Managing Money

“Whether you think you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right”
-Henry Ford

Why do you need to learn managing money better? Because proper money management can lead to so many good things in life. Truly, good skills managing your money can be the difference between spending your life in a wage slave misery, with ends never meeting, or financial freedom. It’s your choice. But “I don’t have enough money, don’t have a good enough job and never will” you say. Then you won’t. Easy, go sit on the couch and choose to avoid change.

Here’s my challenge. Learn to manage your money better and see if you feel better about your every day life. If you don’t feel better, go back to your old habits and let your ineptitude overcome you. If you do feel better, enjoy the feeling and use that feeling to propel you towards creating the life you want instead of the life that you fell into. Like anything else, managing money is a skill that you can learn with practice.

Eventually you’ll improve at it, and at some point, maybe even enjoy it. It may sound strange, but I actually enjoy paying bills. Yeah, I know, run for the hills, the woman enjoys paying bills. But in reality, I view bill paying like cleaning the kitchen. It is a chore yes, but the results are easy to achieve, and if you keep it relatively clean to begin with, you won’t be overtaken with dirty dishes every time you enter the room.

Managing money is like that. The better you do it, and the more you pay attention to it, the nicer your life runs and the better you feel.

The word “budget” has that sick ring to it. To me it sounds like a lot of willpower investment and internal battling. I don’t know anyone who really enjoys budgeting. This is why you should check out my article on how to make a budget how to make a budget. I ascribe to the minimalist school of budgeting (what? that exists?? check it out here ).

Once your budget is in place, it should run effortlessly in the background. Sound impossible? Its not. The reason is automation. First, figure out how much you already spend on things. Then set some goals for future spending. Next, you structure your bill payments and accounts around trying to make that process run as smoothly as possible while saving money at the same time. Over time, you don’t even notice the money that you have been putting aside automatically, or miss that extra DVD that you didn’t buy because it wasn’t on the list.

How do you learn managing money better? Read and practice. Once you set up your budget, read about what other people recommend. Take a look at my list of books on personal finance for a place to start. Once you have six good months of managing your money well under your belt, then start learning about investing.

Start looking for ways to invest your stash so that it grows and eventually supports you, which is what you are playing for. In the beginning, managing money is the tool by which you achieve this glorious situation. Education and experience is how you achieve good money management skills.

Make your financial education a high priority. Try to find ways to make it fun. Read authors who write in an interesting style like Suze Orman and Dave Ramsay. Don’t settle for ho-hum encyclopedic books that make you fall asleep. There is a lot written about personal finance and some of it is wonderful.

Some good blogs to look at are The Simple Dollar and Get Rich Slowly. Both of these websites have a good take on personal finance and provide a lot of interesting insights.

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