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Five Things to Do NOW For Your Financial FUTURE
Your new financial foundation
Disclaimer: This is not a “get rich quick” post. Also, if you’re looking for extensive or advanced investment or money management advice, this post is not for you. This post is meant to serve as a blueprint for fundamental money habits that will help you work towards fiscal harmony.
These five things alone might not make you rich, but they can put you on a path toward wealth.
This post is rather long. If you’d like, you can skip to the summary. Otherwise, please read on! At the end I also share various books, talks and people on social media to follow that I think are great when it comes to finances.
Over the last few years, I have been trying to expand my knowledge pertaining to personal finance, budgeting, investing, and just having a more progressive relationship with money.
With the recent purchase of a new home, being money mindful is critical for my wife and I — now more than ever.
Through my research, I’ve come across some great books, talks, and bits of information related to personal finance. In this post, I will go over what I think are the five most influential (and relatively simple) philosophies that I’ve gleaned from all of these sources.
The first one I want to talk about is arguably the most important as it feeds into the rest of the other five. If any one of these exemplifies a financial foundation, it is this one.
The 80/20 Rule
The first thing you can do to improve your financial present (and future) is follow the 80/20 rule. Basically, this means that you allocate 80% (or 80 cents of every dollar) of your monthly income towards spending.
This can include your rent, car payments, groceries, credit cards, etc.
As for the other 20% (or 20 cents per dollar), that is for you. You can either save it, donate it, invest, what have you — anything but regular spending.
What I like to do is “pay myself first” every month.
I find this principle so important that I dedicated an entire post just to this principle. Check it…
