“The climb to learning personal finance may be rocky, it may not be clear where it may be taking you. No matter, it is important one keeps exploring that road with curiosity.” – Ryan Louie

It was during my times growing up in California and my first time living away in Boston when I developed my spending habits. I think I grew up as a saver – excited to know I was accumulating money. But I also have been mostly conservative with big ticket items that I spend my money on. For example, while going to undergrad in Boston, I never flew home during the Thanksgiving or Spring break, as my parents encouraged me to save that money. During undergrad, I hardly took any vacations or trips using my own money – all the vacations were enjoyed with my parents and luckily paid by them.

I was very fortunate to graduate with an engineering degree debt free, thanks to both a half-tuition scholarship and, in no small part, my parents who supported the rest. With a high-earning potential degree and a lack of financial burdens, I felt more flexible in choosing a first job out of college. When figuring out my values for that first job, I remember at an entrepreneurship event someone saying “After graduating from college, it’s no better time to pursue that pursue that startup dream – you won’t be able to pay yourself a lot, but also there is no other time in your life where it’s okay to live scrappily and still live off ramen noodles, and where you don’t have other outside obligations like a family, a house that you need to a stable high-earning wage to support.” That idea really appealed to me – go for that more unique first career experience when there are little downsides to failing or earning money at this point. So when the decision time came, instead of pursuing that high-earning software engineering job, I chose a PhD that offered only a livable stipend. But I felt that pursuing the PhD had greater potential for high returns, would broaden the possible trajectories I could chart, and would challenge me and fuel personal growth.

When I came to Evanston for my PhD, I was excited to live scrappily – I was proud that I was paying what felt the cheapest rent possible in Evanston, I was still not flying or planning my own vacations very frequently, and thankful I didn’t need a car to get to work. By living a generally a low spending lifestyle, I never felt the worry that I would spend my whole paycheck. But from this comfort grew complacency: I knew I would be generally fine, and thus never made financial goals or plans for myself. With little free time outside of my PhD, I wasn’t pursuing any new, expensive hobbies. Thus, I never took the time to budget my money. I didn’t think it was a high priority to invest some of my earnings, and thus didn’t learn about investing and often missed years when I could contribute to a Roth IRA that my parents encouraged me to setup.

But something has changed recently. And there has been more moments in which I experience a nagging feeling, which tells me that turning an eye away from personal finances and investing is really hurting me. Part of this motivation came out of ongoing frustration that I was accumulating more money (due in some part to a higher-earning summer internship), but that money was just sitting in a checking account, withering away to inflation, and there was a lack of action on my part to use this opportunity to make the money work for me. It might have been when I struggled to make a larger life decision that would affect my finances. Recently, I was debating whether I could move in with my closest friend near Uptown, but hesitated on whether the 30% increase in rent was something I could afford. I didn’t know what in my spending habits could be adjusted to offset this change.

So I’ve become personally interested in learning personal finance and investing in my outside time, starting in 2020. I’ve read a small book, bookmarked countless articles, and watched Youtube videos about personal investing. I want to start tracking a monthly budget, to understand what I could do to still afford to move in with my close friend near Uptown. My motivation for taking this class arose out of happenstance: I stumbled upon a flyer in the Garage advertising this class! I heard that class was oriented to anyone who wanted to learn these necessary adult skills, and that students from previous quarters felt the quality of the instruction was extremely high! I was excited to have a more structured curriculum and environment for continuing my learning about this important topic.