A while back, I was asked to give an hourlong presentation where I talked about my key principles of personal finance. I chose to give a presentation where each slide was available for about a minute with one simple rule on each slide, giving me a minute to discuss that rule.
The more credit cards you have, the more chances you have for identity theft and the more chances you have to miss a payment. The more investment accounts you have, the less attention you can give ...
Your future self might have more income, but it’s also fairly likely that your future self might have less income and you’ll find yourself in a really bad situation.
Even if your future self is doing well, there are probably going to be other big expenses that you’ll want to deal with at that time, like buying a house.
Building an emergency fund: set up an automatic weekly or monthly transfer from your checking account to your savings, then leave the savings alone until an emergency appears.
Eliminating high-interest debt: Set up a simple debt repayment plan by organizing your debts by interest rate, then attempt to make a double payment on whatever debt has the highest interest rate.
Saving for retirement: It will actually end up being a much smaller burden than you expect, lifted up by the pleasure of knowing that you’re securing your retirement.
In personal finance, using frugality to save money is an obvious option. The less money you spend, the more money you save. You can find thousands of blogs with tips on not buying your espresso at a coffee shop, making your own soap or thrift shopping.
By following the conventional path of "school to loan to university to work" you risk running into serious debt. Being creative is a potential way to lessen or eliminate that.
Maybe finding a different and cheaper way of doing the same thing, doing a yard sale or getting a side job… Put your mind to it and you may find ways to get a financial boost.
When you buy mutual funds, you are charged a purchase fee upfront. This is a one-time payment to the fund management institution. Annually, you will be charged with a percentage of management fees, commonly known as “expense ratio”, which can be expensive.
Beware when advisors at your bank recommend mutual funds to buy. They might be earning a sales commission.
If you're a regular reader of financial websites, you've probably seen plenty of articles urging you to cut "unnecessary" expenses from your personal budget. And in many cases, if you read further, you learn that the unnecessary expenses the authors have in mind are luxuries, like coffeehouse lattes.
It is more efficient to brew one cup at a time and you can choose from a great variety. However, it can be very costly. The excess packaging also causes environmental problems.