BKfinancial

Well I have thought a long time about writing and today marks my first time doing so 1-14-2020. I decided to record through this blog my financial moves in 2020, I am 32 and up to this point in my life have never even attempted to manage my money, finances, retirement or savings in any way, having said that today was the first big day for me I received and activated my very first credit card, I intend to use this card as a platform to grow my credit score so I may one day begin the purchase of a house.

So let me update you with the moves I have made in 2020 starting January 1st. First and foremost I sat down and reviewed all my expenses versus my current incomes and used that as a starting point for designing my first monthly budget, as of today I am off budget by $47 due to being somewhat irresponsible (old habits are hard to break and all that), but in essence I have a road map that i intend to follow while correcting my spending actions as I make slips ups. The second thing I did was begin looking into how to invest any savings I currently have and any future savings I accumulate through budgeting, so to this point I have never saved a dime for retirement no 401k no IRA and really no emergency fund at all either. I made the decision to sign up for my company 401k and will be finalizing that this week, with that completed my next move will be to look into an IRA which i intend to speak with a professional about, I will update my leanings this week here.

Closing thoughts

Finance and planning both seem like a very scary concept to me as I have waited so long to begin working on my future, choosing to just ignore these vital things was definitely not the right move as one should never choose inaction due to fear. I will move forward and even though I may encounter set backs and hiccups I know that managing my monies will set me up for a better and brighter future.

Thanks so much for taking this time with me today and I look forward to sharing my progress and knowledge as I go. B

“Financial Freedom” As I have been exploring the astoundingly large world of finance I have noticed a term that people throw around a lot, honestly I don’t think financial freedom exists you budget and save and invest even design personal strategies for you monies but none of this ever leads to freedom. Freedom implies that you can do what you want but doing what you want leads to financial distress as far as I can tell, I think I prefer the term financial independence this gives me a sense of control. being independent is not necessarily freedom its ensuring that you have some room to maneuver your money and make some decisions while keeping in line with the overall goal of growing your wealth to maintain a certain life style. so I say beware of the snake oil that financial freedom is sold as.

My whole life I have never considered finances to matter much or even budgeting for that matter I have always just lived on the cusp of my whims without putting much or any thought to why it might be important to save or plan or even care really. This to me has always been a live for today kinda of life and after talking to many people and reading many posts and watching a ton of videos i’m starting to think that maybe a lot of people are doing the same thing I started this blog to catalog my journey from start to finish in terms of money management and i will honestly say i do not know if will be successful I also can say that being fearful is not in my nature so as i write this with my credit score open on the other page I cant help but wonder why does financials and money management scare me so much why does the prospect of working until i am 90 so disheartening and why are so many people doing and feeling the same.

Now to the updates from my last post- First i set up my first ever credit card and begin using it for my morning routine transactions i have so far spent $32.57 using this card I was also able to make my first payment on my card today for $11.56, i promise it is no lie to say that I am so paranoid about credit cards I checked that thing everyday so I could immediately pay off my balance after it cleared, it so funny to think that credit scores dictate so much of who we are what we can buy and how banks look at us. i am proud of this step though as I feel this was a big move to stabilizing my finances and getting one step closer to control over my money and spending.

The second thing I have done this week is make my first move into investing in stocks to grow my hopefully not 90 year old retirement I plan to make another specific post regarding my investing process and ideologies soon so I wont go into details but suffice to say it was exhilarating to take a step towards and eventual retirement…

Thanks so much for taking this time with me and i hope my journey can be yours

MY First Blog post (Brandon) 1-14-2020

1-17-2020 (Brandon)