Here's an introduction to myself, my circumstances and goals.
About Brazil
Brazil is not a developed country. Since "third-world" is now considered politically incorrect, I hear a lot about mine being a "developing country," but that's doublespeak—unless it refers to Charles de Gaulle's observation ("Brazil is the country of the future... and always will be."), in which case it's rather accurate.
Local retirement of the usual sort goes "8-to-6 (including Saturdays) till you're 65," then there's a lot of waiting in lines for social security—our contribution over the years is automatic, we don't get to choose how it's invested, and when the time comes we start receiving a fixed, monthly stipend.
We pay an incredible amount of taxes, but the return is terrible—the country doesn't have proper infrastructure; our public hospitals lack medicine, beds and doctors; we have absolutely no safety.
Then there's education. I remember the time when the Brazilian students got the last place on the PISA, and the Minister of Education commented that he was pleased and surprised with Brazil's performance, for he had expected "worse results." (?)
My background
Before being enrolled into middle school, I used to be a nice kid—you wouldn't believe it. Once there, being literally the only introverted person, also the only one who read books, I was the perfect victim for bullying. It wasn't the best period in my life, and by the time I finished high school I was badly depressed and self-medicating.
I moved to a bigger city and started "making a living." Sending over my curriculum—a blank slate at first, filled with accusing blanks later—never worked, but some companies used to simply ask people interested in an opening to go there, answer a few written questions (local equivalents to "who was Ben Franklin?" etc.) and write a short dissertation—and those I always rocked, so I landed the interviews, and to date I've never failed to get a job if I could actually talk with someone endowed with hiring capacity.
They were far from being "nice" jobs, of course. Brazilian businesspeople know exactly what our "education" is worth, so the requirements for the simplest of functions have inflated exaggeratedly. I did have a "good" job once, though it was highly stressful—some people actually had mental breakdowns there—but the others were just slow death—the kind of drudgery a high school diploma makes available.
Renting in Brazil usually requires two guarantors, each owning amortized real state and willing to stake it in vouching for someone, and I didn't know anyone who could do that—an alternative was insurance ("pay R$ 4,000 up front, but you don't get the money back after you leave!"), which I also couldn't afford (never mind the "wouldn't"). So I lived in places destined for people who couldn't get anything else—dark, dirty, damp holes, in bad neighbourhoods, shared with some unbelievable types, owned by psychopaths. That accounts for the ambience. Now add clinical depression and PTSD as factors, plus a constant lack of food, and you get an interesting mix that represents my inner landscape back then.
The routine: I'd go out to a meaningless toil, come back feeling less human, walk through the hood—children smoking crack, prostitutes soliciting, muggers lurking at every corner—to get "home" and discover that Crazy Neighbour I had tried to flush many half-smoked somethings down the toilet, and Crazy Neighbour II had added his biological contribution to the mess, thus clogging everything, and it all had overflowed, so the whole place, flooded, stank, and when the landlord comes in, drunk, and yelling... no, forget about it.
The point is, after a few months of that, I'd invariably be going nuts—so I'd move to another dungeon, find another job, and go for another whirl on the merry-go-round. At some point, I decided to go to college, and, whoa! Just... whoa! Some people say "higher education" in USA is a scam? Sure, it may cost two legs to afford Harvard, but I bet they give SOMETHING in return, right? But here? The bastards barely pretend! What a waste of time, money and sanity!
All in all, I spent years just keeping myself alive. I've survived hunger, people trying to shoot me, nasty bosses, perverts, you name it. And I managed depression, I learned to cope with it all by myself. So I am not exactly worthless, nor weak. But for all that, I haven't learned any marketable skills; I've wasted a lot of time (and money), and I have nothing to show for it.
I'm back at my home town now—returning always feels like waking from a nightmare into a different nightmare, an older, slower one—and living with relatives. Though the town is as dangerous and harmful as they come here, the cost isn't monetary, for a change. Not that it kept me from wasting what little money I got here, or getting myself into more debt, but this started to change a few weeks ago.
First steps
I heard Jim Rohn speaking about financial independence. It was basic stuff—live on less than you earn, so you can use some of it to pay for your debt, increase your capital, and invest—which may be common sense elsewhere, but not here. I had never studied personal finances, and though I did take an Economy class at college, it had a different focus ("Keynes! Keynes! Keynes! Inflation! Keynes!"), so that was a refreshing new perspective for me.
In the talk, Jim Rohn recommended the book The Richest Man in Babylon, by George S. Clason, so I read it. It made a lot of sense, so started acting on it, and since then I've ceased all unnecessary spending (I've even quit smoking!), and I'm using almost all the money I get (a little average of R$ 60/month) to eliminate debt—it will take a few months to get rid of the most pressing stuff (credit card), then there's around R$ 800 of no interest, manageable amounts, and finally... R$ 10,000 of student loan (yeah...).
After finishing Clason's book, I remembered stumbling upon the MMM blog some time ago, so I visited it looking for some ideas on where to go next and found book reviews, one of them praising Your Money or Your Life, by Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez. Doing some research on the book, I found the Recommended Reading page on the ERE wiki (which I had also visited before), where YMOYL was described as a "great book similar to ERE, but less technical and theoretical, and also less targeted towards engineering/INTJ type individuals." Being an INFP, I decided to use it to ease the way into ERE. I finished it yesterday.
Starting with ERE, I read this:
My starting point is far below zero than the usual—I don't live in the land of opportunities, to begin with; I'm indebted; no marketable skills; no job experience that "looks good" on display. That means that improving my life and accomplishing my goals will take some creative adaptation, but that's that.While this book is somewhat US-centric in its examples, the methods should work in any developed country with a market economy. Retirement plans have different names from country to country, but every country offers very similar plans to its citizens. In some countries health care is paid through taxes, and in other countries it's paid out of pocket. In any case the prices for goods and services are similar in developed countries so the strategies in this book will work, even if technical details differ.
Currently, the biggest challenge is that the only places I can afford to inhabit (combined with the jobs I can get) stifle me in ways that enforce the status quo—making me too depressed to accomplish anything, hence stuck to an environment that makes me... too depressed, and so on.
Fortunately, I don't need much. I'm highly introverted, so finding some quiet and privacy from time to time is a necessity, but that's it—it may be a cubicle of a studio apartment, going through some dire straits, but if I can just be by myself now and then... whoa! Unfortunately, it's been years since I last had such an arrangement, except for sporadic, short periods.
Of course, others had it worse than me and did fine. I'm not trying to find excuses for anything, or whining—I'm well aware that I'm responsible for my life and the way it currently is. Notwithstanding, I must account for my shortcomings and liabilities, internal and external, and I do have some—in terms of reaching financial independence, I'm starting on hard mode.
I can't go on living at this town for much longer—and pinching pennies wouldn't get me anywhere, anyway—but just moving to another area and repeating the old pattern again won't do. I don't want to restart the same old cycle. I want to leave this country altogether.
My project
To sum it up: To leave this country, stabilize, become able to assist my family, then, hopefully, help their settling down in a new place as well and make sure that they are well provided for, happy and living a fulfilling life; along the way, invest, in different ways, in some good initiatives—including my own. It all starts with getting out of here, though, which is my basic goal.
But... how? I can only think of three two options (with variants), right now:
- Saving enough money to move to a bigger city in the South and "survive" until I got a job, after which I would bring thrift to new levels so I could eliminate all my debt as quickly as possible and invest to reach my goal.
- Pros: The South is more developed—our big, famous cities are in the South-East (Sao Paulo, Rio), but I've had enough of being at gun point to last for some time, and South is safer. Lots of opportunities there as well;
- Cons: If, for some reason, I couldn't secure a job fast enough, I'd be in for a world of trouble—there wouldn't be any safety net (not one I could set in place soon enough).
- (Like the above, but taking thrift to new levels so I could work, tackle debt... and get a degree (without paying for the course, which is quite hard, but not impossible), thus allowing for better-paying jobs, perhaps even before graduating, then invest to reach my goal.
- Pros: As above. A degree might also help in landing on my feet in a new country, supposing I got there before reaching financial independence;
- Cons: As above, but harder—there's the added effort to learn despite in a Brazilian educational institution (though it couldn't possibly be as bad as my last academic experience) and conciliate classes with work.[/color]) ← This option has been impugned. *
- Spending 6 months to 1 year cramming up Brazilian Law to take an government entrance exam and become a public servant. While the monthly minimum wage in Brazil is R$ 880 (≈ U$ 272.97 currently) a high school level government job can pay up to and over R$ 5,000 (≈ U$ 1,551), more than enough to quickly eliminate all of my debt, and, through frugal living, invest enough to reach my present goal and move towards financial independence.
- Pros: Good remuneration, working only from Monday to Friday, and, depending on the job, only 6 hours/day, plus some interesting benefits;
- Cons: Rote memorizing a lot of stuff I don't care about, while being unable to do (or study) much else.
Conclusion
Next step is getting on with the ERE book, intending to check back at this thread after I finish. Until then, thank you all for taking time to read this (very long) post, and thank you for any suggestions and advice you may offer. Godspeed!
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Edit (02/01/17): * I hadn't reminisced over my little academic stint for years now; to be sure, I had established that it sucked, but I would mostly leave it at that. Whatever I'll be able to grasp from ERE, though, I can already give it this: it's made me remember how it felt to be in college, reminding of how and why I almost got expelled. I don't think I can go through that again; those crooks shouldn't be getting more money—they should be in jail. I'm reconsidering my options (I hadn't thought they'd change this quickly...!). The one regarding government jobs is under probation for similar reasons:
From David J. Schwartz's The Magic of Thinking Big:
The story is told that the great scientist Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein’s reply was “I don’t know. Why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?”
Einstein taught us a big lesson. He felt it was more important to use your mind to think than to use it as a warehouse for facts.