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Personal Finance and money management has become my obsession/addiction. What to do now that everything is set on auto-pilot? I feel empty inside :(
Main Post:
I'm pretty sure I have an obsession with personal finance/planning, and I'm not sure where to go from here.
Over the last 3 years, I've spent a ton of my free time researching about personal finance through this subreddit and other sources. I've managed to save up a emergency fund, reduce my expenses to a minimum, set up budgets with Mint, and pay off $50,000+ in student loans (by living on less than half my $45kish income) to name a few.
Now that my high interest loans have been paid off, I'm sending that money that once went to loan payments to max my Roth IRA, fill my employer 401k, and begin saving for a home down-payment with ETFs.
Everything is now on auto-pilot, and all set up with automatic re-occurring monthly transfers. I should be good to go, but I find my self CONSTANTLY checking my bank accounts, retirement accounts, Mint, free credit reports, etc. I'm talking almost every weekday, at least once.
When I was paying off my student loans, I would constantly make extra payments. So I would log onto my student loan servicer, and send over a bit more money with every one of my bi-monthly paychecks, and also if I made anything from freelancing. Every time I did that it felt really good, which helped me to pay off my loans quickly and keep motivated. Now that I don't have that "feel good thing/reward", I feel super empty?
I'm not sure how to channel this energy, or if it's natural. Does anyone have any advice? I have a feeling that I'm so into this because it's an aspect of my life that I feel like I can "control", and that gives me comfort. I'm aware this is totally a first world problem, but would appreciate any advice.
EDIT: Well, I definitely didn't expect this to blow up, but thank you so much to everyone who has responded with recommendations. I think my new plan is to:
- Take some of my stuff off Auto pay. That way I can feel the excitement of transferring the money myself
- Possibly allocate a VERY small portion of my savings to stocks that I can more actively check on/manage. I'm talking like 5% or less, or maybe just bonus/gift money?
- Get back into Duolingo for those 5 minute sanity breaks I need at work. Hablo un poquito espanol perro quiero aprender mas!
- Possibly start a couch to 5k program. I'm a pretty skinny lady, but I'm 0% in shape when it comes to stamina.
- Stalk this sub and help out others when I can/widen my knowledge about things like taxes n such!
Top Comment:
Channel that energy into improving yourself (hopefully this will lead to a higher wage). Is there a certification you can take,etc? Work on the earn more side of the equation.
What Personal Finance/Money Management App do You Use?
Main Post:
Since Mint doesn't work with Robinhood I'm looking for an alternative. Mint is a little too cluttered for me anyways so yeah, a switch would be nice!
Top Comment:
Mint - just add a separate thing like car ownership or land owner and put the general value. Eventually it will support it but this works for me for now.
I update it like every 3-6 months
Personal Money Management software that is Self Hosted?
Main Post:
Hi, i'm looking for money management that is self hosted, and preferably that can read automatically if possible bank accounts and tie into them somehow.
I've found a few older posts and look at some software but they appear to be very much geared toward businesses. I also looked at Firefly but it seems to be very manual on the imports. If there isn't really anything that can do automatic imports and I have to go manual route that's fine, just not sure if there is anything better then firefly.
Thanks!!
Top Comment:
Since it's in the early stages, I don't know how much it'd help right now, but I'm building Stoic Money in my free time: https://github.com/serversideup/stoic-money. The goal is to be 100% open source, self hosted, and connected automatically through Plaid, but also import for accounts that don't have Plaid support.
You can see a lot of the notes and WIP here: https://github.com/serversideup/stoic-money/projects. I'd love to hear any feedback and if it can help any of you. I'm writing it for myself at the moment, but also with the experience I have making financial software. Any ideas or features you'd like to see, please add them to the repo. Any code will also be available for other devs to learn.