Do you feel like you need to be a banker, accountant, economist and stock market analyst just to keep the family finances in check?
Should it really be so hard to cover the household bills, make the payments on the car and mortgage, put away a little for the kid’s education, and make some solid investments that will hopefully leave you with enough left over for a reasonably comfortable retirement?
Managing your finances might have seemed a lot simpler in the past. Then again, the early 1980’s had interest rates of 15% with inflation over 10%, so that claim is a little dubious! What has changed is the number of alternatives available to “help us”— it can get overwhelming very quickly.
For example, if you are looking for options to invest your hard-earned TFSA contributions, there are around 5000 mutual funds and 1000 ETFs in Canada to choose from! But that’s only if you are already up to speed on the differences between mutual funds and ETFs, MERs and investment fees, asset allocation, RRSP & TFSA rules and regs, DIY online investment platforms… and the list goes on!
The reality is that personal finance is likely to get more difficult and more complicated in the future. If you are lucky, your employer may offer financial literacy programs as part of their employee wellness program. In some provinces, high schools are now offering financial literacy programs for kids to learn the basics before they graduate. This is great news for your kids and their financial future, but it isn’t going to do much for you… unless you want to put your kids in charge of the household finances?
The reality is that most of us are on our own when it comes managing our money. There are some great tools and information resources that can help immensely, but the easiest, most cost effective, and most reliable option for the majority of us is building our own financial knowledge.
The good news is that mastering the basics is a lot simpler than most of us realize. You don’t need a complicated app to track your expenses, a pen and paper will get you started. If you want to know more about DIY investing or whether an RRSP or TFSA is best for you, there is tons of information available to help you.
The problem for most of us is we focus way too much on making money and spend far too little time looking at where our money goes, or how to manage it better and make that money work for us. Earning more money won’t solve many problems if you continue to spend too much, make poor decisions, fail to invest, and have no goals to help guide you and measure your financial progress.
Written by DLC Marketing Team
