Managing Home Finances

I want to share with you one thing that I passionately do: I am in constant pursuit for learning a little about a lot of things, whenever, wherever. I believe that my growth as a person is a struggle, a lot of hard work, discounting dependence from other individuals.

I remember how I took the accountability to manage our home finances. I live with my parents and my younger brother, we are naturalized Americans but we all practically grew up in the Philippines. Before I took over managing the finances (payables from bills, loans, credit cards and etcetera), my parents were on the brink of a couple of thousand debt. It was a headache for me to face, but I took it as a dare to my self and I had fun. I slowly cleaned up the mess from debts prioritizing those with high-interest payables and told my family that as much as possible refrain using credit cards if there is cash available. What my parents mistook was the convenience of credit cards until, to their surprise, interests have compounded and we all found a fortune of debt. The most important skill I learned to develop from this task is self-control and to have fun. I suddenly became conscious the way I spend our money, I learned how to balance off a need from a mere want. I found myself drawing a mind map of the things I have yet to learn in order to become a successful businessman.

I don’t have a background in accounting and I only know simple mathematics but I told myself that in the end of this task I will be learning something that will help me grow as a person, and I was right. Before I learned the essentials of making my money work for me, all of my earning went sitting in the bank. Just a year ago after I read Kiyosaki’s book, I was determined to apply in myself the same lessons and attitude in that book. Someday I will be financially free.