On this article I’d like to share some personal update on our financial freedom journey. I’ll share our 2016 accomplishments and setbacks and hoping that in the end of this article, you’ll be inspired to work on your goals towards financial freedom. Let’s go!
This post has been overdue. It should’ve been posted earlier but I was not able to finish it last week that’s why it’s rolling just now.
Overall, 2016 had been great for us. We’re able to achieve some of our financial goals and were able to move forward in our financial freedom journey.
Here are some of our major achievements in our financial freedom journey last 2016.
1. We’ve built our emergency fund
As I always shared and advocate on this blog, emergency fund is necessary component of your finances. It is something that can give you piece of mind because you know you have something to pull-out in case “life emergencies” happen.
Our initial goal after the marriage was to build a solid emergency fund. So me and my lovely wife aim to save an equivalent of our 4-5 months of expenses. How did we knew how much we spend each month? We listed all of them!
You’ll only knew how much you really spend when you track it. Here’s some additional benefits of tracking your expenses.
So we talked about it, agreed on the target, literally wrote it and put it on the wall of our dressing cabinet. Yes! That’s literally what we did.
We set that in January of 2015 and by September of that year were able to complete it. You can read more about that here.
Why it’s listed in our 2016 accomplishments? Because we added some buffer this year to make it pretty solid.
Since we knew we’re expecting a baby that time, we decided to add some more to cover all of us in case of emergency.
Emergency fund goal – checked!
2. We completed our baby fund on time
After building our emergency fund, the next goal we set was to save for our little boy. This include expenses in check-ups, medicines, deliver and other post-delivery expenses.
And like any goal you want and work on, we’re able to complete it on time.
Our handsome, super-cute and artistahin baby boy(mana sa daddy) born last February of 2016 and his name is Billy Jr.!
Here’s new born picture.
And now look at him couple of months ago.
I told yah! 😀
We added buffer on this fund and when B2 was born, it was fortunate that we spent less than what we expected. We prepared for CS but my wife made it through normal delivery. Hats off to her!
So the excess was added to our next goal which is #3.
3. We started our house down payment goal.
Right now, we currently rent the house we live in. It’s a studio type apartment which basically good for a starting family like us. It’s good for now but we know it’s not for long term.
Like any other family, we want something for our self. A house we can really called our own.
So our current major goal for now is to have our own house. Or at least to save for the down payment to move in. Last year we’re able to start saving for that goal. It may take some time but we’re positive we can have it on or before our target date.
We invested some part of this fund into BDO UITF.
I’ll share an update regarding this in the future.
4. Our side business income continue to grow
The income of this blog doubled last year compared from 2015. Since more articles had been added, it acquired more visitors and readers. Thus, the income in Google Adsense and sponsored links increased too.
Another additional passive income we generated were sales from my CCNA Basic and Fundamentals Ebook. As you already know, I run another blog about CCNA or Cisco Certified Network Associate. That’s basically a certification for network engineers like us provided by Cisco.
The sale of the ebook was pretty good. As in pretty pretty good! Especially on the first and second month of the launch last year(November and December).
I never imagine it will earn that much but surprisingly it did. Up to now I’m still in the cloud with what happen. It’s true that when you provided value and solve other people’s problem, it will come back to you 1000x folds. Right now, it continue to give us passive income.
I’ll share more of my blogging and online business journey in the coming months. I’m also planning to share the journey to another blog which will focus on that. More on that in the future.
Are you interested to learn blogging and make money from it? Just put your comment below. Thank you.
Now, as any other person on earth, we also have some setbacks last year. Here they are.
1. I was confined for 7 days ‘coz of dengue
It was unfortunate that I was hit by dengue last year. I stayed in the hospital for straight 7 days. Ugh! I hate that. Good thing I was able to recover fast but the experience was certainly not good.
Though most of the expenses were covered by our HMO that time, we still incurred additional expenses from fares, food, medicines etc. Good thing it was not huge to pull-out from our emergency fund. Our rule is to pull-out the EF only on crisis and big life emergencies.
2. I was laid off
The job I thought was secured and stable was unfortunately not.
In July 2016, it was announced that all of the Tier 2 IT in our company will be redundated. It will be outsource in India for the company’s new strategy a.k.a to save and earn more money.
In short I loss my job. You can read more about that here.
Am I shocked? Yes, definitely! But I was not scared for the simple reasons that we have emergency fund, we’re earning from other source of income and I’m confident I can easily find a new job if I want to.
But instead of applying for a new job, I decided to pause and take some rest. In fact I decided to quit the corporate world. You can read that here.
It’s also more of a personal choice because no one will watch and take care our baby. We can’t find a “good yaya” that’s why I came to the rescue. Another reason was wife’s work is good ‘coz she can work from home and have a good health benefits that cover us. And as mentioned, I continue to bring income through blogging and online gig.
Right now while writing this post, I’m still jobless. But again, that didn’t stop me from bringing income into our pocket. It’s a big help from my wife’s income and our overall budget.
It only takes creativity and resourcefulness to find ways to earn money. You just have to take action.
Those were the major setbacks we had last year. There were small ones too but I can’t pull them off my head right now so I’ll end this here. Maybe it didn’t punched us that hard that’s why.
These are the 2016 major financial updates in our financial freedom journey so far. The accomplishments and setbacks. There were other small ones but I guess these are the ones worth sharing.
This year will going to be a challenge but we’ll continue working with our goals. It maybe slow but we’re happy that we are moving forward. After all, it’s a journey and it takes time.
I understand it’s a personal thing but I’d like to shed some inspiration to you that you can do it too. No matter where you are right now, you can always start. You just need to take action. Take a single step each time, that’s enough to move forward.
Over to you
What’s your major accomplishments and setbacks last year? Can you share them on the comment section below, please. I’ll read them one by one. Thanks!
I hope you were inspired by this article. Until next time, cheers!
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