Money isn’t the most important thing in the world. If you spent your life doing nothing other than pursuing money, then you’d probably end up pretty miserable! But while it may not be everything, that doesn’t mean that it’s nothing. It quite clearly is. While they say that the happiness/money connection begins to fade once you make more than $75,000, anything above that figure is much better than being on the bottom rung of the scale. Having limited money can be awful. And yet, that’s the situation that a large chunk of the population finds themselves in. 

So what can we all do to prevent this? By looking at the common financial errors that lead to money problems in the first place. In this blog, we’ll run through just a handful of the most common.

They Don’t Spend Time Sorting It Out

A little bit of management can go a long way towards keeping financial problems at bay. Why? Because planning will allow you to manage small issues before they have a chance to become big problems. For instance, let’s say that you had something that was essentially a money pit, something that you had to keep spending money on without getting a return on. If you knew what that was early on, then you could take action to close the pit. If you had a “head buried in the sand” approach, then the problem could go on for much longer than it should. By the time you realize it, it has already caused a significant amount of damage. 

Make a budget, know how much you’re earning and spending and have a good lay of the land when it comes to your finances.

They Lack Proper Insight

The majority of people are not financial experts. How could they be? Personal finance isn’t often taught in schools. And while the basics of money are pretty easy to understand, saving, planning, and managing money over the course of a lifetime can be challenging. There’s an easy solution to this problem, however. You can work with a financial advisor such as Kevin Canterbury. Advisors help people to make a plan for their financial future and stay on top of their goals. A little bit of expert knowledge really can go a long way. 

Advisors come in many forms in this day and age and depending on your situation, following a financial blogger could be helpful enough or there are plenty of set and forget investing tools out there!

They Forget That Random Things Happen 

A person might think that they’ve got all of their finances under control. But then, life has other ideas. Surprising things happen all the time — you never know what’s going to happen. Sometimes, those surprises are good. Sometimes, those surprises are bad and expensive. If a person hasn’t adequately prepared for random surprises, then it’s inevitable that it’ll impact their finances. You can avoid this by setting up an emergency fund. You’ll hope that you never need it but will be extremely grateful that you set one up if you do. 

They Undervalue Their Work 

Finally, people run into issues because they fail to realize just how valuable their work is. It’s in an employers’ interest to pay a person less than they should. By asking for a raise, you might just get a pay rise of 5 – 10%. If they don’t give it to you, then it could be time to look for another job! 

What other pitfalls or mistakes have you found yourself making?

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