Tag: Personal Finance

When It Comes to Advice, Everybody Is Wrong…or Right?

by Mike Mabrouk

I love reading. I love meeting new people. I love traveling. I love watching educational YouTube videos. Every source of learning even the traditional form of schooling, provides you information for what you should know and what the recommended ways are to go about it. I believe it is very important to observe, listen and take note for what all the mediums have to say so you have a well-rounded knowledge foundation of what is going on and why it is the case. Now having said all of this, do you ever focus on a topic, try to learn more, and realize there is conflicting advice? Yeah that is why I created this blog post title. Who is right? Who is wrong? The answer is……. well everyone.

Why Everyone Is Wrong and Right

I am going to use an example topic to talk about with this dilemma. Let’s talk about personal finance, one of my favorites. When it comes to learning about personal finance, I love to read on the topic and watch YouTube videos that talk about investment strategies. Usually when talking about the topic, the person(s) goes over their own investment strategies and their own thoughts based on what has worked for them currently and in the past. The problem with this is each time I learn more through someone new, they have conflicting opinions on what is right and what is wrong. An example being investing in the stock market. Some would argue majority of your eggs so to speak need to be put in the stock market basket. Some say through index fund investing. Some say through picking out a personal stock. Those not in favor of putting all your eggs into the stock market basket, may be in favor of instead putting some of your money into real estate. Some would argue put it in bonds and be more conservative especially with this next recession coming up which by the way, everyone has conflicting thoughts on when it could happen too. So which advice and perspective should you follow? The answer really and one of my MBA professors used to always say…. well it depends.

Everyone Is Dealt a Different Hand and Has Played Different Cards to Win

It is important to understand when listening/learning about different perspectives and viewpoints, why they are different. A large part of that is due to their own personal history. Everyone has their own unique life experiences and it is human nature within us to share those perspectives of what has worked for us and what has not. Staying on the topic of personal finance, an example could be investing in a house to flip that totally failed and therefore their viewpoint is never try this since you will fail like me. Another example being investing in the stock market. With the economic crash around 2007-2008, many had large investments in the stock market and saw their investment portfolio start to vanish. Therefore, from their experiences, they will tell you not to invest in the stock market. That is why it is important to take in as many perspectives and form your own opinion for what will work best with you. This is where the whole everyone is deal a different hand comes into play. When trying to learn about a topic or take in advice, everyone will speak about that said topic from the hand that they were dealt with and how they played the cards. You as someone who is trying to learn more needs to apply the knowledge with the hand you have and what works best for you. That is how people become successful. With personal finance, if you have the ability to me more aggressive, investing in the stock market could make more sense. If you live in a neighborhood that is up an coming and you know of some properties for sale, maybe the real estate route would make sense and from there you can focus in on that topic more in depth instead of learning at a broad high level perspective.

How Do I know What My Hand Dealt Is?

This metaphor or analogy (one of the two…clearly didn’t pay attention in school for this) signifies that every individual has their own unique circumstances in life just as if you were playing a game with a deck of cards, everyone would have a unique combination cards in their hand. While playing the game, you can easily tell what cards you are holding since they are physically there and you can see them (if you are blind, just have someone else read them off). In life, we are dealt a hand but have no idea what it is until we live life and experience it. Unfortunately, that is the reality. Life is about experiencing what works and does not work for you individually while learning from others that can help your own personal experiences be enhanced. When you are able to create knowledge from your own experiences and learn more from others that can help develop and improve the learning, then that is a recipe for success.

Thanks everyone,

Mike M.

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How YouTube Can Help Your Health and Personal Finances

by Mike Mabrouk

YouTube is probably where I put most of my time at when it comes to boredom entertainment. And it’s definitely for a good reason. This platform has everything that can both entertain you and be educational. The whole framework of everyday random people posting content trying to teach you from their learnings or simply even just exploding stuff is awesome to me. Endless hours of content are online for you to watch basically free. This is why I wanted to write a blog post on this. I want to make sure everyone capitalizes their time with this platform for improving themselves at no investment whatsoever.

What I like about YouTube

So, I like learning and I like learning in an easy digestible fashion. And that is the power of YouTube. Screw the I have to read a textbook to get familiar with a topic. What I love about this platform is the freedom to watch whatever videos you want in the topic you are interested in from different perspectives too. The traditional textbook is written by an author who updates publications with new “lingo” just to pocket more money. The best is when a professor themselves has written a textbook that you have to buy for three hundred dollars. Now while I do have some jokingly not jokingly comparisons with the traditional form of schooling in this writing, I am not by any means saying you should substitute school with YouTube. The platform of YouTube though does provide an outlet of content that can assist with your schooling efforts along with learning about what life has to offer that a classroom will never teach you.

What topics I like to watch

There are many subscriptions I have that align with topics I love to watch videos on. Everyone is unique with what they are interested in and what they would like to learn more about and explore with. For me, there have been some topics especially of recent that I love to focus on and learn more about. I am a huge sucker for personal finance videos on YouTube. Personal finance is a category that is not really talked about or brought up a lot with daily conversations and learning efforts. I believe it to be very important to know what the heck to do with my own money, the money I owe, and the money I will earn. There are a plentiful number of channels that have their own tips, tricks and strategies for personal finance, what they recommend and how to go about it in a quick and easy fashion.

Two other topics that I also enjoy binge watching are success stories with personal health & entrepreneurial efforts, along with traveling abroad videos. The success story videos show you people who have actually took action in their lives to improve themselves and make a success out of their situation. The two categories that fall into this topic that I enjoy watching are weight loss stories and people who have started up their own business from scratch whether that is an online business or even running a franchise. Both of these topics directly and indirectly motivate me to push myself as well since I am literally watching people who have pulled it off and are doing it as we speak. I think it is good to have this kind of content in your life to spark some motivation in you and to push yourself even further with whatever goals you have in mind.

Now the traveling abroad videos are simply awesome. You can learn so much on YouTube from peoples’ personal travels whether it being a country that you have always had on your bucket list to visit some day or even tips and tricks for the best ways to handle expectations and preparations for visiting a country. I love love love watching travelers visit countries that are not so common travel destinations and may even be considered dangerous to the everyday person living in a westernized country. These videos show the true insights of how the media does spin things to make it seem everything is awful but in truth, we are all human and while there is bad everywhere there is good everywhere as well. These travelers and documenters show the insights of how the locals live, the traditions they have and even the cuisines they indulge in. It is a real fun category to spend hours on learning more about what is truly going on with the rest of the world and how the media never focuses on the good sides with some of these “unpopular” countries.

The real danger of YouTube

Recommended videos can lead to binge watching YouTube. And I am talking worse than Netflix. At least with Netflix you to a certain degree know what you are getting yourself into, but not YouTube. Two hours can pass by in a blink of an eye and before you know it, you just absorbed so much good learning content that makes you think why the heck is this not the traditional form of learning compared to sitting in a school classroom for two hours.

Conclusion

Yeah YouTube is just awesome. I myself spend a lot of time on it and I believe it is a better form of entertainment to learn from and improve yourself than many other mediums including television. While I did list some of the topics that I love to watch, keep in mind YouTube has everything and anything that you may have an interest in and want to learn more about. I definitely recommend taking advantage of this platform. With that being said, thanking you for reading this post and check out some of my other previous blogs posts I have written on topics dealing with health and wealth.

Thanks everyone,

Mike M.

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Reasons Why Credit Cards Are Good

by Mike Mabrouk

It seems like the talk of town from everyone is that credit cards are evil, and everyone should stay away from them. Heck, if you really did some basic research online, there are some “financial gurus” that make this point that you should never open up a credit card and you are doomed if you dare to. So, I can understand where everyone is coming from with the statement of staying from credit cards. First of all, if you really do not have any self-control, then it probably would be best to stay away since the freedom you have with a decent credit limit and just telling yourself I can pay it off sometime later is dangerous. Also, if your spending habits in general are out of control, you really should try to get some good habits in place to correct those issues before you have that credit limit to spend on everything useless. One of my personal favorite dangers too is throwing the monthly subscriptions on the card and not even realizing what you are actually spending on all that stuff (i.e. Hulu, Netflix, Gym).

With all of this said, there are some very good reasons why having at least one credit card is a very good thing. And disclaimer of course, I am not a personal financial advisor or anything and everyone has their own unique situation, so please do some research for what makes the most sense with you but I find these reasons very appealing and they are why I have two credit cards to my name.

1. Build up Credit

Basic I know right? But it is true. Credit cards are a great way to build up your credit score and provide a track record of you paying your bills on time which will help with future larger purchases down the road to have lower interest rates and qualify for higher loans. Also, if you are on the younger side, credit cards are a great way to start your credit history as well as get in the habit of paying your bills and most importantly paying them on time.

2. Helps Budget and Keep Track of Spending

There are really two sides to how best to keep track of spending. One is to withdraw cash or use your debit card straight from your checking or savings account so that way you are not induced to spend a lot and you can control yourself with spending due to how much you actually have available or how much cash you actually withdrew.  I actually agree that this is a good idea. I will say though from my experiences using a credit card is a lot easier (as long as you can control your spending habits). Credit card companies’ interfaces are really advanced now, and they can breakdown for you the category of each payment you had of spending (i.e. gas, food).  You can start to track how much you spend in each category either through a spreadsheet or an online personal finance tracking software like Mint.com. Now I haven’t used Mint myself, but I do know friends that use the platform and swear by it. But anyways the main point here is credit cards provide you a history of what the heck you actually are spending your money on and not just a withdrawal of cash and asking yourself later where did my cash go.

3. Rewards Points

The hidden not so hidden anymore perk to credit cards. REWARDS. Credit card companies provide incentives to sign up and use their cards through multiple avenues but a main one is the reward perks of their own individual card. These can be from cash back rewards, travel points, flight mileage points etc. My personal card (Capital One) has a 1.5% cash back rewards meaning as an example for every one hundred dollars I spend, I get one and a half dollars cash back in my account. That does not sound like a lot initially, but it adds up over time. And it is a simple click to redeem the cash in my account. There is no crazy process to redeem it at all. And not only with the cash back cards, but the travel cards as mentioned are great as well since you can collect points either through actual travel or spending habits and use those points for flight discounts or even hotel discounts. Reward points are essentially just an extra bonus to you spending money that you already will be spending anyways.

I am sure there are a lot more perks to using credit cards than the one’s mentioned above but my main goal with the post is for you and other readers to start doing your research on why credit cards are not bad and start to investigate it more.

Thank you for reading my post and please give a like and follow the blog if you enjoyed. I like the idea of going more in depth with this kind of stuff or health related stuff I am not quite sure. I want to see what the people like.

Anyways thanks for checking this out!

Mike M.

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Tips on How to Adult Properly Right Out of College

by Mike Mabrouk
Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

So, I am kinda sorta relatively out of college and have learned A LOT when it comes to being thrown into the “real world”. I mean I left home to live at my university in an apartment, but for some reason leaving away from both parents’ house and college for good really makes you feel some type of way. It hits you hard with what to really do and how to go about everything. Through experiencing it, reading about it, and watching YouTube videos on it, I feel somewhat seasoned dealing with how to best set yourself up for the transition and smooth sailing for your life. There’s a lot to leaving college, everything from finding a good job, a location to move to (obviously job can force that), how to handle personal finances, you name it. I am by no means a financial advisor, but I think I am currently starting to get a hang with adulting and leaving the college world. Here are some tips that you should take advantage of to start off rolling.

  1. Open up credit cards. I am a huge believer in credit cards and the fact that everyone should have one. I can talk more about this topic in another blog post but the main benefit of having at least one credit card is it is an easy way to help build up your credit which is very important for you moving forward. The sooner you can open one the better. The main knock on credit cards is that if you don’t pay your bills on time, you can build up some serious debt issues. My response to that is you are either going to be good with paying your bills on time or bad no matter what method you use to pay for things. The habit overall isn’t going to change and if you do trust yourself to pay your bills on time, then there is no reason to not have a credit card and start building up your credit score.
  2. Figure out your transportation situation. Find out for wherever you are moving too if they have reliable public transportation, if your work is walkable or if you need a reliable car for those longer commutes. You need to have a plan in place for what will work best for your mode of transportation, especially for to and from work. This allows you to know if you need to get a car if you already don’t have one and maybe a newer car that is more reliable so you don’t have to worry about it breaking down weekly. Or if you plan to live in the city, it may be best to sell off your car and use that money elsewhere.
  3. Have a Budget system that works for you. Everyone has their own preference for what works best for them, which is how life should be in most aspects, but it is very important to have a method in place to keep track of your money and your expenses. For example, I currently have an updated list with when my bills are do and track my overall expenses to make sure they net out to a number I like from my income. It is very basic but allows for me to see the overall picture if I am overspending. Personal recommendation too is to keep track of your paychecks from work in a spreadsheet to see what you actually make after taxes and to ensure the payments look correct just in case there are any mishaps from the company you work for. Budget wise though, you can create whatever format you want from categorizing every category of spending (if you love numbers) or even just noting your bill payments to see what these fun utility companies are actually charging you yearly. Search in Google for good budgeting templates and there are many free ones that you can download and use.
  4. If you still don’t have a job, apply literally everywhere. What worked well for me to find my current job was applying everywhere and through a lot of different job posting websites. This includes sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, Company Websites, etc. It really is a full-time job to apply for jobs and takes a while to find a good fit but many argue against applying all over and through websites like Indeed where there seems to be a lot of other people applying. My argument why you should, is that it worked for me and it allows you to build up your market research knowledge of what jobs are out there and what the qualifications are. This allows you to tailor your resume to these jobs knowing what they are looking for (since you have gone through a lot of postings of course) and other companies that are similar that you may not have even thought of applying to. If you don’t have the direct connections, best way to find a new job is to play the numbers game where the more times you apply, the more chances you have of finding a good job that fits you.
  5. Don’t be afraid to stay at your parents’ house for a little while. This point really hits home to me (pun intended). I started off living from home right after college while having an internship near by (I was doing my MBA at the time) and this saved me a ton of money from rent to even food if your parents are kind enough to still provide that for free. This allows you to have a mini transition and more preparation time to find your job and what location best fits for you. It also allows for you to better prepare when you do leave with your finances. My advice with this too is do not plan to stay too long since you will have to leave sooner than later and you don’t want to be that person that stays until you are 35 (of course if you are taking care of your parents, that is a completely different story).

Hope you enjoyed the quick read of some helpful tips to help prepare to adult right out of college. Please when you have a chance to like and follow as well as check out my other blog posts.

Thanks everyone,

Mike M.

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Introducing Myself

by Mike Mabrouk

Well greetings everyone if you have made it thus far. My name is Mike and I want to start a lifestyle blog on tips and tricks to make your life a success with simple recommendations from my life experiences. The blog content will include everything from personal finance life hacks, healthy eating, everyday struggles, big life decisions and plenty more. My goal is to utilize my young life experience and help others along with recommending resources for everyone to succeed. These posts will be short and sweet to be easily consumable and to not take a whole lot of time out of your day.

Enjoy,

Mike M.