CHILDHOOD – I am a SAVER. Whenever I got my allowance or money from relatives, I would tuck it away or put in my piggy bank. We didn’t go shopping for random things all the time, only groceries. Therefore, more incentive to save! When we got older, we went on a shopping spree with our cousins (mom and aunts took us to the big mall). It was a lot of fun! That’s an idea to keep in the back of our minds for our own children later, to go with their friends or cousins.
WORKING – When I started working at 16, I can’t remember how much I saved or what, because I had a car and had to get gas. But I had a checkbook and was slowly learning how it all worked. It also got frustrating when I had to keep matching the checkbook to the bank account, for some expenses didn’t match perfectly (where I would keep it in order, but the bank didn’t match it on the correct day the transaction happened).
COLLEGE – During college, the only thing I had to do was watch how much I spent on my school “debit” card for the quarter/semester. I always made sure I had enough! In summers, I worked and saved as much as I could. I also didn’t do too much.
INTERNSHIP – When I went to Massachusetts for my summer at a higher paying job, I saved a lot. All I did was go to work and back home. My roommates hung with each other and nearby friends, as we lived in an apartment meant for interns. I went on outings with them, but I didn’t spend a ton. I saved around $4,000 that summer!
AFTER COLLEGE – When college was done soon after, I really wished I had STAYED HOME TO SAVE. My boyfriend (now my husband) needed to find an apartment. We wanted to be together and two people paying on an apartment would be better than one. But I lost the $4,000 in order to do this, because only he was working at the time. I finally got my 2nd internship in finance at a hospital. We were both working. We both sort of struggled with mail and finances, and with each other. My boyfriend was never on his own, so he didn’t think about bills until it was in his face. This was around the time I began to look into ways to save money. Then as it got close to 1 year, the owners of the building needed the apartment for family. So my boyfriend and I went back with our own families.
DAD’S METHOD – In his 20s, my dad had to learn how to take care of his trailer/land and money, a little bit the hard way. Once he met my mother and told her of his dreams of building a house, things got better for him with banks, loans, and credit. He paid/pays everything on time and even earlier. Automatic payments were another thing that he learned about and uses. He showed me a list he made on excel and printed, that lists all of his bills for the month. He checked them off as they happened. The check register is still used, and he prints extra to add into his book. For some reason, this system didn’t seem to work for me. OR I wasn’t ready yet.
CENTRAL APARTMENT/SISTER/BACK AGAIN – I had another chance to STAY HOME AND SAVE, but I was jealous as my sister found an apartment after finishing college and moved out quickly. I was used to being on my own and liked it. So I quickly found a GOOD apartment complex that was a decent price, was well maintained, and at a great location! My boyfriend soon joined me. After a few years there, my sister was restless and wanted us to live together in an apartment to save money. Then she found a house! So we moved in with her for a few years. Soon I was engaged and we needed to move out and back to that central apartment again. Luckily it was still at a decent price and rooms were available. My sister eventually sold the house as she couldn’t afford it alone, and found her old apartment again like I did. Weird! I wished we never did that because we probably lost money doing this, even though the intention was to save money. I also think it was a blessing so my sister could learn more about my boyfriend.
TRIED THE EXCEL METHOD FOR BUDGETING – A friend from my accounting classes in college told me how she budgeted. So I tried it: I made an excel sheet that had all our incomes and bills/expenses. Then made 12 sheets of a kind of register that would hold all the possible categories and actual transactions per month. Categories would list on the left column. Totals would tally up on the bottom row. It was a nice set-up! But for a detailed person like me, it was too detailed and complex-looking. Plus, I didn’t want to have to go on my computer every time I needed to update it. I was also tracking my credit card account the same way. No, this was too much!
TRAILER – As rents began to rise around Covid19 time, we got an offer from family to get my grandmother’s trailer. But there was no way to move it. Then we saw the trailer parks having newer trailers on the lots, and I wanted that. My husband’s family had some money to help us out, so we went ahead and got the trailer. My concerns about getting any kind of house was: how much would the bills be if we did? How much do we need to save for emergencies? Mortgage, heating, electricity, internet, etc. In an apartment is was cheaper in a sense. Your own house, things could get costly because of things breaking down or how big the house was to how much electricity or heat you used.
IN CONCLUSION:
If I had to change anything, it would be: “Stay home and save money for as long as you can.” Moving is expensive as well as exhausting. I would prefer, as probably many people would too, to get a house after leaving my childhood home.
I have learned: we need to know our budget (income and expenses) AND keep track of what we are spending (to make sure we pay what we owe and make the most of our money). To take advantage of technology to make things easier, if we so wish.
So I basically combined my dad and friend’s advice to make something simple for myself. It’s different for everyone, so you would have to make your own. But here is mine if you want a layout. I printed them to do them by hand, as I don’t open my computer daily.
