Cha Ching.

This is about what I feel regarding money. Hence this is going to be a long and rather personal post. Disclaimer, this are just my thoughts. There's no right or wrong when it comes to this kind of things.

Money.

Let's be real. I have alot of emotions attached to it. I even majored in something related to money because I was just so curious. 

Thanks to what I studied, I understood how the financial system work and why it was created. Learning about it gave me the illusion that I understood it. It also made me think that I was rational when it came to money. But the reality wasn't true and it also took time for me to figure that out.

When I got my first job and handled my own finances, I took pride in doing it right. I tracked my expenses and I even have a spreadsheet of my bank accounts. I knew where my money was and what I did with it. (Not that I had much. Haha)

The thing that mattered was that I was doing all the right things. But despite doing these things, it didn't help with my emotions towards money.

I struggled with my spending sometimes. I swing from being very frugal, calculating every dollar and justifying every expense to just spending recklessly. It was stressful. It was bad for me and the bank account.

When I was being frugal, I was upset because I constantly stress about every dollar and that I was missing out on the things I would like to enjoy such as having a cup of coffee in a cafe.

When the stress accumulate and I get sick of being so hard on myself, I will eventually snap and that makes me go on a spending spree. I'll stop looking at the price. I'll just spend, telling myself that I deserved it and that it was a treat. Then much later, once I realised what I had done, I'll be mad at myself for doing that.

Don't worry, I didn't go too crazy when I was spending. But it hurts my savings. It was also silly that I was working so hard to save so much, only to betray myself by spending it crazily. 

I constantly swing between these two extreme behaviour which was bad for me. 

It took me a while. But finally, I came to my senses and struck an alright balance. This was so much better for me. I allowed myself to treat myself occasionally but I still had a saving rate that I wanted to hit. 

A balance is much better than swinging between two extremes. Finally, for the first time, I wasn't so upset. Honestly, that was somewhat liberating. But it took me a long time to get here. Well, at least I'm here now.

Next thing, investments.

I finally took the first step yesterday and made my first real investment recently. Slow, I know. But I finally did it. I feel somewhat proud of myself for it and I'll tell you why.

As someone who's major is related to money, one would think that investment is natural. It is something that should be done. 

I even picked up books related to finance so that I knew what was the best strategy or how I should go about it. I started reading these books, 3 years ago. I also paid alot of attention to financial news. 

For someone who read alot of these, I knew that I should invest. But for years, I put it off. Why? 

I think the simple answer was that I was afraid.

What was I afraid of?

I think I was afraid to make a mistake.

I was afraid of losing the hard earned money that I saved.

Not only that, it was also difficult to translate the knowledge in books to real life. Yes, we know which should invest.

For an example, let's say you choose to invest in stocks. 

You saying you want to invest in stocks doesn't mean anything if you don't do anything.

And it was hard sometimes to do something.

Because investing in stocks means, opening a trading account. 

And this is where it get complicated.

Which trading account should you open? There's quite alot of options out there nowadays and this makes newbies a little overwhelmed and intimidated.

So for someone like me, who is already a little afraid, seeing the overwhelming options and strategies just gives me a headache. It makes be just not act.

But I was lucky. I have a friend who also wanted to invest so we both decided that we would do this together. We would share information with each other and we would encourage each other. Frankly, I think my friend knew alot more than me and so, it's more like, it's my friend who is sharing information and knowledge with me.

But having a friend who wanted to do it helped me make my first step. So thankfully, I ended making my first step. I'm already late to the party but at least I'm here now.

It does frustrates me sometimes that I didn't take action sooner. I already did the other right steps such as track my spending, make sure I don't have debt and have emergency money. So why is this step so hard?

I don't know really.

But it was hard for me.

So I'm really glad that I made the first step.

And here's to more.