Financial mistakes and Pursuing my dream career in the land of opportunity

Financial mistakes and Pursuing my dream career in the land of opportunity.

I hope you enjoyed the first part of my journey from India to the United States. If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend you check that one out first. Like I mentioned, I'm a simple man with not so simple rims.

So, I have a pretty normal childhood. My cousin, friends, and close friends are the first few idols. And like I mentioned in the last part of the blog, my final year project was the turning point. So in this blog, I'll talk about how I enjoyed the job that I got because of my family project, and at the same time, I also hated it because I had to use Microsoft silver light. I hope you guys don't have to use it ever.

I will also share more about my journey to the United States and how I got into deep financial debt. And, of course, how I got myself out of it.

University of California

That's where I got my first admission. When I was planning to come here come to the United States for a master of science in computer science. So I plan to go to the United States right after my bachelor's degree, and I even got admission into the most amazing university of California. But then, the problem was they had put me in the wrong branch.

There was a communication gap, and there were few resources. They made a mistake, but I had to back out from the admission. So I waited another year and then started working for a software company back in India.

This was like the job I got in that company was because of the project I completed. The company was terrific, and I made a lot of friends. The project I was working on was exciting, but the technology was pretty good.

When I had to work long hours with loopy, that made the situation worse. So it was a classic recipe for disaster. I had decent marks in my GRE exam, so your exam is already what you need. If you want to come, come to the United States for higher education, it's GRE exam and tophi.

I’ll probably make a video if you want to know more about the process of pursuing higher studies in the United States. I had got decent marks on the GRE exam. It was 1350 out of 1500. It was based on the older pattern marking system. So I played again, and I got selected in a few decent, more than average universities. To be honest, I did not get admitted into the same or a similar university in California.

California was my dream destination.

I did not get admission to any university there, but then I got into New York and got a 30% fee scholarship. I just took the offer, packed my bags, and still vividly remember the first day I landed in the United States.

Everything was amazing, beautiful weather. I almost instantly fell in love with this country, but I can go in needles about like, I can go in details a whole day about why I love this country, but let's move on.

I started doing my master's in computer science. So one thing I really liked about the school system here is that it focuses on practicals. Which I remember we clearly missed back in India. Like everything, there was terrible. You have to learn and remember all those textual books and the textual content with minimal practical knowledge for every course; for every class, we had three to five mini-projects per quarter, like two and a half months here.

And so we had to complete like three to five projects for every subjects. It was daunting. But it also felt amazing. It actually helped me like cement. My learning made me more confident. Like I mentioned to you guys, like focus on implementing, don't just learn the concepts, but actually implement those concepts because that is the actual learning you will remember.

So just apply the concerns you learn, blue projects, and solve real-world problems. And that is the attitude that actually helped me gain or get my first internship. It was pretty easy. Like I definitely, it was not in like in a big company. It was a small shop in the city itself in the town itself.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the work. It was my first job in the United States. I was making my fullest dollars. So why not? After my internship, I continued with my studies and got a lot, many projects on my resumes. So, that was pretty helpful to get my full-time job. And finally,

The first full-time job I got was in my dream tech stack

I was learning .Net, learning JavaScript, and a new framework. I was also doing many side projects in angular JS. So I was pretty well versed in it. The company I got into used a similar strategy that I was familiar with.

That's how I did my first job at a decent $70,000 salary per year. It was just too decent entry-level. I mean, by a unit like USA standards, but if you're from India, if you calculate a significant few multiplied by like 70 rupees, it will amount to about five crows in Indian rupees?

But that led me to some pretty serious problems.

You know, I like it was a dream come true. Earning dollars in your dream country. I ultimately started spending money, like anything, buying random stuff on Amazon, eating lucky, like eating out or every other day, getting a new iPhone, getting a new Mac book, everything.

I was just putting on the credit card, which led to a pretty deep financial crisis. It was a rookie mistake.

Personal finance tip for you if you are earning, and if you want to buy something and never buy it from credit card, but if you are buying like using a credit card is good, but if you're buying from credit card, make sure you pay off that credit card every single month, please.

I was about $40,000 in debt. That's when I realized I was doing something horrible. I had to stop. And that's when my two journeys as an entrepreneur really started. I started taking small steps.

I was discussing with my mentors my friends how are they doing? How are they managing their finances? How are am I the only one doing so wrong? I started reading blogs. I began by finding resources online watching YouTube videos. That's actually, that's how I came across Dave Ramsey.

If you don't know him, he's like a financial adviser in the United States. He has a famous book titled seven baby steps for financial freedom and a YouTube scanner. I was religiously following him and his book I will teach you to be rich. Is it was a fantastic eye-opener. These are great resources.

A mindset shift in me.

So like when one thing unit to understand is a personal finance, getting wealthy is 90% about you. It's not only about creating more money or investing more money. It's also about saving the money you have.

So that's what I mean by 90% being about your mindset. So learn the fundamentals of personal finance. As I mentioned, having a credit card is good, but knowing how to use them and knowing to pay and pay them off every month is the primary mindset.

So start learning, start taking some personal finance lessons. Essentially to increase the monthly income that helps as well, like starting some online business, a sale, like creating courses, selling courses, like building an audience, you know, like these, everything is tied back to the mindset that you have basically having hustler attitude in you, everything you do try to learn something also, of course, enjoy the process, but learn something out of it.

That's what I'll be sharing in the next part. Like, I will be diving deep into the hive, how I came out of. And like with flying colors and how my network went from minus 40,000 to like positive, almost $400,000 right now in a span of like five. So if you're interested and if you have enjoyed this article and learned from my horrible mistakes, I want you to check out my next blog.