One general rule I live by: you should give away what you hold dear, because it is only in giving that it will return to you (and you will appreciate it more when it does!). I'm not a metaphysical believer, but I do think life has a cruel way of reminding you of your pettiness when you least want to hear it. Plus hoarders are unattractive.
Most things, like love or maple syrup or books, are easy to give away. Money....not so much for me. My husband joked when we first started combining finances that he used to be the miser in every situation. Now it's me. Perhaps an inevitable bit of my personality? - the same bit that makes me good at science or planning? (I'll elaborate more on that tomorrow). Whatever propels me to budget and finance and planplanplan has started to rub off on others though, so at least I'm giving something useful away.
Over the last year or so, I have met with four friends with different financial personalities and issues (one still studying, one a homeowner/artist, one young professional working in the non-profit field and the fourth about to move where her boyfriend was going to school). Together we worked on budgets, short-term and long-term goals. I think each of them, during our "session", told me they wished someone had sat down with them ages ago to teach them this stuff (life pie, income potential, interest rates, etc). It got me thinking that my job at the university might be just the right arena to round up willing young souls who might be interested in learning what "prime + 2.25%" actually means.
I held off advertising around campus in the Fall because it isn't until second semester when students really feel the financial pinch. Ideally, it would be a casual round-table discussion on financial vocabulary and basic concepts, where I would steer conversation, chip in with my knowledge and serve donuts. :) Perhaps this week I'll actually book space and make up a poster, something I've been putting off due to vague feelings of "who-do-you-think-you-are-itis". Inferiority complex - pipe the fuck down, I'm just trying to help.
Last January I had 14K in student loans left. After reading a bunch of these personal finance blogs, I excitedly proclaimed 2011 to be the year I cleared all my stupid debt off (!!) I was going to punch my debt in the face too!!
Needless to say, I failed.
January 1st 2012: my balance sat at 4,000. Eight more excruciating months at current payment rate. Gah!
So here's to July 1st, 2012! The day I hopefully kick the last of that debt in the face. Meet me out back behind campus, mo-fo.
2 comments:
Just catching up with the flood of new posts. I imagine you've heard of mint.com but thought I'd mention it anyhow. We've been using it since they started up their Canada site and have found it quite helpful for managing finances. It's an incredibly easy way to pull together all of our accounts and makes it a cinch to budget and track income/spending in various categories. It's also got alerts for large transactions that help you spot when something might be awry.
I haven't worked up the courage yet to know everything THAT well. One day soon.
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