Good morning Dinks. As you know I haven’t always been good with money. In my late teens and early 20s I racked up thousands of dollars in debt and spent the rest of my 20s paying it off. I like to tell my story because I really want to help people avoid making the same mistakes that I did. I also want people who are in debt to know that this is not the end of the road; your situation will get better if you make smart choices to make your financial life better.
Some of us learn smart money management from our mistakes, some of us learned how to be financially responsible from our parents and some of us learned how to manage our money from reading tips and stories on personal finance blogs.
What if you could find the best of a who’s who of personal finance in just one place? Well now you can. Allow me to introduce Rockstar Finance by our friend J. Money. I recently discovered this website and I am really surprised that someone didn’t have this great idea sooner. Rockstar Finance is one stop shopping for the best of the best of personal finance blogs.
3 money tips that I learned from Rockstar Finance
Try to put your emotions aside. There is always an emotional part of everything that we do in life when it comes to the choices we make, but emotions and money just don’t mix. In the post “Emotions of Financial Independence” by Mad Fientist I learned that the mental and emotional reliefs of becoming debt fee are almost just as rewarding as the financial benefits. The opposite is also true: having debt, worrying about money and not being able to pay our bills is also very stressful. Impulse purchases from gum to stocks are usually based on emotions and they almost always end up being a mistake. The key to personal and financial success is to not get into debt, but if you are already in debt the key to the stress relief is to get out of debt as quickly as possible.
Always save, no matter how much money you make. As a financial planner one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is taking money for granted. You may think that you don’t need to save money because you have a really great income that lets you afford all the things that you want in life, but I am here to tell you that money will not always be around. Saving money doesn’t only mean that you transfer from your checking to savings account each month; it also means that you search for deals and get the most out of all the money you spend. Yahoo! Finance tells us that even billionaires save money in the post “Top Secrets of Penny-Pinching Billionaires”.
Your money will be what you make it. In the post “How to Win the Lottery Called Life” J.D. Roth talks about life after money. Life is about doing what we love and making ourselves happy; so often people think that this means having a lot of money, but the truth is that life is about so much more than money.
Photo by petyosi
Kristina Tahnyak
Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.
We seem to have a similar story. I started being more responsible with money after I turned 30. Until then I never bothered save, I did get into debt (fortunately not too much, but enough to mess my finances for 4 years) and always thought I’ll be making good money.
Then 2009 came and I lost my job. I was in debt, I had taxes to pay and no savings at all. It really showed me how stupid I’ve been all this time and now I’ve recovered and learned a lot from this :)
I’m the same way. I learned a lot later in life about the sheer importance of money. I always kind of coasted and did OK because my paycheck was nice, but once it wasn’t, I was in for a world of hurt. But it’s never to late to learn.
If you could only tell someone who wanted to learn more about personal finance three things, I don’t think you could have picked a better 3 tips to share. I think the most important is to always save, no matter what, even if it’s just a couple bucks. It’s such an important habit to develop ASAP!
It is sad that in almost everything, money is involved and without it, there are so many things in life that one can’t get. Perhaps that is primarily the reason why so many individuals are in debt and sometimes a significant turning point need to happen first before one learns the value of “a penny saved is a penny earned”. Even if saving is not needed at one point in life, nothing could go wrong with being prepared come what may where there is enough savings.
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