How to Take Control of Your Financial Future

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Day 7: Face Your Finances Series

This post is part of the Face Your Finances series. You can achieve financial freedom sooner rather than later. You don’t have to settle for a life of debt, financial overwhelm, and living paycheck to paycheck. Don’t let your current financial situation make financial freedom feel impossible. It’s time to reclaim control and face your finances!

Today is the last day in the Face Your Finances series. We’ve gone over so many important topics relating to personal finances. In case you missed any, here are the past 6 posts. I recommend that you do the lessons in these posts first and then come back to this one!

Day 1: How to Do a Financial Inventory With Your Money
Day 2: How to Understand Your Spending in 3 Easy Habits
Day 3: How to Face Your Credit Card Debt in 5 Easy Steps
Day 4: How to Start a Budget You Actually Stick To
Day 5: How to Save Money Like a Pro
Day 6: 17 Way to Increase Your Income

Before I wrap up this series of posts, I want to set you up with some final tips on how you can take control of your financial future.

The truth is, the only person who can take control of your financial future is you.

Financial security, independence, and stability are truly invaluable and necessary for your life. While these past few days of facing your finances might have been challenging for you, it’s an awesome set up for your financial success.

In today’s lesson we are going to talk about how to take control of your financial future with 6 easy-to-follow tips:

Know the value of your time
Beware of the interest rates
Ignore the Joneses
Save for large purchases
Investing
Have fun

Here are some extremely helpful tips on how to take control of your financial future.

1. Know the Value of Your Time

Saving money might not seem exciting, especially since you worked 40 hours a week for your paycheck. Why not just go and spend all your money on partying and shopping?

Well, have you ever taken the time to figure out your worth? Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you make $15.00 an hour and go out with friends and spend $120.00. That’s 8 hours of work.

Is it worth it? Not always. If you wanted to buy an item of clothing that costs $45.00, that’s three hours of work.

Is it worth it? You’re not just going to work to get a paycheck. You are giving up your time. Time is valuable and is something you can’t get back. That’s why you need to know your worth.

2. Beware of Interest Rates

When making any purchase on a credit card, or when taking out any loans, assess the interest rates. Interest rates can seriously cost you down the line.

The longer you have a balance on your credit card, or the longer you have a loan, the more money you will pay in the long run. The lower the interest rate, the better.

3. Ignore the Joneses

Who are the Joneses and why do we have to keep up with them?

Well, the Joneses are an imaginary family who magically has everything you ever wanted. They have the best cars, gadgets, clothes, vacations, and appearances. So, why do we want to keep up with them? Easy, it’s the fear of missing out (FOMO).

How many times have you or a friend gotten a new phone when it wasn’t time to upgrade? What about keeping up with expensive fashion trends, or buying specific name brands you can’t really afford?

The problem with keeping up with the Joneses is that we will always be one step behind. After all, they are an imaginary family that has everything we have ever wanted in life.

But with social media, the Joneses have materialized into influencers who never repeat outfits, high school friends who seem to always be on vacation, and people who have new everything even though they probably don’t have jobs.

It’s easy to want to keep up and fit in. But, financially, it’s not worth it. If your phone is in good condition, it’s probably not worth it to buy a new one. If your closet is jammed packed with clothes, just window shop and save your money.

Trust me, it’s not worth it to spend all your money trying to uphold an image because you’re afraid of missing out.

4. Save for Large Purchases

Instead of being credit card happy, or splurge happy, save for large purchases. The less debt you rack up, the better. Saving for a big purchase may not be easy because it requires self-control and consistency.

However, in the long run, you will feel better knowing that you paid for your purchase with money you have, not with money you don’t yet have. This also saves you money because no interest is involved.

Recommended: 25 Easy Ways to Save Money

5. Investing

No matter what age you are, what kind of job you have, or how much money you make, you should be investing in some way even if it is investing back into yourself. Everyone should at the very least have a retirement plan.

If your job doesn’t have one set up for you, open a Roth IRA and place money into it for the purpose of saving for your retirement. Some other ways to invest are in the stock market.

There are plenty of apps that make it really easy to invest in the market. Do a bit of research to find what works best for you.

6. Don’t Forget to Have Fun

You work hard for your many. Don’t get so caught up that you forget to take a vacation or treat yourself to something you want to do. While money doesn’t buy happiness, it does buy experiences.

Experiences are priceless.

This is officially the end of the free Face Your Finances course. I hope that during these past seven days you were able to take an honest look at your finances and get yourself set up to take control of your financial freedom.

In case you missed it, check out all 7 days of the Fae Your Finances series: