Young people today have the problems of overspending, massive student loans, and crushing debt. While this can be overwhelming, there are ways to fix these problems, becoming better savers while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. By setting practical limits, planning for the future, and using technology to their advantage, college students and young adults everywhere can change their lives for the better. Setting budgets helps young adults be more financially aware and stay away from materialistic desires. For instance, the “zero-based budget” allocates every penny spent. Dave Ramsey, author of several personal finance books, explains how “make [your] income minus the outgo equal zero” (Johnson 2017). Therefore, nothing gets wasted, and every dollar goes into supporting a person …show more content…
Automatic transfer is an impactful tool in savings: “Everyone should have a savings account,” claims David Weliver, founding editor of Money Under 30, “But... for the goals you have and not when you’re strapped for cash” (2018). Additionally, keeping this new account with separate bank lowers their risk of putting funds back into a primary account and washes away the temptation to overspend. Another way to prepare for the future is by setting up a retirement plan. Katie Lobosco, writer for CNN money states, “If your employer doesn't offer a 401(k), you can contribute to an IRA or Roth IRA to save for retirement” (2017). Young adults should always have a retirement plan that suits their needs. For example, a Simplified Employee Pension, or SEP, is especially for young entrepreneurs and self-employed business people. Researching retirement allows people to individualize it to their needs and continue to be current with every update. Setting forth monetary saving targets will lead the next generation to be determined, hard-working people who are not afraid of the
“Ensuring quality higher education is one of the most important things we can do for our future generations” (Ron Lewis). There are more students enrolling in post-secondary schools than ever before and consequently there are more students acquiring large debts. Once a student graduates, they enter a $33,000 or more student loan debt (Students Loan Resources). These student loans continue to place graduates into large debts, which is largely caused by their lack of knowledge of available resources, and this impacts their everyday lives and future generations.
Countless people would agree that our country’s young adults continue to incur a lifetime of debt by enrolling in college. In addition, it has become a somewhat understood that when preparing to attend college, one might as well expect to graduate with a monstrous amount of debt. Very valid and life altering problems can arise with student loan debt. Robin Wilson, a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote an article, A Lifetime of Student Debt? Not Likely.
* Plan for retirement- planning for retirement can make for a better and easy future. Planning for retirement will also help you learn how to make investments and save money
Here in the United States, there are many forms of consumer debt, which help contribute to the large sums of debt countless Americans find themselves faced with. Directly effecting many college students is student loan debt. Student loan debt is now the second largest form of consumer debt behind housing” declares the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Grisales). This is due to the fact that student loan debt grew 7.1% in 2014 to $1.2 trillion (Grisales). If this statistic alone is not worrisome this next one is sure to be. The amount of debt in the housing market that helped to spark the last recession was only $1.3 trillion (Grisales). Due to the increased amount of debt required by students to attend college many students are feeling the wrath. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “In 2014, 11.7 percent of females and 17.7 percent of males between the ages 25 and 34 were living with their parents” (Grisales). The fear of obtaining massive amounts of debt is driving the current generation of student’s to put off many future hopes and dreams. While causing them to move back home to save money. The current student loan crisis is crippling the economy and ruining the lives of American students.
A budget is something I take as seriously as education: without it, you’d be nowhere but miserable. My mother racked up a lot of debt before leaving my dad and I. She was and is legally supposed to send child support, but she never has. My dad spent until 2008 trying to repay the debt she left us with while she was living in Hawaii buying multiple cars and living in luxury. When I was old enough to understand this, I promised myself that I would never go into debt if I could help it. At my school, Personal Finance is a graduation requirement; while some students were complaining that we were only watching Dave Ramsey “ramble on”, I took it with all seriousness. I would rather listen to Dave Ramsey talk about budgeting on the radio in exchange of not going $60,000 in debt and losing my house because the payments are too steep. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “The only way I know of escape from that constant tragedy is to keep running expenses low enough so that something may be saved to meet the day when earnings may be small.” Knowing that President Coolidge not only shared this value, but practiced it in everyday life as well, made me respect him even more than I already
Students are asked simple personal finance questions, yet most are uneducated about what the right answers are to those questions. Knowing about personal finance before adulthood can help future generations not repeat the same mistakes as past generations. People who don't have a basic knowledge about financial literacy tend to not plan for retirement, and are more likely to borrow money with high interests rates not knowing how much it will cost them (Shepard). Learning to create a budget, saving money, and using a credit card with understanding the fees and the interest rate are basic concepts but are usually misunderstood until later in life. Personal finance questions come up in adults life's everyday, however some adults can find these questions to be very difficult. By educating young adults with every day life situations about personal finance knowledge before adulthood can eliminate poor financial decisions later in
Higher education comes at an extremely high price. The excitement of graduating college to land the six-figure job is soon destroyed when students realize how much debt they’ve obtained. Dreams of owning a house and starting a family are shattered by the money borrowed to provide and guarantee students an excellent future. Instead of waiting to land the ideal job, students work multiple jobs to help ends meet. Struggling to stay afloat, millions of students become victims of one of the major economic crisis in the United States today; Student debt.
In the year 2007, 18.2 million students enrolled into college. About thirty-nine percent of those students were between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four (Marcus). College is seen as something one must do to be able to have a successful life or career. Student debt is almost guaranteed for anyone that goes into college. Seventy percent of bachelor's degree recipients graduate with student debt. Student loans in just the U.S. alone are up to 1.2 trillion dollars, this is the second highest level of consumer debt, just trailing behind mortgages (Snyder). Student debt has been an issue for anyone thinking about going into, that is attending, and graduating or leaving college. How to solve this issue is very simple, which is to save money, lower
At the same time, a growing number of millennials are facing burdensome student loan debt. Rather than come out of college with pristine back-end ratios primed for a hefty mortgage, they are handcuffed by the debt that they have amassed in their early twenties. As the Pew Research Center has noted, 37 percent of people under the age of thirty have student loan debt. They contribute to the $1.3 trillion in student debt, leverage that could presumably be used for a mortgage or some other useful credit if it were not locked up already. Millennials are trying to increase their earning power by going to school so that they have the opportunity to advance economically, but it is simultaneously holding many of them back via years of extra debt—debt that is notably not going to a
Many families and single people are forced to live on a budget. The process of living within a budget takes will and determination but to reach happiness and avoid poverty, it is worth the sacrifices. There are many economic reasons, such as a new baby in the household, job loss or change, the children’s education expenses or retirement. All of these occurrences can cause financial burdens and, the need to control and tightened spending. Even the wealthy, have to budget and arrange their unrestricted expenses against their limited incomes. It is possible to live well on a tight budget but there has to be an understanding of the expenses, a good attitude and a clever plan.
Budgeting can be very difficult, nevertheless for college students, so I will be explaining how to budget in college by making smart decisions. A college education is probably one of the most expensive purchases a young adult will most likely ever purchase in their lifetime. College can be very expensive as a consequence tuition can range anywhere from 10,000 to 70,000 a year. Nearly all college students pay for college by a college fund, scholarship/grants, out of their own or parent's pocket or borrowed money. Despite the fact some of those payments aren’t directly coming from the student it is more than likely that they still don’t have a stable income to provide themselves with basic necessities. Most colleges don’t provide students with basic necessities which means they acquire to go out and obtain everything needed as far as food, supplies, books, also toiletries. The average college student spends anywhere from $200-$700 a month on just the articles they need. While on articles they want they spend anywhere from $20-$200. More than likely that most college students don’t work, notwithstanding first-year students and athletes, which is a large population of the school anyway. Today most students aren’t obtaining a stable cash flow and even the ones who are from allowances or a job tend to still most likely struggle with budgeting. Budgeting can be a very difficult task even for adults or people making a substantial amount of money, but it’s not impossible if
In the history of mankind living within a budget was a matter of survival instead of a necessity. A person lived life one of two ways. They had too much to possibly spend or go through or never enough to get by. Balancing a budget was more of an exception instead of the rule. Survival skills then and now are employed in a number of ways to ensure future success. I will reveal and expand on each technique started then, carried over to modern times and the challenges that lie ahead to live a modest and debt free life.
Although a budget is one part of this process, we must learn to save money first. Specifically, in this book it says to set aside one-tenth of what we earn and save it (ch.5). Setting aside one-tenth of what we earn allows us to make more suitable decisions on what we do with the other nine-tenths to live our daily lives. After a certain point, the one-tenth that we save every time we earn grows more and more to be able to buy the things we want or even really need.
A budget refers to a financial plan that represents the allocation of the income to various expenditure channels such as expenses, savings, and debt repayment. A personal budget is important because avoiding financial surprises and keeping financial stress down helps avoid a crisis and allows you to focus on your overall goals. You cannot avoid all risks in life but if you plan your finances to live within your means, you can avoid being kicked out of your home, losing your car and other terrible things that a solid budget would help you avoid. Knowing what you can afford is a central life skill. Unfortunately, many do not budget even though they know they should (Wagoner, 2012).
Personal budgeting is an important factor in regards to successful long term financial stability. Budgeting has many great aspects as well as showing areas of weakness. It can show the truth about your personal financial spending habits, areas that are not looked at enough, and if there are needs for a larger emergency fund. The reality of personal budgeting is that many people potentially do not keep a personal budget for one reason or another. People also don’t consider the negative effect that it could have on one personally and or how it effects the economy.