Hi, my name is Ashley and this is my first post here on my new blog. I recently embarked on a journey to better understand my personal finances and decided that I would like to document it as I go along. So, I am mostly writing this all out for my own benefit but if I can help someone as I go on my journey then that would be great. I plan on being pretty open about my various expenses here but I am not sure that I will go into saying what my income is or anything like that. As a brief introduction, I am currently 25 years old and I live in the great state of Ohio. I decided to start learning more about personal finance in September of this year.
My biggest goal at this point in time is debt payoff. I currently have about $11,600 in student loans and $6,800 in credit card debt (split between 2 cards). That’s about $18,400 total. I started with $18,700 or so in student loan debt in early 2017 (split between 7 loans) and I felt really confident that I would be able to pay it off quickly. I was able to pay off the two smallest loans within 2017 while still living with my parents. As the year went on, I realized that for my own sake I needed to move out and in December of 2017 I did. Since then, I have accrued an amount of credit card debt that (in my mind) essentially undoes all the hard work I put into paying off my student loans. I am back where I started. Actually, I am worse off because my student loans all have under 5% interest while one of my credit cards has over 18%. (The other is 0% for now and will increase in September of 2020.)
All my life, I just wanted to be financially free. Watching loved ones around me struggle with money made me want no part of that. I went to school so I wouldn’t have such a hard time. That might just be where I went wrong. I went for a degree that I thought would help me make more money; I did not really consider career options until I was in my senior year of college (one semester from graduation). At that point, I figured why not just finish and get my bachelor’s degree. Now I feel reality smacking me in the face because I do not make what I hoped I would and looking back, I think my only motivator was money. I don’t even have a job title that goes with the degree I got. And if I get one, I risk possibly taking a pay cut due to lack of experience in that particular job.
Recently, I have been trying to learn all I can about personal finance. I have been watching Dave Ramsey and other personal finance videos on YouTube to try understanding what I can do to buckle down and pay things off ASAP. At first, I was really motivated and I still am but once I actually sat down and added up the numbers to get my total amount of debt compared to what I actually bring home I felt crushed. I came to understand recently that I cannot just focus on these debts. I also need to save for expenses that are coming up throughout the year and just plan things out more. In the new year, I am planning on doing better. I have already started, but I know I can always work toward doing better than I already am. I think writing out my feelings and goals in this blog will help, even if no one but me sees them.
I’m not really 100% sure what kind of content I will be putting on here or how frequent I will post. I’m thinking it’ll all be personal finance related with maybe a few non-finance posts from time to time. I would like to post my budget on here and maybe do some check-ins for each month. I also want to do a post on pressure and how it can impact your financial decisions (for instance, going to school just to say you have a degree without knowing what you want to do). Every post will be personal though; I do not plan on doing any professional blogging or anything like that.
I am looking forward to finding out where this journey will take me.
-Ashley
Ashley The Millennial 