Hello, all. Hope today is going well for you guys.
I have made a few changes the past two days since I was in shock with the amount of loans I had. Also, I read an article about crazy things people did in order to pay off debt on makingsenseofcents.com (https://www.makingsenseofcents.com/2018/05/strategies-to-pay-off-debt.html). After reading this article, I realized how little effort I was putting in towards my finances. I was inspired.
One thing I started doing was to reduce the number of times I was going out to cafes for my study sessions. My friend and I started going to different coffee shops every weekday in order to work on our projects ever since summer started. However, I decided that I have enough Korean instant coffee sticks at home, so I cleaned out my table to have my own work space. I'm virtually saving around $5 everyday (not including the lunch money I would spend since we would stay out for the entire day).
Another thing was actively searching and reading successful and established financial blogs. Somehow, I did not know where to start looking for these blogs, so I started listening to a podcast called Optimal Finance Daily. This is a podcast that narrates successful financial bloggers' posts everyday from Monday to Friday. By listening to this, I was able to not only learn about cool personal financial facts but also discovered many financial bloggers that were out there. So now, I'm in the process of reading their posts to learn about other ways to increase my income.
Well, that's it for today. I feel like this post is mostly a report on what I've been doing today (like a diary) but the real reason for this blog is to track down my personal finances so that I can be more comfortable with these types of posts from now on. Cheers to me who's always trying to improve and you guys who are working hard to improve your financial situations!
Showing posts with label financial goals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial goals. Show all posts
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Student Loan
So... I finally signed into my fedloan servicing account. HAHAHA. Joke's on me, talking about personal finance when I didn't even know how much I owe.
Right now, I currently have an auto loan and student loans. Since I am responsible for making payments for my car at the moment, I am well aware of my situation with that. However, for my student loans, I have been putting them off because I was too scared to know. I don't know what it was back then (even a few weeks ago), and a part of me didn't want to check because I felt like I would be too stressed out about something that I can't pay off at the moment. But recently, something changed. I decided that if I'm going to take my personal finances seriously, that I need to face the facts, and I did.
As of right now, my student loan is $116,625.85😵 . And I have one more year to go till I graduate! OH HO HO. Now that I checked my debt amount, I'm surprised about how not-stressed out I am about this. I'm in shock, yes, but not stressed out.
This puts everything in a different perspective. I've been slacking off lately with my money and this number really makes me think about what situation I'm in and how much effort I need to put in. In one of the posts, I mentioned that my goal was to pay my student loans off by 2021.
Okay, I CAN DO THIS. I believe in myself. I have 4 years to go now, and I will make this work. I'm going to brainstorm tonight.
Right now, I currently have an auto loan and student loans. Since I am responsible for making payments for my car at the moment, I am well aware of my situation with that. However, for my student loans, I have been putting them off because I was too scared to know. I don't know what it was back then (even a few weeks ago), and a part of me didn't want to check because I felt like I would be too stressed out about something that I can't pay off at the moment. But recently, something changed. I decided that if I'm going to take my personal finances seriously, that I need to face the facts, and I did.
As of right now, my student loan is $116,625.85😵 . And I have one more year to go till I graduate! OH HO HO. Now that I checked my debt amount, I'm surprised about how not-stressed out I am about this. I'm in shock, yes, but not stressed out.
This puts everything in a different perspective. I've been slacking off lately with my money and this number really makes me think about what situation I'm in and how much effort I need to put in. In one of the posts, I mentioned that my goal was to pay my student loans off by 2021.
Okay, I CAN DO THIS. I believe in myself. I have 4 years to go now, and I will make this work. I'm going to brainstorm tonight.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
More Financially Conscious
I slipped with my receipt journal. However, after doing it for a month, I became more aware of my financial situation. I noticed things that I would've missed before and I put more effort into reducing the unnecessary expenses with the things I now notice. So what are they?
1. Eating out.
Don't get me wrong, I still eat out a lot. However, my choice of places I go to or the selection of the dish that I order is totally different. If I am eating out, I go to places where I wouldn't use over $8 most of the time. If I end up going to a restaurant with more expensive dishes, then I try to go for an appetizer (since my portion is small) or pick something that is on the cheaper side.
2. Coffee.
Once again, I still go to coffee shops most days out of the week since my apartment is packed with moving boxes (temporarilyy staying here) and I can't focus in this mess. So I go to coffee shops to get my daily work done. This means $$$ on my drinks. So what I started doing is to get drip coffee, which tends to be the cheapest drink at a cafe. I love the sweet lattes, which makes the whole converting process a bit challenging, but regular coffee is better for my health anyways.
3. Clearance section.
Whenever I go grocery shopping or buy necessities, I go to the clearance section first to check if they have the items that I need. Now, this only works when I write down a list of things that I need before going to stores. Otherwise, I will be going through the section and grabbing many things I don't need.
4. Clothes.
Since I'm moving, I went through all my clothes and piled up the clothing items that I don't wear anymore. Then I took them to a second hand clothing store and sold whatever I could and donated the rest. Another thing I do is to go to an actual retail store to buy clothes and check out the clearance section. As you guys know, retail stores are struggling with sales so they have a lot more deals going on and they have different sales than their online stores. Sometimes, the online stores have cheaper deals (which is why I always check before I buy anything), but I usually find cheaper things at an actual store.
I still have a lot of work to do for fixing my financial habits but at this point, I decided that it will be a slow working process. Thank you guys for reading this post and cheers to your efforts for your financial goals.
1. Eating out.
Don't get me wrong, I still eat out a lot. However, my choice of places I go to or the selection of the dish that I order is totally different. If I am eating out, I go to places where I wouldn't use over $8 most of the time. If I end up going to a restaurant with more expensive dishes, then I try to go for an appetizer (since my portion is small) or pick something that is on the cheaper side.
2. Coffee.
Once again, I still go to coffee shops most days out of the week since my apartment is packed with moving boxes (temporarilyy staying here) and I can't focus in this mess. So I go to coffee shops to get my daily work done. This means $$$ on my drinks. So what I started doing is to get drip coffee, which tends to be the cheapest drink at a cafe. I love the sweet lattes, which makes the whole converting process a bit challenging, but regular coffee is better for my health anyways.
3. Clearance section.
Whenever I go grocery shopping or buy necessities, I go to the clearance section first to check if they have the items that I need. Now, this only works when I write down a list of things that I need before going to stores. Otherwise, I will be going through the section and grabbing many things I don't need.
4. Clothes.
Since I'm moving, I went through all my clothes and piled up the clothing items that I don't wear anymore. Then I took them to a second hand clothing store and sold whatever I could and donated the rest. Another thing I do is to go to an actual retail store to buy clothes and check out the clearance section. As you guys know, retail stores are struggling with sales so they have a lot more deals going on and they have different sales than their online stores. Sometimes, the online stores have cheaper deals (which is why I always check before I buy anything), but I usually find cheaper things at an actual store.
I still have a lot of work to do for fixing my financial habits but at this point, I decided that it will be a slow working process. Thank you guys for reading this post and cheers to your efforts for your financial goals.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
My Financial Goals
So what exactly are my financial goals? I can't believe I've never talked about my goals on here when I started this blog.
Here are my long term goals:
1. Retire by 2027 or have the freedom of retiring in 2027 (I might choose not to).
2. Pay off my student loans by 2021.
3. Buy a condo/house by 2023.
Here are my short term goals:
1. Have a side income source by 2019.
-Be creative and use my creativity. I can use my hobby and see if I can sell its products online. I will continue to do my blog and start a Youtube channel about my passion on my financial independence.
2. Pay my auto loan off by 2019.
-$3,000 is left in my auto loan. I am using my auto loan pay off worksheet to recalculate and make sure to finish it off so that I won't have to worry about it by the time I graduate.
3. Save $1,000 and have an emergency fund of $1,000 by the end of 2018.
-Start saving $25 every week and increase the amount I am saving each month.
I added details on the short term goals so that I really follow my steps to reach these goals. Now that I actually wrote them out, I will revisit these goals in August and re-evaluate. It will be a fun and challenging journey and I am looking forward to see how far I can go. Why don't you guys write what your financial goals are so we can work towards them together. Cheers to our financial independence!
Here are my long term goals:
1. Retire by 2027 or have the freedom of retiring in 2027 (I might choose not to).
2. Pay off my student loans by 2021.
3. Buy a condo/house by 2023.
Here are my short term goals:
1. Have a side income source by 2019.
-Be creative and use my creativity. I can use my hobby and see if I can sell its products online. I will continue to do my blog and start a Youtube channel about my passion on my financial independence.
2. Pay my auto loan off by 2019.
-$3,000 is left in my auto loan. I am using my auto loan pay off worksheet to recalculate and make sure to finish it off so that I won't have to worry about it by the time I graduate.
3. Save $1,000 and have an emergency fund of $1,000 by the end of 2018.
-Start saving $25 every week and increase the amount I am saving each month.
I added details on the short term goals so that I really follow my steps to reach these goals. Now that I actually wrote them out, I will revisit these goals in August and re-evaluate. It will be a fun and challenging journey and I am looking forward to see how far I can go. Why don't you guys write what your financial goals are so we can work towards them together. Cheers to our financial independence!
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