Disclaimer!
Before using this site, please make sure that you note the following important information:
My content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a professional in connection with, or independently research and verify, any information that you find on my site and wish to rely upon, whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise.Welcome
For starters, here is my story...(hopefully you can learn from my mistakes before you even start)A few years ago, I decided to buy a house. I had saved up some money for a down payment and was sick of changing apartments every couple years. This is great and all, real estate is almost always a good investment so I stand by my decision. However, this created some issues:
Issue #1 - the house I found was a little further out of my price range. Looking back, this was not a good idea. Stretching out your money will make it harder to have money for upgrades and put work into the house.
Issue #2 - in order to get out of paying mortgage insurance, I had to clean out my savings. No emergency fund, nothing stashed away, just the money in my checking account from my last paycheck. This is never a good idea, you should always have something just in case anything happens which I was about to learn.
Almost exactly a month after I moved into the house, I was driving home from Thanksgiving at my parents and my car broke down. Seized the motor and because it was an older car it totaled it. I was lucky enough to sell it for $1200 to use for a down payment on my next vehicle. Even with that, it was still a nightmare experience finding a replacement vehicle which took 4 months and one horrible winter.
That was my first bad experience with money. Fast forward a few years and you get to the second...
At this point, I had replenished my savings but I fell victim to something called Lifestyle Inflation. This is when your spending habits go up as your income goes up. I had a good job making good money, but I was living paycheck to paycheck. Even worse than that, I was having to pull from savings each month to cover my spending. After a few months of this and my savings getting closer and closer to zero again, I realized something had to change. I started developing the budgeting and money methodology that Im still using and refining 3 years later.
A few things to remember before we start...no two people have the same financial situation, there are just too many variables. Also, what works for me and how I like to manage things might not work for you and your situation. This site is meant to be general information and examples of what I do so you can develop your own way of doing things.
These are the steps I followed to get my financial freedom: