I see a lot of posts on here that generally say "Hi I'm a single 24 year old single male who just got my first entry level job at $325,00 a year and I paid off all my debt and am currently saying 90% of my income, any tips would be appreciated."
I not only made crappy minimum wage money from 18-29 but I managed it poorly. I am finally at 30 and making a good salary over 50k and and getting a hold of things and just had my first month of putting something in savings. I know that when you come to a subreddit called personal finance you'll find people are super ahead and on top of things.
In real life everyone around me is in the boat I was in just a month ago. They save nothing and eat out every day and have no plan. My girlfriend has over 70k in debt and has no plans or ambitions to pay it off. She just says things like she wants to enjoy her life. It's easy to feel like yeah everyone is broke because that's just how it is but you come here and it's just not true.
I recently got off of all social media due to reading a book called Deep Work by Dr. Cal Newport and that really helped a lot. I still come to Reddit but I only subscribe to relevant subreddits that can help me in my goals. This place is inspiring but also depressing at the same time.
I felt great about what I accomplished last month financially even though it's just baby steps compared to those who have 500k savings and 60k cash on hand.
I have set the following goals to try to help keep myself looking forward to progressing
1 month
Save 700 out of 1000 to go into my Emergency fund
Don't spend a single dollar on take-out, delivery, or junk food purchases. (I was spending $400-$1000 before each month)
Do not add any new charges to my credit cards
6 months
Save $3500 for a very important trip this summer
After saving the $3500 and having the $1000 emergency fund, aggressively pay off my largest card of around $6k
1 year
Be debt free. I have $25-30k depending on whether I count the car loan. I picked up a second gig which I can do at home after work which may or may not be long term and I hope to earn around $1k a month with. I will put all of this towards debt pay off. If I can pull this off I want to be able to write a nice post about how I did it and what helped / didn't help.
Submitted December 01, 2018 at 09:40PM by an_idiot_with_money https://ift.tt/2zErdkr
