10 Financial Commandments

I read this article last night on the MSN and I am enticed on what the author listed. I know most of us have done these, a good thing, I am in my mid thirty’s.

1. Pay off your nonmortgage debt.
I agree on this 100 percent. I should have no debt except for mortgage and if there is one like a car where we need to commute to work, then it must be a reasonable one.

2. Kick the debt cycle altogether.
The author said “What good is it to pay off your loans only to take out another one and rack up more debt? An easy way to save for big-ticket items -- and avoid going back into debt -- is to put money you would have used for monthly debt payments and interest charges into a savings account. For instance, after you make that final $300-a-month student-loan payment, keep making an equal payment to yourself. After one year, you'll have $3,600 saved."
My hubby and I are planning of doing this. We have a credit card loan with an annual rate 9.9 percent per year and we are planning to apply a loan to payoff that loan using his 401k for 3 percent. I hope this will happen soon.

3. Get serious about retirement.
Being in our thirtyish is when we saw surprising growth in our 401k. Unfortunately the market has taken it back much of its gains. In the long run, we should be better. We were just lucky and able to timed up building our passive income.

4. Diversify your investments.
We tried our best to diversified most of our hard earned money were it’s been distributed to 401k, savings deposits, cd’s, income properties, and with my small business.

5. Continue to learn.
I have been continually educating myself. I often read financial books. Even the emails coming from readers and friends, it’s an experience that I like to pass on.

6. Protect your assets.
It’s our hard earned money and our security when we are ready to retire.

7. Live simply.
Unless you make a lot of money, you really can’t have everything at once. I would rather wait and save until I can afford that something. I am glad that my hubby and I live simply. We live in an affordable area and make a decent living and this is something were not everyone has the advantage. And I say we’re lucky, and thankful, and blessed. We still made the decision to live in a small house. Though not our dream house, we haven’t done any improvement on it.

8. Make your will known.
We are not really used to it. We are going to plan this out this coming months.

9. Get a life…insurance policy.
Being an owner of a small business, I never thought about having one. But at least my hubby has one from his employer.

10. Be charitable.
My family tithe but we could do better in giving. We give away our used clothings, used materials, still we could do better.

Reading the ten financial commandments makes me comfortable. I am feeling better at my husband and I on our accomplishment in our thirty’s. Sooner we will be in our forty’s and new commandments on the way.