Blog about personal finance, personal development, travel and designing a life you love!
It’s been a little more than a year that I have been home so I have been reflecting on how it has gone. Overall, it has been a good year personally, financially and a year of many firsts!
Continue reading “2019, the year I made more staying home than I made working”
I recently heard that college loans are the biggest debt our nation has, even bigger than mortgage debt. And frankly, I think it is crazy that students pursue an education and leave with the burden of debt that follows them around for a couple of decades. I’m glad several politicians are looking to make public colleges free which makes so much sense. Most countries offer basic education (and yes, I consider college education basic!) free or at minimal cost. After all, they want to encourage an educated workforce! Luckily I did both my Bachelors and Masters in another country and had little to pay till I came to the US for my MBA. For more on how, I paid for that, read this. Now with 2 young kids, I am trying to figure out how we will pay the cost of college.
First I tried to estimate the cost of college at Scholarshare to send one of my kids for undergraduate degree when they turn 18. I used University of California Berkeley as a proxy. Hope you are sitting down. The estimated cost is a whopping $270,000!!!! For two kids, that would amount to $540,000 over four years!! Excluding room and board. 😱 Now I’m trying to hold down the panic that is threatening to rise and instead focus on researching how I will pay for college for both my kids so here goes….
Continue reading “How to pay for college and make it affordable”
So I introduced the blog as one about personal finance, personal development and travel but haven’t really talked about travel. I LOVE TRAVEL! The bug hit me early, as I all but grew up on my dad’s ship. His first career was that of a merchant navy sea captain. My first voyage was when I was 6 months old and I celebrated my first birthday in Australia! This also drove my love for the water and the need to always live near the beach.
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to travel as much, as I had a full time job till December. But now that I am free at 41, it’s time to make up for lost time and burn those miles. In April, we are going to Hawaii for a week! Aloha Maui, here we come!
Till this point in my life, I have been following the herd! But what now? This new life is unscripted and I am trying to find my own path forward. While that sounds really romantic, it is pretty tough and there are times, I lose it. I am definitely struggling with the change in identity and figuring out my true north, my true purpose. While our jobs are definitely not our self worth, we are so entangled in them, it gets hard to let go. And when I lose sight of what’s really important, going from making a 6 figure job to making less than what I made in my first job makes me feel like a failure. But there are many definitions of success. Ultimately I want a life I can feel good about on my death bed and that definitely doesn’t involve working long hours in an office.