Please join me in welcoming this week's Let's Talk Money guest. Today's interview is with Anthony from the well known blog Joyful Self-Manager. I was motivated to learn more about Anthony after reading his story on the About page of his blog. Anthony has overcome many challenges. Check out his About page to see what I am talking about.
Anthony's blog touches on many different areas of our lives. He writes about managing your own business, managing your money, managing your health and your home, as well as managing conflicts.
The best way to describe Anthony's blog is to say that through his writing Anthony inspires and encourages everyone to be the best that they can be.
Let's take a look at how Anthony has, and continues to manage his money.
Please provide a brief introduction about yourself and your blog including when you created your blog. If comfortable, please share if you are married and how many children you have.
Thank you for inviting me to take part in your Let's Talk Money Series. My name is Anthony Thompson. I’m originally from New York, but I currently live in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m a real estate broker by trade, but affiliate marketing is my true passion.
My major life goal is to spend a year in France and another one in Brussels. Joyful Self-Manager is the title of my blog. I created it in mid-2010, but it’s only now that it has started getting recognized in the blogosphere. I’m single, have no children, and I’m having a blast.
How did your mom and dad spend money and how did that affect you?
My mother was a homemaker during the early years of my youth, so my father was the sole breadwinner. He earned a relatively good salary as a blue-collar worker. I don’t know what his salary was, but it was enough to raise a family of four; which included me and my younger sister.
As for their spending, I would say that it was moderate. They never spent recklessly, and saved money on a regular basis. This provided a basic financially sound foundation for me, because I learned how to save money through their wise example.
What is your view point regarding money? Money is meant to be saved? Money is meant to be spent?
Personally, I think it’s a combination of the two. However, I feel that people should spend a great deal of concentrated effort saving money rather than spending it.
I like to use the late Jim Rohn’s 70/30 money management formula. This means that you use 70% of your earnings for your basic living expenses, and then divide the remaining 30% into three parts. Those parts consist of bank savings, diversified stock investing, and business start-up.
If you desperately wanted to take a vacation that would cost you $5000 but you didn't have the cash to pay for it, what would you do?
That’s an interesting question. If I were that desperate, I guess I would take the vacation, but forgo the $5000 vacation expense.
I would determine how much money I had saved in my vacation budget, and then use that as my vacation expense.
I wouldn’t be able to take a lavish vacation, but I could still enjoy fun activities like camping, hiking, visiting my state national parks or any number of things that would fit within my budget.
Do you think joint or separate checking accounts are appropriate in marriage?
If we’re taking about unmarried couples (including unmarried gay couples), I would definitely suggest separate checking accounts (and other types of accounts).
This is because the financial risk is far greater. If one party makes horrendous money decisions resulting in bad debts and court-ordered judgments, and then somehow vanishes from the face of the Earth, the other party won’t be legally responsible for those debts.
However, if it’s a joint account, and the same scenario occurs, then the other party will be legally obligated to pay those debts.
As for married couples, my take is a little different.
I think it would really depend on their financial objectives. However, there would have to be some conditions. The conditions would be that the objectives must be carefully thought out and discussed, and that they must benefit both spouses.
What is your monthly grocery budget and how do you manage it?
My monthly grocery budget falls between $60-80.
I manage this by first building up a grocery budget of $400 in one of my bank accounts.
Then, I withdraw $20 per week from that account just for groceries. I make sure to buy the essentials and pay discounted prices using store coupons and Big Box grocery shop value cards. This way, I don’t end up overspending for the month.
Outside of a regular job, have you found ways to make additional income? If yes, please explain.
Over the years, I’ve come up with several good ways to supplement my income. One way was to deliver Sunday newspapers. This brought in an additional $200 per month.
Delivering pizzas part-time brought in between $400-800 per month.
Mystery shopping has also been a good source of additional income. By doing it part time, I was been able to clear between $100-200 per month; provided that I did the higher paying shops on a regular basis.
As a realtor, doing BPO (Broker Price Opinion) reports for banks made me some good part-time money.
My future plan is to develop a real estate referral system for providing leads to local brokers in my area for a fee. This could bring in additional earnings of $200+ per month.
I want to make it clear that I didn’t do all of these gigs at once, but at different points of my employment.
Have you found ways to make money online? If yes, please elaborate.
Finding ways to make money online has always been a challenge for me.
Back in early 2009, I was very fortunate to earn $100+ writing on web 2.0 properties, but over the past few years many have fallen by the wayside because of the Google Panda changes, and the sites’ earnings restructuring. My income dropped significantly as a result.
At this point, I’m putting a majority of my focus on building a great web presence for Joyful Self-Manager.
Do you live to work, or work to live?
Actually, I would prefer to change that to live to serve, or serve to live.
And, I think that both responses are accurate. Throughout my remaining years, I want to live my life serving and helping others.
However, I want to also serve others in order to live. In the first case, I want to dedicate my life to improving the quality of my life through my work. In the second case, I hope to be financially rewarded for the quality of my work; and thus live joyfully, wisely and safely.
If you had a friend or a co-worker that was in debt come to you for financial advice on how to get out of debt, what are the first 3 steps you would suggest for them to work on?
I’m not a financial planner, so I don’t think I could make sound suggestions for getting out of debt.
However, I would advise these three things. First, I would advise that they sit down and gather up all of their billing statements (including credit cards, mortgage, car note, etc.) to get a snapshot of their spending habits.
Second, I would suggest that they go over their bank records to view their monthly savings.
And lastly, I would strongly recommend that they sit down with a state certified and highly qualified financial planner who will help get them on a payment schedule to pay off their debts.
Anthony, I just wanted to say that it is wonderful to have you as today's guest for Let's Talk Money. You have shared a lot of personal information around how you deal with money and it gives all of us the opportunity to get to know you better. Thank you very much!
If you would like to chat a bit more with Anthony I encourage you to connect with him on twitter @TonyGThompson, or please stop by his website at Joyful Self-Manager.
Source: http://tacklingourdebt.com/2012/04/18/lets-talk-money-series-anthony/
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