Personal Finance — 3/8 — Beating Broke

How Your Confidence Affects Your Finances, Part Two

January 27, 2014 By MelissaB 14 Comments

For part one of this series, go here.

In our earlier post, we talked about how debt can seem insurmountable to some, as documented in the movie, Maxed Out. Unfortunately, some people feel their debt is so overwhelming that they take their own lives. That includes a college student who owed $12,000. While $12,000 is not a small sum, it’s not worth taking your life.

Debt and Your Self Worth

Our culture recognizes that many people identify their worth by their jobs. When we meet someone new and tell them what we do for a living, we say, “I am a teacher” or “I am an engineer.” We literally take on the identity of the job that we do.

What is not discussed is that we often measure our worth by our debt, also. If you’re in debt and struggling to make your monthly payments, it’s easy to feel worthless and hopeless. When my husband and I finally faced our nearly $57,000 in credit card and student loan debt, I felt embarrassed and stupid. After all, how did I let myself get in this position?

Your Thoughts Can Determine How Quickly You Can Get Out of Debt

You may begin your debt pay off journey as I did–chiding myself and feeling like it was hopeless. How would I pay off this debt that was greater than our annual income? The whole process felt hopeless, and I wanted to give up before I even started.

But through our two year long journey thus far, I learned some things that make paying off debt easier.

Be confident. When I stopped chiding myself and instead decided to encourage myself, the weight caused by debt was lifted. Instead of thinking, “I’m so stupid for being in this much debt,” I thought, “We’ve made mistakes financially, but now we’re on the right path. We’re making strides in our debt repayment plan, and eventually we’ll be out of debt.” This encouraging self-talk increased my confidence and reduced my anxiety. I felt empowered.
Look at the little picture. Sometimes looking at the big picture–the total debt that you owe–can be overwhelming. Instead, focus on the smallest debt. If you put your extra money on the smallest debt, you’ll see progress more quickly. If you owe $60,000 but your smallest debt is $5,000, focus only on that one. Don’t look at your total debt load. You’ll feel elated as you watch your progress paying down the smallest debt.
Celebrate small victories. Encourage yourself every step of the way. Praise yourself when you’re able to pay more off in a month than you typically can pay. Celebrate when you pay off one debt. Shout in your house that the debt is gone. Share it with your friends if they know of your debt struggle.

If you’re in debt, you can either hurt yourself mentally and physically by berating yourself and wallowing in self-pity. Or, you can heal yourself mentally and physically by praising and encouraging yourself through the long journey of paying down debt. Which would you rather do?

How do you encourage yourself when paying down debt?

Personal Finance is a Life Skill

December 17, 2013 By Shane Ede 11 Comments

ChristianPF posted a very thought provoking article a while back. In it, he talks about how spending money wisely is a life skill. The choices that we make in spending our money are the root of how we live our lives and can bleed through into the businesses that we run or work for. Basically, the way that you spend money is a very important.

I think I would take it one further. Not only is the way that you spend your money a very important skill, but, as the title of this article states, the entirety of your personal finance management is a life skill.

Schools all around the world concern themselves with teaching children life skills. Skills like writing. Reading. Wood Working. Mathematics. Science. And even Cooking (0ne of my favorites). Perhaps personal finance isn’t as important as things like mathematics, writing and reading (the three Rs), but I would argue that it’s just as important (or more so) than the rest. I would argue that personal finance is a life skill.

Improper management of your personal finances can lead to some pretty dire circumstances in your life. You can find yourself falling into a trap of revolving debt and upside-down mortgages. Too easily, you can find yourself making the choice between ramen and gas to go to work. And yet, people continue to put personal finances aside as something that isn’t all that important.

Over the last decade, I’ve spent my time learning many of the tenets of personal finance management. Even with the knowledge I had gained, it was a very difficult trip to take. I started as close to the bottom as I cared to get. I’m still a long ways from the top, but I’m getting there. And most of that is owed to learning to manage personal finances properly.

Take the time today to learn something about taking care of your finances. Teach it to your children. Teach it to your friends. If we all learn a little bit more each day, week, and month, we can turn our situations around and help more people. The more people we help with this, the less likely that our economy will ever find itself in this situation again.

Investing in Your Personal Finances

July 9, 2013 By Shane Ede 6 Comments

In business, we talk all the time about investing in your business. We’re not talking about actually buying stock in your own company, although there are those that do that as well. What we’re really talking about is investing the things that will make your business better. For a cab company, that might mean investing in an extra cab or two. Or replacing some of the older cabs in the fleet with newer ones. It might be something as simple as sending an employee (or yourself) to training. But, as much as we talk about investing in our businesses, how many of us actually invest in our own personal finances?

How to Invest in your Personal Finances

Investing in your personal finances can be something as complex as buying new investments. But, it can also be something as simple as providing yourself with the training you need to improve your personal finances. What part of personal finance scares you? Is it the budgeting? Is it the balancing? Selling? Buying? Investing? Maybe you just don’t understand how savings accounts work? Investing doesn’t mean you need to spend money either. All those things I just listed can be learned online for free. It might take a bit longer because it isn’t all consolidated like it would be in a course. You might need time sorting through sites like this one learning what the authors have to teach. But, it can be learned. And, when you’re done, and you understand something a bit better, you’ll have invested in your personal finance.

Earning Dividends on your Personal Finances

In the investing world, dividend paying stocks are the ones that many investors (for sure income investors) will look at first. Why? Because, even if the stock doesn’t gain any value, it’s still going to pay that dividend out in most cases. The people who run the company have invested in the business to improve it enough that it can pay some of it’s revenues back to the shareholders. You can do the same. As you invest in your personal finances, and implement the things that you’ve learned, your finances will get better. You’ll be working on them all the time to improve them. As they get better, you’ll start earning dividends on your investment. Maybe it will be in a higher rate of income. Maybe a higher rate of savings. Or, maybe it will just be a higher rate of understanding that leads to a calmer sense of where your finances are headed.

The quicker you start investing in your personal finances, the quicker you’ll start earning those dividends. Click on a few of those links in that list up there. Learn about something that you don’t feel in control of. Invest in your personal finances today.