While everyone’s got a story to tell, my personal finance story isn’t very exciting.
I’ve been lucky enough to not encounter huge amounts of debt. My only debt was being in the red, a couple hundred dollars short. I had just graduated and embarked on a month-long backpacking trip to Europe. I have always been a saver, and more recently in the past couple of years, an investor.
Bad luck: It all started when I quit my 2nd job only after a year. I didn’t have anything lined up, no plan, goals, nothing. Having just purchased a car earlier that year, I decided to take on a retail job. Not the ideal job when you’re a university graduate, but hey a job is a job. You have to pay the bills somehow. After almost a year of working retail, I quit and then jumped to another job that was less pay, less guaranteed pay, less stable. After 8 months of not really making money, I decided to make my part-time job which I had been doing while I worked my 2nd job, into my full-time job. So I made even less money but still managed to pay my car loan and insurance. Mind you, I was living at home during that time because I could not afford to move out. Yes, I will openly admit that I was a boomerang kid.
After getting my steady job early 2011, I finally moved out and re-experienced the independence I had when I went away to university. Being frugal, tracking my expenses, working a full-time job that has overtime pay each month (which varies), having a part-time job, investing and paying myself first has enabled me to still save a decent portion of my income. (I’d eventually like to get to almost 50%). I prefer to keep my net worth private, but I’m on the positive side and its growing. When I look at the amount, I am proud of what I had managed to save despite not working full time for a couple of years. 🙂
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