When I first heard about the Covid-19 virus, I didn’t take it that seriously. I thought it was going to be the other virus that came and went. But, fast forward to now, this virus is still around and it seems like it's going to stay for a little while. Just like many others globally, the pandemic has already impacted me financially (for the moment, I am grateful this is all that I've experienced). Right before Covid-19 picked up it’s rampage, I lost my job because of budget cuts. The same day I lost my job, I moved into a new apartment with my partner.Thankfully, I was able to secure a new job, however, my partner lost hers. She had two jobs.
Living through this epidemic, I’ve been spending a lot of time doing some deep-level thinking and introspection. I’ve been asking myself how prepared I was for this mentally and financially? Can I keep myself healthy and uncontaminated? How are my personal relationships? What are my priorities and values?
Truth be told, I feel extremely unprepared to face this situation mentally and financially. It’s not that one can really prepare for any crisis, especially at this magnitude-- but generally speaking, the importance to better take care of my mental stability and to create a better financial plan finally clicked. I also realized that I need to re-prioritize my relationships.
Covid-19 seems to have freeze time, and so, I feel like life is giving me the chance to reset. And that to me is my silver lining, a new opportunity to start fresh. During my reset period, I decided to 1) allow myself to be critically honest and accept those hard lessons I learn about myself, and 2) gave myself new goals to focus on as we overcome this pandemic. And we will.
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NEW MY GOALS
My first goal is to develop a new personal financial plan and for my household. Building my financial plan means to develop and foster new spending habits that would allow me to save, but back on wasteful spending, and to use money to buy things that align with my values and ultimately support my lifestyle. Experiencing a job loss in the midst of the unknowns of today's situation created so much stress. And since I became careless with my savings, the stress was amplified.These days I often think about how I could have saved all the money I spent buying coffees (2-3 cups daily) and food at Dunkin Donuts. But those days are behind me and so to start my new financial plan, I picked up a new book titled Smart Couples Finish Rich to educate myself. Although the book focuses on couple spending/savings, the book has great insight that can be applied at a personal level.
My second goal is to learn the basics of investing, but in particular real estate investing. I often think about owning multiple 3 floor apartments. It’s been a life-long dream of mines. I figure using the web as a resource should make information gathering simple, but what I am missing is clear direction. I know that I need to do research, but I'm unclear of what I should learn first? Readers, if you have any book recommendations/resources, please share!
My third goal is to develop a social media branding strategy that works for me, but in particular I want to use this strategy for LinkedIn. When it comes to branding on social media, I have a hard time. Partly because I like to talk about the many different interests I have. From my understanding, this doesn’t help me brand properly because 1) I can’t pinpoint a population target, 2) I can’t seem like an “expert” in my field. I also have a problem with maintaining my online presence and being consistent. To me, depending on what content I come across while surfing the web, my mental state could be impacted positively or negatively and sometimes it can take me awhile and A LOT of energy to process that out. That's part of the reason why I limit my use time. And so to me, I would like to develop a system that doesn’t require me to surf daily and use tremendous energy. I know that might sound lazy, but I would like to use the words efficient and smart.
As I work towards meeting these goals, I know I can do them alone! So if you have expertise in these areas, I welcome your input!
