Tag: financial

#58 Proper Accounting

Okay, well I didn’t become an accountant or anything, but I think I can say with some confidence that I understand accounting a lot better than when I wrote that goal.

I was thrown into learning how to manage finances for a business and learning the ins and out of the business was really the key in me understanding how the finances worked. Which took me a couple years to fully grasp and once I got that the books for the business became way easier to understand. Understanding a business is super helpful when you are learning how to bookkeep if you never really were a book keeper. There were things I didn’t understand and as I’ve grown up things started clicking more and stuff that’s obvious to me now were completely unknown to me like 4 years ago.

So I am not an accountant of any type, but I can do some book keeping and keep up with my taxes and financials pretty well and that seems like a solid life skill attained.

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#53 Start Investing

Fantastic news everyone! I saved enough money to start investing.

Which I have indeed started investing already. I started small by putting a small portion of my savings in a low risk investment portfolio and just let that sit there.

But then as investing goes you start getting more curious about stocks and then you do some research. End up buying more and more. Which then I took about half of my savings and spread out investments all over.

I’ve set myself up for mostly long term investments as I would rather try to place my bets in a safer place. Alas markets can always change so there is nothing that is actually safe, but for the most part my investments are in low risk areas which I feel better about.

There isn’t much else to say on this goal, but a quick update for it just to show that it is in motion.

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#51 Budget

Savings and Budget go hand and hand for me, so obviously this was going to be the next post. The budget properly happened  when I finally started focusing on my savings more because the only way for me to do anything with out touching that savings money was to budget.

If you saw my last post I mentioned I was being aggressive with saving money and because of that I’ve had to be really careful with what I spend money on and really thinking over every aspect of what I can and can’t afford. When I first started my budget it was difficult just cause I was used to just paying it off whenever, but now that I didn’t have the full safety of my full income it made me refocus and go through all my payments.

I started by going through every single subscription and monthly payments that I had. I ended up cancelling a few and going to cheaper subscriptions and it ended up that I was paying around $100 in things I didn’t even care about or use that much. I then stopped eating out every week and now I think I only go out once or twice a month.

The hardest thing for my budget has been when I want cool things. So I usually take a few weeks to decide if I really want something and if it’s just not in the moment. For the most part my thinking has led me to buying the stuff, but I’m glad I thought about it for a few weeks to prepare the money for it and make room in my budget. That way I can still have fun, but also have enough money to live.

Whether I will always stick to the budget plan I have now I don’t know, but it’s been working for me for a while now and I think I’ve developed good habits that I intend to use for the rest of my life.

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#52 Savings

I’ve always been good at saving money and not spending it on items I don’t necessarily need. I do buy things for fun and I make sure to spend my money on experiences that will be worth it, but I also always try to find the right deal for me.

With that said. I’ve never actually had a savings account. So last year I opened one up and I did a quick google search of how much I should have in savings by the time I’m 30. I found a few random numbers that people thought you should have by 30 and I saw some percentages for savings based off income.

In the end of that little research I decided to focus on my savings using the 50 / 30 / 20 rule, which is also what I am currently setting up my budget to be. 50% in necessities, 30% in wants, and 20% in savings. Since I didn’t really start my savings til this year I’ve been a bit more aggressive than 20% of my income every month. I’ve been making sure to divert any extra cash that way to build it and I’ve made sure to have my paycheck split into two bank accounts. That way I don’t even see that 20% ever in my bank account. Makes it way easier to save when it just happening. Bless direct deposits.

My plan right now is to use a portion of my savings to invest once I get to a more comfortable amount in my savings and have it grow that way. As for now I’ve made it a solid year of straight habit to put money in my savings and I feel like that’s a goal worthy accomplishment!

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Master List

The Plan: Have 100 goals completed before I turn 30.

The Goals:

  1. Know over 25 go to healthy recipes
  2. Clear skin
  3. Find a fitness activity to be passionate about
  4. Get to and maintain a 59 kilograms weight
  5. Keep consistent pace on a run
  6. Dance every day for a month
  7. Do another OCR
  8. 20 Mile Hike
  9. 20 Consecutive Push Ups
  10. Learn some yoga
  11. Master a classical piano piece
  12. Make a table top game
  13. Build a game table
  14. Finish a full art journal
  15. Paint a picture
  16. Scrapbook
  17. Learn calligraphy
  18. Bake and Decorate an Eccentric Cake
  19. Learn ballroom dancing
  20. Write a Book
  21. Zorbing
  22. Sky dive
  23. Parasailing/Paragliding
  24. Canyoneering
  25. Learn to Sail
  26. Zip line
  27. Surfing
  28. Scuba Diving
  29. Bungee jump
  30. Backpacking trip
  31. Read 1000 books
  32. Fluent Spanish
  33. Decent Korean
  34. Obscure history
  35. Connoisseur of Tea
  36. Study Business
  37. Art History
  38. Astronomy
  39. Study a Theory
  40. Learn something I have no prior interest in
  41. Puerto Rico
  42. Spain
  43. Italy
  44. Peru
  45. South Korea
  46. Southeast Asia
  47. Greece
  48. Iceland
  49. New Zealand
  50. Road Trip the U.S.
  51. Budget
  52. Savings
  53. Start Investing
  54. 800+ Credit Score
  55. Passive Income
  56. Financial Freedom
  57. Pay off all Debts
  58. Proper Accounting
  59. Start my own business
  60. Own a Home
  61. Gardening
  62. Fly Tying
  63. Cardistry
  64. Survival
  65. Knife Throwing
  66. Leather Craft
  67. Bartending
  68. Fighting
  69. Videography
  70. Beauty
  71. Go Dancing at least twice a month for a year
  72. Monthly Board Game Night
  73. Go out every night for 1 week
  74. Throwback outings
  75. Live music
  76. Make New Friends
  77. Say Yes
  78. Go to Vegas with a Group
  79. Dating
  80. Join a Club
  81. 9 Ball Break and Run
  82. Complete a Dozen Escape Rooms
  83. See a Play on Broadway
  84. Stay in a Haunted Hotel
  85. Fly First Class
  86. Have the best Theme Party
  87. Go to a World Festival
  88. Cook Everything in a Cookbook
  89. Drive an Expensive Sports Car
  90. Teach dog utterly useless trick
  91. Have a Car Chase
  92. Befriend strangers at hotel
  93. Go to a Psychic
  94. Start a dramatic scene from a movie to someone in coffee shop
  95. Return something lost to someone
  96. Have someone tell me their life story
  97. See someone in a bookstore looking at a book and buy it for them
  98. See a shop that is doing some type of class and go sign up for one
  99. Make up a different persona for a day
  100. Attend a fancy affair

Financial

I actually wasn’t going to do financial goals just because I hate the topic of money, but it wouldn’t really be plausible for me not to have any finance goals before I turn 30. Money and finances coexist with everything else in life, so best to just get it all out there.

Also, before I get on with the list I didn’t want to do this list mostly because a lot of this stuff is stuff I can’t check off until I turn 30 and it’s more of the long-term goals that blend in together. Which are good, but with lists I just wanna cross everything out and be done. That won’t be the case for this one, as it seems like it is more my financial plan.

Financial Goals: 

  1. Budget
    • Probably the most common financial goal because everyone needs to focus on their spending. I will say that my budget as a whole is actually not too bad, but I intend to rein it in and do some analysis and see where I should be focusing to get to where I wanna be by 30.
  2. Savings
    • Always smart to have money saved up for big purchases such as a home or traveling and at this current time I don’t have much in savings. Which is why it’s on this list so I can actually get saving within my budget and from there I will hopefully get a solid cushion of money in savings.
  3. Start Investing
    • With that lovely savings because just hoarding money isn’t fun and I really want to experiment with investing and markets. In order to do that I need money that isn’t going to be too risky and won’t harm me financially if it all goes bad.
  4. 800+ Credit Score
    • I don’t think this is something I can maintain long term, but I would like to hit an 800+ credit score just for the bragging rights to say I have a credit score over 800.
  5. Passive Income
    • The plan is to essentially have enough passive income that will cover my living expenses that way it will never be a worry.  But before that can happen I will need to find a way to establish passive income and let it grow on the side.
  6. Financial Freedom
    • This is where my passive income will hopefully come into play as well  if I have done it successfully. If not I can assume I tried it and still can count that as completing that item. But as for this it’s going to be a big reach and a lot to do in my 8 years until 30. I want to get to a point in my life that I won’t have to worry about living expenses or splurging on a last-minute trip. I’d like to do some of my best and profitable work in my 20s and then just allow whatever I do to grow for the rest of my life.
  7. Pay off all Debts
    • At this point in my life my debts are actually low, but since I still have quite a few years to accumulate debt I can’t really consider this done until 30. The main focus will be trying to keep low debt even on bigger purchases or loans that way I am managing debt and not drowning in it.
  8. Proper Accounting
    • So here is something odd, a lot of the work that I do is accounting and financial business. The thing is I was more thrown into it and I don’t actually have proper training. I came in to a business and it was a learn as you go experience and I worked with some people who showed me the essentials and then they were like be free. I need to get to a point that I know what I’m doing.
  9. Start my own business
    • I’ve done some freelancing and I currently have businesses with my family, but I don’t want either of those to qualify as solely mine. I guess the freelancing can be considered just mine, but at the time I felt more like I was hobby freelancing just to feel it out and it just didn’t feel like a business. Honestly this is something that I am not sure will be successful because though I have businesses those were already mostly created when I came into them. So, for my own I really want to experience starting from scratch, coming up with an idea, fulfilling that idea, and see if it works and to see if I have a little entrepreneurship in me. And if it fails completely then I am assuming I will have learned exponentially from it, so it’s a win/win.
  10. Own a Home
    • This is the simplest way I’m phrasing this because the full goal is not only own a home, but find the ideal place for me to live. Financially you have to buy the house, but before that I will need to live somewhere that suits me financially, morally, emotionally, etc. I don’t know if I intend for this home to be the home that I’d like to have for the rest of my life, but I kind of would like to find a place that I would keep forever. If not living in it forever, but then keeping it to rent or something.