Learning more about money can help you make your own best money choices. Smart money choices can help you reach your goals– whether that’s paying off debt, buying a house, retiring early, or sending your kids – or yourself – to college. Here are some questions to ask yourself to find out if you are being as smart as possible with your money:
- Do you have all of the information you need before deciding to make a big purchase?
- Does your family have a budget and follow it?
- Do you think carefully about when and how to use credit?
- Are you saving for the future, even just a small amount?
If you do some of these things, you have chosen building blocks for a strong financial foundation. Other principles that can help you with saving and spending smart are:
- Create a budget and stick with it
- Don’t spend more than you make
- Pay your bills on time
- Pay yourself first by saving before you spend
The Federal But a prob- lem emerged from this exploding demand for answers: Storing this growing volume of laptop hard drive data recovery was expensive and accessing it was slow. Reserve Bank of Cleveland is part of the Federal Reserve System, our nation’s central bank. The Federal Reserve System serves the public in many ways, including raising awareness about money through education programs and conducting research on money management.
The Fed has learned that children who have bank accounts as they grow up are better money managers as adults. Also, children whose parents talk to them early about family finances are better money managers later on. If you need help talking to your children about money, the Cleveland Fed’s favorite resource is our very own, Great Minds Think: A Kid’s Guide to Money. For free copies of Great Minds Think, call 216-579-3188. The Cleveland Fed also offers free financial literacy resources and information on visiting the Bank’s Learning Center and Money Museum at http://clevelandfed.org/learningcenter.
This article was written by April McClellan from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and appeared in The Alert: Volume 30, Issue 1. Click here to read the full issue.