My Financial Story

When i was young my parents pretty much lived from paycheck to paycheck as most normal people do and looking back, i wasn't really helping with saving some money. Always had to have some  cool toy or a pc or a laptop and so on. They are kindhearted people and so they didn't really hold back much of what they could spare for their children. The term investing didn't even come up for discussion. They did a decent job with keeping up with money so we weren't heavily in debt at any point during my childhood.

When i went to the university, i was still partially relying on my parents income along with the scholarship the university provided for good grades. On top of this i took on my first ever loan. It was a student loan and in today's currency it amounts to about 2000 euros. 5 years back it was a whole lot more money than nowadays. And no, i did not spend it wisely as a big part of it went to enjoying the social side of the university life.

On the second half of the second year at the university one thing led to another and I somehow got myself to look for a job. Now that i think of it my mother probably was pushing me with this at the time. I was amazingly lucky to land my first job as a programmer from the first few places i got an interview at. From this point on I was able to support myself fully for the first time in my life.

Throughout my career i have always been a natural saver. There is something that makes me feel safe and good when i know i live below my means and can stash away quite a bit of my income every month. There have only been a few where I have done otherwise and those pain me enough to make me avoid such spendings.

A few years later i had saved enough to pay back the student loan. I always keep a healthy buffer so by the time i decided to pay the loan back i probably had twice as much saved for whatever should come up in my life.

Having paid off my only debt, i had already started preparing for my next big goal in life - owning my own apartment. Ideally i would have loved to pay in cash for the whole thing but ended up with around 30% downpayment by the time i got the chance to buy an apartment.

Being a really conservative person i went for an almost maxed out loan term which was 29 years instead of 30 because the bank preferred it for some reason. After the downpayment i still had enough in the emergency fund to make me feel comfortable. 

It has been around a year since i bought my apartment and i haven't changed my lifestyle and since the income keeps rising, i am comfortable with being in the 50% club - a term i hadn't even heard of about a few months prior to writing this post. For those of you not familiar with the 50% club - it is a term used for people belonging to a group of individuals who can save up 50% or more of their income every month and direct it towards becoming wealthier.

And here I am now, listening to podcasts like investeerimisraadio (Estonian), Dave Ramsey (USA). Reading books from Jaak Roossaare (Estonian), different blogs about investing and so on. The only classical wish i have is that i would have liked to have started way earlier because in the investment world.. it's not just "Time is money" it's "Time is more money".

This is where you hop on. Hopefully I can make some wise decisions and keep this blog interesting with achievements and probably some failures! Thank you for reading this through and I'll see you around. Keep building up the pot of gold (well, gold is also an investment but mostly for tougher times!) and fighting the war for financial freedom!