late 20s that the gears started to click and I finally understood the keys to budgeting and investing. And once they did, my wealth started snowballing.

At 22 years old, I graduated college with my Economics degree and $5k in the bank.
At 25, I used my new MBA degree to switch jobs, get my first six-figure salary, and grow my net worth to $100k.
At 28, my net worth tripled to $300k through consistent savings, boring investments, and cash flow from a rental property.
By 32, my individual net worth crossed one million dollars, making me an official millionaire.
Together with my wife, our household net worth hit one million dollars when I was 30 years old—$800k from me, $200k from her.

And we did this in a high cost of living (HCOL) city, without any get-rich-quick schemes or fancy tactics.

Tunnel View in Yosemite National Park, California, during beautiful spring weather for our mini-honeymoon a few years ago.

Learn and Take One Step at a Time: Persistence is Key

Money is often considered taboo to discuss with friends, family, and coworkers. The only reason I came across much of the information I did was because I had a natural curiosity for finance and a dream to retire early. My regret is losing time and money to not knowing what I didn’t know.

My goal is for Money Evergreen to serve as a resource for hardworking people to learn what the rich try to gate-keep: how to gain financial freedom so you can live life on your own terms. Check out my blog, products, and resources to get started, and get my free guide and newsletter below. The way to build lasting wealth and reach financial freedom is with one step at a time.