Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The worst thing you can do is nothing.

There are several things in my financial life that go against what the “experts” say. When I come across those things it always makes me question my planning. By no means do I think that I do everything right. But there are things that I have made a conscious decision to do and when an expert says that I’m wrong I get frustrated with money. I feel why should I bother to do anything when it seems like no matter what I do it’s wrong.

But you know what? In the end what is important is that I do something. Making no financial decisions is way worse than making a less than perfect one. I would rather invest in a mutual fund that earned less than average than to blindly spend every last dollar.

The point is that any budget is better than no budget, any savings is better than no savings, any plan is better than no plan at all. There are thousands of places to read about what you should be doing, but it’s not an all or nothing type of thing. Fit what you can into your life and leave the rest for now. It’s ok to take baby steps. You don’t have to be perfect, just try to make progress when you can.

2 comments:

jleane said...

Hey Mom, good advice.

God knows we all make mistakes - it's how we deal with setbacks that's important.

Anonymous said...

Exactly. The experts don't know your specific situation - and sometimes the events in life aren't in the experts plans.

At least you're in charge of your finances and if you mess up, you can blame yourself - nobody else.