I am young enough to have several years ahead of me before retirement, but old enough to preface conversations with “back when I was your age” when lecturing to my teen-aged daughter as I tell her to get off my lawn. This is probably a horrible way to describe that, mostly because she hates being outside.
Much like my peers, I didn’t grow up learning about personal finance. I didn’t have a lemonade stand and I didn’t deliver papers on my bike. I was dragged out of bed at 5 or 6 in the morning to assist my father who worked as a general contractor. Building brick walls, replacing roofs, repairing plumbing, painting, building driveways, you name it were some of the things I helped do. Gaming consoles, name brand clothing, and other expensive items we take for granted these days were out of the question then. As a child, my only aspirations were to make enough to buy my mother a red Jeep Cherokee, and own a house with a sidewalk and a garage.
On my own as a young adult, I lived paycheck to paycheck, used payday loans to keep the lights on, and relied on the occasional $20 loan from friends for meals. I would eventually grow tired of this lifestyle, and it forced me to learn how to better manage my money. Because Rome wasn’t built in a day, I would still wonder why I had extra money in my account, only to walk into my apartment to find that the power was turned off. Oops. Getting over bad money management habits was difficult, but after a couple of years of trial and error, I was able to figure some of this stuff out. To be transparent, I’m still in the process of learning, but at least I’ve learned how to be consistent.
The purpose of the blog is to aggregate some of things that I’ve learned so far to a central location. The hope is that the information found on the pages of this blog will help someone avoid the pitfalls and challenges I went through. Not everyone is eager to learn about personal finances, and I have learned that the hard way when I try to minister what I have learned to others. So whenever my progeny or nephews and nieces are ready to learn, they can go through the ever growing blog posts that will be added to this site.
Visitors of this blog should always perform their own research. This blog is my way of aggregating different topics to a central location, simplifying investing terms and topics, and should not be taken as financial advice.
Polymathics Finance 