About
PERSONAL FINANCE
Like many others, I was clueless about personal finance – and didn’t care – in my 20s. I accumulated a lot of credit card debt, bought many “cool things” – mostly computers and electronic gadgets.
In my late 20s I had an “aha” moment when I saw on my credit card bill, the number of years it would take to pay off my balance by paying the minimum amount – and it terrified me. It was then that I vowed to turn myself around – although too much by some people’s standards. I also started to get nervous about retirement with no idea on how to feel confident about it.
My frugalness began – quickly becoming an obsession. To avoid eating out, I made batches of lunches for the week and froze them, eating the same exact lunch every weekday. I even had holes in my socks and underwear and refused to throw many of them away.
I used my Palm PDA to track my spending. Expenses were rounded up, income was rounded down. I used 0% balance transfer offers across multiple credit cards as I paid them off because I despised paying interest on money owed. I hated paying rent to an apartment, so (against my parents’ recommendation) I bought my first house, and rented out the other bedrooms (now called “house hacking”) – even the master bedroom for a higher rent – to have more money to speed up paying off the credit cards. I also started selling off the crazy amount of “cool stuff” I had collected.
Luckily, it only took me about 2.5 years to pay off my credit card debt. My next stage was to try to understand how to invest for my future, while my (some may say extreme) new frugal habits continued on.
In my early 30s, I started to research online the basics of investing and started dabbling in some mutual funds. Then as I continued my learnings about 401ks vs IRAs, Traditional vs Roth, Stocks, Mutual, Index, and Target Date Funds, I personally became a fan of Target Date Funds and Index Funds as my primary investing strategies, and continued to maximize my 401ks and IRAs.
In my early 40s, I wanted to get better returns on my investments, and learned that most millionaires succeeded through Real Estate Investing (REI). Listening to Rich Dad Poor Dad gave me my “aha” moment on a new way to look at assets and liabilities. I learned more through podcasts and videos – mostly from Brandon Turner and Bigger Pockets – which gave me my initial knowledge to start in REI. In the first 2 years, I purchased 4 long-term rental properties, self managed the 2 local ones and hired a Property Manager for 2 remote ones, and it has become my favorite form of investing. I also truly enjoy analyzing properties, being a landlord, and even doing handyman work myself. But REI is an area that is so wide, there is still a lot I do not fully understand and will continue to learn and grow in. As many say, getting started was the hardest and the most terrifying part. It required me to “incrementally challenge myself” out of my comfort zone.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT, RELATIONSHIPS, MENTAL HEALTH
Growing up, I was very introverted and shy, and have always had social anxiety. As I grew older, I learned that “incrementally challenging yourself” builds confidence, while at the same time, improves your life. I’ve taken on jobs I thought I wasn’t a perfect fit for, forced myself to take on public speaking, and learned to accept calculated risks when investing in REI.
I’ve also learned the importance of not dwelling on what you don’t have control over, being self-aware to understand your own weaknesses and to understand the thinking of “the other side” (i.e. commercialism, intention), constantly analyzing how your actions can improve your life, and looking at food as fuel for the mind and body.
Although I have had both failures and successes – financially, in relationships/marriage, even experiencing and dealing with mental health – I get a lot of joy talking to others, especially younger people open to hearing and learning from my own experiences.