Hi, so I suppose this is were I give you an introduction about who I am, and I should probably gets this out of the way at the start just so you know what to expect. I am seriously dyslexic so I'm just going to let you know before you start reading this, things arn't always going to be spelt right and I'm not always going to make sense but that's just how it goes. I'm Cooper a 20 year old student living in Ireland and I am very new to all of this. In this blog I intend to talk about everything from personal finance, life experiences (not that I have tons of them) and just overall what's going on in my day to do life. I will try to be as entertaining as possible and maybe might actually help someone out there.
Recently after I turned 20, I have turned such a focus to personal finance and investments and yes this means watching countless YouTube videos of every single person telling me how I should invest my money and what to do with all this money I don't have. Then of course as the night gets later what do I do, start googling "How to make money online" you start clicking countless links titled "60 ways to make money online" each talking the biggest load of rubbish which will work for 0.1% of people. So then I thought why not take this search to YouTube, which then brings up rubbish like "how to make £1000 a day with proof" I'm sorry but if it was really that easy wouldn't everyone been doing it. One YouTuber I enjoy watching is Graham Stephen he talks about the realistic of finance and power of compound interest. He is so open and honest it really starts getting me thinking. It was one thing he said which really got to me, if you interest £1 today at an interest rate of 7% that £1 will be worth £23.12 when I'm 65, honestly I wish I never heard that statistic I really do. I'm now second guessing everything, do I really need to buy that £3 coffee? that's £69.36 when I'm 65. Awk I suppose that is a good way of thinking but I feel like if you take it so seriously it could eat you up. Some people say to me and I really do see their point what's the point of having all this money when you are 65 if you never got to enjoy it when you where young. There must be a balance to this all and I really need to work it all out. Especially at uni and I'm sure all students can side with me on this, personal finance is tough and budgeting is hard. For a while (it only lasted a month) I started an excel spreadsheet to see how much I was really spending cause if you were anything like me you just jump between cash and different cards (I say different I have two) and you never really now your total spend. And as all these Youtubers say you got to know how much you spend before you know how much you can save. As a student I can firmly say social life is the most expensive part of living! Like I want to save money but I don't want to be that boring friend who doesn't want to go out and enjoy themselves, I mean we are only at uni for so long. But then these years are the most important years when it comes to saving money, if you invest that same £1 at 30 instead of 20 it will only be worth £11.51. Half!! your investment loses half its value if you wait ten years now imagine that is more than £1 this is what I mean by the power of compound interest both scares and excites me. If you don't know compound interest is where the interest on your investment earns you more interest it is really quite simple.
I suppose I just feel I'm twenty I'm not a teenager anymore time to start planning my future and in my future I want to retire early! There is this new crazy called FIRE, Financially independent retire early, and I have given myself till I'm 40 to join them. So I have 20 years to save up enough money and investments that my investments make enough money each year for me to live off comfortable. The only problem is it would be lot easier to save up enough to life of 20k a year for the rest your life than 100k a year but I would far rather be living off that 100k so it's time to work hard and some how get there. This blog is to try and drag a few of you on the way with me "I say you I doubt anyone will be reading this" but its most importantly is to hold me accountable for what I say I'm going to do. This is my first rant over I hope you enjoyed reading it please come back and read more! thank you. Please comment and let me know what you think.
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