budgets are sexy « OMG I'm Thirty

After Suze Orman ended her amazing finance show (which I always listened to as a podcast) about a year and a half ago, I realized that almost everything I knew about finance I’d learned from Suze Orman. And I didn’t know what to do without her.

I still had Dave Ramsey’s podcast, which always amused and humbled me (he sometimes speaks to really down and out (aka completely broke) people who call in…and he always has pretty sound advice, even when I don’t consistently completely agree with him (he can get very religious). However, one of his best quotes is “you can’t fix stupid,” which I absolutely agree with). Another podcast I listened to was (and is) NPR’s Planet Money– which is a great podcast about money topics- but is more an exploration of economics in our lives than a ‘money advice’ show the way Suze Orman’s was.

In the past few months I’ve discovered some cool new finance advice podcasts (as well as bloggers…many of the podcasts are from bloggers that have decided to start podcasts). Nothing replaces Suze Orman, who had a distinct voice, but a lot of these are very good. If anyone wants some good and relatable finance podcasts and blogs for complete novices, here are some awesome recommendations:

http://www.budgetsaresexy.com – J.Money’s refreshingly honest and totally down to earth financial blog. I’ve never read a finance blog that’s as open and genuine- J. Money tracks every dollars he has and he will give you exact numbers including his net worth, his retirement savings, his mortgage paid, and much more. He writes articles with titles like ‘What I’d Like to Teach My Dumb-Ass Tenants About Money.’ This blog is fantastic for anyone who doesn’t come from a finance background and just wants to understand all the basics a more, from someone who’s ‘just like you.’

http://affordanything.com/ – The Afford Anything podcast (which used to be called the Money Podcast) got me turned on to budgetsaresexy.com because J.Money (of budgetsaresexy) used to be the co-podcaster. However, he has since left the podcast, and his co-podcaster Paula Pant has renamed the show after her website: affordanything.com. Both the podcast and the website are really inspiring and useful – Paula Pant is in her early thirties and is completely financially independent and never really has to work again. She still works, though, and explains why in both her podcast and on the blog. Listen to the podcast from the beginning to listen to her and J.Money co-host together. They’re a great pair. Paula talks a lot about real estate and has made her fortune from it, so if that interests you, this is an extra good one (but it’s a good podcast even if you’re not into real estate- I’m not.)

Optimal Finance Daily – This is a cool podcast because each episode is a part of a different well known finance blogger’s blog- read aloud by the podcaster Dan Warren. It’s a great way to get familiar with lots of different finance bloggers – plus each episode is only around 8 minutes- so super easy to listen to!

So Money with Farnoosh Torabi – Farnoosh’s podcast is superbly edited and makes the listener feel taken care of (the way Suze Orman’s show always was). Farnoosh’s podcast is great to listen to because she’s a money expert interviewing other money experts! Super clear financial advice, and a very inspiring show as well.

Hope you enjoy some of these. As always, let me know what you think!

Let me just start by saying that I actually really like credit cards and that they don’t scare me. But horror movies do- and even scary, or semi-scary, TV shows can keep me up at night. Hell, just a trailer for a scary movie makes me immediately plug my ears and avert my eyes.

People may laugh at me when I scream in fear during the first episode of Stranger Things, or The Walking Dead, and turn away from the shows for good, deciding to probably never watch them again. But I know myself. I know how scary movies and books and TV shows might seem fun to me at first but can give me terrible nightmares, especially when I’m alone at an old hotel in the middle of Oklahoma City.

And since I know myself, I also know that I’m as good with money as I am bad with horror films. I was that kid who would look for money hidden in the coin returns at arcades and collect it, as opposed to using the coins to actually play the games. I know that credit cards will never tempt me into spending more than I have because I’m just a cautious type of person.

Yikes!

However this isn’t true for lots of people- and if you’re one of them, don’t be ashamed. Be glad that you know yourself. The amazing finance blogger J. Money, on his fantastic blog Budgets Are Sexy (I only very recently discovered this extremely relatable and super fun-to-read blog, and I highly recommend it), writes about how he was solicited by TD Bank to create a credit card article targeted to millennials. Instead he describes how millennials are actually doing great things for themselves by avoiding getting into credit card debt. The reason TD Bank, and many other banks, are especially targeting millennials for credit cards is because millennials have been shying away from the cards due to worries about ending up in debt. According to the Budgets are Sexy article, almost half of all millenials- 44% – aren’t using credit cards at all. After all, many millennials-including myself- grew up and/or spent their early twenties during the recession of 2008 and are already saddled with insanely high student loan debt and a degree of worry about incurring any more bills.

TD Bank was trying to get Budgets Are Sexy to write about the benefits of credit cards and how millennials should establish credit so that they could borrow money later to acquire a car or a house. Yet J. Money, although he likes credit cards for their various perks and benefits, thinks that avoiding debt is way more important than your credit score. And I completely agree. Although I love credit cards personally because they’ve enabled me to take many a free flight somewhere, and to pass the credit check to rent my apartment, I disagree with telling millennials they should establish credit in order to take on lots of debt down the line… especially when millenials are already worried they’ll take advantage of “free money” credit cards and take on debt from unnecessary things!

I think it’s important to know yourself, and if you know you can’t handle the temptation of credit cards, stay away from them! I’ve cut scary movies out of my life because I know I can’t handle them, and I’ll never look back!

This creepy image scares me a lot. It’s actually from a protest against credit card debt, that I found in a How Stuff Works article

OMG I'm Thirty

Everything You Should Know About Your Thirties

Tag Archives: budgets are sexy

Some Awesome New Finance Experts I’ve Been Following

The Connection Between Scary Movies and Credit Cards

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: