Spud Set? …. You Bet (For Life): A Middle School, Middle Class Moorhead Teacher’s Take On Money

May 15th, 2020: As I write these first few words down on a Google Doc at 7:20 PM on a Friday night during the last few days of shelter in place, it comes to my attention just how ludicrous this all seems. I’m just a 25 year old, washed up college athlete. I split rent with a Cobber whom I met on Craigslist. My beer of choice is Hamm’s and I still buy Karkov Peach by the handle. I drive a totaled, 2010 Camry with 190,000 miles on it, where one of the doors doesn’t open from the outside.

Now after this brief anecdote about my post-collegiate “adulting” life, some of you might wonder why I deprive myself and thinking I live like some sort of vagrant. However, as I was out for an 11 mile walk today (yes, not a typo), I realized that this is the perfect time to chronicle my journey going forward, as well as provide information that I feel like a lot of us may need to hear. I have all of this relative “free time” all of a sudden, and I know I will feel guilty if I don’t come out of Covid-19 with at least one positive to shamelessly brag about.

One of the things that I have become increasingly passionate about is personal finance, and specifically the concept of becoming financially independent before the standard "retirement" age. My goal as of now is to become financially independent and having the option to retire before I am 40. I’m sure the person reading the last sentence probably just rolled their eyes, closed this tab and went back to watching Tiger King (again). However, if you are someone that has even the slightest desire to improve your money situation, this just might be for you. If the status quo is what you seek, then this will likely be where we part ways. To take a page out of Dave Ramsey’s book, being “normal” means being broke. I have seen firsthand the amazing power of having even basic financial literacy, as well as the toll of making uninformed decisions. I am in no way claiming to be an expert in anything really, but if you begin to follow me as I chronicle my journey, you may learn a thing or two.

While this blog and services are open to everyone, the target audience of this blog will likely be teachers, as we all can relate to one another on several levels. Plus then I won’t have to deal with the “Yeah but you get summers off” argument (cue eye roll here).

O.K. now that we have gotten rid of the riff raff (and no, not the rapper), I can start to break explain to you some of the major money mistakes I have made over my life (so far). See my second post for those mistakes.

#selfacceptance #lifestyle