A letter from Jun 7th, 2021

Dear Future Erick, I am writing this to you to see if you have worked on improving yourself, your mental health, and your actions, including your spending habits, behaviors towards employees, and having perseverance for hard challenges in life. I experienced some of those things during my senior year in high school, especially learning how to be frugal with my money. Before I had my economics class, I had very little knowledge of finance. I didn't know how debit or credit cards work, nor know the different types of accounts and assets you set up in a bank or credit union. I was also struggling with the math part of finance, including using the simple and compound interest formulas when it comes to investing. I used to have the mentality of being able to afford anything that you want when you are rich. Until I got older, and realized that having that detrimental mentality can cost me my money, my mental health, and livelihood. There is a saying that I never heard of before that was introduced into the economics class, which is also something that I’ve struggled with. That saying was "Keeping Up with the Joneses." Which means you are foolishly sacrificing your hard earned money from your savings to buy things that other people have, including the people you hate, just to keep up with the trends that are in the market. But it would still leave you insecure, because those trends could change over time, and you would have to buy those new trending items while putting yourself into debt, if you are not careful. One example of this that I had to face was the Nintendo Switch. When the device came out, I constantly tried to get my father to buy one for me, in which he said now, since I don’t have time for playing one, I should be more focused at school and improving on my grades, since my main priorities change over time. (Which is what happens when you get older, and you prioritize school more.) I was struggling at the time, and I started to become more inferior to other Switch owners at my school, until I learned the truth about it when I was in my junior year. It won’t be worth it after buying the switch, as it will only give me a short term of excitement, but not a long term of happiness. The constant worry about getting the latest video game fads like the switch takes a toxic toll on my mental health, which left me in an almost depressed-like state. I don’t want that afflicting my personal life and relationships with others. Now that I am heading to college, I eventually saved the time for getting a switch for later, as I got my mind straight on saving up for a house that I could live in, once I am financially and mentally sable. I want to save up for a down payment for the house, and also for a car whilst working in my job as a Automotive Mechanical Engineer, so then I could be able to travel freely without having to rely on public transportation to get to places that are far from where I live. Although I do have side passions for acting, character drawing, voice acting, music production, and movie and show production, so I would have to diversify my savings so I would be able to get the equipment I need for those jobs, so that it would add into my monthly income. That way I would have more money saved from the necessary payments I would need to make, so I would make investments for retirement, whether it's through the use of a 401(k) or a Roth IRA. But one question that I want to ask you is how are you going to split the money between retirement and personal savings for your jobs and side jobs, and how are you going to do that without drowning in credit card debt? Another question is how are you going to balance time between all of those jobs at once? If you are able to do those things, then I hope you continue to do what you are doing, and live your life to the fullest, since not many people are able to handle multiple Jobs at once, nor able to think realistically about their finances while they are at it.