How I finally sorted my finances, once and for all

How I sorted my finances, once and for all!

Now I’m in my 30’s and own my own home, I have finally learned to be careful with my money. Yes ok, I admit it took a little while to figure out but I think I’m there. No longer can I justify spending all of my hard-earned cash on new clothes, make-up and nights out. Woe. Nowadays, I have to be sensible and be ready for anything that could happen. For example, since owning my own home, I’ve realised you have to pay out for the most random things – last Saturday we were merrily getting ready for dinner at the local pub over a glass of wine when water started pouring in from our porch, down through a gap in the wall into our bedroom below. The porch was flooded and there is now a lot of damage to both of our beautiful bedrooms. I won’t bore you with the details, but the moral of the story is that you just never know what is round the corner. I had to swap the glass of wine in my hand for a mop, and angrily cleaned up our sopping hallway before we went out, recking my outfit in the process. You catch my drift.

When it comes to money, I wish I had begun to build my credit rating and started saving earlier, but hey ho – I got there in the end. I moved out of home quite young – at 18 I was renting in Brighton and working full time and never really learnt how to manage ‘real life‘ until a bit later. This resulted in spending most of my early twenties living on the breadline, only just making ends meet and racking up quite a bit of debt just to manage. Subsequently, it took me quite a few years to pay that back and I can wholly say I learned the hard way, but those times are over now and I’m pleased to say I’m in a much better place.

As my financial journey has been one that I could only describe as a ‘bumpy road’ I would say the turning point for me came when I focused on these things:

  • Paying my debts back (whilst refinancing to the cheapest interest rate in the meantime)
  • Building a good credit rating
  • Budgeting my monthly finances religiously
  • Use any spare money to pay off debts, only save once you are debt free.

My advice to anyone is that the sooner you can do that, the better.

With this in mind, when Stoneacre got in touch to share with me their new infographic ‘The Road to Good Credit’, I thought this one is actually something I wish I’d seen a long time ago – so I decided to do a post around it as I can’t stress enough how important this is.

If you are thinking about boosting your credit rating, the graphic below contains some really important tips – to be honest, is a good refresher if you’ve thought about all this before…

The Road to Good Credit Infographic

 

I know this post was of a different style to my usual posts, but I hope you found it informative and it helps out, even if just a little bit as I wish I’d had someone to guide me, back in the day.

 

What is your top tip to manage your finances? 

Post written in collaboration with Stoneacre

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