Treat Your Money Management Philosophy Like A Marathon
March 13, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Investing, Personal Development
I didn’t run a marathon last weekend, but it felt like it for someone who has never trained for long-distance running until this past January. I always played basketball when I was young, and basketball is a series of fast sprints, not methodical long-distance running. I ran in the Gate River 15k Run here in Jacksonville, which is a pretty well-known 15k run. I didn’t run it to compete, I ran it because I had never done something like that before, and I wanted to say that I had done it. I ran it in about an hour and 40 minutes, which is pretty slow, but I was proud of myself for jogging the whole time. Like the personal finance nerd that I am, I was thinking about how running long distances relates to becoming wealthy. The obvious cliche is that becoming wealthy is like running a marathon. The slow, methodical individual will become more wealthy than those that have short spurts of wealth building over a period of time. But, there was something else that I learned about money management when training for and running a long distance.
The Importance of Helping Each Other With Financial Problems
March 12, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Consumer News, Personal Development
I was reading this article by Jeffrey Strain from TheStreet.com and he gives five ways to help other people with financial issues from your own personal experiences with managing your money. One of the things he listed was starting a personal finance blog. This is what I did two years ago, and my goal was not to act like I knew everything about money and I wanted other people to know it, but I had a revelation about money. I made a 180 degree change about the way I managed money, and I wanted to share that with other people. My goal for this blog is not to see how much money I can make from it, if that was my main reason, I would have stopped a long time ago. My goal is to help other people with the things I have learned about money and research the things you want to know about. So, if you do learn anything here, please don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with someone else. With the housing market going down the drain, gas prices continuing to rise, and the economy on the verge of a recession, people need help with their money!
Two Reasons Why You Could Be In a Financial Mess
February 25, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Credit and Debt, Personal Development
The other day, I had the TV on in the background, and a lesser known morning talk show caught my attention when they were going to have a segment on helping a single mom get their financial life back on the right track. Of course, they disappointed me with focusing more on fooling with different types of bank accounts and setting up automatic overdraft protection with a credit card on her bank account. Yeah, that’s great. Just keep assuming that she’s going to keep bouncing her checking account. That’s why she asked you for help! Anyway, they did little to correct WHY she was in the predicament that she was in, but they did ask her this one question: “What was it that got you into the situation that you are in now?” She responded by saying, it was poor decision making and the lack of financial knowledge. It made me happy to hear that she wasn’t trying to blame someone else for her situation. She took responsibility for the decisions that she made and knew that she made some decisions due to ignorance. I think she hit the nail on the head for most people that find themselves in a financial mess. I know that I can trace many of my financial mistakes back to a poor decision and a simple lack of financial knowledge.
Three Ways To Know If You Are In Love With Money
February 14, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Consumer News, Personal Development
Ahh, love is in the air, isn’t it? I can just hear cash registers around the country being overworked on this day that is loved by retailers more than it is loved by consumers. Call me Scrooge, but do we really need an unofficial holiday of love? If the government would recognize it and declare it a national holiday, then I’d start to like it more, because at least I would get the day off. Anyway, I’ll stop the Valentine’s negativity, and get on with my dark “love” post for Valentine’s day.
Strategically Invest In Yourself to Build Personal Wealth
October 22, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Careers, Money Management, Personal Development
I was sitting in a computer science class back in 2004, trying to figure out the foreign language that the professor was speaking (computer language, not an actual foreign language), when I realized that this wasn’t for me. I may have been investing in myself, but it was a bad investment. I came to the realization that I liked tinkering with computers, but I hated learning binary code, writing meaningless programs, and learning about every intricacy of a processor chip. Some people love that stuff, and they are fantastic at comprehending it. It wasn’t for me. I switched my major, and moved on. Getting a college degree can be a great investment in yourself, but it can also be a very bad investment in yourself if you don’t get anything out of it. My philosophy has always been that you get more out of an undergraduate degree just by surviving for four years rather than what you actually learn. Developing writing skills, personal responsibility, setting and achieving goals, time management, and money management are all skills that you either sharpen or dull while in college.
