Being on my own financially at 17 was hard. I never had a new car, I shared rooms with people to save money on rent, I went to school and worked afterwards, and did what I had to do to be able to live on my own.
My parents taught me a lot to do about what not to do financially. My dad had a business that went bankrupt, and I kind of saw what that did to my parent’s relationship and I wanted to avoid that in my own future.
My husband was in the wine business when we met, and he always dreamed of starting his own label. And we both kind of looked at each other and were like, “Should we do it?”, I’m like, “Let’s do it!”
You know we called in a lot of favors from our family and our friends. We bought used barrels we had a friend design the label for us, and I made the website.
My husband and I talk all the time about our short and long term financial goals.
I started investing because I’m self-employed, so I needed to start thinking about my own retirement since I don’t have an employer that’s doing that for me.
I think it’s important to just get started with whatever you can do on a monthly basis, how much you can save, you know put away ten dollars, twenty dollars or take a look at your finances and budget you know where you can.
I think we both have a good balance on each other so if he comes up with the crazy ideas I’m like, “Okay let’s bring it in,” and if I come up with the crazy ideas, he’s usually the one to be like, “Okay, let’s start small.”
You know so I think we have a really good balance of you know, putting each other in check about what’s realistic, and what we can afford to do, and compromising.