![]() I stress to young couples: do not bring children into this world without a minimum of $1 million of life insurance. All for a lack of sufficient life insurance. My father had a PhD in psychology and was super smart, but he never got around to planning. He thought he’d live forever instead, he died of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty, leaving his wife and children destitute. In reality, not only did I lose my father when I was eleven, I also lost my mother because, after being a ‘stay at home mom,’ she had to return to work to put food on the table. If you have children, be sure to have sufficient life insurance to replace your income if you or your spouse died. My father died and left my mother with six children and a $10,000 life insurance policy.On a monthly basis, using the concept of ‘dollar cost averaging,’ invest in mutual funds or ETFs and never consider touching it until you retire. Invest a minimum of 10% of your GROSS paycheck.Stay away from debt, especially credit card debt. The only debt you should have is a home mortgage, a car loan, and perhaps a student loan from college. Too many people rely on credit cards and it is a sure road to disaster. Never carry a credit card balance-never.As the founder of a highly successful financial planning firm, what are the top three things you would always advise your clients, regardless of their net worth? I think it’s harder on people who have never experienced lack or loss. They have no context to what bad decisions can lead to. I’ve never really understood this, but I think it helps that I came from a life of extreme poverty and significant personal challenges. I knew I never wanted to live like that again. The biggest mistake people make is not doing what I described in the previous question. If people prioritize the Lord’s work with the first 10% and invest the next 10%, starting by age twenty-five (or at whatever age they are when reading this article), their financial life will work out for them. It’s the easiest thing to do but most people do not have the personal discipline and the willingness to sacrifice the pleasures of today for a secure tomorrow. In your opinion, what is the biggest (and maybe easiest?) mistake people make when it comes to their finances? We never considered touching it until we retired. Now we are retired and it’s almost hard to touch it! But we are. And I can tell you the Lord truly blessed our tithes and our personal discipline. He did throw open the floodgates. As to the second 10%, once we invested it, we considered it gone. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” We truly leaned on that word. But we stayed focused on the verse from Malachi 3:10: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. What is the #1 thing you wish someone had told you about financial planning back when you started your career?Īctually, there are two things: from the first paycheck you ever get, and every one thereafter, give the first 10% to God as a tithe and invest the next 10% for your future/retirement. My husband and I actually did this from the time we were twenty-five. When we were young and poor, we often went without. She also shares the one thing she wished someone had told her early on about financial planning.ĭon’t have time to read this blog? Listen to it below! Financial expert and author Erin Botsford helps bring us down out of the confusion cloud of figuring out your finances and breaks things down to the basics. There are so many practices, “musts,” and inevitable discomfort and hard decisions. Financial planning is a task and topic that can pretty easily make your head spin.
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