I am so excited that you are here! Thank you for joining me on a journey through personal finance. I hope you find the information on this site useful.
Let me start by saying that I am in no way an expert on money matters. I am constantly learning about personal finance & changing my views and opinions based off new found knowledge. That being said, I would love to share with you some of the things that have been pivotal for me.
I started by personal finance and investing journey after an eye-opening day.
It had been 6 whole months since my daughter started 1st grade. So why was I still reduced to a sobbing mess every Monday morning on my way to work after leaving her school’s drop off line? Something had to change, urgently. I needed to find a way to stop working while still making money to provide a living for my family. But how?
One Monday, the sobbing didn’t end after the 20 minute drive from my daughter’s school to my job. I know what you’re thinking: 20 minute drive? In Southern California traffic? Yes, I am one of the very lucky ones to have a relatively short commute to work in LA’s fashion industry. Even so, I was still unable to calm down on this particular morning. I didn’t want to leave my baby for the majority of the day with essentially strangers anymore! Immediately upon arriving at work, I googled “how to make money doing nothing”. After going down a rabbit hole of weeding out scams and things that I didn’t really consider doing ‘nothing’, I found this magical term: ‘FIRE’.
FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early. Pretty much means exactly what it says. To have enough savings and passive income (through investments, passive businesses, real estate, etc) to cover your expenses and support your lifestyle before you reach retirement age.
Now, I’ll tell you something that I was not ready to come to terms with in that desperate moment: achieving this goal is NOT something that happens overnight. The more I dug in, the more discouraged I got. I’d started too late! I should have been on this road DECADES ago! I could have been retired by now? Why did nobody tell me this was an option?!
Here is where my ‘why’ sets in. The steps to take to achieve FIRE are simple and doable. You just have to know what to do, and do it. I want to provide others with what I wish I’d had long ago: basic personal finance knowledge and guidance that would completely change my life.
Imagine how many generations of your family will benefit from knowing that they are not obligated to trade their time for money until retirement age. That if they worked hard for a relatively brief period of time and made smart yet simple money decisions, they would no longer be obligated to trade their time for money, and use their time to pursue what makes them happy.
It is my goal to reach as many young women as possible to educate them on the importance of building good personal finance habits — something I wish I had known as a young adult. It wasn’t until I was grown and married with kids, student loans, auto loans, and a mortgage that I learned the details of basic personal finance and retirement.
Even if (you think) you’re goal is not to pursue the ‘retire early’ in FIRE, unless you’re looking to work up until the day you die, and I don’t think many people have this as a goal, you’re going to need to achieve the ‘FI’, or financial independence part.
When I said earlier that it was too late for me, that was me being dramatic. It’s never to late to start building good financial habits for your future and for your children. If all I do is get people to secure a future in retirement, then that’s an accomplishment. There’s this popular saying that says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” So let’s get started now!