At the Fiscal Femme we believe that financial mistakes or missteps are all part of the process of getting better with money. Why? We’re not born knowing ‘how to money’ 🤑 and very few of us learn money skills until well into adulthood.
At the same time, whether we’re budgeting, investing or making a plan to pay down debt, it’s much better to get started than to wait until we know everything. Enter #FinancialFailFridays.
When we do get a credit card, it doesn’t come with a manual or even any directions. And considering they can change the financial trajectory of our lives for the worse (or much worse), that’s a big problem.
Understanding how credit cards work can help us make informed decisions. You know . . . knowledge is power and all that.
One of the jargon phrases that often gets thrown around in the personal finance world is net worth. Sometimes it’s not mentioned explicitly but when someone says the word “millionaire” or “billionaire,” they are referring to someone’s net worth.
So how do we calculate our net worth? What does net worth mean? It’s actually a very simple equation - it’s a total of what we own minus a total of what we owe. I’ve put together a Net Worth Tracker to make it as easy as possible for you to calculate your net worth and keep track of it going forward. You can also create your own spreadsheet or just write it down - whatever is easiest for you.
In January, I love to outline my financial goals for the year. Once I know what I want to accomplish for the year, I can then break my goals down by quarter, by month, and by week to help keep me on track.
Things always change and my goals have to adjust, but this initial mapping out of my goals serves as a guide for my goals for the rest of the year. It’s also really fun and exciting to dream about what I want.
And we’re back with part #2 of the results from the Fiscal Femme Anonymous Money Survey. If you missed it, here’s part #1. This time we’re talking about your systems and accounts.
While many of you shared your favorite apps (I’ll give you a rundown below), a great deal of you were also looking for recommendations. Stay tuned!
Over the past nine years (the Fiscal Femme had it’s 9th birthday on March 2nd!), I’ve been creating resources to help you succeed in your financial life and reach your goals. And we provide many of them for free.
Here’s a roundup of my favorite free resources. Whether you are new to the Fiscal Femme or you just missed a few of these golden nuggets, I’ve compiled them for you here in one place.
New Year, fresh start. It’s a time when many of us make new and exciting goals, including goals around our money. Yet, even with the best of intentions, as the month of January rolls on, many abandon their goals.
Study after study shows that most people give up on their New Year’s resolutions by the end of January or early February. That’s not what we want!
In theory we all want to earn more money, right? Who doesn’t? But sometimes we have deep seated beliefs about money that keep us from doing so.
If we grew up being told that having money is greedy or we saw people gain wealth and become selfish, it makes sense we wouldn’t want to have much of it. Who wants to be greedy or selfish?
It might sound funny, but you have a relationship with money just like you have a relationship with anything else. It’s how you interact with and relate to money.
Our relationship with money is created over time and can be influenced by many factors. We are guided by how our parents interacted with money. We’re also shaped by mentors, teachers, friends, our experiences, and society as a whole.
One of the most important parts of your financial plan is your goals. In order to find clarity and reduce our guilt around our spending, we have to have clear goals. That means knowing how much we need for each goal, by when we will achieve it, as well as which goal comes first.
Is it more important to me to pay off ALL of my student loans before saving for my future home? Do I want to aggressively save for retirement (and retire early!) or take an extra vacation each year?
