My One Money Advice (MOMA)
Posted on October 16, 2007 by Melissa
Filed Under Budgeting, Household
My friend Pinyo over at Moolanomy recently invited me to participate in a meme he created. If you don’t know what a “meme” is you are not alone. I didn’t know until last week when I read this article on wiki. Pinyo wanted this meme to “help promote financial responsibility and awareness in our hyper consumption society.”
His question:
If you can give one advice, tip, or story related to money, what would you share?
I think my one money advice is to be fully conscious of your spending.
Eric and I made the mistake of ignoring our financial situation and assuming we could afford any purchase we wanted as long as it was relatively small. The problem was that we weren’t keeping track of our spending and all those little purchases eventually added up to a big balance.
If you were to ask me a year ago what our cable bill was monthly I would have had no idea. I paid it every month but I didn’t really pay attention. We had no budget so I didn’t know how each bill or purchase fit into the big scheme of things. I just paid them on auto-pilot.
You know that you might not be fully aware of your spending if you look at your credit card bill at the end of the month and can’t fathom how the total got so high. We used to be stunned when we would look at our bill. “But how could it be THAT high? We only had a few dinners out this month, right?”
When we finally woke up from this “financial coma” and really looked at our bills we were amazed at where our money was actually going. It was sobering to say the least.
By examining our expenses we became conscious of our spending habits and that allowed us to dramatically cut our non-essential purchases and work towards living within our means. This led to us being able to tackle our debt and save towards our goal of a new home.
I believe the key to taking control of your finances is to understand where your money is going every month. That information is crucial in determining what expenses you can live without, what you need to keep, and what you can allocate to savings and payments toward debt.
OK - now for the “passing it on” part. I would like to know what Frugal for Life, Rather Be Shopping, Mrs. Micah, and My Two Dollars consider to be their one money advice.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, get the posts via email, read more about the blog in our about page, or browse our archives. Thanks for visiting!
Related Posts
Comments
10 Responses to “My One Money Advice (MOMA)”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
About Us
A Penny Closer is for those of us who want to improve how we spend, save, and invest. We want to be able to manage our money so that we can use it to enjoy our lives today while still saving to reach our dreams tomorrow. Read more about us here...
Top Commentators
Suggested Reading
I posted mine!
http://frugalforlife.blogspot.com/2007/10/my-one-money-advice.html
I so agree with you. I too really had no idea of what I was spending. I would pay bills and not have enough money for “other things” and just put it on a credit card. Bad, bad move. If someone were to ask me what I spent 22,000+ (my credit card balance) over the past few years, I couldn’t begin to tell you.
I’m just now starting to keep track of my spending on a daily basis and look for alternative sources of income to reduce my debt.
If I were to give MOMA I would say it is to save, save, save. Make sure that you are growing your emergency fund. Because an emergency is sure to crop up.
[...] A Penny Closer said, “be fully conscious of your spending“ [...]
[...] Posted by mrsmicah under Uncategorized I was tagged by Melissa at A Penny Closer for the My One Money Advice Meme. It’s a cool idea, people share one piece of money advice (or a tip or a story) which they [...]
Excellent advice. When you do what you are suggesting the credit card bill is not such a shocker anymore! That in itself, reduces stess levels!
@Dawn - awesome! Your advice is excellent. You can never been too prepared for a rainy day. Thanks so much for joining in.
@wealthy_1 - Welcome and thanks for your comment! It’s awesome that you are working towards eliminating your debt by keeping track of your spending. It will really help!
@Kyle - Yep. Looking at a big bill that you weren’t expecting is a massive stressor. At least now, if a big bill is coming I know it and have prepared for it.
[...] blog I read quite often, A Penny Closer, just tagged me with the aim to get me to give “My One Money Advice”, which goes along [...]
[...] presents My One Money Advice (MOMA) posted at A Penny [...]
[...] was tagged by Melissa at A Penny Closer for the My One Money Advice Meme. It’s a cool idea, people share one piece of money advice (or a tip or a story) which they [...]
Hi Melissa!
I absolutely agree with your advice. I decided to do a small research on this topic - and I quoted your opinion for my post Budgeting Your Money: Opinions From the Web . I’d really be happy to hear some more comments from you.
Thank you!
Tania