My name is Fabian Balmaceda, I’m from Costa Rica, and I recently finish a bachelor degree in Multimedia and Computer Science in the University of Costa Rica as parents always encourage to do because that’s what I want. My parents also went to college and have a good job, build a nice house, we was a medium-high class family, until my mother had an automobile accident and have to move out to the house, so they decided to work from the house, making book, notebooks to schools and universities. For a long time they manting our lifestyle cost of living, but their loan and mortgages start to grow up while their selling drops down, so we cut down ours family expenses and make a living.

I live with my parent and make freelance project to paid my expenses, which are not so much, I dont paid rent or food, and my high education is paid by the government. So, I spend my money travelling with my bike, or my used old van I don’t care about buying clothes or gadget, or expensive food, I vegan and I cook every in a kitchen, and buy good food ingredients and regularly made exercise. I had live in Italy for 3 mounts with a ridiculous low amount of money have fun and explore the culture, and constantly doing short trips around the country, sleeping in friends homes or maybe camping if I fell like. I want to be able to live like that sustainable for a long time and make money to not worry about it, and my profession allow me to do. As a programmer ( or digital producer ) I can do the same work in any place of the world. So I came out with this strategy or plan.

Write down everything.

It’s important to track all your moves from your ideas to all your finance, write down in a notebook, an spreadsheet, or any other app. Note your incomes, outcomes, plans and strategies. This is a form for design for lifestyle and know your financial status all the time.

Find a source of income

Land a job, do freelance, sell a digital product or service. Whatever you do to generate money is important that you receive a reasonably entry every month. Now I’m looking for a remote position at $25 usd — $40 usd per hour full time or part time, that will be around $2K to $6.4K usd monthly depending of the position.

Spend as little as you are willing for a good life.

Make a list of your minimum expenses.

Example:

Salary ( monthly )

$2K — $6.4K

Housing ( single private room or a house, depend of the location )

$200 — $700

Food (Supermarket, outside food)

$100 — $200

Utility bills (cell, digital subscriptions)

$35

Property taxes (if paying monthly)

$260 — $832

Total ( monthly )

$595 — $1788

Savings

$1405 — $4612

If i manage to save that money I’ll save 2.3 / 2.5 times my expenses of my salary thas about $16,860 — $55, 344 usd a year.

I have a simple lifestyle, so I don’t support consuming useful products, or buy the lastest outfit, or go to fancy restaurants. I feel more well or satisfied when I do sports, travel, handout with friends, go to others cities, music events, art, museums, go with my car for an adventure. And i think that all of those things can be very cheap, wealth and sustainable.

Make an emergency fund around the 60% — 40% of your salary to support you for 3–6 months.

Make an emergency fund is saved money to support your cost of living if something goes wrong, if you don’t have more income, or for a medical emergency, some unexpected expense, the mount to apport should be equal or greater than the calculation of your minimum lifestyle cost. I this example if i paid $595 — $1788 I’ll have $810 — $2824 usd to invest, and have my emergency fund in 3–6 months. Or if i do it with the 60% Ill paid $843 and have my emergency fund in 2 months. When is this done, I can use the entire savings for investment.

Invest your savings.

Do this also while you are doing your emergency found, used the rest of los calculation to invest in this thins.

• Education, university, courses, books.
• Stocks.
• Real estate.
• Transportation.
• Buy an used car, that is in their lower depreciation so you can sell it at the same price and don’t lose money. buy it in cash or get a loan to paid monthly.

Make a startup of digital products or services.

That’s the advantage of the digital market, everyone can create new products or services with very low amount of money and generate good profits. Some examples:

• Ai implementation.
• Plugins for apps or cms.
• Desktop, mobile apps.
• Video games.
• Courses.
• Videos.

Start with your own minimum budget and increase as you grow up.

Whenever you want to increase your lifestyle do it if you feel like, adjust your emergency fund, control your expenses always based on your incomes. Try to generate enough money from your investments to cover up your lifestyle cost and be happy.

Checkout my LinkedIn profile. https://www.linkedin.com/in/balmacefa/

I’m constantly looking for opportunities O>

Please tell me what you think about my plan, what you may change o do different? what is your way to invest? have you done something similar?.