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Is The Millennial Bootstrapping Narrative a Good Thing?

Is struggle and underpayment a necessary thing before success? The millennial bootstrapping narrative may have downsides. Click through to read.

Everyone loves a good rising of the ranks story. Individuals who have worked hard, put in the earlier mornings, caffeine-induced late nights and laborious 14 hour days. Success. We all want it in some way. We love reading tales and hearing anecdotes about it.

The stories of putting up with terrible bosses, dreaded working conditions, and fighting one’s way to the top (wherever that is). It’s inspiring. We feel connected to the stories because it feeds the scrappy bootstrapper mentality we crave but still seem to secretly hate.

Accepting responsibility of your personal situation, working hard, and not giving up no matter where you started from. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, as the saying goes.

In a tough love kind of way, this mindset is great. It instills a mindset in people to work hard and not give endless excuses. Accepting the cards dealt. Working up from where you are, with what you have.

But is the millennial bootstrapping narrative always a good thing?

The well-intended millennial bootstrapping advice inadvertently has a negative side: people underestimate their worth.

I sometimes get myself into a long session of reading those ubiquitous “What I wish I had known when I was younger” pieces. Many of them are really good (I love Oprah’s!).

A lot of those “advice to younger self” pieces are also very similar.

I wish I hadn’t worked so hard when I was younger. 

Time’s a precious commodity. People look back on their life and think, “Maybe working those 14-hour days and/or juggling those three jobs wasn’t worth that much after all”.

What other option do you have other than hustling hard? When you’re making an entry-level salary and faced with multiple savings goals (paying down debt, saving for a house down payment, wedding, life investments, kids,etc), you have to find some way to reach them and often it isn’t sufficient with just a singular job.

I should have negotiated the salary at my first career job

People are told this over and over yet many still don’t negotiate. They’re afraid. Afraid of looking greedy and overindulgent. The millennial bootstrapping narrative has made them (especially creative industry types) believe that struggle is somehow a prerequisite for success.

That unpaid internship? Gotta pay your dues. The shockingly low salary? Gotta start somewhere.

A funny thing happened when I graduated college. I, and several other people in my public relations program, talked about how salaries were either stagnant or falling for entry-level account coordinators. Employers were paying well below the typical rate for the job and adding “need 2-3 years experience, internships don’t count” to the job descriptions.

All of us discussed salary negotiation tips to make sure we were would be compensated fairly upon taking a job offer. You wanna know what happened? Several of us encountered older adults (and even some people our age!) saying we were greedy for trying to ask for more money and that we should have just taken what is offered because “every has to start somewhere and pay their dues” (there goes that infamous saying! 🙂 ).

I shouldn’t have worried so much about what other people thought

Did you read the bitter differing perspectives of starting out by a former Yelp employee and the rebuttal from another millennial? Millennials feel scared into not saying anything for fear of being judged or labeled as entitled and privileged.

They dismiss their self-worth and strictly follow the perspective with least resistance.

Dealing with hostile work conditions, accepting a pay rate without negotiating, and staying silent about your problems is all wrapped up with the idea of “paying your dues”.

With its negative side effects, the narrative is still rooted in a good-hearted manner.

The millennial bootstrapping narrative is a good mindset to have when you’re trying to avoid spending triggers and push away pesky distractions. I mean, do you really need to ‘keep up’ with the Kardashians or see who got the rose on The Bachelor? If that activity is disrupting a potential for further reaching your goals, then it needs to go. It can be good to flex your resourcefulness instead of just charging $300 to your credit card for a purchase you think might help you.

If everyone got their elusive dream jobs and picture-esque Carrie Bradshaw lifestyles right away then they wouldn’t ever have the chance to hone in on their tenacity and persistence.

Sitting at your desk, slowly eating saltines while you drudge through work in a soul-sucking job can show first-hand a lot about what you don’t want. The only real way to find out what life you want to live is by testing things out with experience.

It’s just sometimes the narrative can be taken too far.

What do you think of the millennial bootstrapping narrative? Is it a mindset good for instilling the value of hard work or something with serious negative side effects? 

Don’t Look Down!

There are a lot of money "shoulds". You should contribute more to retirement, you should have a bigger emergency fund,etc. Reading all of it can be overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Focusing on the power of starting small and doing one thing can have amazing results. Click through to read.

I don’t have a fear of heights (within reason) but I still don’t look down. Although, heights aren’t the issue here. The issue is my compulsive obsession with scrimping and loading up on money knowledge at every chance.

I used to have a big problem with constantly checking my retirement accounts, savings accounts, and other accounts. I would check them several times a week, daily, and whenever I had downtime. It was a bad habit brewing stronger every day.

My handy dandy smartphone didn’t make it any easier.

Reaching for my phone was simple, though. With mobile apps for banking stuff and lifestyle, checking up on my money and figuring out more ways to get better became dangerously easy. I started to question and micro-manage everything.

Why is the rate of return so low on this?! Should I sell it off? 

Maybe I should invest in some new funds. *obsessively researches for the next half hour* 

Let’s see if I can save a few bucks doing it this way vs. the other way. 

The obsessive checking happened when I was watching TV, trying to do blog work, or even errands. The ridiculousness went into overdrive when the money reading turned into recurring subconscious money thoughts and one too many dreams about me and my FIRE ambitions.

The most memorable dream included visiting Antartica in a penguin costume immediately after retiring at age 40. Weird…although something I wouldn’t rule out. 🙂

It seemed harmless at first. Reading personal finance info and checking my accounts several times a week gave me a feel good “responsible” vibe. It became second nature and that wasn’t a good thing.

When I signed up with Wealthfront for my Roth IRA, I downloaded their mobile app to stay up to date with my investments. Even though Wealthfront is a robo-advisor and handles the managing of my portfolio, I would periodically check in via the app. It felt like a good way to not be too passive about my investing.

Well…I checked the app constantly. Every night, curled up in my bed, with my body patiently waiting to fall asleep, I would open up it to monitor what had happened. In my mind, some big stock market crash would have come out of nowhere in the timespan of the 12 hours since I had last checked.

Without even realizing it, I had developed this apocalyptic mindset. I would question different sorts of small purchases and how my investing account was doing. My hand developed an automatic movement of reaching for my phone, check things to ensure all was good. My money scarcity mindset came back to me. I needlessly questioned everything and started to consume more and more information. It became exhausting.

As I like to think of it, I was spending too much time looking down.

Personal finance, to me at least, is about keeping your eyes up, focusing on the things right in front of you, fixing them, and moving on to the next. Doing small actions one at a time towards bigger goals. There’s a lot of information down below you. A lot of money “shoulds”.

These money “shoulds” feel immediately necessary when you read about them. I should build up a 10k, 15k, 20k, etc emergency fund, I should be checking my brokerage account a lot, I should be doing this, that, and so on. Sometimes we like to focus on way too many things when getting started with just one is the better case.

Emotion reveals itself in damaging ways. Not in the stereotypical hysterical crying, eat all the ice cream, type of way (Although if you do, I would make sure it’s Ben & Jerry’s, gotta have the good kind of ice cream at least).

Checking my accounts constantly wasn’t doing any good. It grew my sense of worry about whether I was doing everything right. It prompted me to seek out way more information than I needed.

Insecurity and comparison syndrome set in. Being “good” at personal finance felt like some elusive clique that would take forever to reach. Rather than just focusing on the one piece of information I needed to get going, I wanted to fix and monitor everything in one big swoop.

The habit has been mostly remedied.  The former compulsive tendency looked a lot like what happens when you go to WebMD to find answers for your sickness. You type in your symptoms and suddenly you think you’re going to die by next Tuesday.

There’s a lot of information, good information, down below but I’m learning to not always look down. Big changes result from small actions. Small actions happen when you keep your head up and plug away, slowly but surely.

Little by little I’m building up my savings, learning more and growing more. As long as I’m making progress, I feel good.

The Tireless Work of Managing Personal Finance Abroad

 

Managing your personal finance abroad

I just got back from a whirlwind trip…to the edge of the world!

Sort of. I was on break from the Thai school year for a few weeks and took a short holiday to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, Thailand. I jammed as much as I could into the few short days.

I went to the famous White Temple (Wat Rong Khun), saw Black House, and toured the night markets of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. The highlight of the trip was a 2.5 hour pickup truck taxi ride I had throughout Northern Thailand’s countryside. So beautiful. Quiet and scenic views of rice field after rice field with mountains in the background. Seeing Phu Chi Fa, the “edge of the world”, was ultimate (so totally worth it) end result of the long ride.

In addition to the short holiday, I also went back to America for the first time in six months. It was bittersweet coming back for a visit and reminded me of something I’ve learned from living in Thailand the past seven months: managing your personal finance abroad is hard, tiring work. 

When I first got back to America, I went to FinCon (the financial media conference) in San Diego, California. While there, I got to see all of these cool up and coming financial companies from the fintech competition.

There’s an app for tipping yourself, an app for combining the benefits of credit and debit cards, and one that screens and analyzes stocks to help you better pick them.

All of it is amazing. It’s fasinating when you you stop and realize just how many tools we have to help manage our money. Money management has never been easier!

When I was still living in the U.S., I had a spreadsheet and online service I used to help me budget. Digit to help me automagically save additional money every month.  Investing avenues were everywhere in the form of different online brokerages. It was great.

And then I moved to Thailand and everything got thrown out the window.

I don’t have any advanced and visually appealing money monitoring software to help me keep track of purchases. There’s no online alert that will remind me when I spend a wee bit too much on books or camera filter grades (my new obsession).

My budgeting tactic right now consists of good ol’ pen, paper, and Evernote. Every night I go through what I spent for the day. I have a small drawer in my bedroom with envelopes labeled for different expenses. I’m using a extra labeled version of the cash envelope budget. Although instead of doing it for some fun experiment, I’m basically forced to do it since it’s the only way I can budget.

People talk about how getting your finances in order can be hard. And it is. It’s hard to really get down and look at your money constantly. I used to think it about the constant struggles and evolving we do with our money. Now I think about how bad it can be to not even have good tools around you to help you get better.

There’s a myriad of personal finance tools to fit different personalities. You hate budgeting? Try this. Or this. You want to stash away some more money? Enable auto-transfers to your savings accounts and try Digit.

Living in Thailand, not having access to a lot of these great things, I can see from an outside perspective how big of an effect fintech services can have on your financial life. They’re hugely beneficial at helping us really see our money without it being overtly boring.

Who likes to be huntched over every night or week and take a hard look at their spending? Not many people. It’s depressing, time-consuming and really boring. Luckily, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. There’s apps to monitor your spending. Services that alert you whenever you over budget.

In Thailand, most people don’t have that. Even the regular, working professionals here don’t utilize fintech services, mostly because many of them aren’t available here.

A hotel clerk I talked with, told me how hard it was to keep savings goals in mind when doing it by hand. The banks here don’t have fancy-tools and advanced interfaces. Visualizing money goals and taking actionable steps toward them is a lot more difficult to maintain.

Something I realized about using plastic? It’s freaking great and shouldn’t be undermined all the time and definitely not cut up and thrown away (I’m looking at you Dave Ramsey). Credit cards and the swiping culture isn’t a terrible thing. It can be beneficial to use plastic often. I love credit cards and not afraid to admit it. They’re wonderfully nifty things to have when you use them responsiblity.

Thailand isn’t as up to speed as other countries with using plastic. Many places, even established businesses, prefer cash over card. When I was at the gym one day, paying my membership, two of the employees didn’t even know how to use the card reader! Plastic is still definely something not embraced here.

As for the whole envelope system, I don’t like having to do a budget cash-only style. It doesn’t work for me and feels weird. Many people say using plastic desensualizes the spending you do, but I disagree. For a person that has a bad memory, like me, logging into your bank account and going through your transactions is easier than racking your brain to remember what you spent $12 cash on two days ago.

When I do make my return to the U.S. sometime next year, I’m not going to take financial technology tools for granted any more. I want to experiment more with different ones and see what they have to offer.

Until then, I’m going to be sitting at my desk in my small Thailand apartment, hunched over, writing down that $5 I spent on coffee last week. Old habits die hard, I guess.

P.S. I filmed a video of my travel to Phu Chi Fa. Check it out if you’ve ever wanted to hear my voice and see how I am on video 🙂 

My #FinCon16 San Diego Experience

Attending FinCon16 was one of the best decisions I ever made. The conference for financial and online media bloggers was a wonderful place to connect with likeminded people and see and hear all things money related. Click through to read my FinCon16 experience

Who knew talking about money could be so fun?

I just got back from San Diego, after being there for four days attending FinCon, a conference for the money media community. Everything about FinCon was awesome: the people, informative sessions, Ally Bank cookies, and the experience of being around people who understand you and geniunely want to help.

This was my first time attending the conference. FinCon has always really intrigued me. I’ve been wanting to go ever since hearing about the 2014 conference. It’s safe to say I’ve been mulling on the decision to go for quite some time. Before I even started this personal finance blog!

I wasn’t supposed to have gone to FinCon16. For the past several months, I’ve been living abroad in Thailand teaching English in a school near Bangkok. It’s been a great, eye-opening experience. Living abroad always has challenges and moments of shock. A particular moment of shock occurred when I tried to sign up for FinCon back in March, only to realize scheduling conflicts would prevent me from going.

The Thai school semester ends on September 30 this year. FinCon16 was taking place September 21-24. Naturally, I felt dumpy about scheduling conflicts that would prevent me from going *cue Daniel Powter’s Bad Day*.

Everything changed when, near the end of August, three weeks before the conference, I got notified I was one of the winners of the FinCon Scholarship and got approved to leave my school early. I crammed my final examination proctoring, took a 21.5-hour airline journey and was suddenly in San Diego.

Wednesday | FinCon16

The first day of FinCon16, a half day focused on getting checked-in and some pre-event buzz. After getting off my plane at 2:30pm, I immediately went to the hotel when check-in opened at 3:00pm.

I loved the badges! They were colorful and your name is displayed prominently on them, so it was easy to immediately know someone’s name upon seeing them (or to refresh your memory if you happened to forget…shhh, don’t tell anyone).

There were a bunch of cool pins you could get in addition to your badge and t-shirt. There were 1st year pins for FinCon first-timers and all the way up to 6-year pins for FinCon veterans.

The people checking me in asked me what my plan was (cause you know…the whole ‘Rebel With A Plan’ thing). Quite a few people asked me this, with a sly smile.

A pre-event happy hour took place after check-in. Through fumbling to find out where it was, I met Debra, a travel blogger at Traveling Well For Less. We walked around, trying to find it, and met Cait Flanders, a blogger who did a 2-year shopping ban and is currently on a road trip around the U.S.!

At the happy hour, on a mission to get food (rather than the free drinks), I made my way to the dessert table and met Colin Jones, from Blackjack Apprenticeship. The dude is a card-counting extraordinaire!

After the happy hour, The Road to Financial Wellness took place. I volunteered with registration and got to meet a bunch of people. Volunteering was a great thing to do to meet a lot of people! Everyone had funny reactions when I prompted them to write down what financial wellness meant to them. One person said financial wellness meant they could have a llama farm!

Thursday | FinCon16

The first official day of FinCon16. I went to two sessions. The first was an informative one on email list building, presented by Chris from Money Peach. He grew his list by 10,000 subscribers in 10 months. The session was filled with lots of useful information and was probably my favorite session of FinCon16.

The second session I attended was Write So Well They Can’t Ignore You, led by the legendary Paula Pant from Afford Anything. Paula was really good about showing ways you could inject more personality into your writing.

After the two sessions and the provided lunch, I went back to my room to take a nap. Originally intended for an hour, I ended up sleeping six hours and missing TradeKing’s party that night. I thought I had beaten jet lag but it proved itself otherwise. Zzzz.

Friday | FinCon16

At the morning breakfast, I got to talk with a financial planner from LA and a woman who runs a podcast guest booking business.

The first session I attended was a Pinterest masterclass on how different online influencers are utilizing Pinterest. The next session was Blog to Brand, which talked about leveraging a blog and influence to become a thought leader. I really liked hearing the humble beginning from the speakers. One of the speaker’s first freelance writing jobs was a post on pimple popping that she got paid $10 for. *Drake’s voice: started from the bottom, now we here* 

A theme of the session was the importance of investing in yourself and making personal development a priority in your plans for growth.

During lunch, I took part in a very impactful discussion about encouraging diversity in personal finance. This discussion was another highlight of FinCon16 for me. The financial industry can’t afford to just be old, stale, and pale!

The big event for Friday was Ignite! An evening discussion filled with a diverse set of 5-minute submitted talks. My favorites of the night were: 5 Things I Learned About Business and Money from Professional Card Counting, I Spent All My Money On A Trip Around The World, and How Rihanna Taught Me To Embrace My Inner Rachet.

There was an afterparty where everyone got free entry into the dance club. Who knew money nerds could get down so well?!?

Saturday | FinCon16

Last day of FinCon16. The best part of this day was meeting some more of my favorite bloggers. I got to meet the Debt Free Guys and Stefanie O’Connell, who is so nice and funny.

I attended a session on freelance writing led by Holly Johnson from Club Thrifty. The session was informative but also really amusing because Holly is so lovingly blunt and to the point. There were lots of giggles during the session.

The roundtable discussions dropped a whole bunch of topics into one room. There were tables for each different topic. I met Ms. Frugal Woods and heard her talk about how she started her blog and cultivating the community around it. She talked about how, back when she started the blog while working full-time, she would get up and do blog work from 6am-8am every day before work.

The last events of FinCon16 included The Plutus Awards, which had a hilarious entrepreneur rap along with FinConner’s reading mean comments about themselves, similar to Jimmy Kimmel’s mean tweets segment.

I loved everything about FinCon16. I’m so glad I was able to attend the conference for the first time. Everyone at the conference was so amazingly nice and helpful. It’s comforting to be in a community where people are gracious, helpful, and humorous.

Connecting with people at FinCon happened in so many different ways. Walking down the hallways, being in the expo hall, volunteering at booths, sitting in a corner stuffing my face with Ally Bank cookies…

Connecting was happening everywhere.

My blog name, Rebel With A Plan, was a good conversation starter. During the conference, I was asked numerous times what exactly my ‘plan’ was. Some people even made jokes with it. When I met J Money, while holding a cluster of Jolly Ranchers, he called me ‘Rebel with…Jolly Ranchers’.

Whenever I was holding something, people would say it.

Rebel with a…drink

Rebel with a…cookie

Rebel with a…bag 

It was funny but also reminded me about how I’ve never really shared the reasoning of my blog name. It isn’t a name you would usually think of when it comes to a personal finance blog. I don’t have the word budget, millennial, frugal, thrifty, money, rich, or any of the other words many personal finance blogs have. I’ll explain the reason behind the name soon, in a future post!

Expenses

It wouldn’t be a complete post without including the costs for the conference, right? 🙂

FinCon16 Basic Pass: $0 (I was one of the winners of the scholarship!)

Accommodation: $344.22 (couch surfed for one day and stayed at a nearby motel for the next three nights)

Food: $113.73 (This includes some of the food I got while at the airport)

Flight: $351 (The added cost of flying from Thailand to San Diego, CA then to Texas vs. just going Thailand to Texas)

Miscellaneous: $89.45

TOTAL: $898.40

250 business cards from Vistaprint cost $17.26. Uber rides totaled $72.19. They were higher than I anticipated due to my jet lag. Everyday afternoon I would have to ride back to my room to take a nap because I was so tired. Hopefully next year this won’t be an issue!

Before attending FinCon16, people would always say fantastic things about the conference and all the nice, inspiring, and helpful people who attended it. I wondered if it really lived up to the hype. YES.IT.DID. times 50x.

It’s so wonderfully infectious to be around people who are so passionate and helpful with what they do. I’m still in awe that I even had the opportunity to be able to attend. THANK YOU SO MUCH Philip Taylor for awarding me the scholarship!

I can’t wait to attend next year! FinCon17 tickets went on sale right after FinCon16 and I bought my ticket immediately. FinCon17 is going to be in Dallas, TX! My home state! Ahh, I’m so excited.

Tickets for FinCon17 are currently on sale through Monday, October 3 and at the lowest price they’re ever going to be ($189 for the basic pass). Book now to save big. You won’t regret it! 🙂

Check my Instagram for photos from FinCon16!

Did you attend FinCon16? How was your experience? Let me know! 

Finding Balance In Financial Goals

Balancing living life and meeting your financial goals can be tough. It's all about finding balance and leveling things out and figuring what's most important to you and your future self. Click through to read more.

“There’s more to life than just________”

…Working long hours, obsessing over things, staying in a job you hate because of the health insurance. Can you fill in the blank?

Finding balance in financial goals. It’s tricky. Present day commands a lot of our attention. In work, there are always emails to tend to, deadlines to hit, and making sure that certain someone doesn’t steal your lunch from the office frig…again (I’m looking at you Bob from HR). In our personal lives, the present day pulls us in with household up keep; TV shows that need viewing (what happened on Stranger Things?) and the “hate to admit it but so addictive” social media.

It’s easy to get stuck in the day-to-day. Laying model to the elusive “I’m so busy” saying. We crave the outcome but don’t talk about the process. Think about it in terms of cooking, most people dread the “making” part but love the “eating” part.

Delayed gratification. When is it okay and when should you just go ahead and enjoy the right now?

Take student loans for example. They suck. This is a universally accepted truth (sort of). You want to live your life and roll around with the extra money you would have if you didn’t have the debt (what I imagine people without student loans do…).

They still need to be paid back. Unfortunately.

So you make a plan to pay them off within a certain amount of time. You’re amped up, paying more than the minimum, and determined to banish them from your existence.

But then daily life gets in the way. There’s a weekend getaway you want to go on, stuff you want to buy, and a fun night out that you want to do even though it’s not in your budget.

My brother, while in the midst of student loan repayment, went on three vacations last year because he wanted to get out and see more. While the vacations were far from lavish (two budget cruises and a 4-day trip in LA & SF) and his student loan debt was small, it still creates a question. How much do you want to live in the now vs. keeping in mind your future self?

The job I’m in right now, I don’t make a lot of money. But even with a low salary, I still make it a priority to put extra towards my student loans and into my retirement account. I want my future self to be taken care of and well adjusted. My present day self shouldn’t be selfish and hog everything.

Many of my co-workers, most in their early to late twenties, don’t really share this view. For them, they prefer to travel and see as much as they can. Retirement planning is a non-priority afterthought.

Being in Thailand, all of us have a desire to explore. We go out on weekend trips and holiday’s together, events in Bangkok, and fly to other nearby countries. The wanderlust “eat, pray, love” kind of thing. Living it up.

Trying to strike a balance between being adventurous and staying committed to my financial goals, I make a point to lessen the number of times I go out. I work a second job on the weekends to make extra money.

Some of my co-workers tell me I need to relax more and “live in the moment” but I feel fine. Working the two jobs and sacrificing the occasional weekend trip don’t faze me because I know what my goals are and when I want to reach them. I’m staying committed, even if it is hard every now and then.

Because it’s important to me. It important that I pay off my student loans in a timely fashion, saving for the future, and build up things (like this website!) that I’m proud of. I’m not letting go of my wanderlust, just keeping it balanced.

Often times we focus on what we want now over what we want most.

We want to be debt-free but we also really want to take that dream vacation. We want to earn more money but don’t like giving up our free time. It’s a push and pull and I’m working on finding a balance.

How do you find balance in your financial goals? 

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