On young people and money management

So the time has come to speak about money management and to be honest, I haven’t the first clue on where to start. I just know that I went from working a job I hated making more money than I needed to now working a job I like where the risk of losing money is greater. They always talk about needing to make moves, putting pressure on young people to adhere to a certain financial regime and top a certain threshold to provide themselves, the generation before them and subsequently the generation after. What that structure doesn’t mention is the fragility of that standard for everyone, equally of course and also the highly worrying aspect that we aren’t always taught good financial principles in our developing years. I can sit and harp on at you about savings and cutting your Netflix expenditure but I am going to instead giving you my 3 top rules for what you need to do to ensure financial success in your youth:

1.Don’t be work shy

2.Consult financial advisors

3.Make time to go out

Here’s some steps that maybe you can take to achieve these that worked for me:

1.

Work smarter, not harder. Now I am by no means discouraging young people from working hard to achieve their goals but burnout is going to drive you into a pit of wanting to abstain from work. If you do this, you put yourself at risk of not being able to sustain yourself independently through work and becoming more vulnerable to making poor financial decisions, that can at times be of the quick paced and irrational nature. You don’t want this but you also don’t want to pass off every opportunity that comes your way because you are scouting for the easiest job, let the work come to you but go out and grab opportunities with both of your hands that help you sustain yourself and also evaluate your career and personal life choices from a younger age

2.

Practice healthy networking with financial advisors, seeking help and guidance from trusted ones to enable you to regulate and manage your finances from very early on in your working and adult lives, respectively. There are financial support groups offering guidance to anybody from a collective of young entrepreneurs to teenagers who take on working jobs from their pre-adulting years where they are able to work legally. Wherever you go, check the organisation or individual for legalities and credentials and then begin liaising, switching a listening ear for appropriate advice for yourself, not overstepping the boundaries in the promises that you make to the companies, organisations and individuals that can help you - these are your finances so you need to be the most in control of them

3.

Don’t live a life of a hermit or a recluse. Because the chances are that even if you save up hundreds upon thousands of racks without ever going out to eat, watching Netflix or travelling to a theme park then when you get out and want to do those things, others may not want to. This is your opportunity to prove your financial responsibility to yourself but keeping everything else to yourself outside of sharing and distributing resources alongside others and within your community won’t aid you well. Be responsible but still have fun, spoil yourself if you can afford and deserve it and give back locally, it has a bigger global impact, smile at the world and the world smiles at you

I hope that this helps and can’t wait to share more advice, stories, recipes and weird, wacky topics with you

From, K xx