I Made My Financial Life A Priority And It Changed My Life!

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash

I’ve always been energetic and passionate about entrepreneurship and money matters. My entrepreneurial journey began about 10 years ago, when a friend and I co-founded a clothing line called Royal Dynamite — a street-wear clothing line centered around self-expression, social entrepreneurship, and the facilitation of social change. Over the years, I have explored various ideas and ventures, and have settled on the notion of being truly passionate about exploring personal finance as a driven force to socioeconomic empowerment in my life and that of others.

I was born in the small West African country, known for its white-sand beaches, Sierra Leone, in the 1980s. In 1997, my family and I moved to neighboring country, The Gambia. Upon completion of high school at 18, I migrated 6000 miles to California; it was quite a daring move. Five years later, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Thereafter, I spent a few years post-graduation in the corporate world, working in various roles including; management positions, recruiting, and program coordination. I developed great practices, work ethics and relevant experiences that would go on to serve me in future endeavors.

Over the past seven years, along with managing Royal Dynamite, I have been working as a consultant in healthcare Informatics, assisting hospital systems across the United States in the implementation of new electronic medical record systems. Despite these great experiences, the desire to branch out into more entrepreneurial ventures persisted, and has inspired me to launch this platform in sharing my experiences, and hopefully help others.

A common struggle within both our professional and personal lives often involves money management. According to a report on CNBC, over 44 million Americans have nearly $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. Roughly 1 in every 4 U.S. adults is paying off student loan debt. I was fortunate to have successfully graduated college without any student loans, which, I must credit and thank my parents for giving me the greatest boost that allowed me to start my post-graduate years debt free.

To further add to financial challenges, trying to be debt free in a society that lives on, and even glorifies credit is often futile. Credit card balances as of late 2018 were reaching $420 billion according to NerdWallet with the average US household having about $7000 in revolving balances monthly.

Despite efforts of many, only 20% of US consumers are able to obtain an excellent credit score rating. I have spent countless hours consuming inspiring, informational, and educational content online about money and I am committed to sharing and helping others map out long-term financial goals and achieve stability.

I will be launching Cimifly Money, a personal finance blog, with the goal of helping young people and minorities with similar backgrounds, interests, and struggles. I
want to help others understand the importance of better saving habits
which can manifest into sound financial and investment principles. I am no financial expert, but intend to do my best in sharing the great habits I’ve learned and continues to acquire daily.

I set up an online survey prior to launching the blog, and 30% of respondents stated having ‘above average’ knowledge about finances/debt. This brought me to the conclusion that, understanding and being knowledgeable about money is one thing, putting it into practice is yet, an entirely separate endeavor. My blog will be designed to explore the later and discuss how we can develop great executable habits to put us on the path to financial independence.

This post is meant to set the tone and lay the blueprint for the rest of the blog. You may call it our little pep talk, aimed at laying the ground rules, which help create the mindset for you and me to be successful with our finances. We are definitely on this journey together, and, will help each other build great habits and reach higher heights financially and personally.

Money doesn’t buy you happiness, and while that is true, it certainly is a good down payment, keeping in mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. Having more money does not necessarily make one happier, but having your finances in order can certainly lead to a more stress-free, content lifestyle. A more stress-free, and lifestyle promotes a longer, healthier life, which requires a great financial retirement plan.

If it takes 21 days to make practice a habit, and 90 days to make it a lifestyle, then our goal is to form great habits that LEAD to a great lifestyle. We're not striving for perfection here, just sustainability and greater outcomes!

The blog will explore and primarily be divided into 5 sections; Income Generation, Savings & Spending, Debt Elimination, Investing, and my personal journey, which I call the Cimifly Chronicles*.

Within these sections we will explore various topics in-depth, such as retirement, stock market investing, And student loan debt just to name a few. As the blog evolves, I will do my best to provide relevant, detailed, and helpful content which will be easy to follow and execute. I am super excited about this journey and hope you are too. Welcome aboard the journey to financial independence!!

*Cimifly is a nickname I discovered in high school, with inspiration from a KRS-One song.