How to Learn How Money Really Works

Even after 12 years of public school and 4 years of college, I never had a class focused on practical personal finance. I know a lot of other people in their 20s and 30s have had similar situations and have ended up with debt up to their eyeballs, without realizing how harmful it could be to their life until they'd already done it.

So how do you get yourself back on track? I think it comes down to two things, which are being willing to learn new concepts as an adult and being able to apply them. It honestly has taken my husband and I about five years to turn our finances around for the better, and this is basically what we did:

1) Read a Variety of Financial Books:

I mainly mean books in the personal finance and business section of retail bookstores, and not just theory-based textbooks. Different authors have different advice, and most likely after reading several books you'll find a few that "click" with you. Probably the three top authors I really like are Dave Ramsey, Robert Kiyosaki, and Dan Miller. I read other authors as well, and after several years of this my whole concept of money has changed for the better.

Be willing to keep a open mind however. For example, the first time I ready Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I honestly thought he was a little nutty. The second time I read it, it made a lot more sense. One of the bad "side-effects" of a college education if you're not careful is an arrogant attitude toward new ideas, and I had to keep myself in check when I first started looking into this topic.

2) Create a Budget and Manage Your Expenses:

The mention of this used to make me cringe because I'm definitely not the spreadsheet type. The thing is however is most people don't know when and where they're losing money without having some way of keeping track of it all. The simpler you can make it, the more likely you'll follow it. If you're married, it also helps you work together and start having common financial goals. It makes your relationship better and reduces a lot of common financial stresses. Taking the time to do this is just smart.

Along the way, you'll naturally find things you can probably change. The good thing is sometimes just being aware of a potential problem will go a long way in helping you solve it.

3) Develop a Plan to Quit Getting Into Debt and Pay Off Existing Debt:

For a long time, I really did think that debt was required to function financially in society. The funny thing is however that the more debt my husband and I have paid off, the more money seems to flow into our lives. This is why it's important to not skip reading advice from other people with experience. It's hard to get out of debt without a system or plan of doing it.

4) Look at Ways to Diversify Your Income:

For Generations X, Y, and younger, we need to factor in the fact that the work world is completely different from what our parents and grandparents experienced. The problem is schools have not really changed to train students what to really expect. We're mostly still taught to pick one career and completely stake our future on it. What often happens with people is they will major in college for one thing and end up doing something totally different. It doesn't make going to college a bad thing, but that situation needs to be factored in upfront.

By "diversifying your career," I'm borrowing the investing concept of spreading our your investments to decrease your risk. If you literally spread out your career across a job and one or more side careers, you decrease your risk of a corporate layoff or downsizing from ruining your finances. If you're willing to do this, you really do have an advantage over people who stake everything on their jobs.

5) Use All the Previous to Develop a Long-Term Plan:

Your finances are going to change at different stages in your life, so you'll have to adapt your plans to fit your current situation. The overall principles will generally stay the same, but you may have to juggle certain aspects of your finances to make them work as efficiently as possible.