Hi.

I did not really want to bother doing an introduction on the main forum area for myself, I figure this will work just as well.

My name is Joshua. I from Vancouver British Columbia Canada, and am currently living in Calgary Alberta Canada. I am 22 years old, and I am working at a gas station. I make $10.00 an hour and work a 40 hour week.

My current plan is that I would like to move back home to Vancouver. In order to achieve this, I want to take a skill with me when I go. As much as I love working at a service station that life is just not for me. The skill that I wish to pick up is becoming a bicycle mechanic. There is a school in Ashland Oregon that specializes in just that. I have enrolled, and if all goes well I will be off the waiting list and attending classes in October.

All of my costs for going to Ashland, are taken care of by my lovely education fund. The real planning however begins once I am done with Oregon and need to start my life in Vancouver.

I started saving for this in late April, early May. The majority of my $1600 currently in the bank was from my tax return. In 2 paychecks I will have matched my tax return money setting my savings account at $2000. I get payed next on July 20th and then every other Friday till September 30th. My original amount that I wanted to take with me was $4000, however after looking at things and doing some guestimation I have decided that $3000, would still work. Ideally the more that I take the better, however $3000 is absolute minimum.

Currently I make roughly $1400 a month take home after taxes. I pay $400 a month in rent, $40-$60 a month on cell phone, $400-$450 savings, and $200 or so on a healthy smoking habit. Some where in all of that there is about $300 or so lost in the mix. Actually that isn't quite so, I have a credit card.

I was given a credit card in January of 2007 with a starting limit of $500. Well, as you can well imagine I just went about spending on it, and have been in revolving debt land for quite some time. A couple of weeks ago while tossing and turning in bed, I said to myself that if I ever had the chance to do that all over again, I would not have been so careless with my credit card. The day after that had occoured I went online and checked my bank accounts, and wouldn't you know it my credit limit went up to $2500. I figured this was the universe giving me my chance to start over. By the next paycheck or the one after I will have my credit card brought back down to $0 due and plan to "be responsibe" or, at least think about what I am doing.

This I think will be the end of this post. I want to add my goals for my money over the course of the next 2 years, however I will do that tomorrow evening or the day after. This will give me some time to think about what I want and how I will post all of that.

I just wanted to say thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts and goals with my money. This site and GRS are a wonderful resource, and I look forward to growing with all of you in the future.

Joshua

Welcome, good luck with executing your plan, it sounds like you've got a solid foundation. I've got a couple of questions for you too. Is this cycle school like a UTI or vocational training to be a mechanic? I'm also not sure what you mean by 'healthy smoking', care to elaborate?

um... I know nothing about the American school stuff. I know that I need an M-1 visa, www.bikeschool.com if you are interested. The comment about smoking was sarcasm.

oh, I figured you just meant cannabis since that's healthy.

lol... i foolishly spent the majority of my youth enjoying the powers of marijuana, and now I can not stomach it. And my $200 figure was actually quite conservative, it is probably closer to $350 a month.

Karpet, looks like you are getting your life in order. Have you looked into bike mechanics as a career field? I wonder if you could take the same courses in Canada. That way, you would qualify for Canadian income tax deductions and so on. You could write off books and tuition -- but not if you go to school in the US. Will this skill result in you earning more than $10 an hour in Vancouver? I am just wondering if you would be better to move to Vancouver, pick up a service industry job (call centres here pay up to $20 an hour or you could wait tables or something), and volunteer or work part-time at a bike shop. Would you not be able to gain the same skills? Are you sure these schools have recognized credentials? Are you sure there are jobs for bike mechanics?

Those are just a few questions I would ask. I am not trying to dissuade you. However, if you're going to go to the US for school (and thus lose out on write offs), you need to make sure you will achieve a return on investment.

Those are some very important questions you have posed. Sometime this evening after work I am going to draw up a five or so questionnaire that I can cold call some bicycle shops in Vancouver and get some more information. I will post my questionnaire here for posterities sake.

Thank you