The Numbers, Mason

Its time to make sense of your financial situation!

Now that introductions are out of the way (and if they are not, go back to my first post and leave a comment introducing yourself or just saying hey), lets get into the good, the bad and the ugly. I want to breakdown my starting point as a reference for where I am beginning this journey.

The GOOD:

Give me the good news first; well, I have a job. It pays, after taxes and deductions, roughly $2,100 bi-monthly. I work in the mortgage field and have held roles in the financial services industry throughout my career, ranging from a call center job, to auditing, wealth management and asset management based roles and now mortgage. I really am grateful for this role as it is the best paying and best work environment job I have had in my career, so very easy to put this in the GOOD category. This is my primary source of income - I don't have any sources of passive income (yet), and I haven't monetized a side hustle (yet). The biggest risk here is, of course, job loss; which based on what I am seeing out there, a pretty bleak picture (there is a white collar recession, and we may be headed toward a full blown recession in 2025). This is a great reason to start to build financial security.

I am also going to put I own my own house with my partner (still has a mortgage) on the GOOD list. Building equity is a great place to start beefing up your finances and homeownership is typically the largest mode of wealth creation for most people.

My partner owns her own small business (she's a rockstar and I need to get on her level - maybe I'll get her to make a post about starting a small business - comment if this would be of interest!) and that is another point for GOOD. Having a partner you can depend on and trust - or really any support system - can make the goal towards financial security much friendlier! She helps split costs and supports me emotionally on what I imagine will be a tough journey. So helping to reduce costs by 50% is a benefit.

I have very limited savings - lets say $5,000. I also have a few small retirement accounts which we will leave out of the calculus for the time being.

That really sums up the good - pretty good, right?

The BAD:

This is the less fun stuff, but it is stuff you must acknowledge. One of the four horsemen of financial downfall and the leader of the pack - Debt! In no particular order:

House (showing up on two lists?!) - $1,650 month

Home Projects (there were a few items that had to be fixed after we purchased the house - i.e. deck and hvac) - $1,450 a month (this is what we are paying a month to knock it all out in a year so it is treated as same as cash and no interest).

Student Loans - these bad boys have been dormant for a while but they will rear their ugly head in this new year I am sure - $500 month

I own my car, and while I have other monthly expenses - insurance, groceries, a baby (A BABY?! - yes, thank you, I am a relatively new father, and this can be a big expense and a big gift), bills - they are not debt so I will save them for another post if I feel like they need to be covered or if I try to tweak spending meaningfully there.

The UGLY:

This is where I have to be real with you all and, while painful, admit the ugliest part of this journey. I recently lost a lot of money in the stock market trying to bet on volatile stocks and trying to use options and realized I have essentially a gambling problem. I have reflected long and hard on my choices and tried to parse through the psychological forces that played a hand at my terrible decision making, but this is what essentially wiped my savings and is the catalyst for this journey.

We all make bad choices somewhere in life, and it can be painful, so if you are in a similar situation or have choices that haunt you, its time to reflect and make peace with those issues. The amount of money I lost is no small amount and truly does haunt me - it seems like an uphill battle to get back to what I lost but I am going to keep my chin up and get to work. We are not defined by our mistakes. We are defined by our successes. So it's time to succeed.

---

So we now have our numbers out in front of us. This is a critical step in determining how we will start the journey. Reducing debt can free up some cash flow so this will likely be a priority while researching ideas. Do you know your financial situation? Build a simply spreadsheet as a first step whether that is in Excel, pen on paper, however you organize yourself and put it somewhere visible and make sure to update it and add more details as you continue down your 100k journey.

The GOOD	The BAD
$4,200 Monthly Income	$200,000 Mortgage	$850 a month
	$21,000 House Debts	$1,450 a month
	$46,000 Student Loans	$500 a month