This chapter shows you how to test your financial habits with this book. If you don’t know what to do and don’t follow through in your financial plan, there is a good chance you’ll find a way to get a handle on your finances, or you’ll have to do it all over again.
The best way to test your money habits is by applying what you learn here to your own life. The best way to test yourself is to set it up and see how your habits translate over time. This is called “testing with success.” Make sure you test how you’re doing with money and make sure it’s doing the right things for you.
Money is a big part of life. Many people have issues with spending and saving, and the best way to learn to be a good financial citizen is to try to adopt a better approach. This is not something you can learn overnight. Just like people who use a car, you have to get comfortable with the car and then practice driving it around a lot before you can get comfortable with it. You have to practice driving it everywhere before you can even start to drive.
As much as you want to get into the habit of saving money, it’s important to understand what you can afford. And if you don’t know how much you’ll need, that’s just going to make you more likely to be overspending. Many people spend so much on things like vacation travel, fancy dinners out, and credit cards that they end up not being able to afford it all, so they end up spending more than they should.
The goal is to be as efficient as possible, so you should not have to be concerned about the amount that you can spend. A lot of people spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on things. That’s where you have to look at the average amount you can afford to buy a new house. So if you want to spend more than you should, just practice driving.
Once you’ve mastered that, there’s no more fear of losing your home. It’s simply a matter of finding the right place to live, and making sure you’re in the right city. If you want to live more in a city where you can pay less for groceries, you’ll want to live in a better city.
Theres a certain amount of money a person can spend on housing. And that amount starts at a minimum. If we were to say, “the average price for a new home is $250,000,” that $250,000 is actually the minimum amount we can spend on a new home.
Because buying a home is one of the most expensive purchases you can make in a lifetime, it’s not the kind of thing you can just hop on a plane and leave without. So if you want to live in a better city, there are a lot of things you can do to make this easier. There’s a lot of things you can do to make your housing costs less when you’re living in a better city.
I know the average home price is around 250,000, but we also know that the average rental is 120,000. So if you want to live in a better city, its not just the rent that you need to take into consideration. You also need to think about your income, location, and how the area you live in impacts the cost of living. For example, if you live in a major metropolitan area, your rent probably is going to double.
This is a bit misleading because we don’t know what average household income is, but we do know that you can make more in a small town like Austin than you can in a major metro area. So if you want to live in a better city, its not just the rent that you need to take into consideration. You also need to think about your income, location, and how the area you live in impacts the cost of living.
