Personal Finance Basics: Step 1

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How to Quit Complaining About Having No Money

Money is something that needs to be managed. Whether you make minimum wage or well over six figures, you must understand how to manage your income if you ever expect any of it to hang around.

The first order of business in managing your finances is to understand when, where, and how much money flows into, and out of, your life. To solve this mystery, first begin with finding out where you spend your money, on average, every month. It is imperative to understand where you money ends up at the end of every month so you can begin to identify how you can keep more of it around!

At the end of most months, most Americans have little to no disposable income. In the present situation, most of us are actually able to spend more than we earn thanks to the world of creditors and financing.

However, there might just be hope for you yet.

Ponder the following: if you are over the age of 30, you likely have already had more money pass through your life than you realize. Don't believe me? Take a look at this example:

• Consider that the poverty line for those under 65 is just above $12,000 in the United States for a single individual which rounds down to about $10,000 in take-home pay after taxes. Even with a measly $10,000/yr pay, an individual would have $470,000 in total lifetime earnings (starting work at age 18 and ending at age 65). To further emphasize the point, this person never even got a single raise in our example!

Chances are, most of you make more than just $10k per year. Where has it all gone?

Consider that he average single individual income is just north of $56,000 (according to 2015 US Census data). So how much money does a person making an average of $56,000 earn in their lifetime? Answer: $2.2 million by the age of 65.

Where does all the money go?

"In one hand, out the other" typifies money management in the United States. Worse yet, many are spending well beyond our earnings as evidenced by the $8,398 credit card balance of the average American.

Perhaps you find yourself in the same situation. Somewhere along the ride you decided keeping more of your income was not all that important. You may have decided a new car, new clothes, a brand-new house were all worth having savings in the "slim to none" category.

You may have decided that it was more important to own something, rather than own your own life. Your decisions make the indentured servitude of regular "nine to five" employment a guaranteed certainty until you meet an early grave. 

You are responsible for this. Not your neighbor, Not your brother. Not a divorce. Not the weather. Not your injured knee. Not that tree that fell on your uninsured home. It's your fault. End of story.

Why do we need the pressure of it being "our fault"? Because by assuming it is your fault, then you can begin to understand that you are the one responsible for changing it. Life happens to all of us. Unexpected expenses will continue to come. They do not end and they come at the worst time. Even innocent expenses like birthdays, holidays, baptisms, wedding, you name it, will continue to come at the most inopportune time. This is life my friend. 

I take the extreme "my fault" approach to money management because it carries with it a zero-tolerance policy for excuses. Excuses are wasted energy. They rarely, if ever, do anything to change the actual situation at hand. Excuses are a coping mechanism that are designed to make you feel better about why you are not doing better. They are also used to help explain to other people why you aren't doing better in the hopes they won't judge you (trust me, they still are judging you anyway).

In the words of the late Jim Rohn, "Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better".

While the lifetime earning numbers that we calculated above might be very impressive (especially if you make more money than the example I provided), you may actually find that you are spending more than your annual after-tax income. 

To make the examples above more accurate, use your actual tax returns from previous years and add up what you have made in your lifetime (note: if you need these but don't have them, visit the IRS Website's "Get Transcript" page to learn how much earnings have been reported on your behalf to date) . This can be a very enlightening exercise, good or bad. If nothing else, it should merely demonstrate how little awareness you have about how much money you actually have made. 

The concept of calculating your lifetime earnings is a great place to start to introduce you to your income and create a visual of how well (or poorly) you have managed it throughout your lifetime. It is an important first step to understanding how to manage your money.

*If you would like greater depth on the concept of lifetime earnings, take a look at Your Money or Your Life by Viki Robbin.

Where To Start If You Want to Improve Your Money Management Skills...

Choose one of the following to get started:

Calculate Your Net Worth (assets minus liabilities)

• ​​There are many net worth calculators and videos tutorials online. I take the simple approach of using assets - liabilities = net worth

OR
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Calculate Your Lifetime After-Tax Earnings - for increased accuracy, use the IRS Website for attaining prior transcripts of your tax returns​

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You must begin this journey knowing where you are so that you can figure out where you want to go. All directions require a starting point.  

If you insist that you never have enough money, start by looking at where your money actually goes. I don't mean simply looking at your checking account every other week, I mean look at your longer term trends. If someone is 200 pounds overweight, it would be wrong to assume that only last week was to blame for this situation. We need to look at things longer-term. 

Pick one of the above, and get started. Increasing your net worth can literally be as simple as gaining a deeper understanding of your personal financial snapshot. Just knowing how much money flows into your life (lifetime earning) or simply understanding how much you have saved in your lifetime (part of net worth), you can begin to identify areas where you require significant input (expenses, savings, tax efficiency, retirement accounts, investing, etc.).

In Closing

Part 1 concludes with encouraging you to understand where you are starting from. Two choices:

• Calculate your net worth or
• Calculate your lifetime after-tax earnings.

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Regardless, you decide. 

Personal Finance 101:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3