2. Consider Your Family Plan (and Save) for Retirement

American Public Media’s “Marketplace” helps make sense of what’s going on in the business world and the economy.²⁹

“So Money with Farnoosh Torabi” combines interviews with successful business people, expert advice, and listeners’ personal finance questions.³⁰

The most important thing is to find resources that work for your learning style and that you find interesting and engaging. If one blog, book, course, or podcast is dull or difficult to understand, keep trying until you find something that clicks.
Education shouldn’t stop once you learn the basics. The economy changes, and new financial tools—such as the budgeting apps mentioned earlier—are always being developed. Find resources that you enjoy and trust, and keep refining your money skills from now to retirement and even after.

Things That Classes Can’t Teach You

Personal finance education is a great idea for consumers, especially people starting out, who need to learn investing basics or credit management. However, understanding the basic concepts is not a guaranteed path to fiscal sense. Human nature can often derail the best of intentions aimed at achieving a perfect credit score or building a substantial retirement nest egg. These three key character traits can help you stay on track:

Discipline

One of the most important tenets of personal finance is systematic saving. Say your net earnings are $60,000 per year and your monthly living expenses—housing, food, transportation, and the like—amount to $3,200 per month. There are choices to make surrounding your remaining $1,800 in monthly salary. Ideally, the first step is to establish an emergency fund or perhaps a tax-advantaged health savings account (HSA)—to be eligible for one, your health insurance must be a high-deductible health plan (HDHP)—to meet out-of-pocket medical expenses. Let’s say that your friends like to go out several times a week, eating away at your spare cash. Lacking the discipline required to save rather than spend could keep you from saving the 10% to 15% of gross income that could have been stashed in a money market account for short-term needs.
Then, once you have your emergency stash, there’s investing discipline; it’s not just for institutional money managers who make their living by buying and selling stocks. The average investor would do well to set a target on profit taking and abide by it. As an example, imagine that you bought Apple Inc. stock in February 2016 at $93 and vowed to sell when it crossed $110, as it did two months later. Alas, when it did, you broke that vow and held on to the stock. It went back down, and you ended up exiting the position in July 2016 at $97, giving up gains of $13 per share and the possible opportunity for profit from another investment.