As a woman now in her late 20s who got her first big-girl job at 18 while also navigating college life, I can say there were a lot of firsts as a young adult — and one of the most important ones that nobody prepared us for in school was how to manage our money. I assumed that student loans and credit card debt were just a normal part of life, and that everything would work itself out and fall into place if I just started to make more money. And that couldn’t have been further from the truth!
In most households growing up, money is considered taboo to talk about, leaving young adults to just figure it out on their own. And well, yes, there are so many resources available now to do so, the biggest gap that I see is most of us don’t really know where to start or what questions to even ask to get the financial education we need to create healthy money habits early in our careers.
I set out on my money journey in my early 20s to learn everything I could about how it works mostly because I wanted to buy rental properties and be a full-time real estate investor. As I was reading books and listening to podcasts on buying rental properties, I just naturally started to learn more about money, credit scores and debt in general. However, I know that is not the average person’s path, which is why I have made it my mission over the past couple of years to educate women on how to create those healthy money habits and learn what it means to get started investing, especially as a young adult!
A lesson I had to learn the hard way was if you’re managing money poorly making $50,000 a year, it’s not going to magically get easier if you start making $100,000 a year. Here is what you can do to get started having a healthy relationship with your money:
Get really clear on what your goals are. Where do you see yourself a year from now, or five years from now? Do you have a certain amount of money saved? Are you debt-free? Where do you want to live? Know that it’s okay for this plan to change as time goes on, but it will give you a good starting point for the next step.
Next, it’s time to sit down and see where your money is actually going. This will be huge in helping you create what I call an Aligned Spending Plan. Look back at your past two to three months of expenses and really ask yourself if you’re spending money in alignment with your overall financial goals you laid out in the previous step.
After that, start implementing what I call “weekly money dates.” This is where you spend just a couple of minutes every week looking back at your previous week’s expenses and making sure you are still on track with your aligned spending plan. You know how much money is coming in through your paycheck, so you can pre-allocate how much you are going to set aside for your savings and bills, while leaving the rest for your day-to-day expenses. Doing this every week will give you peace of mind and allow you to course correct faster if needed..
And lastly, the best thing we can all start to do as women is normalize talking about money, so that the generation coming up behind us doesn’t have to go through years of trial and error like most of us did!
Mercedes Collins is a financial coach and the founder of The Abundance Generators Podcast and Membership. It’s her mission to help young women create a healthy relationship with their money, while also learning how to set themselves up for future financial success.
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