I’d been sitting on a bunch of posts for a long time.
A lot of it I held back because I simply started to think a little too long, a little too hard. It is way past time and I’ve let myself get in my own way. I’m really not sure how to resume my blog but I can’t continue to leave it on pause. With that, I think I’ll start with a personal note. So here goes.
So I’ve waited a few days to get the new year new me blues out of my system. I’m not new, I’m not different neither so, we’ll have to manage. Oh, Kinda new Job though. That’s IBM in the image.
Yeah, I work there now.
Now that we know how to budget our income appropriately, it's time to start discussing what to do with the goals/money shovel piece of the budget. We have effectively handled our debts and have created some distance between us and Murphy's law with our emergency funds & necessary insurance products. It is now time to do fun stuff with money, investing it.
I've got to say, in my short lifetime on this planet I have met some pretty interesting people. There are those that like to eat. God bless y'all by the way. The ones that like to read, the ones that like to talk, the ones that like to sing, etc. You get what I mean. Most importantly, there are those that have SPECIAL interests.
So for most of us, buying a house is a pretty big deal. Literally & financially. It is a huge milestone and a very important achievement in adulthood. I can share that there is a huge difference especially emotionally between coming to a home you own and a house you rent. Having been on both sides, let me add to the rent vs buy debate, when to buy and home to buy brigade.
I was taking inventory of my life the other day with my best friend as most of us do when life comes at you this quick. We went through each other's dating journey and the entertainment such memories bring are box office to put mildly. In the discussion, I realized that dating reveals a different side to people that are fun to talk about.
As a young man with a lot of ego and a highly competitive nature, I find it easy to want to one up the next guy. I find myself constantly comparing my progress with that of the next guy. I have to stop myself from feeling inadequate because someone else seems to always have a new highlight. There is always that one guy that looks like he has figured life out.
Okay, so adulting isn't always about money. It plays a huge part of it, most of it, but not all of it. Some of the time, you're eating. Let's not lie to ourselves here, the way to anybody's heart is through food. I find myself thinking about food at least every other minute. If I'm bored, I just want to walk up to a fridge and open it. Even if I was there a second ago.
Most of us (young adults) don't have piles of cash ... yet. So while we build our stacks of cash, there are ways to synthesize the same terms rich people have. They don't worry when their cars get totalled, they don't worry when they lose their jobs, they don't worry about their cards declining on a purchase. So let's do some things to recreate the same effects.
I really want to someday say I’m great at this but quite frankly as of today, I suck. I run two budgets simultaneously (one for myself, the other for my home) so I can share my struggles and successes from using them for about the last year or so. I’ve quickly learned my personal budget goes over more often than the budget for my home. This is simply because my home doesn’t have emotions, my home does not get hungry unexpectedly and my home doesn’t buy new clothes when there is a sale.
So you want a car, that's a good aspiration to have. You're tired of taking the bus everyday for over an hour in each direction. That's two hours of your life each weekday in addition to any walking and idling while the bus makes its way to your stop. I get it, those are really useful hours you could capture for more useful things. Not to mention the mental preparation for winter and waddling through the snow and sub-zero temperatures just to catch a bus that may or may not even show up.
