FinCon FOMO, coding bootcamp and other news

FinCon starts tomorrow! For those not familiar, FinCon is the world’s largest conference for financial educators and influencers. Their website, finconexpo.com, calls the community “a diverse group of ‘money mediapreneurs.’”

The FinCon website and podcast are a great reference for newbies to personal finance/investing because they group the content creators by their niche or their story, making it easy to find what interests you.

They also have a pass to access recorded presentations of the highlights, which I’m considering purchasing. I’m binging on online courses/bootcamps right now. Like I said in my last post, my mind is like a sponge soaking up information!

One course I started taking is an introduction to coding and programming. Even though some minimalist and frugality blogs have provided me with a helpful self-exam of my spending habits, it makes more sense for me to focus on earning, by gaining skills to make more income in less time, so I can have more time to pursue volunteering and other projects that are meaningful to me.

Other discoveries of the day, Investopedia.com. My burning question has to do with entry points into the stock market, the buy low part of investing. An article on the site, What is a Bear Market? mentions that it is almost impossible to tell what is the bottom of the bear market. When is the ideal time to buy, do the experts even know? Sounds like I could use some real advice.

Are you learning any new skills right now? What are you finding useful?

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?

Dual-income-kids or dual-income-no-kids? BYOCoffee or $3.65 latte? Innie or outie?

No, not belly buttons! I’m talking about something called internal or external locus of control. Here’s what I mean.

After hustling and trying to change my day job, in 2017 I got an offer to teach some professional development classes. They offered me 3 classes for that semester, but due to circumstances, I could only teach one of them. Three classes and my side hustle would bring a good income, plus a flexible schedule. But one class wasn’t enough money.

Disappointed, I turned down that job offer. I thought to myself, you could’ve taken the job if you had a decent savings! Things would’ve been fine until they offered you more classes.

This story sounds sad, but it was actually amazing because for the first time, I realized how my actions could create a different outcome. I saw how my spending habits had led to what happened. The bad situation hadn’t fallen on me at random. If I could learn smart savings habits, I could change the outcome of my situation.

Locus of control is a common term in psychology. I think it has to do with how empowered we feel in our life to make things turn out for the better. Internal or external influence? Innie or outie? Understanding the connections between our own choices and our life’s outcomes can motivate us to make better choices.

I was reading some how to make your blog interesting so that people wanna read it posts. They say find your audience, like, who you connect with, and write to them. But whether you’re a mom or whatever status, like double-income-no-kids, single-income-with-kids, budget-phobe or penny pincher, I think ideas are universal. If you’ve ever struggled to take good advice and thought, I know what to do, why can’t I do it? then you can relate to what I’m writing about.

So many of us go through life spending thoughtlessly, without grasping that even small actions can affect our life! So much comes out of those daily little decisions. They’re choices! I didn’t understand that in the past, but I’m learning.

I’ve been learning about mindset, habits, and the FI (Financial Independence) lifestyle. As I write more, I’d like to share the blog posts, podcast episodes and books that helped me the most, and why. I want to thank the authors for their advice and tell them how much it’s helping. Have you read something recently that’s helped you?