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What is Your Needed Internet Speed?

What internet speed do you really need? Use the handy infographic to help you figure out!

What is your needed internet speed? The speed in which you can comfortably browse your favorite website (Buzzfeed?) or send an email to grandma or to watch your favorite Netflix show.

In a former life, I worked for a telecommunications company. From my stint there, one thing stuck out to me: many people really don’t know what internet speed/package to get and usually end up paying more than they need.

Misconceptions and confusions run abound. I have the 6 mbps package. That’s fast, right? I just upgraded to the 75 mbps turbo package! Super fast internet for me!

Nobody likes to pay more for something they don’t really need, right? Heck yeah, right! Gotta save those nickels and dimes.

Below you will see a nice little infographic I put together to help you figure out what internet plan you really need.

What size internet package do you need? Check out the infographic to find out!

The casual user: If you’re a person who just needs simple web browsing, some Netflix (standard definition, SD), streaming Pandora or Spotify and sending basic emails then a low package will be more than enough to fit your needs. A 3-6 mbps internet package is good for a single user.

Moderate users/couples: A 6-12 mbps plan will work for people with a needed internet speed package that allows them to send big emails with many attachments, watch Netflix or YouTube without the annoying buffering, and online gaming. This package is good for 1-3 users.

Families/work from home types: A 12-25 mbps speed will work great if you do work from home or have a family of people using the internet.

Now this post is about finding out what internet package/speed works for you. Finding out and comparing service providers is another thing you will need to do. This can usually be a stressful and time intensive endeavor.

Some quick tips as you go through it: Understand companies quality of service greatly depends on regions (remember that when reading online reviews! Ask people in your area.) and don’t forget to look into local companies as well.

What internet speed do you currently have? Is it fitting your needs without breaking the bank?

Learning to Accept a “Bad Budget Item”

Learning to accept a "bad budget" item in your monthly expenses

What are some of your money vices? “Bad budget” things?

I can tell you two big ones I see the personal finance community target over and over: lattes and gym memberships.

If I had a dollar for every time an article told me to cut lattes and my gym membership, I would have enough money to be a millionaire right now. I mean, some of the articles talk about how if I cut lattes and gym memberships, I will be a millionaire before I know it. Right? Yeah…okay.

With lattes and gym memberships so often being looked at as “bad budget items”, it made me wonder what small things people spend money on every month that wouldn’t be considered part of a “good” budget.

The idea behind the whole “ditch the latte and gym membership craze” centers on cutting out the unnecessary expenses in your budget and focusing on the expenses you need and that really matter.

Cut the unnecessary expense and you’ll have more money to put towards debt or retirement, they say. You don’t need it. Yada Yada Yada.

Now, I have done a good job of not taking on unnecessary expenses into my monthly budget over the years. I only get lattes from coffee shops occasionally, so they aren’t a detriment to my budget.

My bad budget item is having a gym membership.

So many articles about cutting back and saving money mention ditching the gym membership. There are workout videos you can do yourself! Gyms are expensive! Do yoga at home!

How about…no. Good habits die hard my friend. I’m one of those people that actually uses their gym membership. *Shivers*. At $20+tax per month, It isn’t an overtly expensive item to keep.

What are some common bad budget items?

  • Eating out (don’t we all want to try out the most amazzzing restaurants and be an amateur foodie?! Also, apparently brunch is a legit thing now)
  • Endless subscriptions (magazines, Spotify, Neflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, subscription box services)
  • Excessive ready made food, snacks, and drinks
  • Small purchases that add up (I had a issue with this for a while when I kept ordering $10-25 dollar things on Amazon, 🙁 )

Having one or two bad budget items isn’t going to break your budget and keep you from reaching your financial goals.

So often people get caught in the mindset of “If I just reduce my expenses to basic needs” them I can achieve my financial goals.” This logic is part of the equation but not the whole thing.

On the other hand, there are the articles centered around not focusing on cutting your bad budget items and instead increasing your income. This, again, is part of the equation but not the whole thing.

Achieving financial goals involves a healthy mix of getting into a good mindset of what/when to save and when making additional income is more practical.

Having one or two bad budget items (as long as they aren’t big ticket things) are okay for a budget. They are useful even. They become that little incentive that keeps you going and helps maintain your day to day happiness.

A bad budget item keeps your happiness up while also keeping you in check from spiraling into a multitude of bad budget things. After all, saving money is rooted in a person’s mindset. It’s not about depriving oneself.

When bad budget items ruin your monthly budget…

Little money wastes can be fine in a person’s particular situation. The key is to not let a bad budget item ruin your budget completely. For instance, if your bad budget item is having cable, what happens when the cable bill increases?

What happens when you start getting a little to comfortable with getting lattes and start purchasing them more frequently?

Best thing to do is to temporarily eliminate the item from your monthly budget. Try a 30 day challenge where you go without it. At the end of the challenge, you will have a better idea if you really need it or not.

For me, I loved having Hulu and Spotify. The assortment of playlists on Spotify was kinda life changing (kidding, not kidding). However, as time went on, I found Spotify to be a time suck better served for reading. I also wasn’t using my Hulu subscription as much.

After temporarily eliminating them for one month, I realized I didn’t have a big use for them anymore and got rid of them. $17 bucks a month saved! (Now I just gotta stop buying pretzels from the mall so frequently!)

The good thing about personal finance is that it’s personal. Figure out what works for you.

What “bad budget” do you have in your monthly budget? Do you keep the expense because it helps bring happiness? 

My Commencement Address to College Graduates

commencement address to college graduates

My commencement address to college graduates…

I had an realization while busy at work, this month (May 2016) would have been the month I graduated from college. I didn’t graduate this month though, I graduated college 1.5 years ago.

On a warm December day in 2014, (winter in Texas wasn’t much of a thing) at 20 years old, I walked across the stage in an over lit auditorium and accepted the university diploma for my bachelor’s degree. (people have questions on my early graduation, I’ll answer them in a later post).

I remember be crunched up in the tiny auditorium seat, listening to the commencement speaker talk to us graduates about starting our new lives and taking chances on things. She gave the usual warm and fuzzy closing remarks about reaching such an accomplishment and wishing us the best on our new endeavors.

And that was it….

After she finished, we got our diplomas and left the building.

The commencement address wasn’t bad, I really enjoyed it, but there was something missing about it. Speaking about entitlement wasn’t the missing part. I’m not part of the group of people who constantly shout “We NEed to TeLL KIDS ThEY R NOT SPECIAL!!!!!”

I was inspired to write this after reading Think. Save. Retire’s piece on college commencement. There is one big thing I would tell to people graduating university and stepping ground into “the real world”.

Don’t drink the Kool-aid: don’t blindly follow what everyone else is doing. Figure out what works for you.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@colinashby”]Don’t drink the Kool-aid: don’t blindly follow what everyone else is doing. [/tweetthis]

So often I see recent grads taking jobs they hate, buying new cars with money they don’t have, doing the minimum on their student loans, and generally not being conscious and intentional with their choices.

Despite being done with formal education, they are are still following a syllabus. A syllabus they haven’t even fully examined.

They get a certain job because that’s what they think they need to do, they buy a new car because that’s what’s seen as the right choice, they settle with paying the minimum balance on their debts because debt is seen as normal.

It’s odd how so many people follow it, then later when they want to change things, they’re weighed down by all the baggage they took on.

Don’t fall into this. Things I would like to add:

  • your job does not define you
  • know your worth and understand your strengths and weaknesses (yeah…it’s more than just a job interview question)
  • The life you want, no matter what it looks like, has a price tag (Stefanie O’Connell)

Your job does not define you

What do you do for a living? It’s one of the first questions people ask upon meeting you as an adult. We put people into labels and categorize them because it’s somehow easier.

Your job does not define you, no matter how much you hate or love it. This idea is in part perpetuated back when you were a senior in high school and socially forced decided to go to college.

You NEED to go to college. You don’t want to be a server or do a “menial” job for the rest of your life! (because obviously college is the surefire golden ticket to a great job, right…)

Our identity needs to be centered around our interests, personality, and skills, not our job title. After all, working at a job only takes up part of your life, how do you live in the other parts?

Know your worth and understand your strengths and weaknesses

It isn’t just a question you get asked in job interviews.

Confidence, assertiveness, and knowing your worth are hugely valuable traits to have and learn.

Towards the end of my university career, as I continued to apply to more places, I was offered an internship at a media communications company. The company was a well known company in the area and seemed like a good place to  expand my skills more.

Then, after a good interview, I found out it was unpaid.

You will get lots of exposure and a chance to build your portfolio! – interviewer

It was an opportunity I would have taken as a college freshman with little experience, but I was a senior, confident in my skill set, and already had a portfolio. I turned it down.

Be assertive in your future endeavors and know your worth. Be honest with yourself about what your strengths and weaknesses are.

How can you strengths help you move forward? What weaknesses do you have that you feel are holding you back? Figure them out and start working on them.

The life you want, no matter what it looks like, has a price tag

This is an awesome quote from millennial finance expert Stefanie O’Connell.

O’Connell graduated from university with a degree in theatre and spent the next seven years living the starving artist life as a professional stage actress. Over the years, she has built up a business as a freelance writer, millennial finance speaker, and author. She’s #breakingbroke (love a good Breaking Bad pun 🙂 ) and wrote a great article on becoming a six-figure artist.

So recent university graduate, I’m here to tell you money is a key part of your life, you can’t ignore it or have a passive eye on it. Don’t just go to your parents for financial advice either. Actively managing, saving, and growing your money will help you splurge on that passion project you’ve been wanting to try, it will help you move away from that dreaded job you hate, and it will make you feel more relaxed and not always stressed about money (nobody likes wondering whether their going to overdraft on their account).

Being proactive about your money and being savvy with it will be a key ingredient in helping you propel forward and reach your goals. Don’t ignore or put it off. Start today.

So university graduates, congratulations on accomplishing a big milestone. While your degree isn’t a ticket to success, it is an accomplishment in and of itself. Good job.

As you set out into the world, remember to not drink the Kool-aid. Examine it, add your personal flavoring to it, and make it suit your taste.

 

What would your message be to recent university graduates? What do you wish you had been told at your commencement address? 

 

Financial Lesson My Parents Were Wrong About

financial lessons from parents

I feel the need to clear the air. I like reading about people’s journey with money. A lot of the endearing stories detail how the individual’s personal finance journey came to be. There are tales of being high in debt, maxed out credit cards, frivolous purchases later regretted and so on.

The stories unveil how parents or a financially sound voice of reason came into the light and kicked them into gear towards getting better with their money. The stories are passion filled and inspirational. It makes me feel less than jazzy about sharing mine.

My interest in getting better with money was inspired in part by a feeling of languish I had as a kid.

My parents made a good living throughout my childhood. My mother ran her own nursing home type business and my dad happily worked (and still works) for the same employer since he was 20 years old (37 years and counting! That doesn’t happen much anymore!).

However my parents lived a live influenced strongly by consumerism. They bought a wayyyy bigger house than they needed, constantly added unnecessary additions, put a lot of stuff on their credit cards (and didn’t pay in full every month), and were big on lifestyle inflation. My siblings and I lived a fairly frugal childhood on the other hand, weird…

I love you mom and dad! Despite all the knocks I’m about to take towards your personal finance attitude…

1. Credit cards are evil and should be avoided

I want to apologize to the polite Wells Fargo agent who I turned down every time when she tried to help me apply for an (actually good) credit card while I was in college. You the real MVP. 🙂

I was afraid of credit cards and turned them down at every turn due to advice from my parents to avoid them. Both mom and dad had a history of carrying credit card debt. Due to their constant hate-fueled talks towards credit cards, I viewed the piece of plastic as the devil’s advocate.

After getting my first credit card last year, I found out they are not all that bad! They actually have some solid benefits to using them (besides the obvious building credit thing 🙂 ).

2. Buy your cars new

“You’re better off buying a car brand new. With used cars, you have no clue what you’re going to get.” – my dad

I get where my dad is coming from when he said this. I don’t want to go drop a few thousand on a used car with 153,000 miles that might cause me more problems than I want down the line. The best bet? Buy pre-owned/new-to-me vehicles.

New cars depreciate so much in value in the first few years. My brother and his wife have both bought pre-owned 1-2 year old cars with low mileage and were able to save several thousands.

Better tips? Buy your vehicle with good ol’ cash. If you do finance, don’t get it through the dealer. They always try to make more money off you through the financing.

3. Buy a house, renting is just throwing money away

Yeah…my parent’s opinion on this changed when they tried selling their house in 2007, right as the housing market crashed.

Reading up on Afford Anything’s take on the rent vs. buy debate and Lifehacker’s take on it, reaffirmed me to not feeling bad for putting off homeownership for a while.

4. Money can’t buy happiness

It was ironic my parents always said this considering they bought several new cars, hot tub, extensive home renovations, and filling up the house with a lot of material possessions.

It weird how this saying is repeated over and over, as if happiness and making a good living are mutually exclusive. They aren’t…

Money can buy happiness to a certain extent. Being broke is expensive and time-consuming.

I partly get where the saying comes from: don’t work a job you hate just cause it pays good, there is something great in living with less, and so on.

However flat out saying money can’t buy happiness isn’t completely right. Having a lil’ extra to put away for a rainy day doesn’t hurt.

What financial lessons, either good or bad, did you learn from your parents? Have they carried with you throughout the years? 

Naysayers of Personal Finance & What to Do About Them

 

personalfinance_hate

There are always those people that kill your vibe. The ones where, when you explain some things you’re doing, they instantly retort against it. Sometimes, certain topics get more of an adverse reaction than others. Personal finance is one of them.

Talking about money makes many people nervous. Money management, saving, making more, and investing aren’t talked about much because for some reason it was decided to be a hush hush type of topic.

It’s interesting (and sometimes heartbreaking) when people brush off the discussion of money. When it comes to the naysayers of personal finance and money talk, I’ve experienced and learned of the different kinds of people who are so resistant to talking about money. Let’s take a look at them.

1. The Yolo (You Only Live Once) person

This is a big problem with millennials and people my age (I’m 21). Whenever the topic of saving and budgeting comes up, the YOLO person throws up their arms.

“You only live once! I want to enjoy my life, not have to restrict myself! I could die tomorrow for all I know!”

Yes, you could die tomorrow, but there is a greater possibility of you living much longer. Don’t you want to make sure you have a good financial foundation to enjoy your later years as well?

They make lots of impulse purchases and cover with the guise of “treating themselves” or “buying things that they need”. These are the “treat yo self” people. The type of people who may need to get better at being more intentional with their money and seeing the long-term.

The YOLO person fails to see money management as an opportunity rather than sacrifice [LINK]. They don’t understand it’s possible to live a good life and financially prepare for the future. These two are not mutually exclusive!

2. The “Thanks Obama” person

The title doesn’t have much to actually do with Obama, haha, it’s more discussing a particular mindset. A “thanks Obama” person is someone who complains about their situation and attributes their problems towards other things rather than focusing on actively working to better themselves.

They’re the ones who would rather hope for getting on a loan forgiveness program rather than look for ways to pay off their loans. They’re the ones who don’t know how to take the meaning of something and and shift it to fit their needs and goals.

How often have you read articles on income reports, people paying off big amounts of debt, working lucrative side jobs and so forth? On those articles, there is usually always someone in the comments who says how the situation won’t work for them.

I have three kids and a mortgage, there is no time for a second job! 

I only make $12 an hour, there is no way I can pay off my debt faster!

This person paid off 8,000 of debt in three months? That’s not possible for me!

This type of person focuses on the exact details of the above example stories, rather than focusing on the overall lesson: having a reason behind doing what you’re doing and making a plan that works for your situation.

3. The “On a better day” person

Most often known as a person who always says “I’ll do it tomorrow”, a “on a better day” person waits to get started. They believe things in their life aren’t in order at the moment and they will focus on their financial goals “on a better day”.

They constantly talk about how they don’t have this or that to get started or are too busy right now. Often times, they cast this mindset on others and try to guilt them.

“You run your own online business? Well I could run one too if I had a fancy laptop like yours.”

“You maxed out your Roth IRA this year? Well I have too many bills, I couldn’t possibly do that. Maybe when I start making more money…” 

4. The Overly Optimist

There is no need to build a good size emergency fund, right? Things will work themselves out. That debt will eventually be paid off. A big experience I had with this was when I was in college and talked with other people about their student loan debt.

“Oh, I’m not focused on it. I’ll worry about it when I graduate”

Besides rolling my eyes at the statement, my college self thought maybe it was just people not being exposed to the real world as the reason for this overly optimistic attitude. Nope! Being out of university now, I realize even lots of people in the real world do it.

They don’t pay their credit cards in full every month, they don’t make bigger payments towards their student loans, and they don’t focus on building up a bigger emergency fund. I mean, having $1,400 in a savings account is a good enough emergency fund, right? Right…

These types of people can bad for your finances. They may be great people, wonderful friends, and so forth, but they’re bad with money. How can you do about them?

Explain your ‘why’ and provide an example. 

The types of people above don’t have a definite ‘why’ behind their personal finance, so that’s why they see things like saving, investing, and making more money as not something worthwhile to focus on.

You could tell them your reasoning in dealing with personal finance and what you hope to get out of what you’re doing.

“I’m practicing frugality in terms of cutting my cable bill and limiting dining out. Nothing too extreme. I want to use the money I save to take that vacation to France I’ve always wanted to do.” 

“I’m working a second job as an Uber driver. I’m using the extra money to pay off my student loan debt. I want to pay it off faster so I can focus more on my passion project of painting, without having to worry about debt.”

“I made a budget for myself. I want to see where my money goes every month so I can see where to save. I want to use the saved money to put towards a down payment on a house.”

A lot of times, people just need to be explained why something might be beneficial to them. They may see personal finance as some daunting, big task. It doesn’t it have to be.

Everyone starts somewhere. It all starts with one thing. Doing one thing every day and working towards building a more solid foundation.

 

Have you encountered naysayers of personal finance and money management? What did you do about it? 

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