I’ve recently turned 26 about a month ago, moved cities, purchased a home, relaunched a small business, and a bunch of other stuff. Life has been hectic but progressive. Here are some of those updates:
Real Estate Investing:
About a year ago I moved from San Jose, CA back to my hometown of Nebraska since my partner was accepted into nursing school there. Luckily my software engineering gig gave me some flexibility to move and allowed to me work remotely full time.
When we got back to Nebraska, we were looking to move somewhere near the school since it wouldn’t be too far of a commute and decided to rent a 2 bedroom 1 bath house near the university for $900 a month.
We told ourselves that we’d stay there for a bit and end up trying to find something cheaper but never did and after finishing her first semester, we decided to move out, move in with my parents, and find/purchase a property instead.
In a few short weeks, everything fell in place. I purchased a property next a duplex my brother and I own and I am working to renovate it. More updates on this soon.
Software:
I recently updated my parents catering website to take online “takeout” orders and we tailored it to work with a schedule that made it easy for us to transition into doing online orders.
This was a cool experiment for me since it was all done from scratch, from the UI all the way to the backend.
Day 20/100
Finally finished 1 of the 2 projects I committed to finishing for #100DaysOfCode
Converted my parents catering company to take online orders for takeout: https://t.co/2aty6olpco
Tech used:@vercel @vuejs @nodejs -severless@MongoDB @SendGrid@stripe pic.twitter.com/fjcB2ERHgj — ????ℭ????? (@juancarloscodes) June 8, 2020
We opened the app up for testing to some friends and family which was super useful in finding bugs. Especially since some of them were QA testers and Project Managers!
I made a quick “Admin” application to help us out in the kitchen that I through together in about 2 hrs.
I am writing an upcoming blog extensively on this since it is the first application that i’ve build that has actual paying customers. And although the product is food, it is still exciting to see people visit the site, purchase products, and receiving their payments through stripe.
Finances
This has been a wild time for anyone in investing. Stocks have plummeted then shot back up. My 401K went to nearly half of the balance that was in there a month prior and has since recovered. And the interest rates on savings account don’t even beat inflation anymore so it’s best to take that money and invest.
I decided to reorganize my accounts into cash reserve buckets to get a better grasp of my financial life.
– Main (Checking) : This is where my paycheck is deposited and the account that I pay my bills and credit card. A transfer 70% if my paycheck every month over to my savings account title “Future Investments”
– Future Investments (Savings) : This is my main savings bucket, where I take cash from this bucket to pour into the others.
– Real Estate (Saving) : I’ve added 4 months of cash reserves to this account and have my mortgage from my duplex pulled from this account.
– Vacation (Savings) : This is where I save so vacations and just generally things I think would be cool to have.
– Stock Investments (Savings): This is a cash reserves for future contributions to 401K, Roth IRA, Personal Stock Picks, and/or HSA accounts.
– Emergency Fund (Savings): I now have 6-8 month of living expenses here so if something happens, I can fall back on this reserve
– Business Investments (Savings): For contributions that I make into my businesses or for any future business investments.
– Personal Credit Card – I use this to pay bills if I can, gas, and any other personal expense. Great for collecting points. I pay back in full every pay period.
Wow, looking at this now it seems like overkill. But now I can get a better glimpse of where my income is being flowed to: Expenses, Investments or Saving. I may look back on this one day and slap myself in the face, or thank myself. Not sure which yet.