My Personal Finance Story — Part 1
There have been moments in my life where money has governed several decisions. Decisions that shouldn’t have been goverened by money. I am not proud of them. But I am proud of what they made me. Here’s my personal finance story.
I am proud to say that I never had to officially start my journey to minimalism because I have always been frugal. Frugal to a point where I have been stingy. There have been times when I valued money over relationships. I am not proud of such moments, but they shaped who I am today. And I can gladly say that I am pretty okay with my personal finances, to be honest.
Childhood and School Life
Financial Independence has been the core of my character as a person since my childhood. Whenever I got a monthly allowance, I put it safely in a small box in the cupboard. I was never inclined to spend it because I felt that I had not earned that money. Growing up I kept the same attitude throughout my school life.
College Life
There was a monumental shift in my view when I started going to college. The definition of saving, now changed to earning. I started freelancing in the second year and continued it for over 3 years. I stuck by my mom’s words. She said,
If you want to save more, you need to earn more. You cannot save more by cutting back on needs.
Focus on the word needs here. My parents just like me have never been advocates of spending extravagantly. However, they never cut back on needs. Once in a while, they might have to have compromised on the wants part, but never the needs part. I suppose that’s where my frugality comes from.
So, when I started earning 2k (INR) a month, I thought, well now I can live a lavish life and really eat all the snacks that I want.
When that figure breached the 4k, I knew that now I can start paying my monthly rent.
When it further increased to around 10k, I started paying all of my living expenses and then some.
By the end of college, I was earning close to 20k, a month from freelancing around 3–4 hours a day.
But that wasn’t enough.
Internship and Early Career
It kind of feels weird to say that I am no longer in the early stages of my career (from a short term POV) considering the fact that I have a full-time experience of over 3 years. But when I started working as an intern, I earned around 18k as a stipend for a 9 to 5 role. The first thing I did before I got the first stipend or even attended the first day of office, was start a mutual fund SIP worth 10k.
Considering the fact that my basic living cost (just the rent), was 9k, I was already operating at a negative 1k per month. Now, that is called living in a slight financial crunch, taking into account the fact that taking help from parents was (and still is) a big no-no.
So, I had to double down on my freelancing work to pay my bills. There was a long period in my life when I was working 12+ hours every day just to pay my bills.
But I suppose, that was just the beginning. More in Part 2!
