Welcome to Financial Literacy Month! No, it’s not an April Fools Joke! In 2003, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives designated April as “Financial Literacy Month.” How are you going to improve your finances during this month? Can you make a lasting change to alter the future of your finances?
Everyone deals with money, all the time: earning it, saving it, spending it, investing it and borrowing it. How do you manage your finances? How should you manage your finances? No two individuals or families will have the exact same goals, but the path to get to those goals will be similar for many. We are going to kick off Financial Literacy Month focused on expenses, but we will set it up differently than you might expect.
Let’s start with a thoughtful, but easy exercise. Go get a pen and paper or use your phone or computer. If you have a spouse or significant other, try to do this with them, but each of you should make your own lists and then compare with them when you are done. So here is the exercise:
*** Make a list of the top 10 things you want to do for the rest of your life. This can be experiences, places to visit, or even things you want to own. Essentially, write the top 10 on your Bucket List. ***
So what does your list look like? How many ‘things’ are on it? Is it mostly experiences and travel? Does your list include the house of your dreams or a car you’ve always wanted?
My list consists only of travel:
- Machu Picchu
- Alaska – See the glaciers and National Parks.
- Singapore
- Yellowstone National Park
- Athens
- China – Visit the Great Wall and Beijing
- Visit the Taj Mahal
- Lake Victoria and Victoria Falls
- Istanbul
- Italy – Rome, Florence, Venice
If your list consists of mostly experiences and travel, does that match how you spend your money? Are your spending habits helping you get closer to accomplishing your ‘Bucket List’? How can you change your spending habits? What are you going to do to make your ‘Bucket List’ dreams come true? In the next few posts, we will start to break down expenses and tackle ways to cut your expenses.
What was on your list? Feel free to share! Also, don’t get rid of your list. Keep it somewhere easily accessible, so you can refer to it as a reminder when you are cutting out ‘small’ things you want in order to achieve the ‘big’ things you want to do.
If you didn’t get a chance to read it, I touched on this topic in one of my first posts, “Money and Your Life.”
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