5 Personal Finance Tips That Everyone Should Know

5 Personal Finance Tips That Everyone Should Know

This week’s Office Hours featured Dominique Broadway: speaker, finance coach, and owner of Finance Demystified. She’s known for making financial planning a social experience, and tells women to talk about finance just like they’d talk about other things happening in their lives. In case you missed her yesterday, here are the five main takeaways from her discussion on finance.

Money management isn’t for millionaires: Broadway got her start in the financial world working for UBS. Every day she came in contact with people that wanted to invest in millions, and she realized that wasn’t the world for her. “Personal finance should not be all about people that have over 1 million dollars,” Broadway said. It should be about using the money you already have to make your dreams come true.

There are 5 things everyone should know about personal finance:

• Know your two magic numbers: Everyone should be able to rattle off how much money they bring in each month, and how much money they need to survive each month.
• Don’t put off saving: “Save now and save as much as you can,” advised Broadway. And you don’t have to think of it as some big lofty goal. Break up how much you want to save into a weekly amount, that way it will seem easier.
• Create a debt payout plan: You have to think of an end goal for your debt and tackle each piece of it at a time. It’s also important to calculate your “debt free day”, so you’ll have something to aim for.
• Understand your work benefits: This is something people rarely take the time to do. You have to understand more than just the paycheck, like if there’s a 401k plan, where that money is getting invested, etc. “You don’t want to miss out on free money,” Broadway said.
• Invest in what you use and know: Broadway used Michael Kors as an example: If you love MK watches, than invest in his stock. Don’t invest in energy just because you think it will be the “next big stock.” There’s no such thing.

Money dates are really useful: “Sit down every two weeks with a glass of wine, whatever it may be, and review all of your finances,” Broadway said. This way you can see whether you’re meeting your goals and determine a plan of action.

There’s no one-size-fits-all: Everyone’s finances and financial goals are different. But as a guideline, Broadway recommends putting a minimum of 10% of your pay into savings. Later on, you can adjust to increasing or decreasing the amount depending on how your “money dates” go.

Be OK with failure: Broadway stressed that it’s okay to have failures at a young age. They’re going to happen and things might not always go your way, but sometimes that can be for the best. Broadway said, “Things will work themselves out and life goes on. Calm down and brush everything off.”

For more finance tips from Dominique Broadway, follow her on Twitter at @MsFinanceCoach.

And if you missed her on Office Hours, be sure to check out the discussion here.

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