My Financial Mistake #1
**DISCLAIMER: I still live with my parents (who support me in terms of allowing me to live rent-free, I don’t have a cell phone bill, I mooch off their streaming services, and I don’t have to pay for the food I eat in their homes) and I don’t have much debt so these methods were the best way for me. Not everyone has the ability to be this aggressive with their debt or credit history as I am privileged to be. I also want to make clear that I am not a financial expert by ANY means. If you’re in desperate need of financial advice, don’t listen to a person on Tumblr, go to a real professional. Again, I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL. **
I recently made a new friend who is a few years older than me. She has been asking me to help her with saving money and she’s not the only one. I’ve had a few friends in the last couple of weeks ask me for financial advice. I’m only 22 and, thus far, I’ve only ever taken a money 101 class my freshman year of high school and college microeconomics 4 years ago, but I was very lucky to have parents (especially my mother) be very candid with me about how money works. Of course, that did not mean I didn’t make A LOT of financial mistakes especially the first year after graduating with my first bachelor’s degree. I’ve decided to make this a series to best describe each situation and how I fixed it.
Each financial mistake and how they are fixed is extremely unique to each individual but my goal with this series is to help people (especially students and postgrads) not make the same mistakes I did after I graduated college.
So here are is my first top financial mistakes and how I fixed it.
I overused my credit cards- My first goal out of college was to build and diversify my credit. To be candid, I have a car loan, student loans, and my two credit cards. I’m an emotional spender. 2018 saw the end of college, the start and end of a new job, the start of another new job that was significantly less busy than the previous one, the desire to go to medical school, paying for community college, and ultimately withdrawing from the said community college when I no longer wished to be a doctor, my first break up, and turmoil in my home that ultimately led me to move in with my dad. In short, my life was kind of all over the place as I attempted to figure my life and goals out. I charged my Chase and Discover cards on food, clothes I still haven’t worn, and expensive products I convinced myself I needed. By October, I had accrued nearly $2500 in credit card debt. On top of my other bills and low income, that’s not good and my credit score reflected that. I also didn’t realize that the current and statement balances were two different numbers, the higher representing what I owe including interest.
THE FIX- I was super aggressive. I had deferred my student loans to afford going back to school. I wanted to pay off all of my credit debt before I left my current overnight job for a newer but lower paying job and start paying off other forms of debt like my car and my student loan. My ultimate financial goal is to be completely debt free by 35 (it was 30, but now I want to go to grad school for applied economics and accounting after I finish my BS). I didn’t have much in savings but I was considering moving what money I had into a higher yield account (which I eventually did). I used a good bulk of my savings to pay off that credit debt. With that money (around $1600), I got far enough ahead with my debt (and most importantly the interest) and it took me two additional payments of $400 to pay the rest of it off. Now, I use my Discover card for gas and food and the Chase card is for school. I did recently had to buy professional clothes for my new job and opted for higher quality, ethically produced, more expensive clothes to create a capsule wardrobe of neutrals. This method of aggressively paying off my credit debt worked very well for me.