Things You Need to Know About Money
Few things affect your quality of life more than financialliteracy.
The basics go well beyond being able to open up a bankaccount or get a job. They entail knowing how to make a wide variety of
financial decisions throughout your life. Understanding and applying these
financial basics to the money you earn is likely to make you wealthy. Not
having a grasp of them can leave you in a perpetual financial bind. Here are
the 10 essential financial basics:
In today's world of credit, it's vital to understand creditcard basics. Credit cards can be an asset or a liability depending on how you
use them.
Learning the basics of how credit cards work -- and how you
can use them to your advantage, while not using them when they aren't to your
advantage -- is one of the most important financial lessons that you can master
to ensure that your finances stay in order.
To grasp the full potential and power of investing, you need
to understand how compound interest works and what it can do over time. Save
$150 a month (approx $5 a day) without compound interest, and in 30 years
you'll have $54,000.
Save the same amount with a return of 9% compounded interest
and you'll have nearly $275,000 after the same 30 years. When you understand
the fundamentals of compound interest and time working together, you see how
saving even small amounts for your retirement years can have a huge effect.
8. Risk
When it comes to finances and trying to grow the money you have,
there will always be risk involved. Understanding that risk is part of
investing, and you can greatly increase your wealty by taking calculated risks
to correspond with different points in your. At the same time, being too risk
adverse or taking huge risks with your money in an attempt to get rich quick
will likely leave you retirement-poor.
7. Retirement Vehicles
The government provides a number of retirement vehicles that
allow you to invest with tax advantages to encourage you to save money for your
retirement. These include 401(k)s and IRAs, which can mean the difference
between not being able to retire and retiring in the lifestyle you desire.
Understanding how these tools work to your benefit and taking advantage of them
to save money tax-free is an essential part of basic financial literacy.
6. Index Funds
When it comes to investing, the first and most basic
strategy you need to understand is stock index funds. Over time, you will need
to learn many other aspects of investing, but understanding stock index funds
is the first fundamental part of using the stock market to grow wealth.
It is a simple and cost-efficient way to get into the stock
market when you may not have a lot of money or time to spend on investing, but
it allows you to take full advantage of the compound interest discussed above.
5. Housing and Mortgage
It is important to understand the basics of housing and how
mortgages work. For all of those who have been caught in the subprime mortgage
crisis, this is one crucial financial lesson that they had not learned.
As the number of different mortgages available to borrowers
increases, understanding how these new mortgages work becomes even more
essential. It's important to remember that housing prices don't always go up,
and that you need to make sure that mortgage debt is not only affordable on a
monthly basis, but also affordable over the life of the mortgage loan.
4. Depreciating Assets
Not everything you purchase is an investment, and it's
therefore important to understand the difference between an appreciating asset
and a depreciating asset.
Many of the things that people buy, such as cars, will
decrease in value over time. That does not mean that they are bad purchases to
make, as they can be an important factor in your overall earning potential.
However, it does mean you should be purchasing these at the best price you can
and not buying more than you actually need.
By understanding whether a purchase is likely to appreciate
or depreciate over time, you can use this information to your advantage by
buying a three- to five-year-old used car, for example.
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