The final piece of advice my cross-country coach gave me before he passed was, “Start your 401k as soon as can and put in as much as you can.”  It was my first year in college and it made no sense to me.  He tried to explain it to me.  I caught that involved working and retirement.  I did my best to follow his advice and keep an eye out for it.  The first and only time I have encountered the possibility of starting a 401k at work was five years ago.  Their business manual mentioned they would pay into one after working there for 6 months, but I never met that requirement.
 
At the time, I missed the moral of his advice.  Time is an important aspect of life and younger people need to catch as much of it while it’s abundant.  Time becomes rarer as we age and that’s why older people value it so much.  Time is a useful tool that us younger folk need to realize we have available to us.  Like how time helps timer balls catch pokémon, it also helps our finances by using rollout, leech seed, pin missile, return and stockpile.

Tuesday, I had an eye doctor’s appointment to get a new prescription for contacts.  I left after explaining to the receptionist, the doctor, the contacts person and the glasses person that I could not afford their recommendations.  I felt awful because I felt like I had say “no” to my health because I couldn’t afford to say “yes.”  I felt like I was trapped in a sand tomb, paralyzed and I could only splash about.

So, I came home and started writing about my experience and feelings.  I wouldn’t say I was crying as I typed, but having a Finneon near might have been helpful.  After granbulling for about a page and a half, I had to return to work and try not to be so gloomy.

It was at work that I noticed this feeling didn’t have to do with only my doctor’s appointment.  At first, I ran out of good moves when I had to stop using my credit card PP, causing me to splash around.  Then, I became paralyzed as I started looking deeper into what we have spent and still need to spend on our wedding.  Finally, I was trapped in the sand tomb when I wanted a new contacts prescription, but everything I was being recommended would cost me three to four times what I was expecting to afford.
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I found myself on a Marengo Plateau.

Four weeks from now, I’ll be a married Grown-Up Pokemon Trainer.  We will be packing our bags, saying our farewells to our friends and family, and wrapping up our whirlwind of a wedding weekend.

That’s then, but this is now.  And right now, I’m in what I refer to the week before tech week for our wedding.  We are starting to feel the pressure as we complete our finishing touches and finalizing details.  We are behind on some parts and ahead on others, but we have been through event planning before and know it will all work out.  As for the financial part, our main strategy to keep our budget in check is priority spending.

This week I ended my third decade of moving around the sun.  I am now 30 years old, and my biggest concern about turning 30 is whether I need to change my age in the Rockstar Finance Blogdex.  There’s a huge debate in my head if it will smokescreen my potential future audience from finding me, but that’s a discussion for later.  (Although, if you have an opinion, please voice it in the comments below or on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. ;))

I wanted to start a new tradition to celebrate the beginning of my new year and I came up with the Amulet Coin Money Challenge!
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This challenge originates from me thinking about how most of my personal finance related stress manifests from my inability to use my money the way I want to.  Whenever I get a large sum of “extra” money, my debt, savings or investing usually extreme speed the paycheck before I can use it the way I want to.  The Amulet Coin Money Challenge is a super training exercise that ignores speed and lets me think about what I want my priorities to be for my money.

​Welcome to July!  The first week in July means that it’s time for June’s Review and Net Worth Update.
 
For those who are new to The Grown-Up Pkmn Trainer, each month I write a financial review to xatu my net worth by writing down my thoughts on the previous and following months.  I share these summaries so everyone can gain insight into my personal finances and my thoughts behind them.
 
I started tracking my net worth to measure my progress, inspired by Budgets Are Sexy, which has helped me pay closer attention to my personal finances.  I have been tracking my net worth since January 2015 and writing monthly financial reviews for myself since 2016.  I recommend tracking net worth because it has been such a helpful tool to see my personal finances stat changes all in one place.