Get Financially Fit!

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 Little things done well over and over are far more important
than spectacular achievement done every once in a while.
-Richard Quick

What are the best and worst financial decisions that you’ve made?  I’m sharing my best and worst financial decisions to encourage you to focus on your next improvement step. 

The best personal finance decision that I have made was contributing to my 401k from a young age.  The worst personal finance decision was not putting down 20% on a real estate purchase.    

In my last year of college, I took an engineering economics course.  In this class I learned about the importance of investing early for retirement.  For example, if you invest the same amount of money over time into the stock market, half of your final portfolio will come from the contributions that you made during the first 7 years.  This is because after 7 years your portfolio will earn returns equal to your contributions. 

When I started working I worked with an engineer who was 10 years older than me.  He educated and coached me on the importance on starting 401k investment.  He regretted  that he didn’t start his 401k contributions immediately.  I pass along the challenge to everyone to both start retirement savings as early as possible and contribute as much as you can.  At this point in my life I can see the benefits of starting retirement savings from a young age.   

The worst decision that I ever made was purchasing real estate without putting down a 20% down payment.  I wanted to own real estate so bad that I purchased a condo with only 5% down.   A key lesson that I learned is to be patient and save sufficiently.  I wish I could have learned my lesson from reading about it versus paying expensive tuition.   

Whatever your best and worst personal financial decisions,  I believe we can all make significant improvement by by focusing on continuous improvement.  I encourage you to focus on the following question:  What next action can I take to day to improve my personal finances?   To help you get started in improving your personal finances, I am sharing worksheets and templates from my book, Get Financially Fit! 

Goal Setting Templates  Goal-Setting-Template.pdf
   Related article:  Write down your goals
 
Financial Steps Financial-steps.pdf
   Related article:  Create a financial plan

Financial Fitness Survey  financial-fitness-survey.pdf
    Related article: Take the financial fitness test

Debt Elimination Debt-Elimination-Worksheet.pdf
   Related article: Eliminate Debt

Follow your dreams, Achieve your goals!