Is Your Financial Personality Negatively Affecting Your Wealth?

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Whether you’re mapping an appropriate savings plan or simply want to curb your splurging, understanding your spending profile is essential to figuring out what to do next. Here are a few financial personalities, and how each may better manage their financial wellness.

If you spent your rent money on Coachella tickets:

Do you laugh every time someone mentions your savings account? Favoring experiences over possessions has its merits, but is not a financially sustainable plan.

Tip: There are a number of websites and mobile apps that can help you keep your financial balance in perspective. Services like Pocket Expense, Mvelopes and GoodBudget help you visualize and categorize spending while more comprehensive services such as Clarity track deposits, expenses and credit card debts, providing you with detailed information about your cash flow whenever you need it. Best of all, these apps are free to download.

If you know a thing or two about IRAs:

Your finances are in good order, but if you’ve yet to begin investing, there is an entire world of value spinning — and making money — without you. 

Tip: Time is truly on the side of a young investor. Despite college debt and lower salaries, twenty-somethings are actually in a prime position to enter the investing world. Savvy savers can afford to assume greater risk in their investments and build aggressive portfolios, which place a premium on volatility and ultimately stand to net larger gains. 

If you've ever said “technically it wasn’t fraud” aloud:

It was probably fraud.

Tip: Stop committing fraud.

If you’re still hiding stacks of cash under your mattress: 

Safeguarding yourself against financial emergencies is a smart decision, but the diminishing presence of brick-and-mortar banks shouldn’t deter you from banking altogether. 

Tip: Mobile banking is on the rise, not only for the convenience they provide members but for keeping the customer service experience front-and-center. And most apps go to great lengths to broadcast their security measures for protecting transactions. As long as an online bank is FDIC-insured and uses high-end encryption, there’s no valid reason not to trust it.

If you have a death grip on your credit card:

If you reach for your plastic for every single purchase, you may want to consider taking an in-depth examination of your spending habits.

Tip: Try using cash for every transaction you make over the course of an entire week. This way, you’ll have a tangible sense of your typical spending — and where your patterns may be excessive or obstructive to your monthly or longer-term goals.