I have been bashing around my Resume at work since that is something you should do at the start of every year (at least) to keep it up to date (since you never really know when you might require a resume), and I got to thinking, what would my Financial Resume look like?
What do I mean by a financial resume? Well, I have been “managing” my money for over 25 years now (actually all my life, but for real since I was about 21), and if someone asked me, “Do you think you did a good job?” I’d say, “No,” but I’d never been able to give them a reason as to why I think I have done a sub-par job.
So how would I write my financial Resume? The hard part is trying to remember all of the economic “decisions” that you have made in your lifetime (significant ones, let’s not get down to the minutia of how many coffees you bought at work and such).
The easiest ones to remember for me are the purchases of my two homes:
Buy house #1, already had one child and another on the way. I was positive I couldn’t afford a house, but I gave my Agents a “can’t go any higher than this” price, and then naturally ended up purchasing a home $10,000 more than that. In hindsight, I was far too conservative and could afford the home (with some help from family). The house itself didn’t appreciate, but I did manage to sell it for what I bought it for.
- I ended up out the cost of moving out (I paid for movers), the commission on selling the house, and the cost of the new roof and furnace I put in the house.
Overall, this financial decision was a good one, even with a slight “loss.” The money I would have been spending on renting would have been “lost,” whereas the equity I paid down on my house went into my pocket (with 0% interest, unfortunately), but still, it was worthwhile, and my family needed more space.
Financial Resume
- Your Financial Resume , would you hire you?
- Cars: from my Financial Resume truly a real chance to create a money pit. Cars are a tool for me, nothing else. No status associated with them.
- Financial Resume: Investments luck has had a great deal to do with these. I have been very lucky.
Your resume thus far sounds like mine. I’m afraid to complete mine — so many cars leased, so many credit cards spent to the limits, so many things bought without thinking: I wonder what are the good decisions we have made about money. The learning curve has been high for my husband and I, apparently, which is why, at 47 & nearing 50, we are taking on debt to pay for our kids’ college (something we meant to get around to saving for and never did) and are on such a tight budget just so we can feed the interest on all the credit we have accumulated. My husband made one smart decision that I can think of for sure: he never let me buy the pool I always wanted; it turns out, it would probably be a huge expesne every year that we cannot now afford. I am just trying to get to where I make good choices, but we are so hemmed in by our bad choices, it sometimes feels unattainable. I keep plugging away though. Thanks for a thought-provoking and original idea.