Hindsight is 20/20, right? That is why we often wish we could go back and re-live our lives knowing what we know now. This applies to all areas of life, even our finances. Here are things we wish we knew before we got our first credit cards and began to salivate over balance transfer and rewards offers.
Debt makes you a slave. An old proverb says "The borrower is servant to the lender." When we were young, we did not heed such advice. It seemed so 'old school' to us. But, now as it turns out, we have taken on too much debt and it is throttling our finances to the point of not having enough money for retirement. Now we are looking for ways to get out of debt and be better money managers.
The bank always gets their money. Oh, the interest we have paid! And, to think that loans are structured so that the interest is loaded up front on the loans so that the bank collects their part first before the principle is paid off. That seems a little unfair to us at this stage in life, but what can we do about it? Advice for the young: only take out loans on what you absolutely need and then, only with a substantial down payment.
Buying to satisfy immediate urges is almost never good. It has been so easy to get out the credit card to use for everyday purchases that we have done it over, and over. That has led to many purchases of things that we really did not need, but succumbed to the temptation to purchase. What could we have done with that money if we had just waited and allowed the urge to pass? We would be a lot better off than we are now. At least we would have a lot less junk in our houses, taking up space in our lives.
Refuse to buy if you do not have cash. Waiting to make a purchase until you know that you are going to have the cash would have helped in a lot of situations. Even emergency purchases for appliances could have been better managed by knowing when we would have the money coming in to pay off the credit card within days instead of letting it drag on for months while the interest charges eventually cost more than the original price of the item.
Do not accumulate many credit cards. We cannot count the number of times that a great looking credit card offer arrived in the mail and we went for it and added it to our arsenal. Or, we remember the times that we walked into stores at the mall and they were all offering a special discount or product if we signed up for that store credit card. Now, where did we put that toaster?
This lamenting tends to make one sound like a negative old…well, you know. But the fact is that if we had known what we know now, we would be in at least a better position than we are now. That is a fact that makes this whole effort worthwhile, because if we can help save someone from the same fate as we, then this has been worth the time to write.
