While you can’t change your history with money, you can learn from your financial debacles to build a new life. Instead of viewing the past as a series of blunders, as one financial mistake after another, consider mining the lessons learned from making them. Use this firsthand information to influence how you will handle money in the future.
Regret over the past won’t serve you. But rather than trying to forget it–and desperately hoping for life to give you a lucky break–take the time to review the reasons behind your current financial problems.
Think about why you made poor investments. Ruminate over erroneous decisions. Reflect on how you’ve mishandled your money. Once you’re done, forgive yourself and others. Then, resolve to start fresh and determine what you can do now to change based on all the painful life lessons you’ve experienced.
The story of rags to riches is common. What is less well-known is the painful rumination that the heroes of these stories went through to learn from their mistakes and correct them. The late J.B. Hunt is a classical example of a rags-to-riches story. In 1961, J.B. Hunt failed miserably in his rice hull business, but he decided to learn from his mistakes. Consequently, before the end of that decade, in 1969, he started a trucking business that gradually developed into a vast trucking empire.
So, although it’s difficult to mull over your past mistakes, it can be educational. Identify your biggest financial failure and determine the reasons for your mistakes. With that in mind, here are some suggestions on how to get good at making and managing money:
Simplify Your Budget With Debt Consolidation
If you pay a lot of bills and have high debt, you’ll appreciate the benefits of debt consolidation. This is a debt-restructuring method that can help you turn things around by simplifying your budget.
In these tough days during the pandemic, many Delaware residents have had to rely on their credit cards to substitute for their lost income. Many of them struggle to pay off their balance in full and, as a result, their level of personal debt rose.
MalloyLending.com focuses on helping Delawareans get back on their feet. Their loan process is quick, simple, and efficient. The company has a solid reputation for ensuring customer satisfaction and success and you can follow them on Facebook to learn more about how loan consolidation can help you.
Use Your Credit Cards Properly
People often view credit cards with suspicion and blame their plastic cards for their financial problems.
In fact, when you watch a TV interview with a personal finance guru, it’s not unusual to see invited guests cutting up their credit cards with big scissors to declare their liberation from credit card debt.
Managing money is easy, but not that simple.
Credit cards per se are not insidious financial instruments that trigger debt. It is the misuse of credit cards that causes financial problems. People invariably get into trouble with their credit cards when they max them out, when they pay their bills late, and when they miss payments.
Here’s the thing: credit cards can improve your personal finances if you use them correctly.
You can, for example, use your credit cards to:
It’s an oversimplification to glorify cash and vilify credit card transactions. Paying with cash will not always improve your credit score, help you track your budget, or earn your money back. Instead, paying cash will only help avoid spending more money than you earn.
All things considered, your financial situation may not be as hopeless as you imagine. If you decide to learn from your mistakes, instead of ruefully dwelling on them, then you can reverse engineer your financial woes. You can often turn your financial situation around by using a consolidated loan to pay off all your debts and by using your credit cards properly.