All posts by Greenbacks Magnet

I grew up in the Washington DC metropolitan area and have been working in the financial services and lending industry for over a decade. I earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and master's degree in distance education from the University of Maryland University College.
Financial Freedom

Getting back to cash only

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I once heard the saying ‘cash is king’ and now after spending years in credit card debt, I can finally understand the meaning. If I used cash, there would be no debt. Debt can be debilitating. It can cause stress, anger, anxiety and limit upward mobility.

For example, let’s say that you have $15,000 in credit card debt at 15% interest. It could take about ten years with a payment of $242 a month and over $14,000 in interest before the debt would be repaid. You would have paid for your purchases twice! If instead, that money was invested in a Roth IRA, after ten years of contributing $242 per month at an 8 percent, your investment would be worth $74,452.

That’s a whole lot better than repaying debt! So how can we get back to cash. It’s simple. Just do a little less.

Instead of buying breakfast every morning, you could buy twice a week. Same goes for snacks and eating out. Just limit what you do. And use cash.

Start by using cash at the grocery store and gas station every week. Then on other regular purchases such as the hair salon or barber shop, tip with cash, eat out with cash. When you have to physically part with your hard earned money it hurts a lot more.

Let’s say you pay $1,000 monthly to repay your debt. If you were to save that same amount of money, you would have $12,000 in your bank account by the end of the year. Do this for three years and have $36,000. Five years will give you $60,000. And for eight years will give you a whopping $96,000!

You can’t afford not to save as the alternative is usually being in debt. When you have the cash to pay for whatever life throws your way, you are able to cope better with the challenges it will bring you. Just saving for a few years could provide you with financial freedom the likes of which you have never felt before.

All you have to do is a little less.

Financial Freedom

The “M” Word

Money. Just the word elicits so many emotions and reactions from people. I should know as I have had my own highs and lows in the quest for the almighty dollar. Simply put, life is expensive.

HOW EXPENSIVE…THIS EXPENSIVE

Groceries and a car. A trip to the grocery to feed a family of four can range in the hundreds of dollars. The price of buying a car can now be the cost of a down payment on a house. Car payments that run in the $300-500 range are the norm; which can take as long as 5 or 6 years to pay off (even the president is only in office for 4 years per term) because longer than four years, in my book, is just too long.

A house. Don’t even get me started on buying a home. A nice home, in a good school district can cost upwards of a quarter million dollars or more. That’s right. There was no typo. Depending on what part of the country you live in you could be paying a half a million dollars just to have a roof over your crumb snatchers heads.

Paying the mortgage. According to bankrate.com, the monthly payment on a $250,000 mortgage with no money down and a 5% fixed interest rate for 30 years would cost $1,342.05 per month. That does not include HOA, property taxes, maintenance, PMI, utilities or other costs associated with being a homeowner. Owning a home is great and a truly wonderful goal, but a big ticket item like this has to be planned for.

Get a job. However, to afford all the above-mentioned topics you have to have a good job and there are plenty of those all over the place right? Wrong. Typically, now to get a decent paying job you have to go to college. And college is one of the most expensive items of all next to a home.

Cost of college. Unless you have been living under a rock, you are fully aware that the cost of college has skyrocketed out of the stratosphere. What once was thought of as a way for upward mobility that could be obtained by working your way through school is becoming prohibitively more expensive.

Tuition. According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition for the 2015-2016 school year was $32,4055 at private colleges and $9,410 for public colleges. The latter price is for in-state residents! The average cost for out-of-state residents is $23,893. If you multiply those costs by four, the equivalent of four years of college, it is outrageous. And that’s for the students who finish in four years.

Student Loans. So this is what prompts students to take out student loans. Which can become like a cancer, if not taken out wisely, because the interest can start to compound and make loans bigger and bigger until they become almost impossible to repay. I have actually read some pretty awful stories about students who received college degrees that were essentially worthless or in low paying fields and could barely afford to pay rent let alone their loan payments. You have to educate yourself on student loans and know the risks. I am a huge advocate for educating yourself as college is vital. However, I believe firmly that a good education should also be an affordable one.

End the cycle. All this can lead to the proverbial rat race. Where people struggle for wealth, but are unable to break the financial cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. Although not easy, it can be done.

From blog to billion$. That is what this blog is all about. There is a way to reach the coveted title of having financial independence and freedom. You can reach this milestone. Keep reading and let this blog motivate you on your journey of wealth accumulation.

 

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