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Check out some money basics from “your financial preschool teacher.”
Key points
- Most Americans don’t receive a good financial education in childhood.
- Tiffany Aliche grew up around honest and open conversations about money, which helped her when she ran into financial trouble.
- She has 10 solid tips for improving your money management skills.
Tiffany Aliche is a financial educator, writer, and podcast host who goes by the title “The Budgetnista.” Tiffany grew up in a household where money was discussed openly and freely, and she found early success in saving money and buying a home in her 20s while working as a preschool teacher. Unfortunately, she later ran into difficulties with her job and debt and had to rebuild her financial life from scratch. Now, her mission is teaching money skills to Americans, with particular focus on young people (and in fact, she has described herself as “your financial preschool teacher”). Thanks to Tiffany’s efforts, her home state of New Jersey now has Law A1414, “The Budgetnista Law.” It requires that middle school students be taught financial literacy in New Jersey schools.
Tiffany has 10 steps for “getting good with money.” They’re intended to line out the basics of good money management, and then expand on those fundamentals.
1. Budget building
Not only do you need a budget, but you also need the right bank accounts and automations (such as auto-pay and direct deposit) to support that budget. Without a budget, it’ll be harder to see where your money is going and the places where you can save and learn to spend better.
2. Save like a squirrel
Tiffany believes the oft-repeated financial advice that you should have at least three months’ worth of expenses in your savings account, in case of emergency. You also need to save for other financial goals, like investing.
3. Dig out of debt
In order to get out of debt, you need to know how much you owe and to whom. Then you can make a plan to get out of it, and use online bill pay as well as auto-pay to do so.
4. Score high
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