Start Here: Personal Finance Basics for 17 and 57 Year Olds.
Welcome! My goal here is to provide a resource for people who need to learn the basic concepts of financial literacy–the ideal resource for everything many adults wish they had learned when they were seventeen.
But I’m 17. I don’t have any money yet. Why do I need to learn how to manage money before I have any?
Excellent question, Hypothetical Teenager. Did you wait until you got your driver’s license and crashed a car before you decided to learn the basics of driving? Hopefully not. Yet sooooo many people have done exactly this with their finances. They have jobs and debts and household responsibilities for years before they finally realize they should have called a timeout much earlier in adulthood in order to understand the basics of income taxes, credit scores, banking, debt, or how to build wealth. And because they didn’t…their financial position in their thirties and forties looks a lot like a car crash.
The minute you step out from your parents’ umbrella and start being responsible for yourself, guess what? You are managing finances–even if they are just itty, bitty finances for the time being. If you have taken on college debt, they may not even be so itty, bitty. Sometimes, the less money you have, the more carefully you have to manage it to make sure you are using it to build prosperity instead of digging a hole that the older version of you will regret. Wouldn’t you rather get along with the older you? Wouldn’t you rather the older you looks back at seventeen-year-old you and thinks, “Man, I sure had my crap together.”
If I’m 57 and this site is for 17 year olds, am I in the wrong place?
Also an excellent question. If you were out searching the interwebs and landed on this blog, odds are you are not in the wrong place. You may be in the exact regretful situation I’ve described above and looking to clean up your crash site. Or you may just be feeling like you’ve got a few beginner-style questions you never got around to asking and have decided it’s finally time. So if you are 30, 40, or 50, and whether you are cleaning up a mess, brushing up on your financial literacy, or just wondering if there is more you can do to make sure you’re building a prosperous life, hopefully I can offer something here that will be informative and helpful.
WARNING: THERE WILL BE MATH
I feel like I can’t let you continue unless I clarify that A LOT of managing your finances has to do with math. As my family knows, one of my favorite sayings before I make any financial decision is, “Well, let’s run the numbers.” But rest easy, if you can add, subtract, multiply and divide, you can do this math. There is no calculus here. I’m an accountant, not an astrophysicist. So don’t let the math scare you. NOT running the numbers should scare you. Not running the numbers on a financial decision is like putting on a blindfold before you go shopping. The chances you are going to end up with what you need are dangerously low. The chances you will end up leaving the dressing room wearing plaid pants and an ugly Christmas sweater: nearly 100%.
Why are you qualified to give financial advice?
Well, I’m not qualified to give detailed financial advice about everything, but I did graduate with honors when I got my accounting degree and passed my CPA exam on the first sitting. Seriously, though, I am an accountant with more than 20 years of experience in corporate and personal finance. More importantly, as an accountant, I’ve fielded more questions than I can count over the years (from friends and family of all ages) to know there are a lot of finance basics out there that people just aren’t learning: not at home and not in school.
So make today the day you decide: You won’t make any more financial decisions without RUNNING THE NUMBERS, whether that decision is where to cash your very first paycheck, or whether to borrow $100,000 to get an education.
