Financial Education for the Average Joe

Have you ever come across a financial issue as an adult and thought to yourself “How-come I didn’t learn about this in high school? It would’ve been extremely valuable” and then struggled to wade through the information that’s out there to teach yourself. It can be overwhelming. In fact, for young and old folks alike, money management, knowledge, and skills are not always cut and dry. Using myself as a prime example of this, I wish I had taken the time to completely understand the ins and outs of credit cards and the fees involved.

I wish I had a notebook or resource about how to use it intelligently when I received my first credit card. Yes, I got the packet with the fine print, but I didn’t REALLY understand the whole thing. I skimmed it, like I’m sure many young people do. I didn’t understand the terms and so I gave up reading it because it felt so dense. Fast forward to last week. I did a poll of my co-workers and friends on Facebook to find out what they really want to know about money as a millennial. The answers were fascinating and varied. They wanted to know about the mindsets of different generations in regard to the cost of expensive brand name items versus off brand items. They wanted to know about investing. They wanted to know about workbooks and habits for spending and saving…I never thought about that before. It got me thinking: what resources are out there for adults and teens that would answer these questions at an early age? What I found was very interesting…to be continued…

New Beginnings

This ought to be an interesting year. Why? Because we are in 2020…and that reminds me of hindsight being 20/20 vision. Maybe this time we’ll each get it right the first time. There’ll be no need look to the past to correct errors, because maybe this will be our lucky 20/20 not-much-in-hindsight but rather present year. And also, a little tip for 2020: make sure to write out 2020 in full your important documents/checks. It could turn ugly if the wrong person gets a hold of important documents and decides to add a 1 or a higher digit it could create a lot of trouble for you. With that, let’s raise a glass to 2020! Cheers and have a fantastic year! I can’t wait to see what it brings for all of us. New Beginnings

Designing Your Money

Piggybacking on my last blog entry about how you compartmentalize your money…how do you design your money to work FOR you? There are so many ways you can get the most out of your dollar. I don’t mean to sound like a penny pincher, but how you use your money and where you place it can have a big impact in the long-term on whether it makes money for you or whether it stays the same amount. Think about it: do you really want to continue to trade your time for money for your whole life? Or do you want to put your money to work while you work, or while you’re on vacation, or while you’re at your kids’ baseball game, etc.? I like making money while I sleep. Soooo….that begs the question…how do you do that? There are a multitude of ways!

Banks have designed a system that really works for them. They loan you money or give you credit to use, and you get the assistance you need to pay whatever bill it is that you owe with that money, whether it’s groceries, school loans, you name it. They also must fund their own business, so they make it work for them by giving you the money in return for extra money on top, aka interest. If you’re able to pay your bill back in a super timely manner, the interest you pay would be lower than if you take a long time to pay back the money. Now that’s a smart transaction for them. You get something from them, and they get something from you. They’re making money in their sleep. They’re not spending time working for the interest, but they’re making money regardless. You can use that model, too. You can, in a way, be your own bank! It’s called peer to peer lending.

I had no idea about peer to peer lending until about a year ago. There are many platforms that you can choose from, but the two most popular ones are Lending Club and Prosper. As an investor with peer to peer lending you can log on to the platform and search through the available loans. They are graded in slightly different fashions on each site, but mostly some form of A,B,C,D,E, and HR, with A being the lowest interest rates but the customers with the best concoction of information (credit score, income, percentage of credit used, rating, etc.) and HR being the highest interest, but considered the more risky loans to invest in. In my next blog I will go into more detail about how this process works and what strategy (so far) has worked for me.

This is what I consider designing your money. Instead of simply earning it, you’re creating a system in which your earnings make you more earnings without trading your time. It’s a gradual process, but it’s interesting. I highly encourage you to think about how YOU think about your money, and how you utilize it to its full value. Keep following my blog for more information weekly, and enjoy your day!

Ciao for now, and as always, please consult a certified financial professional for all of your big financial decisions. I’m simply here to enlighten and help, but I’m not a financial advisor.

Designing Your Money

Piggybacking on my last blog entry about how you compartmentalize your money…how do you design your money to work FOR you? There are so many ways you can get the most out of your dollar. I don’t mean to sound like a penny pincher, but how you use your money and where you place it can have a big impact in the long-term on whether it makes money for you or whether it stays the same amount. Think about it: do you really want to continue to trade your time for money for your whole life? Or do you want to put your money to work while you work, or while you’re on vacation, or while you’re at your kids’ baseball game, etc.? I like making money while I sleep. Soooo….that begs the question…how do you do that? There are a multitude of ways!

Banks have designed a system that really works for them. They loan you money or give you credit to use, and you get the assistance you need to pay whatever bill it is that you owe with that money, whether it’s groceries, school loans, you name it. They also must fund their own business, so they make it work for them by giving you the money in return for extra money on top, aka interest. If you’re able to pay your bill back in a super timely manner, the interest you pay would be lower than if you take a long time to pay back the money. Now that’s a smart transaction for them. You get something from them, and they get something from you. They’re making money in their sleep. They’re not spending time working for the interest, but they’re making money regardless. You can use that model, too. You can, in a way, be your own bank! It’s called peer to peer lending.

I had no idea about peer to peer lending until about a year ago. There are many platforms that you can choose from, but the two most popular ones are Lending Club and Prosper. As an investor with peer to peer lending you can log on to the platform and search through the available loans. They are graded in slightly different fashions on each site, but mostly some form of A,B,C,D,E, and HR, with A being the lowest interest rates but the customers with the best concoction of information (credit score, income, percentage of credit used, rating, etc.) and HR being the highest interest, but considered the more risky loans to invest in. In my next blog I will go into more detail about how this process works and what strategy (so far) has worked for me.

This is what I consider designing your money. Instead of simply earning it, you’re creating a system in which your earnings make you more earnings without trading your time. It’s a gradual process, but it’s interesting. I highly encourage you to think about how YOU think about your money, and how you utilize it to its full value. Keep following my blog for more information weekly, and enjoy your day!

Ciao for now, and as always, please consult a certified financial professional for all of your big financial decisions. I’m simply here to enlighten and help, but I’m not a financial advisor.

Let’s Talk About Financial Interest…

Oh, I know, sounds boring right? I used to think so, too…and then I started paying more of my own bills. YEP, it’s NOT SO BORING NOW, right? True. For those of you who are new to my blog, my last post was about how to start the process of improving your credit score. As a disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser, and these are simply my musings about what has worked for my own situation. Each individual financial setup is different, so for your own changes I recommend that you meet with a banker or someone in that field. I would simply like to share my knowledge with you. Along the way I hope to present this to you in a personable and slightly more fun way than your traditional financial sources. We’ll see if I’m successful! Feel free to comment below and ask any questions you might have.

Last time I left off while writing about throwing money down the toilet, right? Interest. Interest is how banks make money on top of the money they’ve loaned you. They wouldn’t be able to do it without interest. They need to fund their establishment, too, and interest is one of the ways that they do that. Interest can come in all sizes. And it is worth it to understand how interest will effect you in five, ten, or however many years in the future.

When you apply for a credit card you will see that banks are going to entice you into applying for their products. Side note: be careful how many credit cards you apply for. Applying for too many credit cards negatively effects your credit score. The bank will promote their company by advertising APR’s. APR’s (annual percentage rates) can start as low as 0.00% when a credit company is trying to gain your business. This is great! It means that for however long that offer is valid you will not be charged interest on the balance of your account! AWESOME! But…be careful. There’s a catch. After that introductory period ends you will be responsible for the interest that starts to accrue on the balance that you have borrowed. That money does not go toward the original amount that you borrowed. It goes directly to the bank for having gained your business. Soooo…you are paying the bank for having given you a loan and then paying that loan back in full afterwards. Interest rates can tack on quite a large amount to the bill you already owe. Several years ago, I took a good, long look at my credit statements…and I was SHOCKED to find out that I was paying the bank $40 per month that went into their pockets and less was going toward actually paying down my loan balance. As you can see, interest can become quite a hefty bill…but there is a way to avoid it!

The first thing to realize is that the bank can not charge you interest if there is nothing to charge interest to. This is possible if you make sure to pay your balance in full every single month. It sounds very simple, but it can take self discipline to stick to this. If, like me, you’ve not always had the best financial habits, there are ways to improve your situation….

Now enters the next option for those of us already down the rabbit hole…APR transfers! For now I will leave you to digest the information about credit that I’ve written about, but very shortly I will communicate about APR transfers and what good they can do for those of us already down the rabbit hole of paying off our credit burden.

So…I hope that today you have learned something helpful and not the hard way, like I have. I’m sure it was quite a comical scene when I figured out (in public) just how credit card interest really works. Ciao for now and here’s to awesome financial habits!

Let’s Talk About Financial Interest…

Oh, I know, sounds boring right? I used to think so, too…and then I started paying more of my own bills. YEP, it’s NOT SO BORING NOW, right? True. For those of you who are new to my blog, my last post was about how to start the process of improving your credit score. As a disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser, and these are simply my musings about what has worked for my own situation. Each individual financial setup is different, so for your own changes I recommend that you meet with a banker or someone in that field. I would simply like to share my knowledge with you. Along the way I hope to present this to you in a personable and slightly more fun way than your traditional financial sources. We’ll see if I’m successful! Feel free to comment below and ask any questions you might have.

Last time I left off while writing about throwing money down the toilet, right? Interest. Interest is how banks make money on top of the money they’ve loaned you. They wouldn’t be able to do it without interest. They need to fund their establishment, too, and interest is one of the ways that they do that. Interest can come in all sizes. And it is worth it to understand how interest will effect you in five, ten, or however many years in the future.

When you apply for a credit card you will see that banks are going to entice you into applying for their products. Side note: be careful how many credit cards you apply for. Applying for too many credit cards negatively effects your credit score. The bank will promote their company by advertising APR’s. APR’s (annual percentage rates) can start as low as 0.00% when a credit company is trying to gain your business. This is great! It means that for however long that offer is valid you will not be charged interest on the balance of your account! AWESOME! But…be careful. There’s a catch. After that introductory period ends you will be responsible for the interest that starts to accrue on the balance that you have borrowed. That money does not go toward the original amount that you borrowed. It goes directly to the bank for having gained your business. Soooo…you are paying the bank for having given you a loan and then paying that loan back in full afterwards. Interest rates can tack on quite a large amount to the bill you already owe. Several years ago, I took a good, long look at my credit statements…and I was SHOCKED to find out that I was paying the bank $40 per month that went into their pockets and less was going toward actually paying down my loan balance. As you can see, interest can become quite a hefty bill…but there is a way to avoid it!

The first thing to realize is that the bank can not charge you interest if there is nothing to charge interest to. This is possible if you make sure to pay your balance in full every single month. It sounds very simple, but it can take self discipline to stick to this. If, like me, you’ve not always had the best financial habits, there are ways to improve your situation….

Now enters the next option for those of us already down the rabbit hole…APR transfers! For now I will leave you to digest the information about credit that I’ve written about, but very shortly I will communicate about APR transfers and what good they can do for those of us already down the rabbit hole of paying off our credit burden.

So…I hope that today you have learned something helpful and not the hard way, like I have. I’m sure it was quite a comical scene when I figured out (in public) just how credit card interest really works. Ciao for now and here’s to awesome financial habits!