A New Job and New Concerns

Wow, what a journey it's been these past 2 1/2 years! I started this blog in August 2019, shortly before I started a humble free course from Springboard called "Intro to User Experience Design." Now, 2 years and 9 months later, I started a new job working in tech. The job is a perfect match for what I was trained to do. My schedule is a bit different than my old "day job," and the pay is much better. Hopefully after a few months I'll be back on track and won't have to worry about debt anymore. I'm on my way to Learning Gold Can Stay for real! So, um... now what do I do?

I still feel anxiety over my spending. The anxiety hasn't really gone away yet. I was so busy building my UX design portfolio and interviewing that I still haven't worked through the exercises in The Financial Anxiety Solution Workbook by Lindsay Bryan-Podvin. That is on my list of things to do. What are some of the things I fear?

Being raised in an environment of scarcity, then moving to sufficiency or even abundance, brings its own challenges. There are so many judgments involved. True, compared to the 1%, I'm still poor haha! But when some family and friends have the mindset like it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich person to get into the kingdom, it doesn't make it easy to share your news. At a time when I want to go out and celebrate, I've been keeping this recent success quiet. Well, in reality I just got over covid, so I'm still a bit in quarantine-mode rather than party-mode.

Also, I've (unintentionally) dated two millionaires in my past, and I remember how having money changed things. (Unfortunately they were both the uber-frugal type of millionaire haha! Actually my most generous boyfriend lived in a trailer after a messy divorce, far from millionaire status.) Anyway, there were times where we really didn't know who our true friends were. If we wanted to go to a concert, but couple so-n-so couldn't afford to go, then the only way we could have their company was to treat them by buying their tickets. Always awkward. I haven't seen that movie Friends with Money, maybe I need to watch it.

Really, most of my friends & family have been happy for me, only one judgmental comment so far. Probably my harshest judgments come from within. I fear how having money will change me.

Another concern is where to save and invest. I need to educate myself! This blog has traced some of my learning journey, but lately I'm suffering from information overload and don't have a clear idea of where to turn and whose advice to take. The economy feels so precarious now, no investment seems that great. Even real estate, which I like, carries risks from weird storms, floods, freak tornadoes in areas that didn't get tornadoes before, etc.

Have you ever experienced a change in circumstances financially? How did you cope with it?

P.S. I don't dread Mondays anymore! Not that I'd ever say it's my favorite day of the week, but I at least look forward to them now.

The Podcast Playlist that Helped Me Beat Debt

Here's an article that I wrote that I unsucessfully pitched to a finance magazine. Normally I would've persisted and tried other magazines, but I'm taking online classes at the moment and only have so much mental bandwidth as they say. But I miss this blog! so here's a nice freebie for you today, no subscription necessary :)

The Podcast Playlist that Helped Me Beat Debt, by The Finance Phobe

One ordinary, groggy Monday in my cubicle, I was jolted by my friend's cheery Instagram post: Monday, favorite day of the week. Wow, I thought with a mix of admiration and jealousy, how do you get a life like that?

I wanted time freedom, tired of working full-time just to pay bills. My dream was to turn my favorite side hustle into my main source of income and support myself with a flexible schedule. A cash cushion would help me through the transition. But sadly I was a statistic, part of the 40% of Americans without the cash to cover a $400 emergency expense. What could I do?

I knew all the tips and tricks to save money but couldn't make them stick. Why was I constantly going in and out of debt and struggling to save?

I searched financial independence in my podcast app and started to listen. Here are the 4 steps that helped me make over my money mindset.

Step One: Take a look in the mirror

Mind Money Balance With Financial Therapist Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, Episode 08: Understand the Four Money Archetypes

This peppy, approachable episode is a good introduction before doing a deep dive. It explores four underlying core beliefs that can influence our spending habits and overall relationship with money.

(To learn more: Afford Anything with Paula Pant, Episode 127: Four Unhealthy Attitudes Towards Money -- with Dr. Brad Klontz, Financial Therapist) 

Step Two: Learn about cause and effect

Radical Personal Finance with Joshua Sheats, Episode 372: The Power of Cause and Effect

This episode asks the hard self-exam questions, for example, am I in debt due to a health event or chronic overspending? Am I not earning enough because of my skill level? Is my personality holding me back at work? I made notes in a T-chart when I listened to this episode, with eye-opening results.

Step Three: Discover my style

Choose FI by The Unstuck Network (hosted by Jonathan Mendonsa and Brad Barrett), Episode 134R: Quit Like a Millionaire | Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung

Kristy’s story of her climb out of deep poverty suggests financial independence is for anyone. Curious, I got Kristy and Bryce’s book from the library. It revealed the root of my struggle was trying to apply advice geared towards Optimizers, or savers, when I have the mindset of someone who’d rather side hustle than save her way to financial health.

Step Four: Chart my path

Afford Anything with Paula Pant, Episode 215: The Seven Stages of Financial Independence, with Joshua Sheats

By clearly defining the steps to financial independence, this episode helped me focus on the basics without being distracted by advice meant for the financially advanced. Taking one step at a time, I could happily build my emergency fund without being intimidated by stock tips and crypto clickbait (note to self, maybe skip that at any stage!)

Writing for a Friend

So we left off with me taking a break from writing to focus on a career pivot into UX Design. I was considering getting a FinLit credential to educate myself and then help others to avoid money mistakes like mine. But I realized I was more interested in money psychology and the social issues around money than in the nuts-and-bolts of numbers and budgeting. Telling my story didn’t really seem like enough.

My last post talked about a big money mistake I made, cashing out a retirement account. Back then I had no concept of my future self. There are studies that show that the more real our future selves feel to us, the greater our ability to save money will be. If the future seems far away and our future self feels like a stranger, we’re less motivated to take care of it. (https://youtu.be/V5BXuZL1HAg, Kelly McGonigal: “The Willpower Instinct” 23:50; https://youtu.be/lw3YTbubyjI, Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?) Dr. McGonigal’s video talked about an experiment where college students interacted with a computer model of themselves with virtual age-progression. Those students saved more. Why do I bring this up?

A close friend of mine just told me yesterday that she’s planning to take out a loan against her 401k for the down payment for a house. She is caring for her elderly parents and has taken on a lot of responsibility for them. I had a moment of panic, picturing her future self trapped and burnt out in her high-stress job, but unable to get out because of the loan. But I remembered how much financial education has helped me, and started to text her information I thought would be helpful. There’s a detailed list of alternative ways of home financing here: https://www.marieclaire.com/home/a30433304/can-i-afford-home/ (also click on link to your state’s housing finance agency).

So now I'm motivated to post again. Thinking about my friend and her family, why do very generous people sometimes have a tough time with financial self-care? Have you ever noticed this? More to come...

Will scary yield curve headlines derail this finance-phobe’s fearless future?

Writing this blog has represented a real shift in mindset for me, away from being reactive and towards advanced planning. Publishing the first posts was so freeing that I started to learn about investing. My curious mind soaked up all the information it could, like trying to make up for time lost being trapped by financial fear.

Suddenly new fears jumped out in the form of scary yield curve headlines. Would this derail my hard-won progress?

On MarketWatch.com today’s headline reads, 2-year/10-year U.S. Treasury yield curve inversion deepens, flashing ‘red’.  CNN Business on cnn.com reported today, Insiders are selling stock like it’s 2007. Bloomberg Opinion posted on social media, There’s evidence that people have been stockpiling cash.

Then I made the phobe’s mistake of watching an online news report about recession fears. It was on Bloomberg Real Yield, and asked the question, When does U.S. fall into recession?

I felt like I needed a translator to understand most of the financial terms the moderator and experts in suits were volleying back and forth. So I hit pause and looked up some words, like mean reversion, negative yields and full easing cycle. Although I was grateful for the education by Dr. Google, haha, by the time I was done I wasn’t really in a good mood.

Fortunately a link on MarketWatch.com led me to a FI blog called Chief Mom Officer at chiefmomofficer.org. (FI stands for Financial Independence. It’s like the updated brand of FIRE, the Financial Independence Retire Early trend.) Last week she published a post titled, Yield Curve Inversions Will Doom Us All – Parody & Real Advice. The parody video was pretty funny, and just what I needed to snap me out of backsliding into a fearful attitude.

My last forward step of the day is to publish this post. Do you feel like you are still making progress?