Hey Y’all Hey! Kijan ou Ye! How are you doing?

Welcome September!

We are entering the last quarter of the year! Yay!

I for one am happy that we are about to be done with 2020!

2020 has definitely been an eye opener filled with lots of lessons. Personally, I have grown a lot this year, mentally and spiritually.

When we were entering the first quarter of this year, one of my number one goals was to save, save, save! I entered this year making sure saving was emphasized for my family and I. Heck I was even pushing my friends to save. There was a shift inside of me when I had my son and I became invested in creating generational wealth and breaking generational curses.

Now I have student loans, credit card debt as well as medical bills from giving birth. So, with all of that combined I didn’t know where to start with saving but I knew that I had to start somewhere. This made me jump start the year with the 52-week savings challenge. Read all about the challenge in this post. Shortly after starting the challenge, I realized that I also needed to have an emergency fund. Then Covid came and I’m so grateful that I was able and still do have a job with health insurance. Once Covid hit, everyone around me started talking about investing and I was clueless.

I started listening to the experts like Dave Ramsey who suggests to pay off your debt first before starting a nest egg and investing. But I quickly realized that although that method worked for others, it wasn’t going to work for me. What is working for me is budgeting which I learned from TheBudgetnista. Allocating every penny of what comes in to buckets, some of the buckets I have are:

• Debt Repayments – The cost of all bills goes into this category

• Savings – This includes the 52-week savings challenge, emergency fund, savings for my son, IRA

• Investing – Since Apple and Tesla are doing a split, I am glad I started an investing bucket so I can get a share or two for myself and my son

• Groceries – Having a budget and a list before going food shopping is major

• Household – This bucket is for all toiletries and household items

• Child – Babies are people too LOL. This bucket is for anything I need to get for baby

• Splurge – I try not to dip into this bucket too much, secretly it’s another savings bucket. But if I want to shop then I dip into splurge and if I hit the limit then that’s it! No over spending.

Being on a budget has been extremely helpful. I’m proud of myself for sticking to the budget I set for myself and I’ve been able to pay off three store credit cards and we all know that those are the worst cards to have.

Let’s revisit this shift that was inside me to make a change and start doing better. Let me tell you, I’m so thankful for my son because if it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have made this change to do better. To do better than my mom. My mom is a great mom, she migrated to the US from Haiti and made a life for my sister and I. Now it is up to me to take the information that I have and do better for my son so that he will have a fighting chance in this cold, cold world.

So, with the last quarter of the year upon us, I plan to surpass my savings goal that I set for myself and to build the foundation to creating generational wealth for my child.

Oh, and the apps that I am using to help with saving and investing are below:

• Ally Bank – I absolutely adore Ally despite the fact that their APY has been decreasing, it’s still higher than Chase. It’s easy to set up recurring transfers, so I just set it and forget it. I also love how easy it was to open an account for my child

• Robinhood – This is the best beginner friendly investing app. If you are new to investing and want to try, I suggest you download this app and get started. You don’t need thousands of dollars to invest. Also check out these people who have been great resources for me to learning how stocks work, Earn Your Leisure and Wall Street Trapper

• Acorns – I’ve been on this app for a year now and I love their round-up feature where they round up change from the purchases you make with your debit card and when they remove the change from my account, I don’t even notice. Also, their new early feature to help save for your child’s future is another plus for this app

• TD Ameritrade – I just started with TD because I wanted to open up a custodial account for my child. As a first-time mom, I’m starting now to save for his future. And I encourage all my friends to open one up as well

So, cheers to the last quarter!

May you all surpass the goals you have set for yourself and cheers to creating generational wealth for our children!

Until the next post…

Signing Out,

Live with purpose, Love with passion, Laugh with pleasure

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