What is the best Financial goal a teenager can have?

Question

I have a friend that is going to Uni and is wanting to set himself a goal of what to set himself before he goes and while he is there so could you give me some advice so that i can help him on his way to getting his financial goal?

Answer 1

As we move through life, we face different challenges. As children, these challenges are set by our parents, teachers, and other adults. For most of us, our teenage years are the first time we think about our own goals and challenges, especially financial goals.

Short answer - your friend is on his own!

Longer answer...

University sets the standard for the rest of life as an adult, though the real savvy kids will start in high school. We know from bankruptcies and debt counselors that many adults make a complete mess of things, so never, ever listen to advice without questioning it. You have to find the goals that mean something to yourself.

Your friend is in real danger!

If you try to think of amounts of money in isolation, you are doomed to failure. One or two lottery winners might prove me wrong, but most of them are so used to bad personal financial management that they never make the most of their winnings.

The safest way forward is to spend time working out what you want to achieve. This is hard to explain on a personal level, because your friend has to realize his own dreams - not yours or mine.

As this site is young, I have not yet built an archive of examples of financial goals. But, I maintain that these are not necessary for a good personal plan. Everyone should start with their life now, look at what they need to improve, and build from that.

University life is no different from ordinary life, though for most people it is a fixed number of years, which makes planning financial goals much easier. I believe your friend needs to break this down to phases:

Pre-university
First year
Second year
etc

Each year needs study time, work time, social time, and any other time for things that are personally important. Leave a contingency for spare time, say 10%, or more if you are impulsive. This can be a rough estimate for future years, but the current year needs accuracy, and as much detail as you can manage.


Unless you have special skills, plan for minimum wage, then if you do better, you can think about better goals when you plan the following year.

You can now set your financial goals for each year by multiplying work time by minimum wage, adding any grants, awards, gifts, etc that you may have. Take the total amount, less a contingency for emergencies, divide that by 52, and never, ever spend more than that every week.

You have to monitor your plan to make sure you get your planned rewards before you spend then.

You will notice in this Freedly website that I often talk about working online, especially Internet marketing. I do this because it brings flexible working hours. My simple steps above work for any type of work. But you only succeed when you want money to do something specific, not if you want money for it's own sake.

Comments

This is a great answer as it has said to me that my friend is going to University next year on his own and will not have me with him to help him. Also it has helped me to give him advice on what to do with his finances before and after University. I will also tell him to come on here and read it for himself so that he can take all the information and decide what he wants do with his money situation.