Finance

Let’s face it. We have all made financial mistakes. Whether you once carelessly spent money on useless trinkets while on vacation or bought a house at the peak market price only to have it drop in value like a rock, financial mistakes hurt. They hurt a lot.

I remember receiving a brand new Velcro wallet for Christmas one year when I around 10 years old. There was a place for paper money as well as coins. If I were to sum up this wonderful new wallet in one word, I would choose “Amazing.” In this amazing wallet was money I had received from my aunts and uncles and grandparents. A total of $38 in paper money was in the wallet plus some change. After Christmas was over, we took one of my older brothers to the airport so he could fly back home. He was looking to purchase a newspaper. Since I wealthy beyond measure with my $38 cash money, I offered to buy the paper for him.

At the newspaper stand, I took out my wallet and opened it. This yielded the unmistakeable Velcro sound so everyone in the concourse knew I was opening my treasure chest. I chose the coins necessary to buy the paper and then placed the wallet on top of the newspaper stand so I could have both hands free to purchase the paper.

With newspaper purchase complete, I walked away – leaving my wallet on top of the newspaper stand.

You can probably guess what happened next: I soon discovered my error and raced back to find my wallet. I found it, but the money was gone. What a terrible and awful feeling it was!

Financial mistakes have a way of making us feel really low. This leads to any number of negative feelings: despair, depressed, frustration, desperation, anger, embarrassed, humiliated, confused, and ignorant.

In this series, I will be addressing some of the most common financial mistakes people make. We will talk about each mistake, its consequences, and how to recover from it.

The good news is you can recover from a financial mistake. It took several weeks, but I recovered from my lost Velcro wallet. And my huge credit card balance. And my student loans. And my furniture loan. And my engagement/wedding ring loan.

You can do this!

NOTE: If you have a particular type of financial mistake you want to make sure we include in this series, please fill out the CONTACT FORM and tell us about it.

Read the entire series (available after 8/10/2014)

Welcome to the latest series at the wildly popular JosephSangl.com – “How To Destroy Your Finances”

In this series, I will be sharing methods proven to cause financial pain and agony. Use these methods if you want to live with piles of stress and harm your relationships.

Part Five   Let Your Feelings Drive All Of Your Financial Decisions

When all else fails to destroy your finances, employ this method. After all, your feelings are always correct, right? I mean, there was that time you felt that one person was really awesome and wanted to date them and they turned out to be a terrible monster, but that was just a one time error. Your feelings should absolutely come first when it comes to finances. Employ Nike’s slogan: Just Do It. When you were thinking about saving some money, go ahead with your feeling to go shopping. When you wanted to go to Human Resources to set up your retirement plan contributions, go ahead with your feeling to go out with your friends.

Go ahead and date the person who has piles of debt and two bankruptcies. I’m sure they were telling the truth when they say it was all someone else’s fault. Even though your friends are telling you how awesome a budget is working for them, let your feelings of inadequacies force you to remain quiet instead of asking them to help you with your own budget.

When the salesperson says you look good in it – buy it. When you don’t want to eat the groceries in the fridge, just go out to eat every meal.

Your feelings rule.

Of course, if you don’t want to destroy your finances, you would prepare a budget (get free budget tools here) and automate the important things so you won’t have to rely on “feeling like it” for the things you know are important – like college savings, emergency savings, investments for retirement, and exciting things like Christmas and property taxes.

Welcome to the latest series at the wildly popular JosephSangl.com – “How To Destroy Your Finances”

In this series, I will be sharing methods proven to cause financial pain and agony. Use these methods if you want to live with piles of stress and harm your relationships.

Part Four   Never Save Money.

This is a GREAT way to destroy your finances. Choose to ignore the fact that life happens, and it will cost money. Ignore the fact that your car tires and brakes are wearing out. Spend all of your money as soon as possible. Buy a Chia Pet. Refuse to acknowledge that appliances will break, the roof will leak, and that you will have a doctor bill one day. Live in a fairy land where the school never sends home fundraisers, you never have a need for emergency travel, or work doesn’t lay you off.

Instead, comfort yourself with lies like, “I just don’t make enough money to save.” Ignore when crazy finance people (like the ridiculous FIRED UP Joseph Sangl) say things like: “You can not PROSPER if you do not SAVE.”

Blame your failure to save on other people and things. It’s your employer’s fault for paying you too little. It’s your kids fault for continuing to grow. It’s your landlord’s fault for not insulating the house. It’s GOT to be someone else’s fault because if it isn’t, then it might be your fault. And we all know that ain’t isn’t possible.

Whatever you do, just spend it all. Live for the moment. We’ll deal with the stress later.

Of course, if you don’t want to destroy your finances, you will choose to save some money every single time you are paid. Even better, you would automate your savings into a great savings account.

Welcome to the latest series at the wildly popular JosephSangl.com – “How To Destroy Your Finances”

In this series, I will be sharing methods proven to cause financial pain and agony. Use these methods if you want to live with piles of stress and harm your relationships.

Part Three   Don’t Invest – Retirement Is Too Far Away Anyway

When offered a company match for your retirement savings plan (401(k), RSP, 403(b), TFSA, IRA, Roth IRA, etc), refuse it. You need that extra money for your budget spending right now. Say things like, “I don’t ever plan to retire anyhow” and “I’ll make my kids take care of me.”

Choose to remain ignorant in the ways of investing and how compound interest works. Use the wonderful excuse, “Investing is just too confusing.” You only have $100 to invest each month, anyway. What difference could that money really make?

Rely on the lottery as your best chance of retirement. Demand an inheritance from your parents. Better yet, continually hit them up for money right now. If they don’t immediately comply, use the “guilt trip” approach. When your siblings approach you about your leech behavior, become outraged and tell them, “You just don’t understand how hard it is for me.” And, of course, when mom and dad do give you money, don’t you dare invest it. AB-SO-LUTE-LY do not do this! To properly destroy your finances (and relationships), spend it on something ridiculous like an original VCR.

Of course, if you don’t want to destroy your finances, you will invest some of what you earn each paycheck. You will choose to lasso the power of compound interest that makes $100 per month for 40 years at 12% annual growth equal $1,176,477. You might even look at my current list of investments as a starting point for your investment strategy.

Welcome to the latest series at the wildly popular JosephSangl.com – “How To Destroy Your Finances”

In this series, I will be sharing methods proven to cause financial pain and agony. Use these methods if you want to live with piles of stress and harm your relationships.

Part Two   Use Your Credit Card To “Fill In The Gaps”

When you run out of money, pull out a credit card and swipe away. This is a great way to destroy your finances. Put daily living expenses like groceries and utilities on the credit card. Instead of making the difficult decisions necessary to balance your budget to Exactly Zero ™, just finance the difference. Besides, putting $254.78 on the credit card this month isn’t so bad, right?

Be sure to carry a balance each month with the highest interest rates possible – preferably a department store credit card with interest rates above 20%. Make the minimum payment and continue to run up the balance. Plus, the department store receipt says you “saved” money today which means you are obviously a savvy shopper.

If you really want to maximize the destruction, obtain multiple credit cards and use one card to pay the payment on another one. Flipping the balances between cards feels like you are doing something to address your financial situation – and we all know that our feelings should drive our financial situations.

Of course, if you don’t want to destroy your finances, you will prepare a balanced budget and refuse to carry a credit card balance. If you did have a credit card balance, you would roll it over to a 0% balance transfer credit card and pay it off while paying no interest.