saving Archives ⋆ Kubo Riches

I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine about personal finance recently. He knew that I was able to pay off my $35,000 student loans in 9 months. But I don’t think he knew just how much money I’ve been saving and investing ever since. I’d like to think that he was pretty impressed when he found out since he asked me how I manage to do it regularly. In other words, he was wondering how I’m able to live on only a small percentage of my salary. I didn’t have a good answer right then and there and so I just said something like Kubo Queen helps out a lot. That wasn’t a lie. Kubo Queen does help out tremendously. However, there are also simple principles I stick to when it comes to handling money. And by sticking to those principles I’m able to do luxurious things like maxing out my 401k account, maxing out my HSA account (which is really just another investment account), and putting away a big chunk of money in our savings account all at the same time. Since I wasn’t able to discuss the principles with my good friend at the time, I thought it was a good idea to write about them here for everyone to read and think about. So let’s dive in.

The Seine River. Taken by me on our honeymoon to Paris.

For the longest time I had no clue what money was for. I just knew that to live in our society there are essential things we have to pay for. Things like food, shelter, utilities, and transportation. But then once those were taken care of, it wasn’t really clear what I was supposed to do with the money that was left. The prevailing thought, it seemed, was that money left over was supposed to be spent on things. Many economists and financial professionals call it disposable income after all. And I often heard people say something like what’s the point of saving so much? You can’t take your money with you when you die. There were people who mentioned the importance of saving, but they were few. And the advice often seemed more of an afterthought to the ever more important issue of which things you could afford to buy with your disposable income. So even though I avoided consumer debt in my younger years, I spent a lot of money on things I shouldn’t have. In hindsight, I just didn’t understand what money was and how it should be used.

Tag: saving

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