I’ve written this because I wanted to share a few musings from my own journey (I started in full time youth ministry and now I’m a teacher), in case there are other people like me. And in the hopes that others might be able to share their lessons learned on a similar journey.
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It’s not greedy or worldly or faithless to be thinking about this. Instead, this is an act of humility. And it is an act of love. It says: I’m not too proud; it takes months for the seeds to grow into plants that bear tomatoes and more time still for those to ripen. For those of us who are unmarried, it says I will not make an idol of marriage as the thing that’ll solve this question. It is, instead an act of love and humility to prepare for old age so that that sweet little old lady that I become can continue to love and serve. It is an act of love and humility to prepare a home for children (perhaps ones that I myself bear, perhaps not).
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So much of financial advice feels perfectionistic. Like you have to know everything first or be perfect at everything first. Instead, baby steps are okay. It’s okay to not know everything. It’s okay to be a learner.
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Getting out of debt is good. And there are many useful strategies that work for different people. But guilt and shame about debt are bad. Debt is really common in this country NOT because we lack discipline or self control. It’s common because of how our economic system works: credit is really easy to get.
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Saving for the future is really really good. (And that’s the reason to get out of debt.)
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To do both, we have to increase our income and/or decrease our expenses.
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For me, it’s become really clear that I need to do both. I always felt okay about decreasing expenses, but increasing income felt greedy. Decreasing expenses was about being less materialistic, simpler—it was about self-denial, which somehow felt spiritually okay. But looking to earn more? That was greedy. Now I realize, it’s just a humble self assessment. This may mean taking on a part time job or it may mean switching jobs. But for me it’s become clear that, especially during my time of full time ministry, I was just not earning enough.
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So, if you’ve been thinking about it, go do it: get a part time job.
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A lot of the financial literacy teaching says “get out of debt before saving more than $1000 emergency fund!” But for me, learning to save while increasing my efforts to get out of debt has felt so much more encouraging. I’m increasing my income specifically to get out of debt faster. And I’m learning to save on my regular income. And since I’m writing this in the time of covid19 (during which I’m super grateful to be able to work from home), having a modest cushion of savings has felt like a relief.
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Baby steps for investing: I’ve started saving vía my company’s 401-k plan. My hope is to increase my contributions by a percentage point per year every year that I get a raise. What this means is: putting any raise to savings. To do this, we have to learn to live on the income of a year.
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Baby steps for investing: After starting to take advantage of the company plan, I started using Acorns. Acorns is a simple tool that lets you invest a small amount of money, little by little. Like: really small. I use it for the rounds-ups (it links to my debit card and automatically ‘rounds up’ to save that spare change—so if I spend $34.67 at the grocery, it saves my spare change of $0.33; when it gets to $5, it transfers to my Acorns account) and an automatic deposit of $5 every week. Acorns charges between $1-3 a month (my modest level is $1), which is really small for the investing. Acorns lets you choose one of four or five investment packages where they put your money into a combination of stocks and bonds. The idea is that this money is going to stay in this account for years (like, at least 5, but ideally 10 or 20) and it’ll go up and down as the market goes up and down. So, it feels a little nerve-wrecking to see the number go down, but this is how it works and you just leave it there during the ups and downs. Here’s an important point: some people get freaked out by the dips, but the dips aren’t a sign that you’ve done something wrong.
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Baby steps: after a while on Acorns, I finally decided to learn about more direct investing (since Acorns and my 401-k are automatic) by opening a brokerage account. Back in the day, there used to be charges to open a brokerage account and account mínimums and even fees to buy or sell stock. This has changed and now stocks and brokerages are accessible to people like us. I have chosen to use a free account with free buys/sales (there are many companies that do this: Robinhood, TDAmeritrade, perhaps your bank has a brokerage account option that is free). I purchased a small number of stocks that have a good reputation and I’m going to let them sit there for years. They go up and down in price—some people get addicted to trading and then have psychological meltdowns when the price drops (as they have in the most recent COVID19 dips). But that’s counterproductive because the wisdom is “buy low, sell high”—that means realizing that stock investments can drop and then having the commitment necessary to not get spooked by that and instead wait until the stocks are high to sell again.
I still have a lot to learn and one thing I wish for is information that isn’t so aggressive, judgy, or perfectionistic when it comes to these topics.
Maybe Reddit is not the best place to post this (this is my first post and it may really get voted down), but I’ve learned a lot from reading this board and I hope that this helps someone else like me.
Submitted May 15, 2020 at 10:26PM by NewGardener17 https://ift.tt/2WVfTLG
