I remember getting shocked with my first credit card bill. Total amount is almost the same amount as my full-time job salary. 😅

That was 8 years ago.

Mabilis ako madala e. Soon after that, I looked up how to properly manage my money. This is when I found YNAB (You Need A Budget). It’s a budgeting software. Its value isn’t in the software itself, it’s in their methodology. It provided me structure on how I should think about money.

First phase is explicitly deciding where to put in all my money.

The goal here is to have an idea where my money is going. I can’t improve what I can’t measure right? Having a handy list of my budget, upcoming expenses, and current state of my net worth made it really easy to decide on unplanned purchases.

This also made me treat credit card spendings as money spent. It’s instantly deducted to my net worth as soon as I spend it.

Second phase is aging my money.

YNAB have this concept called “Age of Money”. It means how long your money stays with you before you use it.

I recently got to a point where my age of money reached 180 days. This gave me flexibility to plan ahead, take risks, and try new things.

Beyond YNAB

What I’m looking for to do next are investing on a business and stocks.

I’m like a sponge now absorbing information from r/phinvest. Taking action to things that’s starting to make sense to me.

Let’s see where this takes me.