My One Money Advice

I've been tagged by Dawn over at Frugal for Life

Apparently I'm supposed to come up with one piece of financial advice...Hmm...

I would say, "Spend less than you make."

This means that credit should be used as only a last resort for a large purchase (such as a house) or in an emergency...a true emergency. No, needing a pair of blue heels doesn't qualify.

When Fidget changed jobs (about 8 months ago), we watched her paychecks for a couple of months. We traded in a vehicle for one that got better gas mileage, did some home improvement stuff, and basically re-did our whole budget. It worked very well with her new income. Except that her new income was falsely inflated by overtime which was caused by trainings and such. And we didn't take that into account. ARGH!

We are now left with a $1500/month gap between what we thought our income would be and what it actually is. If we had maximized the "spend less than you make" wisdom, we wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck right now. Well...and if we hadn't racked up about $5000 in credit card debt. DOH!

In the past, I have used my credit cards pretty much every month: but I paid off the balance in full each month. So this whole ball of credit card debt is new to me.

Yep, I would definitely say "spend less than you make".