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How I started my journey to financial stability

Ever been the kid in school who wasn’t able to get anything mainstream? During my days in middle school, the Iphone 4 was the phone that most students had at the time. While everyone enjoyed using the features, I felt left out. I kind of knew my parents at the time would also say no to anything new and mainstream. They would always remind me that I should be grateful that I had a flip phone with limited text messages, no internet, and limited service because they had to use the public telephone booth when they were kids and had to communicate with their parents.

This is what it looks like:

There wasn’t anything I could say because, yes, I should feel grateful because I don’t have to go searching for a telephone booth.

BUT still, It sucked.

I wasn’t able to get anything new and trendy that everyone else in the school seem to have. I always thought to myself:

“Why couldn’t that just be me?”

Why can’t I just be that person that can get anything they wanted?

What were they doing that I wasn’t doing?

I was so angry and frustrated at myself all the time.

I felt like there was nothing I can do about it.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that my parents have taught me a very important lesson that I want to share with you. The important lesson my parents taught me is the ability to independently think and solve problems.

Fast forward a decade, I’m debt free and on my way to financial stability. I have read many books, articles, and regularly listen to podcasts such as the bigger pockets or Rich Dad Radio show and consistently educate myself on personal finance. I know when I need to be a spend thrift and frugal. I am currently learning about different vehicles that can help me achieve financial stability.

Most people my age have student loans that will take god knows how long to pay off. Most people my age receive a loan for a piece of paper and maybe possibly some skills and knowledge that can be translated into getting a job in their interested industries. I realized that for people who lost big time during the ‘07 -’08 crash at least had something physically real and had intrinsic value. Myself included, many people find it difficult to get a career in the field of their studies because they realize that school never prepared them to be qualified for the job requirements for most positions.

Realizing this before my Sophomore year, despite many of my peers disagreeing with my strategy, I decided to graduate a year early so I can take the time to learn and experience the job market in real life: my version of graduate school A.K.A the school of hard knocks. During my summer breaks, I worked as a life guard, delivered food, and drove for the ride share companies and saved every dollar I had so I can graduate debt free. There were many times when I wanted to give up. There were many times that I felt like I was missing out with friends and experiences. But I stuck to my goal and kept my head down and hustled. I was focused on the goal.

Immediately after I graduated, I was able to pay off the student loan of $12,000 in full. I remember feeling relieved and excited because I was now able to move on to building a plan for financial security. This was because I was able to think for myself and stuck to the plan. I always thought about how I can make more money and save it so I don’t have to deal with student loans for 30 years like many Americans do.

After graduating and working for a year and a half, I realized that schools don’t tell you about certain jobs that are going away because of automation. They also don’t tell you about interest rates and how that affects you. They don’t teach you about how to handle money properly with a great logical strategy that gets you closer to your goals. What they do tell you is that you need another degree via graduate school. You would think they are telling you this because it’s for your benefit. Unfortunately, if you look at your financial statement and look at where the money is flowing, in my opinion. I think it’s for their benefit.

Q: So how did you realize this early on before you went into student loan debt? And how were you able to act early and make the student loan problem smaller?

A: It’s only comes down to Three things Assets, Liabilities, cash flow.

With the help of my parents setting up the situation where I was frustrated, curious, and jealous, I read and listened to as many personal finance resources I can and I wanted to learn how to solve the problem of how to get the things I want. As per the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad,

If you’re confused, let me explain by using student loans as an example. If you look at the chart below, you will see what I mean.

On the left is your financial statements, on the right being the bank, or government, or your university/school, or whomever you are borrowing from. As you can see, you have an asset: University degree. It is an “asset” because it increases your likely hood of generating income but it doesn’t necessarily cash flow for you. To me it’s speculative. You also have a liability called Student loans. If you look in your income statement in the expense column, there is a line that says monthly student loan debt repayment. If you follow the money, the same monthly student loan debt repayment goes to the income column of the lender’s financial statement. You also see that in the lender’s assets column, they have student loans. They don’t have liabilities from this transaction.

To summarize:

The sooner you can be on the right side, you will achieve financial stability.

I understood that it’s a liability. To solve this problem, first I lessened the debt because I didn’t have the option to not graduate because my parents required me to get a bachelors even though I was thinking about dropping out. That way, I don’t have to go into debt paying for another years worth of education. But instead, I just made it quicker. People have told me you can’t do that so many times. Even the career counselors, who also had no idea what they were talking about, told me you can’t. So I independently thought through how I can graduate in the fastest way possible. Thanks to my drive and childhood experience of not getting the things I wanted, I made it happen for myself.

How can I get something I want?

What are their parents doing that allows them to give their kids the things they want?

Why was their house much bigger and their cars much nice than ours?

These are some questions I asked as a kid that helped develop that part of me to think independently and come up with solutions. The ability to think, the curiously, and jealousy is what has allowed me to learn about how I can begin to live life in the way I want to. I remember my parents telling me, if you really want something, just learn the skills and strategy that makes sense, and the apply it AND/OR use money to buy it.

This is what allowed me to spend almost $1000 and much of my time on personal finance, educate myself, and learn how to be debt free and start my journey to financial stability.

I make sure I create AND review my financial statement weekly. And I always ask myself:

How can I increase my asset column?

How can I reduce my liabilities?

How can I reduce expenses?

How can I increase income?

Its simple. Definitely not sexy. But makes me feel less guilty when I spend money or confident in the financial decisions I make.

The financial stability is a peace of mind. It’s control over your money and not the other way around. You are the one that either creates the stability or instability. Money does not think anything of you and it most certainly does not make the everyday decisions for you.

You do.

Once you can think for yourself and make sound decisions based on logical facts, and stick to your financial plan, based on what I learned from thousands of hours of studying wealthy people, you can become financially stable.

This took me a lot of thought and effort!

Please leave a comment below on your thoughts or clap for me! 😃👏👏👏👏

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