Five Frightening Financial Pitfalls You Want to Avoid

With the spooky holiday right around the corner, what better time to go over some financial frights you want to avoid at all costs! We constantly read about what we SHOULD be doing to better secure our financial future. But no one ever mentions those scary financial pitfalls that could really bring about financial ruin.

Five Frightening Financial Pitfalls to Avoid:

• Opening up a credit card is not a bad idea but carrying a lot of debt is BAD. This not only wrecks havoc on your credit score but it causes a ton of unnecessary stress in your life. It’s always best to pay off your balances in full every month.

• Having high interest rates on your credit cards. You never want to open your credit card statement and find that this is the case. Ultimately if you do carry a balance this means you are paying more for an item than what it is really worth.

• Reaching the age where you could retire but realizing you never planned for it. Many young people never think about their future and forget the importance of retirement planning. Ask your employer about retirement packages and figure out if the retirement plan will even cover all your needs or if you should also looking into supplementing it with a IRA or other investment account.

• Finding out recovery time from surgery is going to take a longer than expected and work does not cover disability and you have NO emergency fund. You always want to make sure you have at least three months of rent/mortgage payments in savings in case of an emergency.

• Hanging on to those losing investments. Yes, naturally you want to keep them until you can make your money back but sometimes your best move may be to sell when at a loss. Not only is this a good tax strategy but it will free up your money so you can make another better more profitable investment.

It is important to understand the impact these pitfalls can have on your financial future. By realizing and preparing for each of these you can save yourself a great deal of stress and anxiety. These five frightening financial pitfalls can happen to anyone on any given day. Don’t wait until it’s too late, take control of your financial future today!