10 life choices that can ruin your financial future

“While you’re making plans, life happens,” it’s a saying, and it is a real one.

It’s just that life doesn’t really happen by itself, but it often happens in a certain way due to personal life choices.

No matter how much we want to be perfect, we are not. Perfectionism is the sure path to an unfulfilled life. The stars will never align perfectly and you will never make perfect life choices because you are not perfect either.

Instead of looking for an endless series of perfect victories in life and being disappointed that you can’t get them, you better accept that in life you will make good choices and less good choices. All a man can do is strive to make the good ones more and more important than the others.

We make good life choices, making bad life choices and learning from them :). But it is not necessary for us to make all the mistakes. We can also learn from others.

Life choices that can ruin your financial future:

1. The career you choose

There are many career paths that lead more likely to nowhere than to anything. I will not give examples here but I think we all know very well trained people who work in fields that either do not bring too much added value or the value brought is poorly quoted on the market or are no longer sought after.

On the other hand, there are areas where the chances of winning well are much higher. Here I can think of IT, law or financial analysis and there are other examples.

It is true that you can earn well in any career, if you become one of the best in that field or if you simply have an entrepreneurial spirit. But the truth is that in some professions you will be paid well as a rule and in others you will be well paid only as an exception to the rule.

2. The house you buy

It is perhaps one of the most impactful life choices that will determine your financial future.

I have seen so many cases of people who have invested all their financial resources to advance to a house and all their financial surplus for the remaining 25–30 years as they have to pay the installments to that house.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m good at buying your own house, I also wrote an article on rent vs. install them on the bank, but make sure that the price paid on your home is proportional to your financial strength.

And a degree of indebtedness of 50% does not mean that you took your house in proportion to your financial strength.

As a rule, the value of the house you live in should not exceed 2.5 times your annual income. That is, if you earn 2000 EUR per month (you alone or with your life partner), the value of your house should be 2000 EUR X 12 months X 2.5 years = 60,000 EUR.

Otherwise, you risk burying your personal finances for many years to come.

3. The car you buy and change at 5 years old;

First of all, the car does not have to be changed every 5 years. I don’t know where this habit comes from.

As a rule, the value of your car should not exceed your income (or that of your family) for 3 months. In the above case, at a net income of EUR 2000 per month, the value of your car should be a maximum of EUR 6,000.

4. The phone you change every year

A friend of mine, a multinational manager, was asked by a junior in his department what phone to buy. The manager listed some good and affordable phones, knowing that the junior had a salary of less than 2000eur per month. In front of this list, the junior was horrified and replied “no, no, I wanted to ask you if I should choose between iphone x and Samsung, I don’t know which one appeared last”. These phones cost about 25%-50% from his salary and were also in the habit of being changed every year.

You keep a car for at least 5 years, but to pay 50% of your salaries on a phone every year? This will surely bury your financial future.

5. The holidays I go to every year

Same with the holidays. There are people who can afford exotic vacations and several city breaks a year and there are people who can’t afford them.

What vacation can you afford? Normally the one from which you do not return poorer than you left. If you have 1 month vacation per year, the vacation you allow costs your income for one month.

6. The vices you spend your money on every day / week / month;

5 eur for a pack of cigarettes makes 150 eur per month. And here we are talking only about cigarettes, I do not add other addictions such as alcohol, gambling, excess sweets, excess fast food and other worse.

From my point of view it is ok to have some vices. You’re human after all. However, it is said that the sum of the vices is constant. So if a person does not smoke, drink or eat fast food you should be careful around him :).

I’ve met people who make half of their income from addictions. And here we are not talking about extreme cases but about ordinary cases: a pack of cigarettes a day, a few beer outings with the boys and a few shaormes a month and almost half of the income.

Financially speaking, addictions should not cost you more than 5% of your monthly income.

7. The life partner you choose

According to Napoleon Hill, choosing a life partner is the most important life choice financially. And not in the sense that you marry / marry someone rich or extreme, you marry / marry someone you have to maintain.

But you simply choose a wasteful life partner, with an extravagant lifestyle, maybe too conceited, or simply with whom you have constant quarrels.

Nothing affects your ability to build a prosperous financial future more than a life partner you are constantly at war with.

8. The people you choose to learn from

Starting from the ordinary:

• I manage my money the way I learned in my family — good, bad doesn’t matter;
• I learn a lot of wisdom about my neighbor’s money;
• I learn and believe when the people on TV say that a lot of money is earned only if you enter politics and do something illegal;

Or more refined:

• Invest in the opportunity (make sure it’s not a pyramid scheme) promoted as an investment by friend X;
• I blindly believe all sorts of slogans of various financial gurus “Those who save are losers”, “Don’t make millions, make billions” and the like, taken out of context and said to shock the world;
• I invest according to the public recommendations of specialists.

Learn about money from people who have results and from people whose message resonates. Not all paths are for you and not all advice applies to you.

9. How dependent or independent are your children?

I saw men over 30 who were still living in their parents ‘house and behind their parents’ backs. I have seen women who, even after the age of 30, receive serious subsidies from their parents for any more serious shopping in their lives, whether we are talking about a house, a car, furniture or even vacations.

If you teach your young children to get everything they want from you, without learning temperance and balance, chances are that when they grow up they will be left at your expense.

Raising our children to become independent men and independent women.

10. How much you sacrifice your health

Give your health for the money “it’s a no deal”. Unfortunately, most of us do not respect this principle. We are sacrificing our health and happiness for the time being for money, and in the future we will pay for this mistake.

Of all the types of health, the most important is mental health, or mental balance. No matter how many activities and businesses you run, always remember that you also need relaxation, activities that charge you and enough sleep.

Keep your health at a good level, eat fruits and vegetables, exercise, get enough sleep, love, enjoy life.

You will make a lot more money by being balanced and healthy than by sacrificing your health through stress, addictions and an unbalanced life.

Conclusion

We can be born into a rich family, we can be born with a certain set of talents and we can even get a chosen education. All this can help us a lot in life or we can waste it in vain. Our life choices will make a difference and shape our destiny.