Debt reduction or savings? How to balance the two.
狈别谤诲奥补濒濒别迟鈥檚听聽series asks people from various walks of life to share their attitudes and approach to personal finance, with the goal of bringing transparency to discussions surrounding money issues like debt reduction and retirement savings.聽 This feature is special, instead of an interview with one individual, we鈥檝e highlighted 15 tips from everyday people about how they approach personal finance.
1) 鈥淚鈥檓 a lot more conscious of making sure my living expenses don鈥檛 outstrip my income. I try to live on my last month鈥檚 pay, which helps when unexpected things crop up. They always do.鈥� -Andrew
2) 鈥淚 really do believe that the amount of money you do or don鈥檛 have affects how you approach it. If there鈥檚 not a lot of it, I think it鈥檚 wise to address that. If there is a lot of it, that鈥檚 an entirely different story.鈥� -Megan
3) 鈥淚 practice the philosophy 鈥榰se it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.鈥� I live a fairly minimal life and I try not to buy stuff I don鈥檛 need.鈥� -Nicole聽
4) 鈥淚 do not hold money in high regards now that I am in a position to do so. The materialistic things 鈥� are not goals. They are not why I work. They are a product of my work and something which I accept and embrace. But they are not the goal. My goal is to achieve something great and change the world.鈥� -Kelly
5) 鈥淭ogether, my wife and I make about $55K.聽 We feel pretty secure where we are because of how we budget, but we just made a 鈥榙ream鈥� budget recently. We went line by line in our current budget and said, 鈥榃hat would be a really comfortable number here?鈥� We didn鈥檛 go too crazy with anything. Before taxes we would need to make $106K.鈥� -Austin
6) 鈥淚 am attempting to cap my Roth IRA contributions every year. I made my $5.5K goal last year, and I intend to do the same this year.鈥� -Chase
7) 鈥淲hen I first left home, I worked and was frugal, and things went well for me and I was happy. Then, as mentioned, I fell into a period of aspiring to an upper-middle-class lifestyle that I just couldn鈥檛 afford. Now I鈥檓 pretty much back to how I was initially.鈥� -Josh
8) 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 realize how quickly money goes until there鈥檚 none of it coming in.鈥� -Andrew
9) 鈥淥ne thing I鈥檝e struggled with is the balance between paying off your outstanding debts and keeping a chunk of money on hand as an emergency fund. There鈥檚 a false sense of security when you keep your savings account padded but you鈥檙e only paying the minimum amount required on your monthly debts. You鈥檒l save more in the long run by paying things off early, but it can be painful and scary doing that.鈥� -April
10) 鈥淥ne of the greatest problems faced by young people in the workforce is that traditional businesses, retail banking in my case, have yet to take into account student debt when setting price points for hiring new employees.聽They prioritize hiring people with degrees but continue to use wages designed to meet the needs of someone with a high school diploma and no appreciable debt.鈥� -Evan
11) 鈥淭he trouble is that what I really want to do is both support myself聽and聽pay off all my debt RIGHT NOW. So that makes me feel financially insecure. If all my debt were wiped away but I earned the same amount of money, I would feel financially secure.鈥� -Nicole
12) 鈥淲hen I was in debt, I always paid at least the minimums, if not more, and I have an excellent credit score to show for it.鈥� -Cait
13) 鈥淚 got myself into trouble with credit cards and personal loans when I was younger and paid more in interest than what I actually spent the money on in the first place. I kept track of the interest, and looking at that number and knowing I could have saved it or invested it is what I regret most.鈥� -Andrew
14) 鈥淎s an adult I鈥檝e tried to be more open about money because I鈥檝e realized that being totally opaque can needlessly complicate your life.鈥� -Evan
15) 鈥淚 think that it鈥檚 perfectly fine and wonderful and necessary to talk openly and frankly about money, because it鈥檚 a problem that every single person has.鈥� -Megan
