I have been meaning to write my blog on personal finance for a few months now. I figured writing a blog on my personal finance would be a means to sticking to my goals and plans because I'll have a venue to view and account my struggles, wins, challenges, and perhaps even victory at the end. Just to share some background about me and my finances, I am 29 years old, single, gainfully employed in a Financial Services company in Manila, Philippines, I have little to no savings, currently on my way to paying all my debts which has accumulated due to a not-so-failed business venture, I have a housing loan amortization for a condo unit I am living in.
Last December 2014, during the Christmas break, I was able to get hold of my schedule and just slow down for a little bit. I was just at home resting and thinking about how my financial situation got so mislead by my desire to create a business venture. My finances started to collapse during the year 2013-2014 when I kept on investing money into my food business. The business flourished for a little while, and was actually gaining traction among my clientele, however after reviewing my accounts on year end, it dawned to me that all the hard work on marketing, operations, and finances that I have put into the business I was still below my Break Even Point. That was the time when I really started to look into my own needs financially. As I have put into the business roughly around 350-400K pesos for its operations, and have realized that it was at a loss, and I myself left without much money and in debt, and would like to get married soon to my beautiful girlfriend, I needed to prioritize and look at reality.
I prayed hard for discernment and understanding of my situation and future. Fortunately, my prayers were answered from a book I picked up at my Mom's house, it was Bo Sanchez's 'Simplify and Live the Good Life'. That book gave me my paradigm shift - it changed my behavior towards money, life, dreams, goals, desires, needs, priorities, and love for God and others. In that book I learned that working hard for more money is plainly wrong and illogical, as it really applied to my case because during my business days I was also employed and really worked so hard on both of that major activities that I have gained weight, became almost hypertensive, was stressed-out, and had losing relationships due to all reasons above and lost time. I am truly grateful to the words in that book for it has made me a different man - simple and with a noble purpose in life.
Before my paradigm shift, I really wanted to go into business also because of noble things like making more money to help my parents, and provide employment to the community, but I have realized that subconsciously I wanted to earn more money to have more material things in my life - perhaps a new car, the latest gadgets, etc., I also wanted to be famous from that business venture because I wanted to become a well known entrepreneur. These things in hindsight are all superficial, and my paradigm shift changed what I really needed in my life - a strong and healthy family life, simple and secure lifestyle, a healthy and stress free body and mind, and a challenging and fruitful vocation.
Since that Christmas break I have made small steps into my new life dreams, I have since then wrote down my goals in life, have maintained a daily journal for all my expenses and earnings, made more money than I had from my business venture just by selling on the side (more on this later on), have lost weight and began eating healthy foods again, I have paid 1/4 of my debts with target completion of the rest by mid of 2015, and most importantly I believe that I have at last arrived at my starting point of my dream life. It took me quite a lot of time and money to finally arrive at my beginning, thanks to the power of prayer and discernment, discipline, and a clearer, simpler desire in life.
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