Category: Twenty Somethings

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Julia Twenty Somethings

Budgeting

Apparently its common at age 27 to finally be holding all the adult cards in life. Your done with graduate school by then, and your loans grace period is up (and the period where you made so little money they didn’t ask for any. Oops compounding interest). You’re probably on you own cellphone plan and health insurance. You may have skated by with car insurance through your mom or dad but now they’re handing that over too. You’re paying rent and bills and living your life while realizing that that future with kids and a family really isn’t that far away…

Some of what is above is true for me and I am finally admitting I need to budget, for real. Thus far I have gotten by and “budgeted” by knowing I wasn’t spending all the money on my paycheck every two weeks, and when I did dipping into my savings. A year and a half of that later and my savings is dwindling quite low and new expenses are coming my way. I have had a Mint.com account since a friend showed it to me in college but I never really used it. I thought I should start with something more simple and then when a real budget comes together, transfer it over to Mint for upkeep and tracking.

A co-worker sent me this and its a really quick way to see what your budget is looking like. I’m on phase one of tracking my expenses for the month to see exactly how much is going out for groceries, food, entertainment, travel, etc. Panic attack coming soon.

http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/spending/T007-S001-budgeting-worksheet-a-household-budget-for-today-a/ 

I think my thirty, forty, fifty year-old self will be thankful I owned being an adult.

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Julia Twenty Somethings

Bell Curve

Dealing with people isn’t getting any easier the older you get. Like a Bell Curve, where in the beginning and end you could give a shit what people think about you/have no pretense about complexities in relationships. But in the middle is where you’re always pretty much within one standard deviation away from the apex of the curve.  Your relationships are more difficult, and there is so much potential for unspoken issues that sit, like giant pink polka-dot elephants in the room.

The edges are you when you think relationships are simple, you express everything you’re feeling. The rest? Its complicated.

What’s the best way to deal with this average place, where we spend the majority of our lives dealing with all kinds of relationships? Wishing it away to a time ‘back when things were simpler’ or looking ahead to when you will be old and ‘just won’t give a damn’ isn’t very constructive; but that’s what plenty of people do.

I’m wondering now, as I wade through several surprisingly confusing relationships in my own life, if it is fear that keeps people just a step away from that damned standard deviation. The majority of people behave a certain way regarding their relationships, so why shouldn’t you do as they do?

I’m working up the courage to not adhere to the norm and if I have to deal with confusing relationships I am going to be as close the the edges of that bell curve as possible. For me, this means saying how I feel and not first worrying about what the other person may think/construe from my words. It means learning that some of the relationships I value most are somewhat unhealthy for me – and working hard to be more honest with myself, my feelings and whoever the relationship includes. Basically not letting the people continue to ignore the elephant. He’s fucking there and pink and polka-dot.

Lets acknowledge this and either work around it or agree that maybe its just best that we both leave the room.

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Julia Twenty Somethings

Happiness First

“So, let go of things. Stop deciding an unknown future based on a temporary bliss and fleeting acceptance. Be selfish. Be you and who you want to be without the pressures of outside opinions.”

I just read an article called “Being Selfish Isn’t Being Rude…It’s Putting Your Happiness First” and it was like someone wrote it especially for me. The quote above jumped out at me as I read and I wanted to share it here. A friend recently told me that I am too nice and do too much for others and care too much for them as well. I usually chalk it up to a part of my personality that just won’t quit and keep moving. But this article spoke to so much that I feel; like helping someone all day or being pre-occupied with others and situations outside myself to the point where I am not taking the time to find my own direction and make my own plans.

In the ‘Summer of Julia’, a corny but hopefully true plan for the short sun-filled months ahead I think I am going to incorporate taking time to be intentionally selfish into my life. Maybe I will learn something about myself and the kind of person I am, without putting so much weight on what others expect of me.

Find the whole article here.

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Samuel Twenty Somethings

Using The Seinfeld Productivity Method

Over the years I have constantly struggled to maintain a “productive” schedule. I tried post it notes, calendars, too-do list… pretty much any kind of productivity hack you can think of, all of which I had various degrees of success with. The main problem with all of these methods is that they would get complicated, and they don’t really show you a “big picture” of how you are doing. I recently came across a quote from Seinfeld about the method he used when he was early in his career, and he credits it with powering his success. Naturally this intrigued me since he is one of the most successful humans on the planet, so I set out to see how this method works for me.

The basic premise behind this method is very simple. Get a large calendar, hang it up on your wall in a place that you can easily see it. Then decide on 3-4 activities you want to do every day. If you do those activities, you get a big check mark for that day, if you don’t do those activities then you have to put a big ugly x mark on that day. I’ve been using this method for 5 months so far this year, and it has REALLY improved my life, and my overall productivity. The goals for each day are completely arbitrary, and will be different for everyone. My goals happen to be to wake up at an appropriate hour, to spend between 3-6 hours of “focused” working, and to get at least 45 minutes of exercise in. To get an idea of what kind of calendar you should use see my setup below:

IMG_20140516_105041_055

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Twenty Somethings

2 great songs to set as your morning alarm

If your like me and waking up in the morning is a real struggle, you may find one or both of these wake up songs helpful. I know I enjoy starting my day with them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu5q_awytxU (as an alarm)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNCSxqcOOTQ (as my snooze alarm)

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Samuel Twenty Somethings

Making Life Easier (aka lowering your overhead)

I get asked quite often how I’m able to go through life just doing things my own way and seemingly not paying much attention to authority, or the normal “rules of the road”.  I work for myself, I do not pay much attention to time or schedules, and to most people I don’t seem to be taking life all that seriously (which is true, I work very hard and I’m very competitive but I do not get worked up about things that most people do).

My answer to everyone is always very simple, and I fear very over-looked. I tell them to  Lower your overhead. So what do I mean by that, I’ll explain.  Everyone has expenses that you cant avoid (food, shelter, clothes, entertainment ect…).  Where a lot of young 20 somethings fall short (and in turn make their life much harder) is that they don’t focus on lowering the “re-occurring fees”.  Personally I try to limit my recurring fees, while getting other people to pay me as many re-curing fees as possible.  I’ll give a few helpful examples below, but I want to make sure and stress this point.  Not having enough money to live is the root of many of our life problems.  The key is not to make more money, the key is to lower the bar you need to hit every month while still keeping your quality of life high and giving yourself enough money to enjoy your life (aka pay for entertainment).

-Housing: Using the FHA (first time home buyer) program I purchased a home with 3.5% down.  I bought a fixer upper so this 3.5% payment equated to just under 5k.  Now when you put so little money down you are forced to buy what is called PMI insurance until the value in equity that you have equals or exceeds 20% of the value on your home.  This is not a problem at all if you buy a home that needs updating.  For the next 8 months I fixed up the house, and then got the home re-appraised.  The house appraised for 40k higher than my purchase price, PMI insurance dropped, happy day.  From there I rented the home out, and took what was a 900/month mortgage payment and turned that into a positive cash flow of 150/month through rental income.  Net effect I make 150/month to live in my house.

-Transportation: I’m luckier than most in this category due to help from my father. Most young 20 somethings go out and purchase a somewhat fancy/not needed vehicle after graduation from college.  This is such a silly idea for 2 reasons. 1 they get saddled with a car payment, and 2 they pay high insurance rates to ensure the car until they turn 26.  I drive an 1995 dodge Dakota.  Insurance cost 500/year and there is no vehicle loan payment. Net effect: I pay 100/moth for gas and 38/month for insurance.

-Food: One of the best things you can do is make your own food.  Its often healthier and way cheaper.  A few keys that I have found help me are that I find 3-4 meals that I really “love” and would be happy to eat all the time.  Those are reserved for dinners, and I always have the ingredients to make these meals on hand.  Examples:

-Frozen turky burger, mixed greens salad, home made salsa, tofu ice cream bar.

-chicken breast with brown rice, sweet potato, mixed greens salad

-solid white albacore tuna mixed with yogert ranch and white vinegar sauce, steamed broccoli

-Clothing: A lot of people my age spend all kinds of money on fancy clothes.  Now I’m all for having a couple nice outfits that you can wear if you are going out, or going to a business meeting and need to look presentable.  But beyond that, I do absolutely zero clothes shopping.  I wear hand me downs from roommates, I wear old clothes from growing up, and that’s about it.  It helps that generally I’m working from home so the dress code is pretty lax, but most people spend so much time/energy/money worrying about the clothes they wear… a much better strategy is to spend that time on exercise/eating right.

 

Overall takeaway: If you just take some time and focus on lowing  your cost for housing, transportation and food you will be amazed what kind of positive impact it will have on your life.  When its all said and done I only “need” about 600 dollars per month to live on.  Now I spend more than that, especially when you factor in services that I purchase to save the most valuable asset we have, our time.  But when push comes to shove it is so liberating to know that you don’t need to come up with a ton of money to live.  It gives you the freedom to really pursue the life that you want.