Financial Lessons Everyone Needs to Learn

Personal finance is sort of an ever-evolving process. We all make mistakes as we learn to navigate the world of money, but, if you can learn and follow some important financial lessons early on, you can have a much easier time being financially stable and secure.   

Lesson #1: Be a Goal-Setter and a Goal-Getter

To start off with, don’t be the person who just blindly works, earns money, spends it, and repeats. That is no way to live, and it’s not going to get you anywhere. Instead, be someone who sets specific financial goals and then makes detailed, viable plans to achieve those goals.

Your financial goals can be anything you want, whether it’s to buy something smart, like a home or a reliable car, or to save a certain amount by a certain age. Whatever your goal is, having something to work toward will give you more focus. Plus, once you reach that first goal, you’ll enjoy the “rush” and will likely make other, useful goals in the future, all of which will add up to you being a smarter steward of your money.

Lesson #2: Don’t Spend it All

One of the worst things you can do is to spend everything you have every time you have it. This is going to get you nowhere fast and could even lead to overspending, which could, in turn, lead to debt and financial hardships.

Make a rule for yourself that you’ll devote at least 15% of your income to savings. And, if you have a problem with spending too much, stop using your credit card as often and instead budget the money that’s left over after you’ve saved and paid all your bills.

Lesson #3: Make a Smart Home Purchase

One final lesson that you’d do well to learn is to avoid buying a house that you really can’t afford. Having a nice home is something that most of us dream of, but if you go overboard on your mortgage, you may have a hard (or impossible!) time saving and reaching other financial goals, such as having an enjoyable retirement.

Remember, your house doesn’t have to be extravagant to feel like a home. Don’t sacrifice everything just to live somewhere fancy; in the end, it’s not worth it.

Most financial lessons aren’t fun to learn, and, more often than not, they require you to be responsible where you’d rather be frivolous. Remember, though, if you can do the smart thing and really learn and live by these lessons, you’ll have a much better life with a lot more financial freedom in the long run.

Secured Credit Cards: What You Need to Know

If you have no credit or less than perfect credit, your investment advisor will probably warn you that getting a traditional credit card, or any type of credit for that matter, will likely be difficult. Notice, however, that we said a “traditional,” meaning an unsecured credit card.

Unsecured credit cards are granted based on your good name and your promise to pay back, with interest, any money owed. As you can imagine, lenders aren’t likely to hand those cards out to borrowers who haven’t proven themselves or who have proven themselves unreliable in the past.

Secured credit cards, however, are a different story. These cards are backed by some kind of collateral, such as the money in your checking account or a deposit you paid to the credit card company. When you’re just starting out or trying to rebuild, they are the way to go.

If you can manage a secured credit card and pay your bills on time, opportunities for unsecured credit cards and other forms of credit are sure to open up. Remember, you have to start somewhere, so never just automatically rule out those secured credit cards.

Related articles

• Can Using a Secured Card Really Help Rebuild My Credit? (bestcreditrepaircompanys.com)

How Americans Waste Their Money

USA Today recently exposed twenty of the major ways in which Americans are wasting their money—money they could be using to plan for the future. It’s no surprise that credit card interest costs were included as one of the “money wasters” on the list. The article even provided some not so nice figures: the average credit card debt per household in the United States is a whopping $15,270!   

Articles (and numbers!) like that one should really make you take a close look at yourself. Are you anywhere in that average credit card debt range? Maybe even above it? If the answer to either question is “yes,” then that’s probably a good indicator that you’ve been doing some poor financial planning and making poor financial decisions.

It’s never too late to turn things around though, especially if you get professional help! The financial gurus at Platinum Financial Associates can look at where you currently are financially (no judging!) and come up with a financial planning strategy to help you make smarter decisions in the future and maybe even ditch that credit card debt.

Related articles

• 12 Wasteful Ways Americans Throw Away Their Money (ftmdaily.com)