About

Current on Currency is a personal finance blog for college students and 20 somethings.

You got that right. It’s another personal finance blog. But in all seriousness, everyone has different lifestyles, goals, and motivations. All I’m hoping to achieve, is to be able to help anyone who can relate to me.

This blog is for you if:

You’re in college and you’re in dire need of getting your budget under control
You’ve been out of college but you still haven’t improved your problematic spending habits
You don’t know where to start with saving, let alone financial planning
You’re spending money that you don’t have thanks to your debt
You’re an international student with no idea how to responsibly manage your finances

Hopefully the information I share on this blog will be able help you become more financially savvy, regardless of what currency you are accustomed to. I lived in 3 different countries before moving to America, yet I was faced with pretty much the same challenges despite the differences in culture, standard of living, and rate of currency.

No topic will be too small to discuss here. Whether it’s shopping for groceries under a budget, or getting out of debt – everything is game. I’ll be sharing some of the useful tips and strategies (that I have to thank my mistakes for) that have helped me to lead the path of being less broke.

About Anum:

I grew up in Hong Kong, one of Asia’s largest financial hubs, and lived there until I was done with middle school. My interests at the time obviously had nothing to do with personal finance or even budgeting of any kind. I just squandered my allowance money on hanging out with my friends at the mall, eating junk food, and collecting furry animal keychains.

But when I was 14, I was shipped off to a boarding school located in the foothills of the Himalayas. That’s the first time I was faced with the task of serious budgeting. Our school had a strict policy on pocket money, and each individual student was only allotted Rs. 1000 every month – which was roughly around $15 at the time.

Mussoorie Ridge via photopin

True, I lived in the mountains so I guess you could say the cost of living was ridiculously cheap. But do you know how expensive a twix bar is for someone on that kind of budget? Or even a bottle of coke? We had a dominoes pizza in the village town nearby our school (I know, the globalization of the fast food industry is very real), and just eating there once would easily drain 75% of my monthly budget. But I digress. I soon got used to the tiny budget because, A) I couldn’t do anything about it and B) You can’t complain when everyone else is getting the same amount.

So thanks to the strict enforcement of this budget rule from the school, I got through high school living small. When I decided to go to the US for my college experience, personal finance and budgeting was the last thing on my mind.

Once I was in college, I was faced with the problem of having too much freedom over my money. I soon learned the hard way that I needed to seriously learn how to save and budget. I’m not going to go into details, but let’s just say that I spent over $10,000 USD during the first semester of my Freshman year. And nope, that money doesn’t include any costs from my tuition, dorm rent or college meal points.

Talk about taking #TreatYoSelf to heart.

Now that I’m out of college, I can proudly say that I graduated 100% debt free (and that’s including consumer debt). I want to share my pursuit of financial progression and personal freedom – drawn from past experiences as well as current struggles. Full disclosure though, I am not a finance professional in any shape or form, but I will be providing information and opinions that I think will be useful to my readers. You can also check out our privacy policy if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

So thanks for stopping by! Seriously. I appreciate it. I’d love to hear from you through email or Twitter!

Here’s to having big people problems (ahem, money).