Building Wealth Together
Archie and Olivia have always kept their finances mostly separate, and it works. He pays the mortgage, taxes, and household bills. She covers groceries and her personal expenses through her massage therapy business. They share one joint bank account, but his investment accounts, his IRA, and his brokerage accounts are his.
They don’t have regular money meetings. No monthly sit-downs to review the full picture. What makes it work, Archie said, is that the relationship was never about money in the first place. Olivia met him right after the lawsuit, when he had sold his car to settle the case and was essentially starting over. She saw him at zero.
"Our relationship was never based on money," he said. "That's not one of the things we really talk about or argue about."
The wealth they have built came through a few consistent habits. From the time he was a student working in restaurants, Archie set a portion of every paycheck to auto-transfer into a savings account with no active debit card. Without a debit card, accessing it required effort.
He always paid off credit card balances every month. He has zero credit card debt.
He also built a rental portfolio in Mexico: all cash-flow positive, all generating income from short-term rentals. "A lot of people say, 'I have an investment house,'" Archie said. "Not really. You have an additional mortgage. You're not going to see the money until it's paid off and you might be 70 by then." His beach and lagoon properties have no notes on them. He bought the land and built them himself.
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Magica casa laguna
At the foot of the beach
He made his share of mistakes in the market, selling Novavax stock before it peaked and unloading Bitcoin at $15,000 per coin before it hit six figures.
About four years ago, he handed most of his market portfolio to a financial advisor and started focusing on what he actually controls: his painting company and his properties.
Archie meets with his CPA monthly and learned the value of financial professionals early. He compares it to sports "Steph Curry has a coach, and they're not teaching him how to shoot," he said. "They're just reminding him and holding him accountable."
That discipline is what let Archie and Olivia try something most couples never do together.
In 2018 or 2019, they took equity out of their Austin home and bought an office condominium to build a massage clinic together. Archie was going to manage operations while she did the bodywork.
Unfortunate circumstances pulled him back to his painting business before the massage clinic was setup. The clinic struggled to scale with Olivia doing all the work herself.
They eventually sold it and converted their garage into a private studio: waiting room, bathroom, massage room, and a separate entrance so clients never walk through the house.
Loving couples make it easier for each other, and that conversion is a perfect example of it. When the original plan didn't work, they found a version that did.
