It's no secret that I haven't held a regular-salary job in over 5 years. (Yes, I did have one back in the day...) Also, most of my friends know that in those 5 years my personal finance went only as far as "How much yarn can I buy this month?" or "Can I eat a full meal in the cafeteria, or should I just go for a bagel?".
All this will soon be in the past, as I begin my journey of once again seriously dealing with a salary, bills, and savings. You might be wondering what brought on this change? During the past couple of weeks, as I searched for more and more information about the JET program and specifically about Hiroshima-ken (prefecture), I found this blog:
Austin, the author of this blog, is also a JET and currently lives in Japan. I began reading his blog just to get a few pointers on how to save money while living in Japan, but what I got was much more: A view into personal finance, and how easy it can be if one takes a bit of time to educate oneself.
He talks about online banks, investing, and just general tips on how to keep money in your pocket. He also wrote a blog about his top 5 favorite personal finance books, one of which I ended up getting: "I Will Teach You to Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi.
According to Austin: "This is single-handedly the best personal finance starter for anyone 16-35. The book is 266 pages, but it reads so fast that you’ll finish it in a weekend. His writing is infectious and it’s like reading a friend tell you to stop being an idiot with your money. Credit cards, banking, investing, savings, retirement. It’s all covered in great depth with eye-popping example and diagrams." And that's true...
I will talk more about what I have actually learned from this book and how I put these things into effect in Japan in later blogs, so for now, I just wanted to focus on one idea that Sethi mentions in the introduction:
"Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't."
This got me thinking... what are the things that I love, hands down, no questions asked? I decided to limit these down to three:
* Knitting/Yarn
* Reading
* Traveling
With this list in mind, I'm hoping I will be able to set up a network of different "savings accounts" to keep me more organized during my time in Japan. After the past two weeks, I believe a good hard look into personal finance is the first step in the right direction towards personal responsibility.
What things do you love on which you would spend extravagantly?
Knitting/Yarn
ReplyDeleteReading
Technology
So...according to this dude, getting an iPad is totally worth it since it's a double hit. Done and DONE. :)