28-year-old and his wife are worth $1 million without ever holding six-figure jobs: It's about 'what you do with your money'

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

Sebastian Marquez was in high school when he took his now wife out on their first date to a local junior league hockey game.

After the date, he asked if she wanted to stop by his house. She said sure, expecting a family home — not a small, rundown house, gutted and “in absolute shambles,” Sebastian, now 28, tells CNBC Make It.

“I thought I was going to get murdered in the basement,” his wife Julia, 26, says.

The house — the second smallest in his town of Hanover, Ontario — was an investment property he had purchased with help from his mom. At 16, Sebastian was balancing school with stocking shelves at Walmart, working on a chicken farm and remodeling the home with the goal of selling it for a profit, he says.