The basic fundamentals about money and personal finance
SMB meticulously watches most of the episodes of real housewives of (fill in your city). Been living in the same room, I also get to see and listen to those housewives most of the times she watches.
Usually evenings are my most productive blog time when I shut myself off from work and everything else earthly, to concentrate on reading and writing. It distracts me a lot when I see a lady buying wig for her dog.
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How many times have you begged your partner to get better at managing the family finances, only to have her/him roll eyes, shrug shoulders and beg off being capable of handling such responsibility? It happens all too often between couples. One manages the money the other mostly takes care of the household business, for lack of better word.
In our home, I am the financial decision maker, SMB doesn’t have much interest in knowing our tax bills or investment returns.
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When I first started earning money it was 2000, I was in India. I straightaway jumped for stocks and within a year my invested amount lost half of its value. Poor stock picking coupled with burst of the dot com bubble taught me what not to do with money when you are a beginner. Since then I committed many mistakes, at the same time, I did things that worked very well for me.
A few of the mutual funds I bought between 2003 and 2005 got almost tripled its value before I sold them off. I had mentored people towards their first investing since then, A little disclaimer, I am not financial expert and don’t take my advice for granted, consult with someone you trust before taking any of the steps I mentioned below. The following ideas are lessons I learned with my life and lives of the people (at work and within family) who came to me for advice.
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Effectively managing financial institution accounts is equally important as saving money and investing money. Still we don’t usually put much attention to the managing side of personal finance. We concentrate mostly on saving money, opening new investment accounts, saving for retirement and diversifying income, etc.
As a blogger, I haven’t written a single post emphasizing this important need, to of keep track of your money, so far. Long back, I wrote about managing money like a Shepherd, and knowing every details about it. I also wrote about how do I track my net worth and watch them grow but, that was it.
As a blogger you receive advertisement/guest post offers from debt consolidation firms. I do receive their pitches regularly. People, in general, think debt consolidation companies are bad, they are loan sharks. Fact is, it’s partially true, they are as bad as credit card companies, if you learn to use them they’ll be helpful ladder for you for coming out of debt.
But, this sector is not as much regulated as the credit card sector so, there are bad companies who adopt fraudulent tactics, giving bad names to debt consolidation industry in general.
If you follow general guidelines, you can take maximum advantage from these debt consolidation companies. Otherwise if you let loose, you may be ruined. Basically debt consolidation companies work with certain principles, that you should consolidate all your debts in to one single and bigger chunk to better manage them.
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