October 4, 2020 Daniel Durham Economics, Education, financial planning, money management, Personal Development, Wealth Building

Don’t be average, you can’t afford it…

“Don’t let average people make you feel guilty for pursuing your mission in life”
– Eric Worre –

If you’ve been reading my blog (and you should be regularly… so please subscribe) then you know that I’m a big advocate for financial literacy and how the lack of it has had massive negative affects on peoples lives. The average person has very little financial knowledge which is why the average person has little to no savings, drowning in debt and nothing put towards retirement planning. The average person will NOT be able to stop working in their later years because they are not preparing properly, if at all.

Even though I’m not a financial planner (yet, but working on it), here’s a tid bit of financial advice anyway. Don’t be average… you can’t afford it!

Did you know that nearly 77 million Americans have debt in collections? That’s just a portion of people who are drowning in debt, Nearly one third of Americans pay the minimum amount due on their credit card each month because they can’t afford to pay more. In 2018 the banks and credit card companies racked up $104 billion in interest and fees.

Being average requires that you keep up appearances and maintain a heavy consumer mentality instead of an investment one. There’s no money left over to put towards financial planning when you’re focused on living a lifestyle beyond your means.

It’s only 43% of Americans who spend more than they earn and borrow on credit each month to cover the shortfall. Credit card balances reached $930 billion in the last quarter of 2019, which was an increase of $46 billion from Q3.

The average American household has over $132,000 worth of debt and that doesn’t factor in those with a mortgage, then it averages to over $172,000. This debt factors in things such as credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, student loans, medical debt just to name a few. The average credit card balance alone is $16,061.

Are you noticing a word that stands out a lot so far? And I’m not even finished yet!

Only 30% of Americans have a long term financial plan and many of those aren’t planned properly against estate taxes, future market downturns and unexpected misfortunes. The average American’s 401k balance is only $96,288 and that’s tax deferred so the the taxes have yet to be paid on that amount. In addition to that, only 18% of Americans actively contribute to an IRA which is capped at $6,000 annually for people under 50.

The average person lives paycheck to paycheck. In fact, ten million Americans don’t even have a bank account. I think it’s safe to assume that these same people also don’t invest for their future or have goals set to become financially independent.

The average American’s social security retirement benefit is $1,363 per month. That calculates to $16,356 annual income. The average retiree relies on social security for nearly 90% of their income but it was intentionally designed to cover only around 40% of the average workers pre-retirement income.

The latest spending stats tell us the average US consumer spends about $60,060 per year yet, money statistics in America for 2019 say the median yearly income was $48,672.

I could keep going on but I’m going to start to wrap this post up. I hope the point I’m making here is pretty obvious. The whole reason that I created this blog is to help promote financial literacy to average people so that the new average of financially educated people becomes the standard.

If you haven’t done so already, give some attention and love to a couple of my previous post linked below so that you can avoid being average and live a life that you can afford to live.

This is why I teach financial literacy…

5 financial habits that you should develop…

5 strategies of the rich that you should know…

How to manage your money like the rich…

Please help me get the message out and share these articles on your social media accounts and assist me in my mission of teaching financial literacy to the masses… it’s my passion!

As I’m starting a financial services business, my time is becoming limited to what I can put towards writing this blog which is my passion. I will be continue to post new articles regularly, but they will be once a week and most likely on every Sunday.

I so appreciate you as a valued reader and it’s an honor for me that you give your precious time to reading this blog.

As I like to say… “the journey begins with the first step”.

If you see value in this article then please be sure to subscribe to the blog if you haven’t done so already. I’ll be putting up more wealth building posts in the future and you can have them delivered straight to your email account.

I’ll see you in the next post. Until next time… be sure to comment below and let’s get some dialogue going. I’m curious to know, what tips do you have on avoiding being average?

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September 17, 2020September 16, 2020 Daniel Durham Credit Monitoring, Economics, Education, financial planning, Wealth Building

5 financial habits that you should develop…

“Financially irresponsible people are not bad people. They’ve simply fallen prey to bad habits”
– Mary Hunt –

Let me ask you a question that some people find offensive but I think is very important to answer honestly. Are you struggling to make ends meat like most of society is or are you comfortable with your financial situation? I ask this because 78% of of Americans live check to check with very little to no savings at all… let alone have any type of financial investments working for them.

The savings rate in america is at an all time low at less than 2% as a nation.

The main reasons of this unfortunate reality is because of bad financial habits that were formed early on in life combined with lack of financial literacy. These formed bad habits have a ripple affect in peoples lives that not only affect their financial situation, but are contributing factors in things such as domestic violence, crime and a growing divorce rate.

The good news is that it’s never too late to purge the bad habits and replace them with habits that you will find beneficial to your life in more than one way. It’s just going to require some desire and discipline to make it happen.

Here are five powerful habits that once adopted will not only strengthen you financially, but assist in overall personal development and help you a long the journey.

Embrace financial hardships & set backs, don’t deny them.

This is where a lot of people get deeply into financial trouble when they can’t make payments and get behind on their debts. Rather than face the reality of the situation and work with creditors to come up with some type of repayment arrangement, they ignore the problem by not replying to collection notifications via the mail or phone calls.

I know from my own personal experiences with this that depression and embarrassment take it’s toll on you. Living in denial only escalates the situation that can lead to things like repossession, frozen accounts, wage garnishment and in worse case scenarios, bankruptcy.

Just remember that though it may feel like it at the time, financial hardship isn’t the end of the world.

The best way to prevent this from happening in the first place, is to have money put aside in case of an emergency. This not only gives you peace of mind, but also has the health benefit of staving off depression and the ailments derived from it. Also, your credit score will thank you for preventing it from falling by accumulating late payments.

Always be willing to discuss options and seek out any type of financial assistance you can.

2. Check your credit score on a regular basis.

We’ve all heard horror stories from victims of identity theft and how it decimated them financially. This is one financial hardship that I can say that fortunately I have not experienced and make efforts to keep it that way.

With free credit score services like credit karma that allow you to check your score once a week, there’s no reason not to be able to monitor your credit on a consistent basis. In fact, once you’ve established an account with credit karma, they will present offers on loans and credit cards that may help you to refinance your existing debts into lower rate loans. Which in turn saves you money that you could put towards building wealth.

Some credit card companies allow you to check your credit score once a week as well. I know that capital one not only shows your credit score but provides your credit utilization percentage and how that has an affect of your score.

There are also paid subscription credit monitoring services available. If any credit discrepencies pop up they alert you immediately for verification of legitimate credit purchases to prevent fraudulent charges from occurring.

3. Designate time for financial education, study habits of the rich & teach them to others.

The saying “give a man a fish and he eats for a day… teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” has so much relevance when it comes to building wealth. As mentioned above, financial literacy is severely lacking in society. Therefore, it’s up to us as individuals to self educate through medias such as books, podcasts, videos and websites like this one.

Schedule time at least once a week dedicated to learning. One way to use your time wisely is to listen to audio books and/or podcasts while commuting and running errands. Instead of listening to music, put that time towards expanding your knowledge base.

By studying the habits of the rich and incorporating them into your own life, you can emulate their success. As you level up and become more successful, you can then take that knowledge and teach it to others.

Surround yourself with people you can always learn something from and people that you can teach. I find so much value in the philosophy of teach what you know as you learn what to teach.

4. Seek out opportunities that will benefit you financially & life in general.

I don’t believe that money is the root of all evil. However, I do truly believe that the root cause for most societal issues are financial. When you take financial difficulty out of the equation, stress levels drop, depression lifts away and people are generally more happy with life.

If you’re passionate about something then figure out ways to earn an income from it. When starting out it takes time to build momentum and get the word out, but over time it’s possible to make a full time income from it. You just have to stick to it and be dedicated to making it work.

What’s important to remember is to not make it about the money. If the products or service that you’re passionate about has value, the money will come eventually.

Persistence, passion and discipline are requirements in order to become successful in anything that you pursue. But none of them have purpose without taking action.

5. Find a support system of like minded people and be active in it.

You should always be striving to be the best version of yourself by setting goals and making achievements a long the way. It’s always more pleasant to take the journey with others and chances are that there are others looking to do the same as yourself. Network within your community and social media with people pursuing the same path and develop strong bonds a long the way.

Be sure to be beneficial to the group by reciprocating in helpful ways through encouragement and providing examples for others to learn from. If you find such a group already exists then consider joining it (hint… hint). If not, take the steps necessary to create one yourself.

“Surround yourself with people you can always learn something from. Always work with people that are better at their craft than you are.”
– Tony Vincent –

As I like to say… “the journey begins with the first step”.

If you see value in this article then please be sure to like and subscribe to the blog if you haven’t done so already. I’ll be putting up more wealth building posts in the future and you can have them delivered straight to your email account.

I’ll see you in the next post. Until next time… be sure to comment below and let’s get some dialogue going. I’m curious to know, what’s your opinion on developing financial habits?

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September 13, 2020 Daniel Durham Economics, Education, financial planning, money management, Wealth Building

This is why I teach financial literacy…

“We were not taught financial literacy in school. It takes a lot of work and time to change your thinking and to become financially literate”
– Robert Kiyosaki –

There’s a lot of financial wisdom being shared all over the web. Tips, tricks, strategies, how to guides and step-by-step tutorials just to name a few. I’ve written a few blog posts about these things myself. Many of them offering valid advice and with the intent to help the average person gain financial wisdom.

But it’s not the how that’s the issue here, it’s the why.

What’s holding you back from accumulating financial wealth up to this point? It’s probably because you were never taught financial literacy when you were growing up. We are trained and conditioned from adolescence to become good employees that are dependent on getting a good job that we can survive off of.

Imagine this…

You’ve been working for this corporation for 24 years. You’ve been a solid employee that’s always arrived on time, worked hard and built up a reputation in your field as “the go to guy”. When shifts needed to be covered and staffing was short, you were the one who came through time and time again. You were the pinnacle of the ideal employee.

Now, you’ve just started working a 12 hour shift because they needed you to help them come in early to get things caught up. You step it up and manage to get things caught up to where they need to be and that’s just the first three hours into the shift. You work tirelessly all night to keep the chaos under control and finally get to the end of your shift. You’re called into an urgent meeting before you punch out just to be told you’re being let go.

Yep… been there… done that.

The problem with that is what happens when we no longer have that “good job” that we rely on to pay for our cost of living expenses? What were we taught to do when that happens? EXACTLY!

You see, the answer to that is to get another job that you have to hope won’t be lost again. Just continue to participate in the rat race until one day you can no longer work for whatever reason that becomes. And if you have no retirement savings to fall back on… then what?

You’re not broke because you can’t build wealth, you’re financially strapped because you weren’t prepared to build wealth from a young age. You were led to believe that making a lot of money means spending a lot of money on frivolous things and luxurious items because “you only live once” (YOLO).

The problem with that is people want to live the rich life without knowing how to manage their money like the rich.

The truth is that you don’t become wealthy because you make a lot of money. A person becomes wealthy because of how they manage the money that they make. The sad reality is that most don’t know how and that’s why people who make six and seven figure incomes still end up broke.

There are several key factors when it comes to building wealth, but two of them are extremely important. One of them is discipline. The fact is that no matter how well educated you are, if you’re not disciplined enough to manage your money properly, you won’t achieve financial freedom.

That’s where I kept messing up on my past attempts to build wealth. I didn’t focus on the discipline part and sabotaged my financial gains time and time again. I should be a lot further down the path to being financially independent than I am, but I haven’t given up and learn from my failures.

Which brings me to the second key factor to building wealth… perseverance. The ability to not give up and begin to rebuild a financial foundation with a better understanding of what it takes to be successful on this journey.

Too many people just accept that they will never become rich because they have the wrong mindset. Once again, they were conditioned to believe that financial wealth is for the “privileged” and the “lucky”. Simply because they were never taught financial literacy.

Because I know what it’s like to endure financial hardships and also because of my failed attempts to accumulate wealth in the past, I’m very empathetic to those who don’t know what they don’t know. It’s become my passion to educate and teach financial literacy so that others can avoid the mistakes I’ve made.

My goal isn’t just to achieve financial freedom for myself, but to achieve it with as many other people as possible a long the way. There’s no joy in taking the journey all alone.

The mission is to keep on teaching financial literacy as I make progress, however slowly, and track my progress to share with the readers of this blog. I believe in the philosophy of you teach what you learn as you learn what to teach.

In order for others to follow the path I forge, I feel it’s my duty to provide markers towards progress. Achieving financial freedom is a slow momentum process that gradually accelerates over time.

People don’t become successful because they quit. Building wealth isn’t easy but it also isn’t hard either. It’s about laying brick upon brick gradually over time. There is no “get rich quick” short cut to wealth that doesn’t come with high risk for the “reward”. Only fools fall for the dream of “overnight success”.

So the why in why I teach financial literacy is because I don’t want people to stay trapped in the rat race until they die. I want to see wealth and prosperity for the masses and less suffering.

I ask for you to be there with me as we lift up others who follow our lead and give back to those in need with encouragement, so that we can be the change we want to see in the world.

As I like to say… “the journey begins with the first step”.

I’ll see you in the next post. Until next time… be sure to comment below and let’s get some dialogue going. I’m curious to know, what’s your opinion on teaching financial literacy?