We all make mistakes. It’s a truism that I feel gets too often overlooked in this day and age. Perhaps it’s because our senses are so often assaulted from all angles with images of perfection everywhere we look. From the airbrushed models we see in billboards to the heavily made up movie stars we see on screen. We know that their perfection is a manufactured and dishonest imperfection, but we aspire to it anyway. Or perhaps it’s because social media has created a vast court of public opinion that has no sense of due process and can react with scathing condemnation whenever someone in the public eye makes a mistake as though we should hold them to a higher set of standards than the ones we reserve for ourselves.
We all make mistakes. But it’s up to us whether we choose to live in their shadow. While you could apply this dictum to every aspect of your life from your relationships to the lamentable fashion choices you made in the late 90s (it’s okay, everyone was wearing flannel shirts and hot pants). Here we’re going to keep our thinking squarely in the realm of family finances. We’ve all made poor financial choices in the past that we’re continuing to pay for now. Whether it was through maxing out credit cards, failing to keep up with loan repayments or letting ourselves slip into rent arrears. You’ve learned from your mistakes and moved on. Now it’s time to stop them from afflicting our future finances…
Stop feeding the buy to let machine
If you’re renting at the moment you may well feel that owning your own home is a pipe dream that will forever be out of reach. But the truth is that there are lots of ways in which even those with lamentable credit histories can own their own property. Check out this article on how to get a mortgage with bad credit. Rental prices often eclipse what your mortgage payments would be and the sooner you’re able to stop feeding the exploitative buy to let machine, the sooner you’ll be able to right the ship of your household finances.
Consolidate your debts
It’s extremely easy and understandable to bury your head in the sand when it comes to our debts. To select the “minimum payment” option and try and muddle through as best we can. When we do this, however, we simply fuel the debt and the psychological damage it does to us. We find ourselves paying off mostly interest and so our debt barely shrinks. Consolidating your debts into a single payment can ease the stress of managing different debts with various rates of interest. Because you’re replacing your existing debts with a single new one, you’ll also improve your credit score.
Always be budgeting
There’s no better solution for dragging your finances into a brighter, sunnier future than by finding the right family budget template and making sure that you stick to it. It’s not a terribly sexy or revolutionary idea… but it does work.
Just because you’ve made financial mistakes in the past doesn’t mean that they should be allowed to dictate your future.
