My Financial Plan to get out of debt
Hello everyone…
A few years ago, well about 12 years ago to be exact, I had left my 9-5 job to become a real estate agent. It was August of 2008, if my memory serves me right, the housing crash came around, depending what you read, around September /October, some say 2007.
Well whenever it happened I had left a secure job and went to a commission based business…ugh, but I have no regrets in doing that, I needed to get out of that job anyway.
So what happened
After I left, my 403(B) had lost half of it’s value, believe me what I know now compared to 2007/8 I was lucky to have made any money at all, I picked an investment vehicle that now I see didn’t make any sense at all, but that’s for another time.
l lost half of the 403B value, I had the rest of the money sent to my checking account to live on since I didn’t have a steady paycheck anymore.
I was an agent for 8 months from August 2008 to March 2009, and I went through the money quickly that I had no choice but to get another job, which was fine.
How did I make out?
After getting a job I was making steady income, but another setback happened, I had co-signed a business loan to my brother-in-law and my niece which I hate to say went south pretty quick, I ended up owing a lot of money to my creditors, but I’ll take full responsibility since I didn’t do my due diligence on the business I was co-signing for.
And on top of that, my family didn’t and haven’t paid me back at all!! it’s been 10 years.. wow, but lesson learned.
Financial Education
What I realized that I had no financial education at all, here I am at 47 years old and thinking I got my finances together, duh, not at all.
I owed $50,000 and I was underwater since my salary at the time wasn’t equal to what I needed to pay back, since I had some money from my 403(B) in my checking account, I was able to pay back half of what I owed, now I needed a plan to pay back the rest of the money.
Read, Read,& Read
Yes, it was time for some financial education I didn’t have or know about, So I started with basic reading, the first plan I had to do was check my spending habits cut some expenses and so on…
The first book I read was T. Harv Eker’s “Secrets of the millionaire mind” the gist of the book is to set aside a portion of your income for bills, education, savings and investing.
I needed to find out what I was spending daily to execute the plan, that I was pretty easy since I can look back at my checking account and see what I was spending daily.
The Plan
Once I had some basic knowledge of my spending habits, and reading T. Harv Eker’s book, I set through my job’s direct deposit 4 saving/checking plan account, and directed a percentage of my paycheck to those accounts, this was in 2009, after setting that up, my job’s 403(B) was next.
After reading some books, next I followed in my opinion the master of investing “Warren Buffett” he suggested to those who don’t have the time to keep up with the stock market to invest part of your salary in the S & P 500, which I did. The index fund has been doing very well.
Please keep up with your finances it can go pretty quickly if you don’t pay attention.
Books I recommend
The secret of the millionaire mind – T. Harv Eker
I will teach you to be rich- Ramit Sethi
The Interpretation of Financial Statements- Warren Buffett
Accounting for non-accounts- Wayne Label
Warren Buffett on what to invest in.
https://grow.acorns.com/warren-buffett-index-funds/
Thanks everyone for reading, and stay safe.
William Morales