Live Below Your Means

Learn to live below your means. Ideally, try to follow the 70/10/10/10 budget or as close as you can reasonably get. This means looking at your monthly after tax take home pay and multiplying it by 0.7, then adjust ALL of your expenses to fall within that 70%. The 10/10/10 is 10% towards short term savings (savings account or money market), 10% towards long term savings (roth, 401k, stocks, real estate, etc.), and 10% towards debt paydown. If you build your lifestyle around spending every cent of your paycheck, you will never be able to save and invest and will always find yourself in financial stress. I learned this lesson way too late in my life. The earlier in your life that you can learn to budget with less than you earn, and to save and invest the rest, the better off you will be in long run.

FINANCE AND BUDGETING