Importance of Money Management

In my recent post on tips to establish financial security, there was a comment from Gary about having enough money to take advantage of the tips.

Don’t Wait For Enough.
An important step in eliminating debt and beginning your journey towards financial independence is to come to the understanding that the journey has to start somewhere. As I discussed in my post about being honest with yourself, often times progress does not truly begin until you take the time to plan your actions.

If you continue to wait until you have *enough*, whatever that may be, you will likely find yourself waiting for years and years to come. This reminds me of a saying that if you wait until you can afford to have kids, you will never have kids. Likewise, if you try to wait until you have enough money to practice sound money management, you will realize that you never have enough money.

Start Planning Today.
Regardless of how much money you may or may not have right now, do not let that stop you from following the tips to establish financial security such as setting goals, creating a spending plan and building your emergency savings. The first two tips, setting goals and creating a spending plan, do not require any amount of money.

The third tip about building emergency savings is better with the more money you have, but as I discussed in creating an automatic savings plan, you can challenge yourself to set aside something as small as $1 per week. I dare someone to provide me details of their situation where they cannot afford to set aside $1 per week in savings.

Benefits of Money Management.
As you begin to follow these tips, you will likely begin to realize that you really do have *enough* money and that you were simply not doing an efficient job of managing your money. When my wife and I first began our journey to eliminate our debt, we discovered that we were essentially wasting a good deal of money on a monthly basis. However, until we took the time to actual set our goals and create a spending plan, we didn’t really understand how much money was slipping away.

With a new spending plan in place, you will likely find yourself with a few extra dollars that you can be saving as an emergency fund. Sure it will take some time to build those savings up but the road to financial independence has to start with that first dollar, so why not take the time to set aside that dollar today?