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Does Life End at Age 30?

Does life end at age 30? You don't have to "do it all" while you're in your twenties. Life and adventure don't magically end when you turn 30.

Does life end at age 30? I’m legitimately wondering because all around me it seems like it. The do it while you’re young and free phrase has been repeated, whether directly or indirectly several times.

Last week I turned 22. I went to work, people sang happy birthday and I ate a bunch of macarons instead of a birthday cake. Taylor Swift’s newfound rite of passage pop song ’22’ got played on repeat. It was awesome.

It got me thinking about the elusive milestone of turning 30 years old. Turning 30 is seen as this big, life changing thing and the benchmark age for “getting your life together”. What does getting your life together even mean?

What should you “have done” by age 30? Does it mean owning a house? Does it mean already gotten started on having 2-3 kids?

Society and expectations are tricky things to understand. The common things associated with turning 30 and getting your life together include: owning a house, being married, having kids, and working a respectable job.

Just like an infomercial for a useless product, but wait, there’s more! It’s not enough to have a house, you have to have a big house. You know, one that has a fancy master bathroom suit and two living rooms. A house that is big and modern looking with cool appliances.

Being married and “settled down” is expected when turning 30. Buying anything other than a robust engagement ring is considered odd. Not getting married with an expected timeline or not wanting to get married is considered odd.

So you’re considered odd if you’re 30 years and not married with a mortgage and kids. This has given way to celebrating your twenties and living it up while the fun lasts. Instant gratification starts to surface.

People are frustrated. They feel they have to be working a dream job, have discovered and done something amazing, own a home, and/or be married and having kids by the time they are 30 years old. They blow money on unimportant things and don’t plan for the future. They thing they need to get all of their adventurous things out of the way by the time they are 30.

It makes sense in some ways. Why put off doing something when you can do it today? If you have a yearning to start something or do something, make steps towards it starting today.

However, instant gratification works in negative ways. When you’re in your twenties and constantly hearing about friends getting married, having kids, and buying houses, it starts to wear you down. Even when you hear about people doing their dream travels or working a fabulous job, it wears you down as well. You want for your life. You want it now.

There was recently Saturday Night Live sketch about a frazzled millennial who came to her boss, asking for a promotion.

Boss: How long have you been here?

Millennial: Three days

It leads me to the first point…

Crappy jobs teach us lessons 

Nobody likes having a bad boss, dealing with office politics, doing mind-numbing work, working long hours, having a long commute, or even the horrendous act of someone stealing our sandwich from the office fridge :). But these jobs usually teach us lessons in some way.

Crappy jobs motivate us for change. They put you in a tenacious mindset of pursuing something better. You develop a thick skin and staying calm when dealing with nightmare situations and bad co-workers.

The coveted “dream job” is touted a lot. It lead to instant gratification problems of people wanting to quickly find an occupation that leaves them satisfied and fulfilled. But dream jobs, no matter how great they are, still require work. Having a fulfilling job takes time and experimentation, and realizations about what matters most to you.

Don’t get hung up on not being able to travel 

Ah, ladies and gentlemen, we are in the “quit your job and travel the world” era. You ever see those people on Instagram who have lots of followers and they’re always traveling and posting pictures of beaches and you aren’t really sure exactly what they do but their photos do spark your wanderlust vibe?

The importance of travel has become more prominent in recent years. It often goes hand in hand with the saying of travel while you’re young!

Does travel suddenly end when you’re 30? I don’t think so. Travel is more about mindset than hitting destinations. 

As you get older, your living costs will increase. Mortgage’s and kids might come into play. Why does that have to stop you though? If being adventurous and discovering new places is important to you, then make a plan for continuing it in some way, even after you hit 30.

Traveling, no matter if your 22, 30, or 80, is going to be a great experience. Don’t get so hung up if you can’t do it right this second.

People achieve success at a later age 

From young dudes wearing hoodies who start social media companies, to teen authors, to young activists, it can seem like if you don’t reach some big milestone by age 30, you are a failure. No.

Plenty of people have achieved greatness at a later age. Things will work out.

Your twenties are a time to live it up and experiment with things but don’t let the thought of having to follow a certain life syllabus hold you down. From what I’ve seen, life doesn’t seen to magically become unadventurous and incapable of trying new things once you hit 30.

Be patient, be intentional, and be active (both in the physical and intellectual sense, I have a feeling your 50 year old knees will thank you). As Parks and Recreation can show you, you’re never too late to do something new.

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I’ll Never Stop Telling People to be Frugal

Frugality is not one size fits all. Money management is centers around understanding your behavior habits towards money. Frugality makes you conscious+better at understanding your behaviors and getting financial confidence

Frugality is not one size fits all. It’s something more. It’s a mindset used to be conscious of spending and priorities.

Every person’s financial journey comes to a point where they put more emphasis on either saving more or spending more. These two opposing perspectives are not mutually exclusive. Frugality isn’t something that has to be tossed aside in favor of making more money. They can co-exist.

Throughout my varying levels of frugality (broke college student frugal, entry level salary frugal, all encompassing general broke-ness 🙂 ) there have been critics about my level of frugality. Every step of the way. Some were simple joking around while many were bitter comments on my lifestyle.

Last summer

My car squeaked as I pulled into the driveway to park. Along with the periodic squeaking, my car would do a series of beeps when I turned the ignition off.

Why don’t you just get a new car already? You have a job, stop being cheap. 

My older brother looked in disdain at the car. Like others, he keep insisting I needed to get rid of my 12-year old car with 190,000 miles and go ahead and get a new car. Not another used car, not a pre-owned car, but a ~new~ car.

You want to buy a new car because then you know everything is brand new and you don’t have to worry about constant repairs. 

This was mentioned to me over and over by several people. Buying a new car was a “good” buy, they said, because it was reliable and making the monthly payments would help my credit score.

Being a person who focused on the “making more” approach, the thought of getting a new, better car started to creep up.

Why not get a new car? If I focus on making more money then I will be able to afford a car payment. A new car would be more reliable…

BOOM. Lifestyle inflation.

My frugal mindset quickly snapped in. I didn’t want to buy a new car. My 12-year old, 190K+ mile car was running fine. There was the repair I would have to do ever so often but the repair costs didn’t come close to what I would have been spending on a monthly car payment.

At the time, I was working my first full-time job out of university. With lots of student loans and an entry level salary to boot. I didn’t want more debt. I didn’t want to buy a new car because it was “the right” thing to do. I didn’t want to have a more costly “nice” apartment, mindlessly go to the movies every two weeks because “it was something to do” and charge $12 drinks to my credit card. I didn’t want any of that.

I want to pay off my student loan debt in a timely manner and focus on the writing and design projects I did in my free time.

During my first year out of college, several things weren’t a priority to me:

  • Going to the movies
  • buying a new, “nicer” car
  • getting a ~cool~ apartment that took 40% of my pay
  • Mindless hookups and hangouts
  • “get together” lunches and dinners
  • extravagant vacations
  • shopping
  • and many more…

Frugality stems from deciding what you really value and want in life. For me? I wanted to be debt-free. I didn’t want to buy a new $29,000 vehicle and have payments hanging over my head for six years. Student loan debt was not something I wanted to carry around with me throughout my twenties.

I wanted to live a life on my terms. Working a job I enjoyed, being debt-free and having time during the weeknights to work on my writing and design projects. Weekends being able to be used for adventuring and being active, both physically and creatively.

Although, as many know, building your ideal life can take time. So frugality helped me implement strategies to get there.

For over a year after college, I lived without a massive rent payment, didn’t go to the movies or get drinks or brunch constantly, and I aimed to live a more simple life.

I would come home from my job, exhausted, then got to work on my passion projects. Every month I saved a good chunk of my income, threw it towards debt repayment, some towards retirement and some towards my emergency fund.

All the while, family and various people kept commenting on why I wouldn’t buy this or do that. I nodded my head politely and went on my way.

One day, an opportunity presented itself: moving to Southeast Asia, Thailand to be exact, to teach English.

Leaving my full-time job, moving to Thailand and teaching English for a monthly salary of about $850 USD? It seemed crazy, until I looked at my current situation and saw it could actually work.

Due to my frugal ways in the months leading up to leaving the U.S., I was in a good financial standing to take the plunge.

I didn’t have a car payment, wasn’t bound by an apartment lease, and I hadn’t succumbed to lifestyle inflation after graduating university. With steady progress made on my student loan debt, a moderate amount of savings. and not a lot of personal possessions, I was able to quit my job, move abroad and experience a new lifestyle.

People are different. They have different personalities, goals, and lifestyles. So why does frugality still carry this stereotype of being cheap and missing out on fun?

I didn’t clip coupons, reuse paper towels or do any of the other extreme measures people often associate with frugality. I made it work for me.

Following the various personal finance advice of cutting lattes, cable didn’t entirely fit for me. Neither did the opposing advice of “don’t focus on spending less, but making more”.

If I had focused on making more while ignoring the spending less, I would probably be sitting here with a hefty car payment to my name.

Frugality helped me understand the importance of being money conscious. It helped me understand how delayed gratification can sometimes be a good thing.

The debate between spending less and being frugal or instead focusing on making more money is a hollow. It assumes money management is about following rules. It isn’t.

[tweetthis]Money management isn’t about following rules, it’s behavioral. [/tweetthis]

I’ll never stop telling people to be frugal. If you are not conscious with your spending, do you think making more money is the ultimate answer? It most likely isn’t.

If money management were as easy as just following what financial experts said, then everyone would be great with following a budget and saving 10%, 20%, or 30% of their income. Making more money would be the key towards solving our money woes.

Making more money does have it’s place. It’s easier to put more towards retirement, save 50% of your income, and ramp up your emergency fund when you’re making $60K versus $30K.

However, it’s not the be-all answer (check out #26 on Broke Millennial’s post). Being frugal, no matter how much or how little you earn, is important. [tweetthis]Frugality targets behavior and willpower, big components to understand on the path towards financial confidence.[/tweetthis]

Everyone should be frugal in some aspect. It doesn’t have to involve obsessively clipping coupons, reusing paper towels or living without toilet paper. It’s flexible.

Frugality is adjustable. Make it fit your lifestyle. 

 

Do you practice frugality? How have you analyzed your behaviors and habits towards money management? Let me know! 

 

 

Weird Things I’ve Done to Save Money

Weird things I've done to save money. I lived in my car, stocked up on fast-food condiments and more.

What weird things have you done to save money? The personal finance blogging world often throws around different ways to save money. Cut cable! Brown bag your work lunch! Unplug things when not in use!

What do you value most? What are you okay with getting rid of? I’ve heard of people even going as far as taking toilet paper from public bathrooms in order to save money. Ummm, okay, not for me.

Saving money all comes down to your own personal taste and priorities. It’s always funny when I see articles about saving money and in the comment section, there’s usually some disapproving comments about how saving money on this or that isn’t worth the effort, dumb, and so forth.

Why would you do that to save money! It’s not even worth it!

What? That’s crazy! No way I would do that. 

Well, if there is a thing living in Thailand so far has taught me, it’s that 1. hot water is not necessary for a shower 2. 20-30 showers are not a necessity and 3. Many Thai people either don’t have internet at their home or their internet isn’t fast enough to sufficiently stream Netflix *gasp* *chills* 

Let’s go through some of the ways I’ve gone about saving money.

1. I lived in my car for my first year of college

Probably the most extreme thing I’ve done to save money. During my first year of university, I didn’t get enough financial aid to cover room and board for the school year. Rather than take out some private loans (with crazy interest rates), I decided to live in my car.

It wasn’t ideal but I made it work. I hung out in the university library a lot, which had air conditioning, wi-fi, and big desks to work on (the necessities 🙂 ).

2. Getting a job that provided a free meal

Going through university usually means the rite of passage of working low-rung, minimum wage jobs. When I arrived at my college town, I started looking for jobs. I quickly found one at McDonalds (you want fries with that?) and got a free meal with every shift.

Usually I got to add extras to the food and even take some home. It made living the broke college life a little easier.

3. Saving condiments from eating out

Most of the saved condiments came from McDonalds that I took after finishing a shift.

4. Dollar Menu loyal

Sadly, the McDonalds dollar menu no longer exists in most places. Back in college though, it was alive and well. There were McDoubles, side salads, sundaes, small fries, large drink, pies, and 4 piece chicken nuggets, all for $1.00 each. I would usually pair up a “main dish” with fries or a salad for $2.17.

5. I kept store cups

I only kept a McDonalds cup. I would keep it in my backpack, order my food, then take it out and fill it up. It’s stealing, I know, I know. The habit died when I graduated from university.

6. Not washing my hair as often

This can be gross for some people, but it worked for me. I usually washed my hair around two times per week while in university.

7. Getting a “dumbphone”

The opposite of a smartphone. At one point a few years back, I decided to cut more expenses and felt I needed to get rid of my “expensive” $38.50 cell phone bill. I opted for a flip phone and got on a $10 a month plan for several months.

I now realize my “expensive” cell phone bill was probably half the cost of what most paid for theirs. You live and you learn.

8. College campus move out days=gold

At the end of the semester or school year, lots of students would throw out or leave a bunch of the school supplies, appliances, furniture and more (that their parents probably bought them).

Me and a friend went through at the end of one year and gathered up a bunch of school supplies, a small table, and a microwave.

Looking back at the somewhat weird things I’ve done to save money, it makes me curious as to what others have done. During my serving days, I know a big one many people seem to do: ghetto lemonade.

Ever heard of it? It involves getting the free water, then asking your server for more lemons (I can confirm, waiters hate this), then adding sweetener and the lemons to your water. Wha-la! DIY lemonade.

What weird things have you done to save money? 

The Rocky History of an Emergency Fund

What has your history with an emergency fund been like? I share my experience over the years having one.

Emergency funds are kinda hot right now, don’t ya think? Well not really…people have most likely had them for a long while. There has, however, been an increase in posts discussing the nagging but super important topic of emergency funds.

The discussing of these surprisingly not so common savings accounts got set off by a Billfold post on The Story of a Fuck Off Fund.

Age 12: Budding Business Owner?

My first real tango with the aspect of an emergency fund happened when I set out to start a business. I was 12 years old, had just finished 6th grade and felt ready to conquer the world. Sort of.

My mom owned an assisted living business and had just opened a new location. I pitched the idea of having a candy counter to serve the residents snacks and promptly got to work

I had separate bank accounts for my regular savings and my business money. I started buying the snacks in bulk to save money and from there I understood the importance of having a “buffer” in my accounts.

Every month I would stash away some of the money I made and put it into my savings account to be used for “a rainy day” or a business investment, as my 12-year-old self liked to call it.

Age: 18-20 University Life

My years at university consisted of going through different shades of broke. “Being worried but still sort of okay” type of broke. “Not having a lot of money” type of broke. “Oh my gosh, am I going to overdraft” type of broke.

My emergency fund fluctuated a lot during this time. Emergency funds were an ingrained aspect in me because of my car. Faced with the aspect of having to pay for repairs, oil changes, registration, and car insurance costs, I knew very well how expenses could sneak up.

I made it a habit to always have at least $1,500 in an emergency fund during the time.

Present-ish day

For a while after graduating university, I worked a job I that was really exhausting and draining both physically and mentally. During this time, I made solid efforts to not let the job become a long term thing.

In addition to job hunting, I started contributing more and more to my emergency fund. For a while, I contributed a good chunk, until my student loan repayment started. Then I was stuck at a cross-roads.

Contribute more to my emergency fund (it was still small at this point) or pay off more of my student loan debt? What was the “right” thing to do?

After reading a dozen or so articles, I decided to make big payments on my student loan debt, but still contribute a sizable amount to my emergency fund. It’s all about personal circumstances and priorities. I figured out what would work for me.

I am so glad I did. 

My job started to become unbearable, I had a decent size emergency fund, and an opportunity to move overseas for a while presented itself.

I still find it funny how a story on emergency funds went viral around the same time I was making a plan to quit my job without a solid new job lined up.

I quit my job, went to an interactive technology festival, went to Oregon, then started my new job in Thailand. My emergency fund was my friend during those few short weeks, when expenses started to pop up.

Thank you emergency fund. I’ll never stop giving you attention 🙂

What is your history of an emergency fund? How much or how many months of expenses do you consider is necessary to have in one? 

Dealing With Friends Who Are Bad With Money

How to deal with friends who are bad with money.

Friends who are bad with money. Either they splurge too much, save too little, or have a YOLO mindset when it comes to their finances. They need help.

I recently got done having a binge of the second season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Awesome show with just the right level of wackiness and humor. I also watched the 1994 Winona Ryder film Reality Bites along with a new indie film called Temps. 

All great stuff that had topics related to starting a new life, finding one’s goals, quarter life crisis frenzy and in some way involved the every golden topic of money.

Back in March, before I departed to Thailand, I sat at a friend’s apartment and discussed all the things I was budgeting for when I arrived in Thailand.

Me: I’m just worried about the various unexpected expenses I will encounter. What does your monthly budget look like? 

Friend: *confused stare* I don’t have a budget. I mean, I save money but I don’t look over my expenses or anything.

Me: *stares in confusion for an undetermined amount of time*

Everyone has tales of being around people who are bad with money, myself included. While there certainly are people who are badddd with money, many people just aren’t good with their money.

[tweetthis]Many millennials have the basic “saving is important” mindset down, but not much else[/tweetthis]

Let’s go through an anecdote. One of my friends has been working at her current company for nearly five years. A year ago she went full-time with them. Being a full-time employee, she got a slew of benefits: health insurance, paid time off, and a 401k with 4% match.

Want to take a guess whether she signed up for the 401k or not?

She didn’t.

I had another friend who had a severe misunderstanding of what “treat yo self” meant when it came to splurges and shrugged it off by saying she put money into her savings account every month, so all was good. No, no, all is not good.

How do you help friends who are bad with money? How do you help them set money goals and understand concepts like 401k’s, IRA’s, Index funds, and more without boring them?

Don’t offer advice unless asked

This is the biggest thing I have realized when it comes to dealing with friends who are bad with money. Being a young twenty-something (I’m 21), I want to to tell them all the things when it comes to practicing money management in your twenties (which, let’s be honest, isn’t a whole lot since I’m learning myself).

You want so bad to help them, to sit them down and explain the basic concepts of compound interest, the magic power of a 401k and IRA, and developing a solid emergency fund.

You shouldn’t do any of this though, unless they ask you (whether directly or implied) for help. Only friends who solicit advice are the ones who actually want to get better with money.

Talk about your money experience

People constantly want to see how something relates to them. How they can apply something to their life.

Whenever I talk about my money experiences (both good and bad), is when my friends relate the most to it and start wanting to get better in their own lives.

Back in university, I talked with a friend about the small, but growing emergency fund I had and how I was glad I had it when it when a few unexpected car repairs came up. I discussed how I was able to save while on working a low-wage job (something she was also going through).

Often times, I found I most often had a “money breakthrough” with a friend when I discussed a personal anecdote.

Like many things in life, becoming better takes practice. Money, whatever way in comes in (being debt free, making a higher salary, etc.) isn’t the goal. It’s all about making it work for you!

How do you deal with friends who are bad with money? What ways can you help them? 

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