Hey everyone I'm Chris and welcome back to another video I've been wanting to
make this video for a while and I feel like now is the perfect timing
especially since my previous video was about my investment property so first of
all I just want to say why 50k and that's because that's the amount of
money I used to buy this current house that I'm living in and also at that time
when I just started working as a nurse I think my salary was almost 50,000
after-tax and so I saved about 50% of my salary. So without further ado here's the
video of how I saved 50k in two years and also I just want to say that you
might hear my puppy in the background I let her in the lounge because if I just
keep her in the kitchen she'll make so much more noise so you might see her
once in a while. The first thing that really saved me a lot of money was my
rent so when I started living here (in NZ) I actually lived in this tiny ass room it
had only space for a single bed I had a tiny desk it had this built-in
wardrobe so it actually wasn't that bad but my friend actually joked that I
lived in a closet which is, there's some truth to it because you know how people with
big houses and they have this big closets and some of those closets were
bigger than my room but I didn't mind at all because not only was i saving heaps
of money but the location was really good for me because it was only like a
five-minute walk to the hospital and so I also save money on transport. Rent in
Newtown, in that area if you live in a decent-sized room, warm house, double
glazed windows which I didn't have at all, it would be around maybe 250 a week but
I was only paying a hundred a week and so I was saving over 7,000 in that year
the second thing is that I'm not a big spender and I live
way below my means even though I could afford it I never bought a fancy
car or fancy clothes and I don't keep up with the latest technology one good
example would be iPhones. I do love the Apple technology and so I have an
iPhone and I keep my iPhone for five to six years because I know how expensive
an iPhone can get it's like a thousand dollars here in New Zealand or over
$1000 especially the latest model and I just really can't justify to myself why
I would change my iPhone every two years just to keep up with technology. Another
good example would be my smart watch maybe an Apple watch these days brand
new would cost maybe $700 and I bought this for $50 and it has all the basics
that I need. I monitor my heart rate, my steps, I log in my workout.
It has other features that I don't use like checking the weather or the alarm
or you can control your music through here I'm sure an Apple iWatch has way
more fancy features but I just need the basics and so this is what I bought
of course there are times when I'm just tempted to just buy whatever I want but
from experience I find that if I do that I end up with something that I don't
actually need or I don't use as much as I thought I would and so now if I need
something expensive I think about it long and hard and I also research ways
to buy it cheaper just like this watch. Next thing I want to talk about is I
don't have personal debt at all aside from with the house of course and
I avoid debt at all cost I guess this is related to what I previously said
because I live way below my means there's no reason for me to take out
personal loans and my rule of thumb if I need to buy something expensive is that
I need to have the money saved up threefold like for example
I need a new iPhone let's say an iPhone is $1,000 so I need at least $3,000 or
more before I could buy that expensive item sorry my puppy is distracting
me so much so having a rule on doing it this way just makes sure that I have
emergency money saved up so in case I need cash real quick
I just take it from my savings and not take out a personal loan especially
knowing how personal loans interest rates can get real high here in New
Zealand it can be as high as 9 to 20 percent depending on your credit score
so you'll actually spend a lot of money paying off that loan including the
interest so my biggest purchase would be my car I bought it ages ago I
have a reliable economic car and I paid for this in cash and that way I didn't
have to pay any interest at all. The next thing I want to talk about are
subscriptions so I don't have any subscriptions whatsoever so I worked out
at home, I use the free version of Spotify, I don't have any magazine or lotto
subscriptions you get the picture some people might think that this is
extremely frugal because there's only seven dollars here, ten dollars there but
the way I see this is that if you add up all of the costs of your subscriptions
in a year it's actually hundreds of dollars and that's a lot of money for me
but also of course you don't have to live like this for the rest of your life
and it's only until you've reached your financial goals that you live a
certain way of course you have to sacrifice something right for me the one
thing that changed is that I now have a gym membership that I actually use and
I'm not only donating to the gym. I actually use it and it's not a lot of
money because it's my hospital gym and it's only seven dollars a week.
Coco. Last but not the least is that I became a conscious consumer
and this just means that I only buy the things that I actually need. Of course
there was a time in my life where I would go to the mall, walk aimlessly and
buy something that attracted me and it's actually quite ironic because I did most
of this while I was living in the Philippines and I wasn't earning much.
And now that I actually can buy most things I don't do this anymore and the
biggest reason is that it breaks my heart that we as human beings we produce
so much rubbish and it hurts the environment it hurts our resources I
hate that we live in this consumer society wherein companies tell us that
we need to buy buy buy and that you don't need to repeat the same outfit
every season it just doesn't make sense to me. So a few years ago I actually
challenged myself not to buy.. not to go shopping for one whole year so no new
clothes, shoes, bags, I didn't even buy socks and it actually was easy
surprisingly because I'm sure you're the same as me you already have everything
that you need in your house right now and you don't actually need new
things and you can go for one whole year with no shopping and I actually had this
conversation with my friends a while back and they say that they spend around
$2,000 a year on new outfits and so being a conscious consumer even though
my biggest motivation was for the environment it now saves me a lot of
money, thousands of dollars every year. So that's all I have for you guys today
thank you so much for watching the video thanks for spending your time with me if
you clicked on this video because you want to save money I hope you learned
something from this and I just want to say good luck I hope you reach your
financial goals if you want more videos like this please subscribe to the
channel leave me a like leave me a comment leave
a like for Coco I hope you're having a great day so far and I'll see you guys
next time bye say goodbye to Coco wait the beam was you Nicole you can't wait
on their affirmation you can't wait on them improve you can't wait with our
support sometimes you've just got a run and look when I do it say everybody who
hosts a run run but I can't stop running because your mother listen listen to me
hear me you can't stop chasing you