Financial musings

I turned 24 last week. I'm 25 next year. In the olden days, that meant I'd be married and would have had maybe 1 or 2 kids by now. Me, I'm still in my first year of a job (conference administrating in Edinburgh last year is what I consider to be a travelling job, although gave me some excellent experience), and now I'm going to be heading back to uni next semester (subject to uni approval). I've never had much luck finding a place with good housemates (a combination of someone who cleans and pays the bills on time is more elusive than I had ever thought), so I keep having the idea of buying my own place. The sad part is, because I'm still in my first year in a job, the pay isn't enough, and I don't have any savings (entirely my own fault).

So I'm in a bit of a limbo, and I was almost considering tonight when I went home for dinner and to drop something off for mum, that moving home wouldn't be a bad idea in order to save some money and not have to stress about cleaning up after housemates and late bills going against my credit record. These are a couple of things that just aren't cool in my book when it comes to sharehouse living. Then I've since remembered that living at home isn't good for my stress levels either, and where my mum lives is pretty far away from UQ. Not to mention living at home constitutes literally living in the garage - which mind you I managed to make fairly livable, but is still, nonetheless, a garage.

I've been trying to implement the advice the financial advisor gave me the other month:

1) Pay off the debts - I've been trying to do this since I've gotten back into the country, with some success. It's still going to take a while.
2) Start a savings account that I can't touch - I filled in an ING Savings Maximiser application on Friday last week and I'm sending in the forms tomorrow.
3) Once the debts are paid, get an investment loan to invest in a managed fund - interest from these sorts of loans are tax deductible, so no principal payments are necessary. My investment wealth grows with the managed fund, but my level of debt stays static.

I also figure that when I decide to purchase a property, I'll be able to sell my investment, which will pay off the loan, plus leave some extra to purchase a place of my own. Unfortunately, I'm not a patient person and don't like to wait for these things. Unfortunately again, I don't really have much choice in the matter.

So really I haven't resolved much with these musings, but it's good to get them down on 'paper'.