Question on How I started Saving

Thought I’d share a recent question I received about how I started saving.

As mentioned before I really love Weasabe, its really helped me be able to track my monthly expense. Plus I love the group discussion portion of it as well since members can all post questions and get everyone’s insight.

(To clarify Weasabe is not a sponsor of my blog, in fact they probably don’t even know I’m alive – I’m just a very satisfied client and wanted to offer the idea to everyone else just like if I found the most amazing restaurant in town I would be bragging about it to my friends forever until they tried it and agreed with me that it was amazing).

Anyway recently a member posted a question called “Stock’s for Newby’s”. I think you should be able to view the whole discussion even if you are not a member yet.

Below are my highlights:

Original Question:
Hey guys,
I'm 18 and working 2 part-time jobs, I have no real expenses and save pretty much whatever I make (I think I've spent a total of 12 dollars in the last 6 months). I am interested in the stock market, so I was wondering if you guys could send me on the right track.
Ps: I know nothing of stocks and have no idea where to start :S
Thanks

My response:
I'm in the same boat as you, I'm clueless about picking specific stocks that's why I stick to mutual funds and target date funds which take all of the guess work out of the equation. I use vanguard and they have target date retirement accounts so its as simple as finding the 2045 fund (which is around the year I plan to retire)and selecting it.

My one word of advise those it before selecting do a little homework and discover the fees and the asset allocation first to ensure they are consistent with your goals. Other than that enjoy.

A different member chimed in with this in response to my post:
I went to your blog spot... wowowow your doing a very nice job on the blog and on your savings........How did you get started in the saving track? Someone must have helped you along the way? Vanguard is a good stop to save on Mutual Funds. I also like TRowe Price and Fidelity.

Happy Savings

I then responded: Thank you very much for checking out my blog. I hope you'll keep reading.

To answer your questions:
- I got started on the savings track when I was in high school because I knew that I would be 100% responsible for all of my expenses including tuition so it was up to me to figure out a way to go to college, and then from that it progressed. In college I was fixated on savings because it would mean I could work less so I could go to school longer and finish up and now my focus is on retirement. I talk a little about this in some of my older posts on my blog.
- As for as someone helping me I wish I could say that I had someone help me along the way. It really boiled down to seeing the example that several of my family members made of being deeply in debt and struggling to find a way to retire that made me so debt adverse and want to save heavily for retirement. Beyond that it was getting involved with finances from reading EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. Plus Wesabe has definitely helped me a lot in tracking my expenses.

Hope I answered your questions. Thanks for checking out my blog, I’m glad you enjoyed it


Just wanted to share some insight with everyone else about how I started saving. I’ve been planning for some time to write a post about how I came to have saved over $90k and only be in my early twenties (okay maybe I’m a little north of early twenties but close enough). So keep checking back because the questions in the discussion gave me extra motivation to hurry up and write that post about how I started saving.