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Wednesday, March 24, 2021

The Quest for Financial Freedom

Many years ago Kuya gave me a challenge. He said I should be financially free by age of 50. And everytime we meet up for Japanese buffet he'd check on my progress. To be honest I only started thinking about it seriously two years ago. 


I'll tell you a secret, I did not like my finance classes. I seem to have done well though because I was offered to teach finance after graduation! I turned it down because it wasn't my cup of tea. That inspired me though to do better during grad school. I tried my best to understand what my professors taught. All I remember now is I had good marks when we were tasked to create a stock portfolio. 

That was the last time I really thought about managing money. Kuya kept reminding me though. The last time we had Japanese buffet he taught me how to properly manage my monthly salary. Here's the breakdown:

The breakdown totally changed how I budget my money. I had been on paranoid saving mode since I had heart surgery in 2013. That meant I was saving over enjoying and rewarding myself. It was a great guide for me to get me going to meet my financial freedom deadline.  

So as much as finance/investments isn't my cup of tea, I swallowed the bitter pill and started working on my future. I started with computing how much monthly expenses I have if I lived in Manila. After that I started assessing what I can invest on. They did teach most of it in grad school. There's stocks, mutual funds, real estate, UITFs, dividen pay funds, bonds and many others. 

The options are dizzying, but the first thing you need to determine is what kind of risk you are willing to take. From how I've been behaving I'm a low risk person. So I've been studying. I've been binge watching vlogs of Chinkee Tan, the Truly Rich Club, Fitz' Ready to Be Rich, Marvin Germo and many others. They all have one common advise, "Know and understand what you are getting into". Aside from watching videos I also do a lot of reading. 

I think I may meet the deadline earlier hrhrhr. 

P.S. Was this post useful for you? Comment down below if you want me to share more about how I'm working towards financial freedom. 

CB///348 #StuckAtHomeDay/Yr2/11 #StayHome #BeKind 


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