Hey everyone! I get a lot of questions about finance, investing, debt, etc. etc. I was talking with a friend yesterday about credit card debt and came up with some ideas for how she could better manage her finances and I thought I would share those ideas with all of you!
Side Note: I’ve gotten a few questions from all of you about the Brunner Project. Yes, it’s still underway and my next post about it should be sometime later today. I’ll be talking about the finances and investing side of the renovation (how much I paid for the property, the cost of renovation, expected sale price, expected profit, etc.) Stay tuned!!
1. Educate Yourself - Understand Where Your Money is Going
I urge you to ask yourself and even ask some of your friends and family if they really understand their money. The first step to becoming the captain of your money ship is to actually understand how the money comes and goes and how the ship operates.
Personally ask yourself these 5 questions in order to see how much you know about your personal finances, if you aren’t able to answer them accurately and right away off the top of your head, then you don’t understand your finances as well as you think:
- How much income do I make every month?
- How much are my expenses every month?
- What is my total credit card debt?
- What is my largest expense every month?
- How many recurring and automatic charges do I pay each month?
I asked myself these 5 questions and I’m able to answer them quickly and off the top of my head. I went around to my family members and friends and asked them these 5 questions and all but 1 of them couldn’t even give a ballpark estimate for these questions. I was horrified, to say the least.
If you don’t understand where you’re going and how your ship operates, then how do you expect to get there? Start by researching and understanding your own personal finances - learn the answers to those 5 questions!
2. Don’t Spend Money on Stuff You Don’t Need and Can’t Afford
One major issue I see with my friends and family is that they are constantly buying stuff that they don’t need and can’t afford. For example, I have a friend who loves coffee and loves clothes. She goes shopping almost every week and buys new clothes on her credit card that she doesn’t need and she goes to Starbucks almost every day and buys a $3 cup of coffee that she doesn’t need.
She then complains about how she has credit card debt and can’t pay her full balance each month. Now she’s getting huge interest charges because she’s not paying off her credit card on time - she’s bought too many useless things that she couldn’t afford and didn’t need.
I told her to make coffee at home and stop buying new clothes every week. Do you know how cheap coffee is? An average cup of home-brewed coffee will cost you about $.15 and taste just as good as a $3 cup from Starbucks.
I also told her to realize what a bad investment clothing is. It’s ok to buy clothes occasionally if it gives you a little boost of joy in your life, but every time you spend excess money on clothes that you’ll probably only wear a few times, you’re taking valuable capital that could’ve been invested and used to pay off your debts. I told her to keep track of how much money she saves up by not buying clothes and coffee and then at the end of each month she can use some of that money to pay a portion of her credit card debt and some of that money to invest in something that will appreciate and pay a dividend (like STEEM or a dividend stock, for example).
Analyze your life and try to find the places where you’re spending money on stuff that you don’t really need. Add all this money up in a month’s time and see how much you could’ve invested instead of spent.
3. Pay With Cash Rather than Credit Cards
Here’s another huge issue that I see amongst my friends and family - they use their credit cards to buy everything and they don’t understand that the money is real!
When you buy stuff with credit cards, it almost seems like the money just comes out of thin air, you don’t really have to think about it. Credit cards are an amazing tool for procrastination! You buy something for $30 and think to yourself that it’s your future self’s problem to figure out how to pay that back.
If you struggle with managing your credit cards, I urge you to start buying things with cold hard cash, something you can touch. I know it may go against your crypto roots to use such an “Ice Age” form of payment, but trust me, it will change the way you view your purchases. Spending money will be a lot harder when you actually have to feel it physically leave your possession.
Disclaimer: Nothing said here is to be taken as financial advice. This is purely my opinion. Do your own research and never invest more than you are willing to lose.
Here's the Question of The Day, don't forget to post your answers in the comments!
What is 1 thing that you spend money on that you wish you would cut back on? Will you do it?
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to leave your thoughts below and I look forward to seeing you in the comments!
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