Part One: I’m a Financial Planner. Here’s how I manage my own finances

First of all, in case you are wondering, I take my own advice. Surprisingly, this is rarer than you would think in the financial industry. I’ve encountered some bizarre examples throughout my career of financial professionals that have spent more than they can afford to keep up appearances.

In order to provide you with some context, I’ve first decided to share how I generally approach my finances. In future articles, we’ll dive into more of the specifics.

I live within my means and I save a lot.

For those of you who know me, I know this comes as no surprise to you. I don’t hide it. If you know me really well, you probably make fun of me for it.

Ten years ago, my husband and I purchased our first home. Although we were both working at that time, we decided to purchase a home with a mortgage payment that was easily affordable on one income. This is one of the smartest decisions we ever made. We knew that at that time it was highly likely one of us would attend graduate school. Both of us did and for four out of these last ten years, we’ve had only one income.

As we continued to make more money, we never really adjusted our lifestyle. We just saved more. Having a manageable mortgage payment allowed us to save. We saved into our retirement accounts, but we also saved into our cash reserve to levels that were more common among retirees instead of late 30 somethings.

Admittedly, I didn’t think our diligence would pay off so quickly. However, after almost twelve years as a financial advisor, I had the opportunity to start my own fee-only financial planning practice while my husband was still a full-time student. I also had the start-up capital to do it.

We choose to live our lives in a way that focuses on what we value most. For us, that’s not where we live or what cars we drive. I’m not big on material possessions. We haven’t had cable for five years. Yes, we are conscious of what we spend, but we still have fun. We love to travel. Last year we spent nearly 10 percent of our income on travel.

Bottom line, living within our means has given us the ultimate flexibility. We travel as much as we want to. Most importantly we’re able to pursue the careers that we want to in the way that we want to. We aren’t chained to a job and or forced to keep up a lifestyle, and it’s truly liberating.

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