Planning Makes Perfect: Finances (5 of 5)

I almost put this off until morning, sorta tired. But that wouldn't really be in the spirit of what I'm trying to do. So forgive any typos and oversights you may encounter.

I'm bad with money. I think it's a trait inherited from my parents. One who always made keeping up appearances a priority and the other who just liked to spend it when they got it. Budgeting is not something I'm familiar with.

Won't work.

I'm going to create a pretty thorough budget. Detailing specifics for everything I would need money for. Food, shelter (rent/power/water/gas), fuel, gym membership (if applicable), spending money, savings, and anything else I think of. I'm going to err on the up-side, so even if I'm running heavy one month in something I know I'll be covered.

My main priority right now is to pay off my credit card. After that is accomplished, I'll be saving the majority of my earnings. I'll be spending some, I want to get Kettlestacks, for instance, as kettlebells are used frequently in Crossfit. My expenses will be mostly things of that nature, items I'll further use in my reformat and beyond. I don't expect to spending more than a couple hundred dollars a month, those items included.

I'm going to create this budget while I'm free of the majority of my financial responsibility. Once I go back out on my own, instead of letting my pay grade influence my budget, I'm going to make my budget influence my pay grade. I'm going to make whatever amount I decide on to be my bare minimum month to month.

That seems backwards, but I think the motivation of "I have to make this much every month" will be a lot stronger than "I can get by on this much every month." I don't want bare minimum anymore.

I won't settle for bare minimum anymore. Balls out from now on.

Having that budget won't do any good if I don't have a way to keep it. For making money, I'm going to do several things.

Firstly, I'm designing a web site. I started on Wednesday with the design stages. Think I came up with a name I'm happy with today. I'm going to keep the details, other than it will be a writing site,under wraps for now; but the people I have talked with about it think it's a good, marketable idea. There are a few sites out there that are similar, but not many and only one that I saw that was of any quality. I like the marketshare of being one of two competitors.

I'm going to devote a heavy portion of my time to this, since it's going to take quite a bit of work. If I bust ass on it, I'll definitely be able to have it up by the end of the year. Probably out of the beta stages by then, making changes to increase traffic, etc.

Secondly, I'm going to start playing poker when I get some money in my pocket. It's a somewhat ludicrous venture, yes. But taking calculated risks is the best way to acquire wealth. There's a lot less gambling than most people generally think, much more calculations of odds and outs and the like. And definitely something with no limit to how good I can get and how much money I can make.

Until I make enough money that I'm comfortable starting to play, I'm going to devote a portion of each day, most likely at least an hour, to either learning more about the game or playing the game for free. This way I'll be better prepared when I actually start, making the learning curve of losing money as short as possible. There are treasure troves of information out there that most people don't take advantage of, videos and books by the boatload. I know people don't take advantage of them because people lose money playing. Over the long run, poker is a beatable game.

These are both highly portable ventures, I can play poker and manage a website from anywhere in the world. Which is an important feature for me, I don't plan on staying in one place for too long anymore, but I'll have a post devoted to that later.

But both of these ventures take not only start up costs, but start up time. I'm betting hard on them though. To the extent that the job I'm going to be seeking here in Dothan, will be one in which I have even a modicum of free time to work on these things. This will be the priority in my job hunt, not the amount of money it pays; any job I'm able to get will be a difference of couple dollars per hour at most anyway. I want to be able to either a book to read about design or poker or, best case scenario, I have a computer to program and play in my down time. Unless you're doing manual labor, chances are you've got a hefty bit of down time every day in your job. I'm going to use this down time to my advantage.

So there it is and here I am.

This concludes my five-part planning stage of my reformat. I detailed the four major aspects of my life that I need to work on and how I plan to do it. If I stick to these plans, I can't fail. It might get difficult at times, but I'm not afraid of working hard. It's been a long time that I've broken a sweat and I'm eager to remember what it's like.