Today’s interesting episode features Araminta (me, the blogger) about financial education, how I started my blog Financially Mint and future FI plans.

What we talk about:

• Who Araminta is
• How I got started with the FI world
• The importance of financial education
• How students should get started on FI
• Future FI goals

It gets pretty interesting (and did you hear Warren Buffet jump out at the beginning?!)

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Who is Araminta?

I’m not going to lie, it does feel a bit weird to write show notes about myself. But here we are!

Alvar interviews me on my life (because why not) and I explain how I’m still at university, am half Spanish half Scottish and I currently run my blog Financially Mint. I’m also turning 20 in a few months (that’s why I keep saying I’m in my early twenties). I discovered FI through my personal finance website, which helps other students understand and manage money in university in the UK. I do cool interviews, experiments and the odd WTF article. It was at a random FI meetup in Edinburgh that I met Alvar and decided to get in on the FI juice. It’s been amazing ever since.

 

How did discovering FI feel?

It all started through the famous but controversial book Rich Dad Poor Dad. At 3 am on a quiet morning in Shanghai, China, I had finished the book and realised I knew nothing about money. And that was not good. I decided to teach myself about money and write about it. The more I learnt, the more I realised, I could also help other students with what I was learning, and that’s how Financially Mint was born.

I was aching to tell other students that they didn’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. That not every Monday of their lives’ would suck, and that they didn’t have to wait till the weekend to enjoy life. And the more that message resonated with me, the deeper I got into personal finance and then financial independence.

 

Why is financial education so important?

Universities lack one huge thing: financial education.

Students graduate university without any idea of what are taxes, mortgages and compound interest. And then the government is surprised when everyone is in debt and no one has saved for retirement.

Financial education is essential to be in control of your money. If you don’t want it to control your life, if you want to be truly independent from your money, you need to understand. Understand how to invest, how to save and how to make sure you don’t overspend.

As I say in the episode, first my mission was to teach myself about money. Then my mission became to help other students. And I do this by helping them put systems into place and encouraging them to financially educate themselves. I don’t want to fix their problems, I want them to learn how to fix their own – that’s the key to education

 

I’m a student – how do I fix my money?

Here’s a simple step by step process I talk about in the episode:

1. 1. Start slowly and get used to the idea: watch The Minimalists, play a game like the Cashflow game, read a book like Rich Dad Poor Dad
   2. Budget: Track your income and expenses, set a budget for each expense and stick to it. Here’s a guide to get started.
   3. Pay Yourself First: The secret to getting out of the rat race. The second you get your income, take out a percentage and allocate it to savings. I take out 15%.
   4. Educate yourself: Keep up to date with the news, check out reddit groups and Facebook groups, keep reading more books

 

• Automate it: Use apps and software to keep systems in place so you don’t have to rely on willpower. Here’s a list of great apps you can use.

 

How Araminta spends her money

Next Alvar asks me about how I spend my personal money. Tough question since I’ve been doing some travelling, but I give away a bit of a breakdown. I’ve tried living on £15/week for groceries (and succeeded!), I spend a bit more on travel since this is a big part of my entertainment, and am lucky enough to not be paying rent since I live in my mother’s flat.

I work as a freelancer and the minute I get my income I allocate 15% to investments, 10% to my emergency fund and 5% to stock picking/experiments.

Thanks to this podcast and talking to more and more people, I’m getting started with dividend investing and have got some money in P2P lending. My biggest advantage: compound interest. I’m 19 and I have time, so I’m using this as much as I can.

 

The Future

I end up babbling a lot on the episode about what I think the future looks like and what I want. Truth be told, life always takes you to unexpected places and I never dreamt I would be doing all this last year.

I am currently looking for an internship in Barcelona as I look to learn more about the corporate world. My dream is to build my own business in 4-5 years. But I know that right now I don’t have enough experience, skills or knowledge, so I’m working on this.

I don’t have a high salary and am not looking to retire early. At the moment, I’m focusing on the FI mentality, on designing my life how I want, and living every day with intention and a goal. It might not work out all the time, but I do try. Let’s see where the future takes me.

Here’s where you can find out more about me:

Links

• My blog: Financially Mint
• Financially Mint on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter

 

P.S. The Warren Buffet parody in the beginning of the episode was brought to you by MR RIP