Russell Nagami's Blog

Happy New Year!  Finally, the year and the month can no  longer be confused (19 years until the year and the day can’t be).

I was in Louisiana on work travel from 12-19-12 to 12-27-12, then was up in orange county with my family for the rest of the holidays, finally back in San Diego!  Super excited to have a chance to settle back in, but I’m hoping to head right back out on travel, to pay off all those college loans, haha.

I finally feel like my finances are settled.  Got my real credit card finally (AMEX Starwood Preferred Guest), and can start racking up miles.  I’m mostly set up as outlined by Ramit Sethi (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/03/26/the-psychology-of-automation-building-a-bulletproof-personal-finance-system/), just working on paying down my college loans, then I will be free to do whatever I want in life (working on figuring out what it is I want to do).  I need to set up retirement accounts (well, mainly the 401k for match, put 0% starting to quickly build an emergency fund), but other than that everything is set up nicely.  Time to grind it out at work and focus on improving myself in other ways.

In other news, my primary goal for now is to read through Four Hour Chef.  I want to focus for a bit on learning to learn, but I need to do some thinking on what to apply it to.  The only way I am likely to learn it, is to apply it, an interesting thought since I’m trying to learn to learn.

Minor goals include sticking to my budget (1600 of 2000 last month, yay), continuing to improve at work, sticking to my habit building schedule, continuing to socialize, working out when at home/small workouts while on travel, and perhaps minimalizing a bit more.

My tagline for 2013: Live Deliberately.

Current loan debt: 27,908.84

Currently I am debating how to handle my finances over the next year.  If I put all my extra money towards my loan debt, I will easily pay it off by next Christmas, ideally by August, or as late as September.  The earliest I can pay it off is June, assuming I stick to my  budget (minus 50% for travel), travel 50%, and put all my extra money toward my debt.  However, recently I’ve been thinking of purchasing a condo or house next year, living in the smallest room, and renting out the other room(s).  This would mean I need all that loan money for a down payment instead putting it toward my loans.

Buying a house, I never really wanted to once I learned more about personal finance, but I can see the benefits of renting out the extra rooms.  I currently pay about 550$ a month for rent and utilities.  That money could go instead toward a house.  Rent money from renters would be doing the same.  And of course, if I continue budgeting and saving a lot, the house would be paid off in a few years, at which point I would have my very own rental property, earning money to pay off taxes/miscellaneous costs on itself, and some pocket money for myself.  Assuming I could rent the house out for 2k and it was worth 400k, that’d mean I earn 6% a year, not bad considering.

However, I think I want to pay off my loans first, so I can be FREE!!!!  I also will be more liquid, so I can start my own company, and more mobile, not having to worry about selling my house or finding full time tenants if I move.

In the short term, I have enough time to think more about it.  I am currently saving up a 10k emergency fund, just in case I lose my job or some such, that should take about another month.  After that, I can think more about where to put my money.  I wish I could find an even cheaper place to live so that I can save faster, lol, but I guess we’ll see.