The Money Section of This Blog

If you check out my about page, you will see that this blog surrounds a number of topics. Lately, I have been focused on the minimalism part because I want to live my life simply. Becoming a minimalist and getting rid of my stuff that I don’t cherish has been the forefront of my life because it is what I need most. I needed to declutter because it has been stressing me out. I need to live more simply because it has positive effects on my life. I have been less depressed, less angry and more content knowing I have more free time to myself.

I’m at a point now that I can shift my focus onto other areas. One of them being money. My fiance and I are doing well for being out on our own for only 8 short months. We’re young, this is our first time living independently and surprisingly, we are doing extremely well for our age and experience. We have money in savings, have an investing account, sticking to a budget, paying our bills on time and going out and enjoying ourselves. We are content. We are good. But, we are still stressed. If an emergency happens, we’re screwed. We don’t have that much money in savings. We don’t have an emergency fund. We are in debt.

Our debt does not take form of consumer debt (we’ve actually been smarter than most people our age and know how credit cards work; they are not free money), but in student loan debt. We are uncertain how much Brandon owes, but for only going to college for half a year before dropping out, I’d say it’s not that much. He’s making $50 payments every month to it. My student loans on the other hand, started out being more than $25,000. Right now, it’s $24,120. I’ve been putting $200 on it every paycheck. At this rate, I’m still looking at 5 years worth of debt repayment. Not something I want to be doing in my early 20s.

So, I have some financial goals I want to achieve. I want to:

• Go on vacation in July. We already have enough to cover this and it’s going to money well spent. I will never regret spending money if it’s going to provide me with experiences.
• Pay off credit card. We’ve been using a lot of credit lately. Right now it is around $700 which isn’t bad at all, but if we don’t nip this in the bud, it might get out of hand. So, I want to pay it down and start paying it in full every month like I use to.
• Give back $600 to student loans. Every paycheck I’ve been putting $200 towards my student loans. But, since vacation is coming up, I decided to put every other payment into savings. This will result in $600 being taken away from student loans. So, I need to give it back.
• Get married. Next April is the date. I need to start saving for this.
• Build up emergency fund. Personal finance advisers advise to put 3 months worth of pay in your emergency fund. So, I want to build up to $8000.
• Pay off my student loans. I want to get down to the nitty-gritty and put more than $200 a month on my loans. I want to pay them off before I’m 23 (I am 20 right now).
• Pay off Brandon’s student loans. I still don’t know how much he owes, but after getting done mine, we’ll focus on his.

Seems like a big list. But, it is definitely doable. And what is going to help me achieve this? Being a minimalist, living simply, being healthy and being as green as possible.

More money posts to come.