I'm more upbeat this morning than I've been in a while -- well, it's payday, I got enough sleep for once, and I just had a delicious cup of coffee, so there are reasons :)
I've got to get to work, so this is a short update, but I was thinking as I looked at mint.com this morning (just to admire the deposited paycheck, you know) that it feels good to have decided that I'm in charge of where I'm going in life, financially. Strictly speaking it's not true; in a lot of ways I really do have to "wait for someone to give me a job." I can't make them appear out of thin air. But this was a year in which I actively solicited more income for myself through side hustles and also, and this is the key, made a plan for what I'd do with the money. I've always worked a little on the side: babysitting, the occasional freelance editing, whatever -- but I've also always just routed it into groceries or whatever without really thinking about it. But now I'm thinking more long-term about where I'd like to be, financially, in 30 years, and really trying to assign incoming money to places that will help me get there. It's a cool feeling, to be responding to immediate needs and inputs a little less reactively, a little more proactively.
That is a very good way of thinking of things. I know that for myself, I always just applied credit card bonuses against the balance due then paid off the rest, now I am thinking I should be putting an equal amount against debt or into a retirement account. It is a different way of thinking!
ReplyDeleteRight, exactly -- when you just pay off the card without really thinking it through, it's not as bad as sinking deeper and deeper into debt, but it's not as good as being intentional about your spending.
DeleteIt is a good idea to keep a (meat) thermometer record of your extras, otherwise you can't remember and don't really have a nice picture to look back on when the going get's tough. I should do this.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good idea! I haven't done it because all the extra money is going straight into my Roth IRA, and right now that's the only money that's going in there, so it's easy to keep track of. But if things get more complicated in the future, like I start putting "normal" income into the Roth, I might go the thermometer route. They're fun to look at, anyway :)
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