About John Crabtree

I truly believe it is possible for everyone in this country to get ahead and build wealth. We have more access to information and investing opportunities than any other generation in history. I grew up in a trailer park and watched as my parents were able to move up substantially over time in wealth. For most of my childhood they worked well north of 40 hours a week, with several years averaging over 60. My mom went to school at nights while working those hours to finish her Bachelors degree. They started with nothing (and had kids young), and retired early by our standards at 55. They were also able to pay for both their kids to go through college.

When I moved out at 18 I worked at KFC for 3 years in Benton Harbor, MI. I met my future wife, Angie, who had a young son. We moved into an apartment together for a year, then moved into her mom’s basement for 6 months while saving up for a down payment on our first house. We bought our first house shortly after I turned 20. It was a $47,000 foreclosure in Benton Harbor. With 5 more years of working and saving we decided to move and found the perfect home a few miles away. Our house now is a 5 bedroom tri-level on 3 acres, and we recently purchased an addition 8 acre railroad bed that is adjacent to our property.

My wife Mrs. C and I have a total of 4 boys. Our kids are 18 and 12, and we have custody of our nephews who are 9 and 8. I’m in my mid 30s and work seasonally as a nuclear outage contractor. I work between 6 and 9 months a year, but during this time I am usually working 12 hour shifts 6 days a week.

I started this blog in 2013 and at the time I had a savings rate of around 20%, which I thought was pretty darn good. Today our family is hitting a savings rate of over 40%. My blog, Actionecon.com is read by over 12,000 unique visitors a month from 111 countries. Thinking about money and writing these articles is perhaps one of the keys to our success. It keeps me focused on money and forces me to research new ideas and to make greater effort to maximizing the utility of our money. There are over 400 articles on Actionecon.com designed to help you make the most of your money.

Over the past year I've shifted my focus from my finances to the finances of my children and grandchildren. In the process I have found that very few books have been written about building generational wealth, and none covering the level of detail that is needed to make a successful plan, driving me to write my first full scale book: For My Children's Children