Blog - Page 13 of 19 - Rebel with a Plan

Is Retirement Harder for Millennials?

August 1, 2016

If you asked me about my Roth IRA at this moment in time, I would just give you a look of distress. The follow-up would be some grumbling noises since I wouldn’t want to discuss it. Then I would quickly change the subject. Anyone see the new Captain Marvel news?!

Saving for retirement is hard. Then it’s easy. Then it’s not so bad. Then it’s hard again. The tough part is having to actually see the money disappear from my hands every month.

Not long ago, my retirement savings were automated. I hadn’t gotten a Roth IRA yet and all I had was a 401k with my employer. I didn’t think anything of it. Countless articles and people older in age would tell me with terror in their eyes to sign up and contribute to my 401k.

Well-intended advice that falls short.

I was contributing to my 401k! #responsible Every two weeks when I would get paid, money would automatically get taken out and put into my 401k which had an employer match. Easy, breezy.

Not anymore. Since I changed jobs, my new position doesn’t offer a 401k plan. Saving for retirement has become a very conscious thing. In my current situation, I can’t do automatic transfers to my Roth IRA, it has to be done manually.

Physically seeing the money go out of my bank account and into something I won’t access for the next 45 years? It’s freaking hard.

Then I think back to a conversation I had with my dad about his retirement. He, along with many people from his baby boomer generation, didn’t properly save for retirement. My dad is 57 years old and only has a small amount in his 401k.

Luckily he has a healthy pension to look forward to as well as a decent size monthly social security check. Retirement will happen for him when he hits 67. One of the lucky ones.

While many baby boomers are having trouble dealing with retirement, a new focus is on millennials. Is retirement harder for millennials? How the heck are we going to to do it?

Student loans

Many people are graduating university with over $30,000 in student debt. The class of 2016 graduated with an average of $37,000 🙁

This increasing debt is causing shifts in life. With a high loan payment every month, little financial literacy, and a small salary, stashing money away for retirement isn’t a big priority for people. Pushing off investing until the late twenties and early thirties, they’re losing out on the power of compound interest.

High cost of living

Everything seems to be making leaps past the inflation rate: higher education, healthcare costs, homeownership and more.

More materialism

Everyone wants the biggest house, nicest wedding, brand new car, and cool new iPhone 7. There’s a reason the minimalism movement has gained popularity in the past few years. Materialism has been ahead of it and some people don’t want it anymore.

People are moving into big houses they can’t afford, buying new cell phones they don’t need, and generally not being conscious of their spending. Constant advertisements and things like Amazon Prime two-day shipping, one-click ordering and Amazon’s Dash button make getting things super easy. The barrier to entry with spending has been lowered.

Longer life expectancy

Longer life expectancies make the traditional retirement age of 65 more unlikely. Social security payouts are going to be a lot smaller for millennials than they are currently for baby boomers.

Are you ready to live well into your 90’s? Retirement planning is going to involve 25-35 year forecasts with our money.

With pensions being a thing of the past (even the U.S. military is cutting them), higher costs of living, and more debt, is retirement harder for millennials? I don’t think so. In a way, retirement is easier for millennials.

Millennials have resources at their fingertips that didn’t exist for previous generations: hundreds of personal finance websites and blogs offering money management insight, mobile apps for brokerage accounts, and even robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront taking care of investing for you.

What do you think about millennials and retirement? Do you think retirement is harder for millennials?

The Grade That Matters Most After College

July 28, 2016

When I graduated college, I was super pumped. No more worrying about grades! Wo0o0o! Staying up late finishing a paper and obsessing over getting a certain grade were no longer priorities. So long!

It felt great graduating college and moving on into the world. As a “newly minted” adult, I starting going through the motions of the real world: getting a full-time job, apartment, and dealing with the constant recommendations of people telling me I needed to buy a new car or get a house. Bleh.

As I started going through life after college, an alarming (at least to me) realization popped up. Over. And over. And over. Credit scores and reports. They were important. Who knew? Obviously not me.

The people at Wells Fargo bank knew. Every time I came into the bank during college, they tried to get me to sign up for their cash back college credit card. I shrugged them off every time. Years of being told credit cards were horrible things kept me away from them. It wasn’t as if anyone had ever discussed the importance of a credit score.

Building credit after college became an afterthought. Then I got denied a cell phone contract, denied apartment lease, and realized I would have to pay deposits on utilities due to my low credit score. The epiphany moment happened quickly afterward. Having a good credit score was important and I needed to get set on improving mine.

The only conversation I remembered having about the importance of good credit was when I was in middle school. My 8th-grade math teacher briefly mentioned how it was a really good thing to have when it came to qualifying for loans and getting lower interest rates.

Being 13-years-old and more concerned with what TV show I was going to watch, the information went through one ear and out the other. Armed with a vague idea of the importance of building credit after college, I set out to get my first credit card.

A week later, I received my new form of plastic in the mail and started charging small things to it: my cell phone bill, gym membership, and subscriptions. The credit card was cash back and every time I reached $25 in rewards, the amount would be deposited into my savings account. Awesome!

I still have that card to this day. A no frills card without much of a rewards program. I keep it because of the $0 annual fee and credit history that comes along with it.

Initially, even with a newly acquired credit card, I still didn’t know what went into a credit score. How exactly could I improve it? Eventually, I stated to learn.

Your credit score breaks down into different categories:

35% | payment history (pay your bills on time and sign up for auto-pay)
30% | amounts owed
15% | length of credit history (why I still keep my first credit card open, generally a longer credit history will increase your score)
10% | new credit (opening several new credit cards in short period of time can hurt your score)
10% | credit mix (credit cards, installment loans, mortgage, retail accounts)

When people set out to get their first credit card, it can be overwhelming. Loads of articles all over the internet talk about ways to maximize rewards and travel hacking. That’s all I heard about when I looked into getting a credit card. Fortunately, I was able to find helpful guides.

I have a few tips for someone who is looking to get their first credit card. Because after all, credit cards don’t have to be evil. You don’t have to cut them up and swear them off (thank you Dave Ramsey). They can even, *gasp*, be beneficial.

Don’t focus on rewards too much (yet)

Don’t focus too much on which credit card to get based on the rewards program. The focus when getting your first credit card is to have it for a while in order to build credit history.

Pay in FULL every month

Disregard bad advice like ones that say to carry a balance on your credit card every month. Don’t. If you’re charging something to your credit card, make sure it’s something you can pay off within 30 days. Pay the full amount each and every month.

Try to see if you can set up auto-pay to make sure you make on-time payments every month.

Don’t open up a lot of new credit cards

Focus on just having one credit card for the first several months, especially if you’re starting out by building credit after college. New credit accounts lower your average account age which have a large affect on your credit score if you don’t have much other credit information.

Get a credit card with no annual fee, know the APR, and hidden fees

Annual fees can suck. They usually are around $59-95 per year. Be aware of credit cards that have an $0 intro annual fee for the first year. You don’t want one at all, at least for your first credit card.

Your credit card’s annual percentage rate (APR) is the amount you are charged on your average daily balance if you don’t pay off your charges in full every month. Understand what your APR is and the difference between the credit card’s introductory APR and the regular APR it will have once the introductory period is over.

Other fees to watch out for: foreign transaction fee (fee, usually around 3%, charged when you make purchases overseas), late payment fee (usually $30-35 and charged when you don’t make at least minimum payment on time).

Keep credit utilization low

When you get your first credit card, you will have a credit limit. Try not to use more than 30% of that credit limit. For example, say you get a credit card and the limit is $1000 a month. Try not to charge more than $300 per month to the card.

Credit utilization makes up 30% of your credit score.

Once you are set to start building credit after college, look at credit card comparison tools and figure out what the best card is for you.

Do you use credit cards? How did you go about getting your first one?

Paul Jarvis’ Podcast Challenge

July 25, 2016

I’m subscribed to an awesome email newsletter called The Sunday Dispatches. It’s run by Paul Jarvis, a writer, designer and freelancer for the past 17 years. He has created an array of e-courses and products designed for online creative makers.

The Sunday Dispatches is one of THE emails I look forward to receiving every week in my inbox. There’s discussions about the sour nature of online advice monetization, client process, mental minimalism and even the correlation between happiness and gravy! Whohoo!

Back in May, he sent out an email out with the subject line “I have a challenge for you”. I thought maybe he had gotten on the internet bandwagon and was asking his email list to do some “out there” sort of thing. What challenge? Cinnamon? Smoothie? Phone pinching? Nope.

It was a podcast challenge.

He wanted people of his email list to start a podcast. They’re easy to consume (even passively) and are on-demand media. You just have to grab a person’s attention once. They sign up for your podcast (by subscribing via iTunes or a podcast app manager like Podcast Republic) and if you have good content and hook them, you have a long time listener.

If you weren’t one of the ones who was part of the Serial craze, then let me tell you, podcasts are a great way to consume content. It’s nice to hear someone’s excitement or nervousness or tenacity as they talk about something. It makes for a (warning: I’m about to use a saturated word most often used as a hashtag on Instagram) rich ~authentic~ experience.

I had been toying with the idea of doing a podcast for a while. Reading the podcast challenge email finally prompted me to get started. The challenge required getting three episodes recorded and uploaded to iTunes by July 15, 2016. There were no prizes or incentives. Just a good ol’ kick in the pants action to take part in a medium of communication worth exploring.

At first, I had no freaking clue what to do a podcast about. Eventually, and at the last minute, I decided to do a solo mini-show about money tactics and current trends going on. The official synopsis for my podcast:

Rebel with a Plan: a solo mini podcast series centered around millennial personal development, personal finance, and intentional living.

My podcast is on iTunes now with three episodes and I will be adding two more episodes to it soon. I really loved doing it! Recording the show made me get better at organizing my thoughts and making sure things were cohesive. Whenever I get into telling something, I sometimes have a problem with rambling on and not being sure how to tie things together. Recording over, and over, and over, and practicing some more helped a lot.

As a result of Paul’s podcast challenge, 29 people started podcasts! Yessssss. I plan to listen to at least some of all of them. Company Ink is one I really like so far.

Company Ink is one I really like so far. The podcast is an audio diary of two business owners, living, working, and sleeping together.

Here’s the full list of all 29 podcasts below:

New Age Nomad Podcast – telling the personal backstories of the individuals who turned their back on the status quo and have made travel, the great outdoors, and extreme sports their life.
Black Sheep Podcast – are you a woman who owns her right to design her life celebrating her brown skin but not being defined or contained by it either? Welcome.
The Cool Kids Club – we’ve all been led to believe that “normal” is cool and the older Dillian gets, the more he realizes cool isn’t what he thought it was.
Life Beyond The Message Table – a short, no BS weekly talk about the realities of running a Message Therapy practice.
Road to Launch – a podcast focused on the product building process.
A que no me crees – a podcast by Fernando Castellano.
Southland Students – a podcast by Southland students.
Breaking Espanol – one family’s honest journey into becoming more compassionate for other cultures by learning Spanish.
The Secret Library – most people believe that books are created in cabins all alone, where authors pound away on some manner of keyboard.
Company Ink – audio diary of two business owners living, working, and sleeping together.
Rebel With a Plan (hey, that’s me!) – a solo mini podcast series centered around millennial personal development, personal finance, and intentional living.
The Business Plan Podcast – a weekly show for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Loose Parts – a podcast about a bunch of interesting things all loosely related to a topic that changes every week.
The End – disasters, dystopias, and doomsday scenarios: apocalypse stories and why we love them.
Taking Charge of Your Life – yoga philosophy meets artistic expression in podcasts that reveal personal authenticity and beauty.
Emma Fogelholm – a podcast from Emma Fogelholm.
Let’s Meet in The Now – mindful connections with Nicole Birkholzer.
Bloom Baby Bloom – straight talk from now or never kind of women over 50.
Behind the Canvas – inspiration, insight, interviews, and action steps for artists and creative entrepreneurs.
Anthony’s Desk – lessons learned from entrepreneurship, building social impact businesses, startup investing, and running succcessful for-profit and non-profit organizations.
Anita no Trabalho – on female entrepreneurship.
Indie Comic Audio – interviews of indie comic creators and makers as well as how to’s and reviews.
Hey Batter Batter – the baseball podcast that’s more about stories than stats.
Front End Center – a podcast by Chris Landtiser that talks about design, development, and how to keep things simple and effective.
What’s It Like To… – dedicated to turning over stones, pushing past assumptions, and discovering what it’s like to have unique experiences in life!
Design Yourself – for people who want to lead a well-designed life.
Creative Women International – a global group with women connecting from over 27 countries, all working in the creative industries.
Sociale Media voor Zelfstandig Professionals – a Dutch podcast from Jolanda Gooiker.
Definitely Totally Normal – 3 totally normal people define phenomenon in various states of coherence.

Check some of them out and let me know what you think! Have you ever considered starting a podcast?

Thailand so far…

July 21, 2016

I’ve been in Thailand for over four months now! Things have been going great and I’ve gotten into a good routine with lesson planning, work, and taking trips on some of the weekends. Thailand has really grown on me.

A big thing getting used to has been not being able to take hot showers (whaaa?). During the first month when I was traveling around Thailand and doing my ATI course, I stayed in hotels and hostels where hot water for showers was a typical thing. Every one of the showers had small hot water heaters hookd up to the side of the shower. My apartment doesn’t have that. Hot showers aren’t a typical thing here.

Learning about money management definitely wasn’t something I was expecting as I started working here. When you’re making a small salary and still want to satisfy your travel bug, you have to get good with your money!

It’s interesting to see the different ways all of the teachers talk about and manage their money. Saving 50% of your salary is a big thing in the personal finance world. At my school, some of the foreign English teachers try to do just that.

At the start of every month, when I get paid, I put half my salary in an envelope and try not to touch it. The rest of my salary is mine to spend. It works kind of like Paula Pant’s Afford Anything Anti-Budget. I just pull my savings off the top and spend the rest. For the first two paychecks so far, I’ve been able to save slightly more than half my salary.

Thailand Culture

Land of smiles

They don’t call Thailand the “land of smiles” for nothing. People can be very friendly here! The clerks at the bank and 7-eleven smile when assisting you, thai teachers smile at you in the hallway. It goes a long way.

Now everything wasn’t always so rosy. The first two to three months were a difficult transition. Everything smoothed out as time went on, though. Culture shock is always something to content with when traveling. Especially when you start living and working in another country.

Taking shoes off

I’ve gotten used to taking my shoes off. At my school, I have to take off my shoes before entering the kindergarten classrooms. It’s also customary to take shoes off when entering temples, some tourist attractions, message and spa parlors, and other places.

In Thailand, the head is regarded as the most important part of the body, because it is where the spirit resides. The feet are the furthest away from the head so they are the lowest part of the body spiritually. Feet are not to be pointed directly at buddha relics, and other important and spiritual things.

I’ve even started taking my shoes off at the door of my own apartment!

7-elevens and message places everywhere

There are 7-elevens every two to three blocks. It’s crazy. I thought at first how was it possible to have so many. Wouldn’t it cause trouble for each establishment since there are so many? Nope! Every one of them regularly gets people coming through the sliding beeping doors.

Like the stores back in the states, the ones here have a variety of prepackaged food/meal items. Although, the selection is different for the stores here in Thailand. There are a bunch of rice and noodle dishes for 37 baht ($1.06 USD). There’s “toasties” as well!

Message places can be found on every few blocks as well. Hour long messages can be done for around 200-300 baht ($5.70-8.55 USD). So inexpensive!

Holiday trips

I try to make a habit of going somewhere every weekend. It doesn’t have to be big or in some far off tropical beach, just something. Thailand is so so so beautiful and diverse. I love the different shaped mountains, Jurassic Park vibe from looking at them (yeah, haha) , beautiful beaches, and diverse atmospheres.

Three big trips I’ve taken since I started work: Chiang Mai, Ko Kret+park, and Koh Chang.

Chiang Mai

It’s commonly said how “everyone loves Chiang Mai”. While maybe not everyone loves it, it is a pretty neat place. Being in northern Thailand, the weather is a lot more compliant to visitors than the hot and polluted atmosphere of Bangkok (Bangkok is still a great place though!).

Chiang Mai is considered the digital nomad capital of the world. It offers a low cost of living, good internet speeds, and plenty of attractions and laid-back culture.

Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai, Thailand — Wat Chedi Luang temple in Chiang Mai

Ko Kret & Chaloem Kanchanaphisek Park

Just outside of Bangkok’s bustling and chaotic nature lies Ko Kret, a small artificial island that resulted from a canal being dug to provide an easier route along the Chao Phraya River. Ko Kret is known for its laid-back peaceful rural atmosphere and pottery.

The island doesn’t have any official paved roads, just a narrow concrete path circling the small island. There is a nice weekend market here that makes it perfect for a weekend day trip. I went on an early Saturday.

I rented a bike for 40 baht and spent the next three hours riding around the island, making multiple stops along the way.

After Ko Kret, I went to Chaloem Kanchanaphisek Park. Stunning views in this place!

Ko Chang

This has been the best trip by far (sorry Chiang Mai). There was an five-day weekend due to Thai Lent holiday. Me and eight other teachers from my school went to Ko Chang for the holiday.

Ko Chang is Thailand’s second biggest island, after Phuket. It’s notable because it’s one of the Thai islands that remains not too negatively affected by tourism. I got to the island by taking a five-hour bus from Bangkok to Trat then a ferry to the island.

Everyday, us teachers took to the beach and every night we took to the clubs. The white sand beaches were seemingly endless. The mountains and cliffs gave a very Jurassic Park vibe. Seeing them was so spectacular and something only my eyes could catch (the camera images did come close though 🙂 ).

It’s a great feeling to be around fun and spirited people. That’s what I got while in Ko Chang.

All in all, Thailand has been great so far. Midterms at school have just been completed after a 2-3 week process. Now back to the daily routine!

What trips are you dreaming up or planning to take?

Creating Positivity on Demand

July 14, 2016

I love it when I feel naturally positive. I feel like I can conquer the world and do anything. This usually happens when I think up some genius idea and Friday rolls around so I think about all.the.time. I will have to work on it. The feeling fades as the weekend rolls quickly through and Monday rears it’s head again.

Having a positive outlook feels great. Sometimes like the best feeling in the world. My brain rolls around. I imagine it doing backflips and jumping around in excitement in my head because of how positive things are.

Then there is the opposite side to positivity. Feeling negative, down and in one of those gloomy moods. It isn’t full-on depression, just one of those bad kind of days where you feel unmotivated, not good enough, and in a mental block that just won’t go away.

It’s usually the feeling you have of wanting to throw your jotted notes to the side, grab your laptop in a fit of redirected determination, and spend the rest of the night binging on Netflix to ease the pain. Ahhh, I just finished watching Freaks and Geeks all the way through for the second time in a row.

I don’t want the whole Netflix defense mechanism to become a common activity. So, I’ve thought through the ways I’ve gotten past a mental block and put focus into creating positivity on demand.

Big poster boards are your friend

I used to think creating mood boards/dream boards was just some baseless thing used more as an icebreaker back in school rather than anything important. Well, I was wrong. They are freaking fantastic. Although I just stick with calling them my “big white poster board full of an overflowing amount of goals I’m trying to make sense of”. It’s a longer name than mood board, but it works. 🙂

I buy a 50 cent poster board (or if I’m feeling spiffy, a nice dollar foam board) and get to work creating a road map of goals: three months, six months, one year, and so forth. I’ve made a point of looking at it every morning before I go off to work. Good way to see what I’ve written down over and over!

Re-stating your goals to yourself= great solo accountability

In the last few weeks, I’ve gotten into the practice of saying my goals and wishes out loud to myself once a week, usually on Sunday nights. This has helped a ton in “lighting the fire under me” to keep going on what I’m doing and remember what things I still want to do.

Repeating my goals to myself out loud makes for great solo accountability.

Be aware of the things that trigger your positivity

I’m not much of a quote person. They’re great but other things help in creating positivity on demand even more. What are they?

A big one is nature. I really love going on hikes. It’s a goal of mine to visit The Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and several national parks in the U.S. in the next year. Even when I’m not actively doing this, simply looking at the photos of past ones makes me feel more positive.

Books give me a jolt of inspiration. The big thing around town seems to be reading several self-development non-fiction books but I get inspired and positive from non-fiction and fiction alike.

I’ve read the first chapter of David Arnold’s Mosquitoland too many times. The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to be Complicated is something I’m constantly marking up.

Podcasts are another positivity boost. Lately, though I’ve been yearning for shorter podcasts (5-15 minutes) to listen to while I clean or brush my teeth. I’m loving Paul Jarvis’s The Freelancer so far. The podcasts are short and to the point.

Longer (30 minute to one hour) podcasts I listen to include Brian Clark’s Unemployable, Kayla Hollatz’s #createlounge, and Climb Out of The Cubicle with Amber Monaco.

What are ways you go about creating positivity on demand? Recommendations always welcome!

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