Consumerist.<\/a><\/p>\nIt\u2019s great to reflect back on your past to ensure that you learn from mistakes, but\u00a0you can cut yourself some slack sometimes too. The\u00a0positives aren\u2019t discussed\u00a0nearly enough.<\/p>\n
Even though I didn’t have a lot of money, I had a few good financial habits\u00a0that I am grateful I learned and have maintained:<\/p>\n
The Discretionary Spending Budget<\/h3>\n
At 18, I wanted to go to shopping in Seattle with my best friend.\u00a0I had just received my first car as a graduation gift from my mom and the world was my oyster. The car was my mom\u2019s old vehicle and it served me well for a couple of years until it went kaputz.<\/p>\n
Thankfully I didn\u2019t have a credit card yet, so the only conceivable way that I could go shopping in Seattle was to save up my earnings from my jobs at the local mall.<\/p>\n
This is when I discovered the \u201cdiscretionary spending\u201d budget.<\/p>\n
Every time I was paid, I split my paycheque into three parts: I paid the bills with the first portion, took a portion of it out for discretionary spending, and the rest went into a savings account which I would later take out for shopping in Seattle.<\/p>\n
With the discretionary spending portion, I was able to go for dinners, to the movies, or wherever my young heart desired as long as it was within that amount. I realize that shopping in Seattle is also discretionary spending, but I was 17, so bear with me.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t grown into my frugality at this point, so the discretionary spending budget was ridiculously high. The principle behind my idea was good, though.<\/p>\n
Never mind that my savings was for something ridiculous like shopping.<\/p>\n
The Number Crunching Phase<\/h3>\n
I still love to number crunch. I discovered my love of number crunching when I was bored in class during my first and second year of college. Instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing (i.e. listening to the professor), I attacked a sheet of paper with a pencil and my calculator.<\/p>\n
I crunched numbers to find out how much I\u2019d be able to save if I got rid of this or that expense; how much I could earn if I got a second job; how much I would save over the course of a year if I went out to the bar\u00a0less often.<\/p>\n
I found crumpled sheets of paper in the bottom of various bags and pockets for months after that.<\/p>\n
This is the period during which I had many \u201cah-ha\u201d moments about money. Numbers don\u2019t lie and the knowledge that I could potentially go on a month long trip by cutting back on eating out once per week over the course of the year was an exhilarating thought.<\/p>\n
The Daily Review<\/h3>\n
Unfortunately I have moved away from this awesome money behaviour in the past year or so, but during one particularly trying period of a few months in my late teens, I got into the habit of tracking my financial position every single day. I\u2019d log on to my online banking, check my credit card balances and just generally get a sense of where I sat. Every single dollar counted. It still does, but a $15 dinner out could easily put me behind on a bill back then.<\/p>\n
This was a financial habit that is good to get into. I tweeted<\/a> the other day about how I got dinged with a fee from my credit card balance being over limit.<\/p>\nThankfully, the credit card company was good about removing the fee for me as it was due to a delay in my lump sum payment, but I might not have noticed if it wasn\u2019t the end of the month (when I do my review), and wouldn’t have been able to ask for the refund.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s nice to look back and not be completely ashamed of the habits\u00a0of your younger years. We all make mistakes, especially with money, and especially as a young adult, but it can’t be all bad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve always loved number crunching when it comes to the green stuff. As a teenager working at my part-time after school job, I would often read the money section of the newspaper on my breaks, and I loved playing around with whatever financial calculators I could find. This is when I started reading personal finance …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[231],"tags":[95],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n