Personal Finance Fails

By Nathan Welch

Life's financial decisions are difficult. Have you found it challenging getting this information through to others or found other finance books boring? This book takes a different approach to setting the boundaries of personal finances. This book is just like the fail videos you have seen on YouTube! You will learn what not to do, or at least what could happen. This is the account of real people's, life changing, financial fails. Learn from them… so you can avoid them!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543977479

Book preview

Personal Finance Fails

Life’s financial decisions are difficult.  Have you found it difficult getting this information through to others or found other finance books boring?  This book takes a different approach to setting the boundaries of personal finances.  This book is just like the fail videos you have seen on YouTube!  You will learn what not to do, or at least what could happen.  This is the account of real people’s, life changing, financial fails.  Learn from them… so you can avoid them!

Nathan Welch

All Rights Reserved

First Published in 2019

ISBN 9781543977479

The right of Nathan Welch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.  Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Personal Finance Fails

The Account of Real People’s, Life Changing, Financial Fails

Learn From Them… So You Can Avoid Them!

Chapter One:

Introduction

Chapter Two:

Life’s Financial Literacy

Chapter Three:

Your Path To Financial Freedom

Chapter Four:

Understand This First… Insurance

Chapter Five:

Understand This First… Interest

Chapter Six:

Understand This First… Taxes

Chapter Seven

Things With Wheels Roll Downhill

Chapter Eight

Credit Cards: Rewards Or Walk The Plank

Chapter Nine

College Success or Financial Ruin

Chapter Ten

Graduate School Or Bust

Chapter Eleven

What Makes A Great Job… Or Is It A Ball & Chain?

Chapter Twelve

Work Performance, Don’t Be A Lemon

Chapter Thirteen

Renting… Save Or Pay Forever

Chapter Fourteen

Have Emergency Savings Or Lose Your Hair

Chapter Fifteen

Engagement & Wedding Bands… Diamonds Or Coal?

Chapter Sixteen

Homes and Mortgages… Free Living Is The Goal

Chapter Seventeen

Your Mini Me’s… Babies

Chapter Eighteen

Wealth, Wealthy (Financial Freedom) Or Broke

Chapter Nineteen

Retirement: The Golden Egg Or Is It Cracked?

Chapter Twenty

There Are No Participation Trophies!

Personal Finance Fails

Chapter 1

Personal Finance Fails

Introduction

This book will be just like the fail videos you have seen on YouTube! The financial fails detailed are real people’s, real-life, financial fails. They are not so far out of reality that they will never occur. They are close to home and can happen to anyone.

If you get close to the edge of a pool, you may fall in. Fortunately, or unfortunately, someone near you may have recorded the entire thing. They are now itching to get this online for the world to see.

You know the kind of fall I’m talking about. The type of slip where your feet end up above your head. As if this isn’t scary enough, your head jerks back in a snap like motion. Your bottom then bounces off of the pools edge like the bouncing effect of a gym class kickball. This leaves viewers gasping. Their hands either end up over their mouths or end up pressed to their foreheads.

Financial fails are not as easily captured on video. Even so, they can elicit the same expressions and emotions. Virtually everyone will be faced with a series of financial decisions that have the possibility to result in a fail.

Many decision points have the possibility to end up in something like the swimming pool fail. This can include things like buying a car, taking a job, buying a home, investing, and saving for retirement. This book will paint the picture of real people’s, real life, personal financial fails.

What does a fail mean? It means you may get hurt, like falling near the pools edge. The impact, like the pool, can happen in a split second. Just like the pool incident, the recovery isn’t always quick.

Some will be lucky and end up with only a bruise or sore muscles. This may only take a few months to heal. You know, the stiffness that you can manage with ibuprofen and slow movements.

Others may not be so lucky. They may be left with a longtime backache that leads to self-medication. This may even leave someone with a pain pill addiction. This in itself will open the door to a whole host of entirely different problems.

The very unfortunate will be left with something even more permanent and life altering. This could be a permanent limp or worse, some form of paralysis.

The personal finance fails detailed are like this pool example. Everyone has been to a pool. Similarly, everyone could see themselves faced with a financial decision where a possible fail could occur. If a fail does occur, it could cause injury. Some injuries could even have permanent consequences.

This book is for my children. When they were young, we spent a few minutes of our bedtime routines watching fail videos on YouTube. Don’t judge, the impact of learning from these videos was powerful. They learned that slopes and skateboards can result in bruised knees or worse, broken legs and wrists. Interestingly, they don’t have an interest in skateboards!

They learned that standing up on an ATV is dangerous. They haven’t tried this. They are however, hesitant to take their ATV’s through mud. They are cautious because of watching videos with people stuck in the mud. See the connection? Knowledge of the people you meet and the information you learn, changes your behavior. Studying fails can be an effective learning strategy.

My children have learned that if you want to go in the water, buy a boat! Most other vehicles or objects will eventually sink. This book will use real life financial fails to help all ages learn about finances. It will keep you from sinking in a pool of personal finance decisions. Some will say, Thank goodness this never happened to me. Others may say, Why didn’t I read this book before? Or, Where was this book when I needed it?!

The financial fails are from real people. This is from the accumulation of my experiences that have been shared from working with thousands of people throughout my career. Their identities are kept private. Their experiences have been shared so that you don’t make the same mistakes that they did.

Financial decisions are not easy. We are human and thus we are clouded with emotions. This alone is a logical reason why most people are heavily in debt and not as well off as they otherwise could be. If it was easy, anyone could do it. Here is the thing, it is easy, if you have the knowledge.

The earlier you read this book, the more informed you will be. You will learn from other’s mistakes. Don’t think that they can’t happen to you. They didn’t think it could happen to them. This book will help you realize mistakes that maybe before reading this book, you didn’t view as mistakes. It will help you avoid what others didn’t at first see. You will learn to see the decision for what it is, a slippery surface.

This book will help give traction to everyone. A young high school student, a college student, a graduate of any type, a retired person or a parent and virtually anyone in between.

If you have struggled to reach your children with financial advice, they may be receptive to a different approach. A book of fails may be the change in approach that they need. This will help guide everyone toward the proper path to navigating a pool of financial decisions.

What this book isn’t, is a get-rich-quick-scheme. It is about navigating life’s financial decisions successfully, avoiding debt, and not ending up in a fails video or in this book!

Chapter 2

Personal Finance Fails

Life’s Financial Literacy

It was my first day of work as an intern. I took a shower, got dressed up, and was eager to learn about the company. I was hopeful this experience would land me a job upon graduation.

Here is the thing… The most rememberable interaction was with the manager and his side hustle. You see, he was an investor, an entrepreneur of sorts. What was to come next has never been forgotten.

To maintain confidentiality, no real names in the real-life scenarios were used. Again, these are real people’s, real life, personal financial fails. Our goal here is to learn from them.

Here I was, my first job as an intern. I was a little nervous, but more excited than nervous. It was the Twin Cities, so I felt a little success when I found the proper place to park! As I moved from the parking lot to the building all my senses were alert, soaking everything in.

I headed to the front desk to check-in. I could see a curved administrative desk, off in the distance, but it appeared to be empty. As I looked closer, I could see that someone had recently been there.

A steaming cup of coffee was sitting to the right of the keyboard. The chair was pulled from the desk and rotated outward as if the person sitting there had to go somewhere quickly. As I was absorbing all this, there was higher pitched man’s voice that came from around the corner, You must be the intern!

Oh man, here it goes. He was moving fast. I took a step forward to greet him. As he moved in closer, I could tell he was a shorter, well dressed, and a very high energy type person. There was so much cologne or body spray that it made my eyes water. It turns out this was Anthony, the site manager.

We ended up going to his office. His office was nice, you know, the big desk, chairs, and even a couch. He was a very experienced individual. This wasn’t his first job, rather he was on the last quarter of his working career. Anthony had worked at other Fortune 500 companies and even held a few Vice President positions.

The entire time that I knew him, he was well dressed and well spoken. He never broke this mold. He always looked, to me, as a banking executive of sorts. You know the type, pressed pants and everything but the pocket protector.

I would approximate his age around 50 years old at the time. Plenty of time for life experiences and plenty of time for more life experiences. One day at lunch, he was telling me about his most recent investment. I enjoyed learning about investments. I wanted to be an investor someday. First, I needed a job that paid me money!

Anthony’s side hustle required a sizable investment of $120,000 dollars. This was more than I could comprehend at the time. I was still trying to figure out how to scramble up some money to go out that night. Remember, I was in college. Nonetheless, to some, this may not sound like much of an investment, but keep in mind, this was $120,000 dollars in 2002.

There is usually always a reason why people make investments. For Anthony, this was an investment to help fund his children’s college. I was just finishing college