Hi, my name is Eliza B. and welcome to Wellness and Wallet! I’m a blogger whose day job is in Finance but my true passion is everything and anything related to health and financial freedom.
The Blog
I created this blog because I truly love sharing information on tips for improving health and personal finances. So, I figured I would stop bothering my coworkers and friends with my random health and finance fun facts and just start writing them for the world.
Over the years I have browsed tons of blogs on both topics but I kept noticing that health and personal finance are typically written about separately. They are both so important to overall happiness that I wanted to make sure that every health recommendation is also a financially responsible choice and vice versa. I have seen many frugal blogs recommend unhealthy choices such as just adding more grains to your diet to save money. On the other side, I have seen so many health blogs recommending obscenely expensive health fads.
In this blog, I want to help people get healthier while also helping them become more financially independent. I am nowhere near the pinnacle of health and I am definitely not financially independent so this blog is a journey for me as well.
My Story
In college and my early 20s I was struggling with my physical and mental health and my finances were a wreck – ironic for someone in Finance, I know.
Health Issues
I didn’t know what healthy food was, so my weight was always yo-yoing from the random diets I was on. When I entered the workforce, it also slowly started to creep up. At the same time, random health ailments started happening. I started to get eczema, anxiety attacks, adult acne, gut issues, and countless other health problems. My blood tests would come back abnormal for one area but then normalize and then come back abnormal for a completely different area. Traditional doctors couldn’t help me but I knew I was falling apart so like most people, I went to the internet for help.
Although the internet did tell me I was basically already dead a few times, I finally started to find information on how my diet and lifestyle were the cause all of my issues. Once I started diving in, I didn’t stop. I wanted consume all information related to health. It became and still is one of my favorite addictions.
Financial Struggle
When I graduated college, I was relatively lucky. I only came out of school with a small amount of student loan debt (go S.U.N.Y.!). I moved to a new city with a job lined up and $300 cash in my pocket. This is actually no joke, I had to cancel my bank account from college and take out the cash because the bank didn’t exist in my new city. Since I needed a new debit card, I figured why not get a credit card for emergencies (I should’ve known better).
The debt started racking up and the savings, was minimal. Then, I got hit with a few large medical bills. My insurance couldn’t cover a massive portion of it so I took out a personal loan. I was 24 and drowning in debt. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to tell anyone. It was extremely embarrassing and stressful. How could someone in Finance not know how to manage their own finances?
Similar to my health issues, I started looking for resources online. I took free calls from financial advisors and browsed finance blogs. After about a year of learning and lifestyle adjustments, I was able to pay off my personal loan and I literally put my credit card in a container of water in my freezer. I love puns so I got a kick out of telling my parents that I was “freezing my credit”.
The next step in my financial journey was less than a year ago. I found out about the concept of Financial Independence / Retire Early (FIRE). I fell in love with the goal of reaching the stage where money doesn’t have a say in what I want to do with my life. When I reach FIRE, I wouldn’t have to be in Finance and could do work that is actually important to me on a personal level. Once I learned about FIRE, I started more aggressively cutting expenses and saving because this goal is not optional for me.
Where I’m at Now
On the health side, I am happy to say that many of my ailments have gone away. However, I am still growing from a health stand point both physically and mentally.
When it comes to my finances, as of March 2018, my only remaining debt is less than $3k left of my student loan. I also now have an emergency savings, extra savings which I hope to continue to grow, and several investments. Although I am so proud of my progress, I am still far away from FIRE.
I am excited to continue on this path of growth and am so happy to share this journey with all of you.
All the best,
Eliza B.
