Everyone is brought up a certain way right? Some have parents that are very wealthy and can afford luxurious vacations or can buy you a car when you turn 16. While some struggle to make ends meet and might work multiple jobs to keep their head above water for their family. My personal situation was a little in the middle but more towards the former situation.
My parents had and still have stable income in their jobs. My mom has worked in health care her entire life and my dad has been a teacher for over 20 years. My parents valued education for my brother and I and they put us in private schools from K-12. It was fairly expensive for them to do it, but if it was something they were head strong on, it was education. Because they spent more on education, we had to share vehicles when I was able to drive and we would go on many road trip vacations, but we would never go out of the country or anything. Looking back on their decision, I can strongly state that I would not have done what they did for my brother and I. There is plenty of amazing public education that you absolutely don’t need to go to a private school for it.
Because they paid for our education over so many years, it set them back financially. If they didn’t put us into private education, they definitely would’ve had enough income to pay off their mortgage early and to invest more so they could retire earlier. Being brought up this way, I knew that in order to be on the right track financially, I would have to be frugal and not make the same mistakes my parents made.
So where does that leave me now? Well, my wife and I both have older cars with no thought on upgrading unless we have to. My car is 20 years old and my wife’s is 13 years old. Our mortgage is just 22% of our take home pay. Our overall expenses every month is around $2200. This means that we are spending only 40% of our income while saving 60% every single month.
Why do I bring this up, if not to boast? Because I care about what people are spending their money on. I care about people making smarter financial decisions. Setting an example for other people earning an average income is something that I want to do on this blog to show others that anyone can make the right life decisions to be in a similar situation that my wife and I are in.
In this section on the blog, I will be going through some of the things my wife and I do on a daily basis with our habits to prevent unnecessary spending. There are a lot of tips and pointers to help the average person save even just a little bit of money every day and I want to be able to bring those to light for you!
Your expenses and being frugal is the #1 component to achieving FIRE. I hope this section can help you build on that frugal mindset!
Thank you so much for reading and I’ll catch you on the next one!
Marcus