Growing Up Fast

I am not sure why, but in the past week I have found myself in at least two conversations about how fast my life changed and how fast I had to learn a lot of new things. Most of my friends are still not married and do not have kids. So when they look at what I accomplished at such a young age and in such little time, they are sort of impressed and curious. Most ask how I knew what to do or how I am affording it all. I am somewhat shocked myself. But when you are put in a situation and you don't know something, you do whatever it takes to figure it out. I have always been good with money and to me, budgeting it a game. I have never had credit card debt and I always tried living in my means.

I have a spreadsheet that a lot of people that are close to me have heard me talk a lot about. It is a simple spreadsheet that just shows how much money I am making broken up into my two jobs, joanna's job and miscellaneous. Then it shows how much I spend each month broken up into a lot of categories like DirecTV, Visa, Student loans, Car payments, etc... Then at the bottom it shows the total for each month, a profit or loss section and then at the end it shows the year. That is pretty much it, but it is addicting to me and I would be lost without it. I would go crazy not knowing how much I was making or losing each month. It also helps me stay on track and doesn't let us get carried away. If anyone would like the spreadsheet, I can send you over a template of it.

But anyway, I have had this spreadsheet going since I moved out with Jeff Kramer in 2005. It is quite comical looking back to the first year versus now to see how much more I spend per month. I think I use to spend about $400-$700/month and now I spend on average $4000-$4500/month! Rabbit (Steve Toerner) was blown away by this since he is at about $400/month. And he was one of the people that asked how I learned everything. Well thank God for the internet and family. I learned a lot from just researching credit cards and loans, but I also learned a lot from my parents and my uncles. It really isn't a hard concept, but it is a lot of hard work. Obviously in order to spend that much to survive, I need to work overtime to make that much per month. It has been a struggle and it has eaten away all of my saving from when I was only spending $500/month. But it has definitely been worth it. And I am glad to say that we are finally, yet slowly, getting out of some of our debt and starting to turn some profit. It was a scary two or three years, but I now feel like I know 100 times more than I did in 06.

I don't consider myself an expert by any means, but if you do ever feel lost or scared moving into the real world, don't be afraid to ask me anything. If nothing else, we can at least brainstorm or talk things out, sometimes that is all someone needs. Most people our age don't think it is a normal conversation to have or people get upset talking about it (Jeff). Once someone wants to talk about it, it is hard to get me stop :D. So you have been warned.

Since my friend Ryan told me to do a "7" blog, I figured I would leave you with 7 quick tips about money, debt, whatever:

1. Do not have credit card debt! It is pretty obvious, yet a lot of people still do this. Only use a credit card if you plan on paying it off each month OR if it has a low balance transfer for the life of the loan or if you get a 0% for 12 month card that you PAY by the end of the 12 months.

2. When you go to buy a house, no matter what, you will feel like the bank is trying to screw you. Be prepared to put more up front than you initially thought.

3. Houses are expensive. In the first year of living in my house, I spent around $5,000 on additional things inside the house not counting the mortgage, taxes and insurance.

4. Pay down debt first before you save. If you have a credit card with 20% interest on it and you only have $1,000 to pay on it, don't save the $1,000 you have in a savings account. Odds are that savings account is only earning at most 2% or 3% right now. Your money is much better spent paying off that debt.

5. Don't just pay the minimum of what you owe. I always just set a price and even though my minimum due goes down, I keep my monthly payment at the same rate or even pay additional payments instead of going out and buying something I don't need.

6. Student loans, house loans, college funds, etc.. are "better" loans to have. you will get to write them off on your taxes. Credit cards and personal loans, you do not. So pay those off first.

7. This is my favorite. You will always find something to spend your money on. Not sure how to explain this but basically, if you have the money sitting around instead of using that money to pay off other debt each month, you will find a way to spend that money. If you don't have the money, you won't spend it. So if you put $50 more per month into paying off your debt, you will see that you don't have $50 extra and therefore can't spend that on something you may or may not even need.

Hope this helps!

**UPDATE**
I thought this was comical. I remembered while writing this that I had started a blog back in 2007 that I was going to write and be "anonymous". I called it the Blue Brick Warehouse and I couldn't even tell you why. I haven't check the email address since I stopped writing on it. I think it was another one of my ideas that I thought was great for a week and then abondoned it. I found it on our test server at work, so I figured I would let you all take a laugh at it. Click here to view it. If it doesn't work for you, it is probably because your internet service is blocking our test server, so tough luck for you!