Credit Card – My Investing Discoveries

To Think or Not to Think: The Financial Question

I hope you are all enjoying some crisp fall weather, wherever you are.

With my latest quarterly net worth check-in, I discovered that I have nearly doubled my net worth in the three years since I started tracking my progress! The beauty of compounding is at play here: The more money I have invested that is making me money, the more money it continues to make. It’s that simple!

Other than that, I want to update you on what I have been thinking about vs. what I have been (choosing) not to think about when it comes to my money lately. This is sometimes by design, as a behavioral finance trick. Each link in this list will take you to a category of articles on this blog for you to explore further.

Bank accounts—I think about them weekly, but don’t always check them that often. My checking account and regular savings account are my most visited; my two high-yield savings accounts are reviewed quarterly for my net worth update, and are regularly invested in whenever I have savings from a biweekly paycheck ✅
Budget—I don’t think about it as much as I used to; I have regular payments that aren’t accounted for in my budget ❌
Credit cards—I think about them a lot, sometimes multiple times per week. This is the primary focus of my finances: What am I spending and—when it comes time to pay the bill—how much do I owe? This is also a good way to prevent fraud, but your credit providers should be alerting you to any unusual activity ✅
Investments—I don’t think about them, but I check my Charles Schwab brokerage account periodically during market shifts (thanks for the heads up, AAII!) and review them for performance and potential deletions twice per year ✅
Retirement accounts—I don’t think about them because I check my progress quarterly, I have a system in place ✅

The aspects of my personal finance that regularly haunt me are my bank accounts and credit cards. These are top of mind since I handle them on a short-term basis, whereas my investments and retirement accounts are for the long term. The one area I need to improve is my budget, hence the “x” instead of the checkmark. At this point, it’s next year’s problem!

The state of my retirement accounts

My retirement accounts are doing well, especially when I don’t think about them! I still have my first 403(b) plan account with Vanguard from AAII, and it remains invested in the mutual funds I chose at the start of my retirement savings journey. My second retirement account is with Fidelity from my current job at Red Ventures. It’s a straight up 401(k), so now I have a fun collection of all these letters and numbers!

I’m actively contributing 5% of my salary to my Fidelity account on a biweekly pretax basis, meaning the money comes out of my paycheck before I even get to see it. Meanwhile, with my employer matching most of that contribution, I’m sitting on nearly $6,500 after over a year of steady contributions and positive returns!

I invested my Fidelity account in these mutual funds that were available to me, using the same weights I applied to similar funds in my Vanguard account: 30% invested in the T. Rowe Price Large-Cap Growth fund (TRLGX), 20% in the Fidelity Mid Cap Index fund (FSMDX), 20% in the Fidelity Small Cap Index fund (FSSNX), 20% in Emerging Markets II (ticker not listed) and 10% in the Principal Real Estate Securities Fund Class R6 (PFRSX).

When I invested in these funds back in fall 2024, two of them had higher expense ratios than I would like for my investments: the real estate fund’s was 0.81%, and the large-cap growth fund’s was 0.70%. My investing strategy is to find mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with expense ratios under 0.60%, otherwise we’re getting dangerously close to 1%, which is way too much to be giving any fund or money manager. Thankfully, the large-cap growth fund’s expense ratio has since decreased to 0.55%.

My petsitting venture

This year, I started petsitting cats and dogs. It took off when I started networking through the dogs, finding more animal friends to hang out with. My closest human friends also have some of the cutest cats ever, so I can’t resist spending scheduled time with them when they are required to pay attention to me 😂.

So far this year, I have made over $1,600 from this venture! Since I haven’t been as regular with saving this year as I would like, at the end of 2025 I plan to match the amount I’ve made from petsitting and move it into my emergency savings account.

When I initially drew up my rules for this savings account, I wanted to keep $10,000 in it at all times. However, I’ve learned since that I don’t really need that much money available, even for emergencies. I settled on maintaining my emergency savings at $7,000. In the current market environment, it makes more sense to keep money in my high-yield savings accounts so they can make more than the measly 0.01% interest my emergency savings will.

Some other financial decisions I made since we last talked:

I signed a two-year lease for my current apartment so I could lock in the increased rate of $1,450/mo. for the next two years to save myself another $50/mo. increase down the line
I chose my health insurance plan for 2026, and went with the lowest tier for around $30 per paycheck

I’ll be back in early 2026 for another portfolio review! Wishing you all a wonderful and safe holiday season.

More articles on rethinking retirement:
Retiring Early: Memoir or Fiction?
Should Young People Still Save for Retirement?
How Much Should I Contribute to My Retirement Account?

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My Payday Routine

Featured image credit: https://beyondspx.com

When I first started working, holding a physical paycheck in my hand wasn’t necessarily the cliché reward I thought it would be. Instead, it was more of a signal that I could buy things again. Back in the debit card days, I would say goodbye to $100 of my paycheck at Sephora almost immediately. I would put some money into savings, and at the time I was paying off some student loans, but it was never strategic.

Having a credit card has completely changed my mindset. Now, payday is a signal for me to distribute the money I don’t need to spend among my goals. With Beyoncé’s voice singing, “Wait, I hear you just got paid. Make it rain energy,” in my head, I open my checking account to make sure the money actually made it in there! You laugh, but one time that happened and I swear the world stood still for a few hours. If you receive a physical pay stub from your employer, make sure the number matches what was added to your bank account.

The first thing I do is type the number on my checking account balance into my phone’s calculator. Then, I determine how much needs to stay in checking for any fixed expenses like rent, utilities, etc. Take a look at what has gone through since your last paycheck to ensure everything looks correct and you haven’t been hacked.

If it’s not a paycheck that needs to be saved for rent, I go to my credit card statement and assess the damage. I subtract my credit card balance from the big checking account number. I almost always pay my card off in full if I have the funds to do so. Sometimes I wish Discover would let me pay off the pending payments too, so I’ll include them in my calculations just for fun!

Now that I have a better idea of what I’m working with after my fixed expenses and credit card are accounted for, I determine how much I can put in savings before my next paycheck. This time, I have $700 available to save. First, I move this amount from my checking account into my emergency savings account since they are with the same bank. Then, I distribute this amount to my high-yield savings accounts.

This is a good time to check in on your savings goals. Right now, my short-term goals of saving up to invest more and moving are the most pressing. My intermediate-term goal of buying property is nicely funded for now, so I’m going to leave my LendingClub high-yield savings account untouched. I set up a transfer so the $700 will be added to my SmartyPig high-yield savings account. This takes a few days to settle, but I like doing all these moves when I get paid on Friday mornings so they can make their way through the system faster at the beginning of the next week.

This money isn’t just going to sit in my account though, it’s going to be distributed to my two separate short-term goals using SmartyPig’s goals feature. This way, I can clearly visualize how much I have saved for each goal and how much more I have to save until they’re both funded. My goal for investing another $2,000 lump sum into my Charles Schwab brokerage account will need to be satisfied sooner than my moving goal. I have $500 out of $4,000 saved up for moving right now, so once my latest savings transfer has settled into my SmartyPig account, I plan to move $200 of it into the moving goal and $500 to start saving up for investing.

Depending on which payday this is, I will also take a look at my spending for the month, but I’ll save my findings for next time when we look at my budget. Stay tuned for more of my investing discoveries!

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Financial Goals to Accomplish by Age 30

If you’re reading this on the day it comes out, I have officially turned 30. I’ve been ambivalent about turning 30 for a while now, wanting to stay 27 forever (unfortunately, I never found a vampire to make that happen). The last time I felt I hit a big milestone was when I turned 19. At the time, I was in college and co-running a YouTube channel with my best friend Ilana. I filmed a video about what people can do when they turn 19, the most exciting of which was being able to drink legally in all of Canada! Inspired by this, I looked at the most common financial goals people should achieve by the time they turn 30. Of course, everyone will be on a different trajectory, but I always find benchmarks helpful when it comes to money.

1. Build and Replenish an Emergency Fund

The decade of my 20s was all about saving, and I’m so thankful I was able to focus on this goal. Building an emergency savings fund is the first step you can take to achieve financial independence. A common guideline is to have at least six months of living expenses saved in this fund, but you can work up to this. I have my emergency fund in my regular savings account that is attached to my checking account. This means it’s not earning me much interest, but that’s quite literally the price I pay for this money to be easily accessible in an emergency. If you end up tapping your emergency savings, be sure to set up a plan for building that fund back up to the amount you maintained before. Whenever your financial situation changes, you should reassess this amount to make sure it will still cover six months of expenses.

2. Pay off Debt

Once you have money saved up for emergencies, you have increased your net worth and also your ability to pay off debt. If you were trying to pay down debt before building up your savings, you would slip further into the red, and it would be difficult to get yourself out of debt in the future. It’s best to focus on your high-interest debt first—anything above 6%—since that interest will compound and add more to your debt if you don’t get it under control. Examples of high-interest debt could be on credit cards, personal loans and private student loans. Federal student loans are usually lower-interest debt, along with mortgages.

3. Maintain a Good Credit Score

Not only do you need to get yourself into a good credit score range (above 670), but you also need to keep that credit score up while you live your life. Your credit score can change at least once a month, but this can vary depending on how many lines of credit you have. You can keep your credit score up by paying your credit card bills on time, keeping your card balances low and only applying for lines of credit that you need. Over the last year, my credit score has stayed within the range of 770 to 780, which is considered “very good.” Maybe I’ll try to sneak into the “excellent” range (800 to 850) during my 30s 😉.

4. Start Saving for Retirement

I know most of us young people don’t even want to think about retirement half the time, but if you are actively contributing to a retirement account, you shouldn’t have to think much about your balance. The best thing to do once you choose your investments for your retirement account is to rarely check it. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but unless you have concerns about your account not making enough or you want to reconsider how your portfolio is allocated, it’s best to just let your investments ride their gains and only periodically check your balance.

One rule is to have at least half of your current income in your retirement account by the time you turn 30, but I’m not sure how achievable this is in practice. Especially with inflation, millennials and Generation Z are struggling to even hit what is considered the minimum. It might be more reasonable to shoot for having one-third of your income saved for retirement by age 30. For example, if you’re making $45,000, this would equate to $15,000 in your retirement account. I can honestly say that I have less than one-third of my income in my retirement account right now, but I have multiple savings and investment vehicles that together would cover this amount.

5. Know Where Your Money Goes

This is just a looser way to say “budget,” but by age 30 it’s important to know how much money you are spending relative to how much you are making. You probably have a general idea when you look at your bank account and credit card statements, but if you still feel a dark cloud over your head when you think about your finances, it might be time to break out the spreadsheets and take a closer look at the numbers. I yo-yo between finding my budget helpful and hurtful, but the truth is there’s no emotion that I’m not projecting onto these numbers. On their own, they’re just numbers. The sooner you face them, the better off you and your money will be.

6. Begin Investing

If you haven’t started investing, there’s no time like right now! For me, the hardest part of investing so far was the beginning. If you’re struggling to figure out where to start, it’s helpful to determine how much money you have available to invest. If you want to go for something easy that won’t take much of your time, put that money into an index mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF). It won’t beat the market’s return, but it will ensure that you have investments making money for your future.

How Do You Score?

By age 30, I have pretty much everything I need for financial stability. Out of the six goals, I would say I have achieved five and a half, for 91.7%, or a grade of A–. This means I have places I can improve in my 30s, so I’ll be focusing more on my goal of saving for retirement and optimizing my budget. If you’re turning 30 soon or you recently turned 30, how many of these goals have you achieved? What has been the hardest one? Let me know in the comments!

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Navigating Finances After Widowhood or Divorce

Back when I started this blog, I had to think about who would be considered a beginning investor. Yes, those in their 20s and 30s who are just starting their careers are prime candidates. But what about women who have been married their entire adult lives and never had to primarily handle their finances? In honor of Women’s History Month, I look at how these women can both literally and figuratively get back on their feet after widowhood or divorce.

The O’Mara Law Group’s Stay-at-Home Mom’s Guide to Divorce covers how women can financially prepare for divorce and manage their finances during the process along with what the legal rights of mothers and children are. In order to financially separate from your former spouse, you must take stock of the accounts and information in your name in addition to anything not in your name that you have rights to. These include bank accounts, retirement savings accounts, tax returns, insurance coverage and Social Security materials. You should also consider any property or vehicles you share with your former spouse—and perhaps who’s going to take the nice espresso machine or the robot vacuum!

Lois Frankel, Ph.D., covered avoidable mistakes women make with money in her book “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich.” Though some of these mistakes seemed redundant or unhelpful to me on first read, her discussion of not having investments in your name is relevant here: “You might just find it easier to comply than to make waves. Or you might be relieved that someone else is willing to handle all of these affairs for you. The fact is, there is no good reason to put joint monies or property into one partner’s name. Doing so leaves one person open to all the gain—or liability—associated with the investment.”

This advice from 2005 is still relevant today, and perhaps even more so with younger generations often running two-income households. Even if both partners aren’t bringing in the same amount of money, combining your finances and investments shows that you trust each other to spend and save wisely for your family. Where there’s no trust, there’s no relationship.

You may also need to build up your personal credit score after a divorce, especially if you have been a stay-at-home mom for a while. Besides the number of credit cards you have, your credit report will show any student, personal or auto loans in your name, your mortgage and any other type of debt. In Erin Lowry’s “Broke Millennial,” she says to “think of a strong credit score as an insurance policy for your financial life. A strong credit score proves to a lender that you’re reliable, which directly correlates to favorable loan terms.” This will also help if you need to apply for a new apartment or refinance your mortgage.

In order to be independent, you can build up your credit score by taking advantage of pay-later options like Afterpay, Klarna and PayPal Pay in 4. Most of these companies that allow you to pay later also don’t charge you interest if you pay within a certain period, meaning that you will still be spending the same amount of money whether you pay for it all when you buy it or stretch it out over four or more payments. This personally helped me to increase and maintain my good credit score before getting a real credit card.

If you have recently been widowed, there are short-term things you should focus on before moving on to long-term issues. In the first six months after losing your spouse, it’s important to build up an emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses and fuel your independence. This fund could also help to pay for any funeral costs. You will need to create a budget with just you and your needs in mind, something that will take some time to adjust to after losing your spouse.

Assess what your expenses are and the monthly amount you will need to stay financially afloat. Ensuring your mortgage and bills are paid, all financial accounts are correctly titled, beneficiary information is properly updated, taxes are covered and continuous health care coverage is maintained are all tasks that require your attention now. Further down the line, you can review your investments and change any rules according to your life stage. Decisions like buying a new house, moving to another state or changing careers should also be put off until you have had time to think through them and adapt to your new life.

If you are nearing retirement, make sure you have a plan for how you will spend it solo. This could involve moving closer to extended family so you’re not isolated, or having family come and stay with you more often since you will have more time to spend with them. Don’t be afraid to lean on family and friends during this time, especially for help with any financial hurdles. Though you shouldn’t be seeking investing advice from family, a trusted member could accompany you to meet a financial adviser or planner who can professionally help you navigate these hard times.

Take advantage of other financial resources for women. Read more about widowhood and retirement at AAII’s Retirement Investing.

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One-Year Credit Card Update: Using Cash-Back Rewards

It has been almost exactly one year since I opened my first real adult credit card! Discover matched the cash back I accumulated throughout my first year, so it’s time to do a little shopping for rewards. Discover provided me with a year-end activity summary that shows how much money I spent broken down by category and how much I spent versus how much I paid down my balance on a monthly basis. The most popular category for my purchases was merchandise at 37%, followed by supermarkets (27%) and restaurants (13%). But my favorite metric was the interest accrued:

I successfully made it through my first year without collecting any interest! I’ve taken full advantage of having a credit card without falling victim to my nightmares of not having enough money to pay it off. Some months I can see my fear creep in, where I didn’t want to pay off my entire bill. I would chip away at it or pay it all off at the start of the next month.

My personal reward for not accruing any interest is that now I get to use my cash-back bonus for more than just paying off my credit card—I get to spend it on my favorite things! Discover has four options for redeeming cash back: cash (deposit or apply to bill), pay with rewards (available on Amazon and PayPal), gift cards (starting at $5) and charity. There were around 100 gift card options, including restaurants, health and beauty, department stores, entertainment and travel. Since Discover includes up to 10% added value with each gift card, I’m already getting a better deal than if I were to use my cash back to pay off my credit card. I thought about my immediate needs and landed on three gift cards to use the majority of my cash-back bonus on: $50 at Target, $85 at Barnes & Noble and $100 at Sephora. You can see below that I didn’t have to pay full price for these gift cards:

I still have some cash back left over, but I’m not sure if I want to apply it to my account or wait to accumulate more. I’m hoping to take even more advantage of my cash back now that I’ve made it through this first year unscathed. My strategy for paying off my credit card twice a month whenever my paycheck comes in still stands. That way, I only have to acknowledge my balance when necessary, and I can spend the rest of my free time doing my skincare and reading my books 😊.

Credit in the Straight World: A Credit Card Journey Update

Raise your hand if you’ve been spending too much money lately!

This inflation is really starting to weigh on my bank account, but I can’t even imagine how much worse it would be if I didn’t have my credit card. When I first opened my account with Discover back in January, I was nervous about having a credit card because of the possibility to spend without the money being instantly taken away from me. It’s too much power and responsibility! I have enough things to worry about! Like staying alive!

But after a few months, I realized how superior it was to use my credit card for practically everything. When I got my first cash-back bonus, I was thrilled to have some free money! So far I’ve just used my cash back to pay off my credit card, but soon I hope to save it up and use it for more exciting things (there may be a juicy Sephora gift card in my future).

I also shifted most of the pay-later options I use—like Klarna and PayPal Pay in 4—from my debit card to my credit card. This way, it’s like double credit (I know, my head exploded just thinking about it) and I don’t have to do any math in my head when I get an email alerting me about one of my four payments coming up. I know that my Discover card has it covered, and that my bank account will thank me for the break.

Since I’m roughly six months into my credit card journey, I wanted to revisit some of the personal finance books I’ve been reading to recenter my thinking. In Bola Sokunbi’s “Clever Girl Finance,” she discusses cash-back and rewards credit cards, and her advice comes with a warning: “The thing about cashback and rewards credit cards is that, while they are a perk for the cardholder, they are also a strategy that credit card companies use to get their cardholders to spend more money. If you are motivated by an incentive like cashback, you are more likely to shift your focus to wanting to obtain as much of the incentive as possible, which can lead to overspending, especially on low-cost items. This strategy is beneficial to credit card companies because it allows them to make money from interest accrued on credit card balances you can’t pay off.”

The good news is that I won’t be tricked by credit card companies into spending more money; the bad news is that inflation has already done that for me!

The discussion of rewards credit cards got me thinking: Since I’ll be traveling on an airplane tomorrow for the first time since 2020, should I get one of those credit cards that gives me miles?

Sokunbi’s “Take Action” section at the end of her credit card manifesto says the following: “1. Be sure to find the right type of card with a reward that suits your lifestyle. For example, if you travel a lot, a rewards card with miles or travel upgrades might be a great option for you. 2. Be aware of the timeline and expiration around which your rewards or cashback can be redeemed. Use the rewards within that timeframe so you don’t miss out. 3. Avoid carrying a balance on these cards and be mindful of your spending when you use them. Always defer to your budget to make sure you are staying on track.”

Thankfully, I’ve got these three things covered with my Discover card: The cash-back rewards are working for me, I know that I’ll be getting my cash back matched by Discover at the end of the year and I’m avoiding carrying a balance on it like the plague.

However, I think I’ll pass on getting a second credit card for now. I’ll see if it becomes worth it to get a card with miles as I hesitantly start traveling again.

How I Raised My Credit Score in 2021

When I first started my job at AAII back in 2017, I wanted to buy a new work wardrobe and my mom took us to Macy’s. She said, “If you get a Macy’s credit card, then you can get all of your clothes here and not have to pay for everything at once.” When I checked out with my new clothes, the cashier opened a Macy’s credit card for me. I had to talk on the phone to some guy who asked me for my Social Security number, my date of birth and my address, among other invasive questions. It felt a bit like an airport interrogation (one time when I had just turned 18, I left my government ID behind and had to tell someone the last names of my neighbors—I never forgot it again!), but after about 10 minutes I had my very first credit card.

I used my fancy new Macy’s credit card whenever I bought things from Macy’s, and then when I moved out on my own in 2018, I opened a credit card with Wayfair so that I could put all of my new furniture on the card and pay it off over time. Thankfully, I was able to pay off my store credit cards without incurring interest, and the Wayfair card allowed me to not pay interest for up to 24 months (the number of months varies depending on how much you spend). I paid everything in full within the year.

However, I’ve never had a proper credit card from a bank. I use my debit card for almost all of my purchases. Why? To be honest, credit cards—and credit in general—scare me!

First of all, what is credit? Credit gives you the ability to borrow money and pay it back later. But I like to see exactly where my money is going, and not be surprised by how much I’ve spent at the end of the month when it’s time to pay the bill. With my debit card, I see exactly what my purchases are and can budget accordingly. But with a credit card, my brain goes all theoretical and then I have to do math and that’s not a fun time! (I recently learned that I could pay off a credit card throughout the month if I want, instead of waiting until my statement arrives, which makes me feel infinitely better!)

Now, whenever I buy something online and a website offers Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal Pay in 4 or Sezzle, I choose it. Not only does this make my bank account happy, since I don’t have to spend all my money at once, it has also raised and maintained my credit score for the last year and a half! Most of these companies that allow you to pay later also don’t charge you interest if you pay within a certain period of time, meaning that you will still be spending the same amount of money whether you pay for it all when you buy it or stretch it out over four or more payments. Most of these pay-later options take your money automatically, but make sure that you pay these installments on time, or else you’ll get pounded with late fees!

I’ve gotten my credit score to a good place (700+), which helped me to be approved for my apartment and will further help me to be approved for an actual bank credit card.

I primarily use Credit Karma to check my credit score, but it also includes offers for credit cards and shows how likely I am to be approved for different cards. After doing some research, it looks like the “Discover it” credit card is a great option for me. There are no annual fees, I can use it at Woodman’s (and buy infinite amounts of cheese!) and I can get 5% cash back on groceries, restaurant meals and more. (AAII worked with Discover to get you some other sweet deals here.)

Signing up for a credit card was super easy, but if my credit score had been lower and I hadn’t done anything to raise it over the last year, it would have been harder to find a credit card that I could get approved for. I’ll keep you all updated on how my credit card journey continues—I’m still freaked out by the possibility and the power!