Many people don’t like to discuss their finances. It’s a “sacred” subject. It’s nobody’s business what you make or what you spend your money on, am I right? Some households don’t even discuss money amongst themselves. Well, maybe that’s the problem! Maybe the reason we don’t talk about money is because we are ashamed of how little we know about it or how to manage it. I didn’t learn about money growing up. I didn’t even learn simple financial principles in high school or college either! So, when we become adults how are we suppose to automatically know how to manage our money!?!

Most everyone coming out of college has debt; you get that first job and start making more money than you’ve ever had before. You want to buy things and go places. Who wouldn’t!?!? But then your student loan grace period ends and you don’t even know how to make ends meet. Both panic and reality set in. Maybe you are angry because nobody warned you! You don’t know what to do or where to even begin! You are overwhelmed and you probably end up doing one of the following three things:

1. Continue on, barely treading water – ignoring your problems will work right?
2. Ask family members to bail you out (in actuality you never learn anything about money)
3. You educate yourself and take control of your finances

Doing any of the above doesn’t make you a horrible person. Many of us have probably tried all three when trying to learn to deal with our finances. Unfortunately only #3 will get us to where we really want to be, and if you’re reading this post, I assume that you are serious about getting ahead or becoming more financially savvy. If not, I hope you see this post as a wake-up call (there’s a little tough love for ya!).

DISCLAIMER: I am no financial guru nor do I have any sort of degree in personal or business finance. The only thing I know is what I’ve read about and taught myself. The only thing I can share with you is what I’ve learned, my personal story, and provide resources that might be able to help you. If you want the best financial advice for your financial situation and a “proper” game plan, find a financial adviser! I’m still figuring things out myself!

So what do I mean when I say we need to be more open when discussing money? Talking about money does NOT mean that you have to share every aspect of your financial situation with everyone else. Nobody expects you to provide all of your financial statements so that we can all sit around the table and read them line-by-line. What I mean when I say “talk about money” is to converse with others about money strategies and concepts and make sure those of you sharing a household are on the same page. With student loans becoming a national crisis, I think we as a society are more open to conversation, but in truth, managing financials isn’t just a “millennial” problem. Here are some crazy real statistics for you:

1. According to one Federal Reserve report 46% of those who responded said they could not cover a $400 emergency expense without selling something or borrowing money
2. According to one study conducted by the American Psychological Association 36% say talking about money makes them uncomfortable and 26% feel stressed about money most of the time
3. One Ameriprise study found that 73% of individuals have money management styles different from their partners and ~31% of all couples disagree about finances at least once per month
4. According to the same Federal Reserve report, 31% of non-retired adults have no retirement savings, with 14% of those being 60 years or older
5. Lastly, the number of consumers 60 years and older with student loan debt has quadrupled over the last 10 years according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Pretty crazy right!?!?!

And the argument that your finances are nobody’s business? It will become someone else’s business eventually! If you don’t take care of them who do you think will? Your debt might eventually become your family’s burden when you are no longer around. Considering the financial state of most Americans, it could be the tipping point of “just getting by” that tailspins into “no way out of this mess”. I don’t think any of us want to drown others in our debt, but it may be a concept you haven’t realized yet.

Not too long ago my husband I were feeling the same crushing stress of being “behind”.  When my husband and I built our house, it was the first house we had ever owned (which I don’t recommend in retrospect). Prior to that we had only rented. When we initially started looking at buying a house, we realized that the cost to buy land and build a brand new house was going to cost about the same. But everything in a new house would be what we picked out. Saving for our first house was actually our first taste of budgeting. Flash forward to closing/move-in day and we had major sediment issues in our water supply, went without hot water for 5 days, and no matter what we did we always had large amounts water pooling in our small backyard due improper excavation. All of this caused us a HUGE amount of stress. While some products come with warranties, not all problems get resolved. We suddenly realized we would need to work a second job consistently and frequently in order to take care of some of the problems around the house before we’d even get to do any landscaping or install a patio (the things we actually wanted to spend our money on). We were definitely naive, but since the house was new we expected perfection. We also didn’t know how to take care of any home maintenance issues, so we were not comfortable with doing any routine work ourselves.

In assessing our finances we knew what we had to do despite it being a difficult decision. If we didn’t already have a budget in place, I don’t know if we would have noticed our issues as early as we did. We didn’t want to work all the time just to pay for a house we couldn’t enjoy. We wanted to be able to take a vacation once in awhile. Ten months after move-in and we were moving out. We settled on a house that was actually more convenient to work for both of us and less expensive. While it was hard at the time to sell our house, the one we worked so hard to design, since moving we haven’t regretted a day.

While we can’t change the past we can certainly learn from our mistakes and carve out an alternative path for our future. We are far from being debt-free (remember those student loans I talked about earlier? – heaping mounds!), but we are able to live comfortably. We knew we had to make a change and we just did it. We sat down and established our short and long-term financial goals then created a plan to accomplish them, all while enjoying a little bit of life as well 🙂 In the past three months we’ve actually accomplished 2 of our 5 short-term goals we’ve set!

I know this may be a rather harsh post, but it’s a rather tough subject that we too often dance around. If you want to become financially independent it starts with the very simple concept of defining your financial goals and constructing a plan to achieve them.