The Worst Financial Advice To Avoid

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bad financial adviceLook anywhere or listen to just about anyone and they will offer you advice about money.

This is good and bad.

Having easy access to all of this knowledge allows for you to easily learn and take the steps needed to become financially successful.

But this also allows people who have no business writing or talking about finances to give advice.

These so called financial experts can make bad financial advice sound good.

It also means that companies that are trying to scam you out of your hard earned money can give advice that makes their product or service look good.

Below I’ve come up with 16 pieces of the worst financial advice ever and how you can easily avoid it all.

I’ll also share with you a couple of the simplest personal finance tips you should follow so you can start growing your money and improve your finances.

16 Pieces of Really Bad Financial Advice

#1. Co-sign A Loan

I’m sure there is one reason why you would want to co-sign a loan.

But for the overwhelming amount of times, it makes zero sense to co-sign a loan.

When you co-sign a loan you are saying that you are willing to take over the loan payments if the other person stops paying.

Let’s think about this for a minute.

Are you OK with paying for someone else’s car? Are you OK with paying for someone else’s education?

If you answered yes to either these, email me as you have just become my new BFF!

No matter how much you love or care about the other person, you should never co-sign a loan.

It will end badly.

Alright, 99% of the time, it will end badly.

What To Do Instead: Support them. If they need a co-signer, either they are trying to take out a loan for more money than they can afford or they have bad credit.

This means they aren’t great with handling their money in the first place, or they don’t have a lot of experience with money.

If they are trying to take out too much of a loan, help them to find a lower cost option.

Instead of a new car, look at good used cars.

Maybe help them to find ways to save more money or earn more money so they can take out a smaller loan and therefore won’t need someone to co-sign.

In the case of bad credit, help them get out of debt by either setting up a plan to repay their debt.

Show them that paying their bills on time and staying out of debt will improve their credit score over time.

It won’t happen overnight, but it will improve. When it does, the need for a co-signer goes away.

Lastly, help them become better with their finances.

The more educated they are about their money, the greater the chance they spend money on things they can afford and save a decent amount of money each month.

#2. Take Out A Mortgage For As Much As You Qualify For

I’m an idiot because I fell for this one.

A long time ago, I was looking at buying a house with my girlfriend at the time.

We went to a mortgage broker and he ran the numbers telling us how much of a house we could afford.

This was back in the early bubble days of the real estate craze. Somehow on combined salaries of $80,000 we could buy a house for over $500,000!

Driving away from the mortgage broker, we talked about how we qualified for so much of a house and how it was a joke.

Looking at various payments for that large of a loan was more than our current take home pay!

There was no way we would ever do that.

Fast forward a few years and I am single and I buy a house for as much as I qualify for.

I’d love to know what happened to that guy that was rational a few years earlier!

I ended up taking in a roommate just to help me cover my costs and survive financially.

It was easily the worst money move I have ever made.

What To Do Instead: Don’t take out a mortgage for what the bank says you can.

The amount they say you are qualified for is bad financial advice and it needs to be changed.

They are looking to maximize their profit with the least amount of risk.

Therefore they will lend you as much as they can while still keeping their risk in line.

This doesn’t mean they will lend you what you can afford, but the most you can afford assuming you want to live without cable, electricity, not save for retirement and fight the birds at the park for the stale bread that people throw.

Here is an alternative for you.

Take your gross annual salary and multiply it by 3. This is the maximum house value you can buy.

So, if you make $40,000 a year, you can buy a house for $120,000 ($40,000 x 3).

The key in this is the word buy. It is not borrow.

You can buy a house for $120,000 and put down a sizable down payment, making your mortgage affordable.

Some banks now are using a multiple of 2.5 instead of 3.

In my opinion, the better advice is use a lower the multiple.

This is because you ensure that you won’t be house poor. You can make your mortgage payment and still live and save money each month.

#3. Going Into Debt For A Wedding

Married couple questioning to combine finances

I don’t understand why people go into debt for a wedding.

Yes I know that the average wedding now costs over $26,720, but that is just the average and it’s a number thrown out by the wedding industry.

You can have an amazing wedding on a budget. You just have to be smart about things.

When you go into debt for a wedding, you are putting yourself into trouble.

We all know that money is a main reason for divorce, so why start off the marriage with debt hanging over your heads?

It’s like running a race with 20 pound weights tied to your ankles. Good luck winning that race.

What To Do Instead: Make a list of what is most important to you.

Whatever ranks the highest, spend the money there and skip the other stuff.

When we got married, we wanted to have good food and have a party. So we spent money on food and the DJ.

The centerpieces were cheap throwaway items. The invites were bought at Michaels for $15 by using their 50% off coupons.

When planning, we sat down and thought about the last wedding that we attended.

Did we remember the amazing centerpieces or the incredible invites? We couldn’t remember either.

No one cares or remembers about that stuff. They want to have a good time and celebrate. Remember that everyone there is there to celebrate you.

You don’t have to do things to make them happy, impress them, or do things how they would do it.

Do it your own way and spend an amount you can afford on the things that matter most to you and your spouse.

Besides, if they are truly your friends and family, they won’t care about any of this stuff. They are there to celebrate the two of you starting your new life together.

#4. Using Your Student Loans To Live

It is so easy to get student loans these days.

And many times, you can get a lot more than just the cost of tuition.

You may be tempted to take out thousands of dollars more in loans to help pay for living expenses.

But this is a bad idea.

It will saddle you with more debt, which means a higher monthly payment after college.

This can make getting by financially more difficult than it needs to be.

What To Do Instead: Try financing college with as little debt as possible.

This might mean starting out at community college. Or it could mean going part time and working to help cover the costs.

While these might mean it takes you a little longer to get your college degree, in the end, you will be miles ahead of others financially.

You will have very little student loan debt to pay back while everyone else will have tens of thousands worth of debt.

#5. Taking Social Security Early

social-security-benefits

You work hard you entire life and see that you can be paid a monthly income from Social Security, so you decide to retire a little early.

All sounds good on the surface, but you are doing yourself a disservice.

By taking Social Security benefits early, you get a much lower payment every month, which ends up costing in the end.

What To Do Instead: Hold off taking Social Security until you reach retirement age.

Even better advice is to wait until you are 70 to start taking benefits.

Every year you delay taking Social Security, your monthly payment increases.

By the time you hit 70, you could be getting hundreds more every single month.

So try to figure out a way to delay taking benefits as long as possible

#6. Getting Sucked Into A “Great” Deal

We’ve all seen the car on Craigslist that has 80,000 miles on it for $2,000.

We think that it is a steal, take it for a drive and buy it.

A few weeks later, things start to go wrong.

After we buy new brakes and a timing belt, then an O2 sensor, we start realizing we should have passed on the great deal.

The old saying always applies, if it seems too good to be true, it most likely is.

This doesn’t just apply to used cars either.

You can find this scenario with just about anything including clothes, TVs, computers, you name it.

What To Do Instead: Understand that quality and value go hand and hand.

Don’t just focus on price when it comes to buying things. Look at the quality of the item as well.

A higher price for a quality item can be a good buy simply because it will last longer without the need to sink more money into it to keep it in good shape.

In addition to this, do some research!

When buying a used car, research to see how reliable it is. Take it to a mechanic you trust to look it over.

When buying other items, jump online and search for reviews of the product. You’ll get a better sense of its quality and can make a better decision going forward.

#7. Buying A Timeshare

Back in the day, timeshares were a popular way to go on a vacation each year.

You would place a down payment on a resort that would be your home resort and in return, you would get a week to go there on vacation every year.

The only ongoing cost was the low annual maintenance fees.

But things changed.

Maintenance fees increased every year as older resorts needed upgrading.

New businesses were born where you could exchange your week at your home resort for a week at another resort.

Of course, this cost money and to book at a popular resort, you needed to do so years in advance.

The worst part, it is virtually impossible to end the contract.

Selling your timeshare won’t get you anything since most people don’t want them any longer.

And in some cases, there is a clause in the agreement you signed that when you pass away, the timeshare goes to your next of kin!

Now they are on the hook for the annual maintenance fees!

So if someone tries to sell you a timeshare, don’t walk but run as buying one is the worst financial advice.

What To Do Instead: Save your money and book your own vacation.

It might sound cool to pay a one-time fee upfront and then just maintenance fees each year, but it is not.

First, who wants to go to the same resort every single year?

Second, maintenance fees currently average around $1,000 a year and you pay them whether or not you actually use your week or not.

As I noted earlier, these fees go up just about every year to update and maintain all of these resorts.

By simply saving some money from each paycheck you can afford to take awesome vacations.

There are tons of websites that offer great deals on vacations.

Heck, you could even use credit card, airline and hotel rewards points and go on vacation for virtually nothing.

My wife and I flew first class for our honeymoon for free using our airline miles. Holly over at Club Thrifty is the Queen at vacationing for virtually nothing.

I’m almost tempted to use her as my travel agent from now on!

#8. Taking Investment Advice From Friends

Your friends are probably great people, but that doesn’t make them qualified to offer you investment advice.

This happens when they hear about a “can’t miss stock” that you “just have to invest in”.

They will tell you all of the reasons why you should invest in the company but really have no clue as to whether or not it is a good investment.

What To Do Instead: Tell them thanks, but no thanks.

No investment is a sure thing and this isn’t how you want to sour a great relationship when you lose money.

Plus, it’s the same reason why you shouldn’t take investment advice from financial experts on television.

They don’t know your goals or risk tolerance. You need to invest based on what you want to achieve.

Feel free to do detailed research on the investment advice they give you, but don’t just accept it as a guarantee that it makes sense for you.

Your best option is to simply invest in a passive portfolio of low cost ETFs.

You can learn more about how to invest and be successful over the long term by reading the investing section on my site.

And if going solo is scary, seek out a Certified Financial Planner.

They will review your personal finances and make recommendations based on what is best for you and your goals.

#9. You Work Hard and Deserve It

A lot of people use this tactic to justify buying things.

Most often it is “I work hard and deserve it”. Other times it is “I’ve followed my budget for 4 months, I should be rewarded”.

In fact, it isn’t even limited to money.

How many times do you come back from a great workout and justify ordering a pizza or having a cookie for dessert as deserving it for your hard work?

We’ve all been there.

The sad truth though is that if you don’t have the money for something, then you shouldn’t buy it, even if you think you deserve it.

Once you start justifying purchases, you begin to walk down the path of entitlement.

Suddenly, you deserve everything.

What To Do Instead: Catch yourself the next time you try to justify a purchase.

Ask yourself why you deserve it.

In many cases, you will find that the two do not go hand in hand.

For example, if you work for 10 hours earning $8 per hour, then you deserve $80. The $80 is a result of the hours you worked and your rate of pay.

When you think you deserve a vacation for your hard work, they do not go hand in hand.

Others work just as hard as you, maybe even harder and do not go on vacation.

If you want to go on vacation that is fine.

Just don’t start thinking you deserve it simply because you work.

You can decide to go on vacation when you take the steps to save for and plan a vacation.

#10. Focusing On Your Monthly Payment

monthly-payment-bills

This is the classic difference between the rich and the poor.

The rich look long term while the poor look short term. Here is what I mean by this.

Two people go shopping for a new car, a rich woman and a poor woman.

When asked by the salesperson about what she is looking for, the poor woman tells the salesperson she wants a car that will cost her $300 per month.

They then go and find a car that has everything she wants and the salesperson works out her monthly payment.

The problem is that in order to get her payment to $300, the salesperson took her loan out 8 years.

Because of this, a $30,000 car turned into a $45,000 car when you add in the interest.

The rich woman on the other hand is looking to spend no more than $25,000 for the car.

She looks at the cost of the car and factors the interest she will pay on the loan.

As long as those two numbers add up to less than $25,000 she buys the car.

See the difference?

The rich woman is focused on the total cost of the car, or the long term while the poor woman is focused on the monthly payment, or the short term.

The result is the poor woman spending $20,000 more for essentially the same car.

When you focus on the short term, you pay more money in the long run.

And this costs you big time.

If the poor woman would have looked long term and spent $25,000 on a car and invested the $20,000 extra she spent, in 25 years she would have an extra $136,000!

What To Do Instead: Teach yourself to look at the overall cost of things, not just what you will pay each month.

When it comes to cars, this includes upkeep, maintenance costs, insurance, registration, etc.

In other words, look at all of the other costs involved with the item to decide if you can really afford it or are willing to pay that price for the item.

Additionally, be sure to take into account quality.

Things made well and that last are a better deal even if they cost more compared to a poorly built item that is much cheaper and will need to be replaced quickly.

#11. Keeping Up With The Joneses

You see your neighbor with a brand new Lexus and you just have to have one as well.

You get caught up after taking a ride in it and start doing some research. Next thing you know, you have a new BMW.

Then you hear your other neighbor talking about their amazing vacation and you would love to get away with your family too.

So you jump online, just to see what is out there, and within a month you are laying on a beach in St. Lucia.

The problem with these two examples is that most people go into debt just to keep up appearances or to fill a void in their life.

What To Do Instead: It’s not worth it to try to keep up appearances.

Take the time to understand why you are trying to keep up with the Joneses.

The more you learn and understand yourself, the better off you will be both personally and financially.

Trust me, it isn’t worth it to carry a credit card balance just to appear that you have money.

The stress and emotional toll the costly debt will have on you will make you regret every single purchase.

And while you are at it, avoid Facebook as much as possible.

You’ll get caught up in the images people are trying to portray rather than the reality of their life.

Finally, create a plan that lists your goals you want to achieve.

Maybe it is to retire by 55 or to travel to other countries every year.

Whatever it is, make a list of these things and refer to the list to keep you on track.

The next time you are envious of the new flat screen or luxury SUV your neighbor bought, you can see that buying the same item doesn’t fit with your long term goals.

You can even use Personal Capital to help with this.

No matter what your goal is, their planner will help you to track your progress to reaching your goal.

And you can do it for free!

Personal Capital Button

#12. Mixing Insurance And Investing

Somewhere along the line, the insurance industry started to promote a new type of product, the whole life insurance policy.

Instead of just offering a death benefit should you pass away, whole life added in an investment component so you could also save money when buying life insurance.

Many took advantage of this new product and began using it.

While those selling whole life insurance will tell you all of the great things about this product, they gloss over the high costs that are embedded within the policy.

And they probably won’t tell you about the commission they get for selling it to you either.

While there are a few cases where this type of life insurance might make sense, for most people, the costs are too high.

What To Do Instead: Keep investing and insurance separate.

Insurance is a vehicle for transferring risk to someone else because you aren’t comfortable taking on yourself.

Investments are for growing your wealth over time.

See the difference?

If you need insurance, then look into basic term life insurance.

A term policy has low monthly costs and does what insurance is supposed to do, which is provide a source of money for your dependents in the event of your untimely passing.

The best company to use to get the lowest rates is Bestow.

They will compare multiple quotes so you can quickly and easily find the best deal for you.

Bestow Button

#13. The Stock Market Is A Scam

I hear this one more and more ever since the latest market crash back in 2008.

The truth is the stock market is not a scam.

It’s just that some people see it as a scam because they don’t understand how to invest.

They give into their emotions and let fear and greed make all of their investment decisions for them.

This means when the market is racing higher, they invest every last penny thinking the market will never come down.

When the market falls and they lose money, they take what is left out of the market and sit on the sideline.

When the market gets hot again, they invest and the cycle repeats itself.

cycle of investing

What To Do Instead: First and foremost, you need to start with a plan.

Why are you investing in the first place? What is your risk tolerance? How much money do you need?

By answering these questions you have a blueprint for investing success.

From there, you need to keep your emotions in check.

It’s a simple idea, but is hard in practice because our emotions are so powerful.

You have to find ways to overcome your emotions.

Turn off the television when they talk about the stock market. Remember to look at the long-term.

The best analogy I have for you is this.

Think of the waves from a passing boat.

Close to the boat, the water is very choppy. But follow the wake out and the waves get smaller.

This is the stock market.

Over the short term, there are big waves or volatility. But over the long term, things smooth out.

I again encourage you to read the posts in the investing section to help you become the best investor possible.

#14. Thinking High Fees Means Better Performance

Many of us make the mistake thinking that an investment that has a high management fee means it will perform extremely well.

We tie the high cost to managers who are better equipped to earn us a great return.

Unfortunately the data doesn’t back this up.

In fact, it is the opposite.

The lower the management fee, the better the investment will perform.

This is because investments with low fees tend to be index funds that track the market.

And, since the fees come out of the investments return, the higher the fee, the more the investment has to earn just to keep up with the market.

What To Do Instead: Invest in low cost index mutual funds and ETFs.

It’s not exciting or sexy to just take what the market gives you but it is what works.

No professional investor beats the market every single year.

They may get on a “hot” streak and beat the market for a few years, but they always come back down.

The kicker is you never know when this will happen, so you roll the dice every year.

#15. Investing Based On Past Performance

This is another investing mistake that many, including myself, have made.

You cannot make investment decisions based on how a mutual fund or other investment has performed in the past.

Don’t invest in a fund that returned 30% last year because you think it will earn another 30% this year.

No one knows what the market will do this year or even tomorrow.

What To Do Instead: Invest in good, low cost investments that meet your asset allocation and your investment plan.

When you do this, you increase your odds for successful long term investing.

Don’t try to earn 30%, 40% or 50% a year.

Build a portfolio that meets your needs and be happy with it earning what the market returns.

It’s not sexy but it works at growing your money over the long term.

#16. Saving What’s Left At Month End

The problem here is that there is never anything at the end of the month to save for 99% of people that follow this budgeting method.

We all have good intentions, but many times we see the money in our checking account and we spend it.

You will never get rich by saving what is left at month end. Never.

What To Do Instead: Flip this plan around and save first and then feel free to spend everything left in your checking account.

By making saving a priority, you guarantee you will save.

When you automate your savings, you will never notice the money “missing” from your checking account.

4 Pieces Of Good Financial Advice

Good Financial Advice

I just focused on the worst financial advice.

You may be wondering what are some pieces of financial information out there that have tremendous financial benefits?

I’ve touched on many of them in this post, but here they are summarized for you.

Save First

When you get paid, put something, anything into savings. You’ll never get ahead if you don’t save first.

Don’t focus on how much or how little you can save, just create a habit of saving and go from there.

Start right now by opening a savings account with CIT Bank.

Set up a monthly savings of $10 to start building wealth.

Then set a yearly reminder on your phone to increase the amount you are saving once a year.

Look at your spending and see if you can save another $10 a month or more.

CIT Bank Button

By saving first, you will build up money for retirement, vacations, a new house, and more.

Stay Out Of Debt

If you can’t pay for something in full, aside from a house or a car, you shouldn’t buy it.

When you are in debt, you work to pay someone else. When you are not in debt, you work for yourself because you keep the money you earn.

You don’t send it to credit card companies.

If you are in debt, work hard to get out of debt.

The sooner you rid your life of debt, the better your life will be.

Just remember you didn’t get into debt overnight, so you won’t pay it off overnight either.

Invest

Even if you only invest in your 401k plan, invest something.

I know $20 per paycheck doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up over time thanks to compounding.

One day you will see you have substantial retirement savings all because you decided to start investing for your future.

Look Long Term

See how decisions will impact you long term and not just the short term.

Saving $20 per paycheck in the short term looks meaningless.

But in 40 years when you have a couple hundred thousand dollars in savings, you suddenly have options in life.

Here is a trick I use to help with this.

Before you buy something, ask yourself how this will impact your life 5 years or 10 years in the future.

Will you be better off? Worse off?

Think of what you are giving up by purchasing the item.

The more you can think about things like this, the smarter financial decisions you will make.

When you are just starting out with getting your finances in order, it can be overwhelming.

I’ve done a lot of work finding the best apps, programs and services that will help you take control of your finances.

And I use many of them.

They have helped me go from over $10,000 in debt to a close to $1 million in savings.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, there are all kinds of bad advice about money.

This list offered up 16 pieces of the worst advice about money but there are more examples out there.

I then showed you better advice you should start following to improve your finances.

Always remember that it is your money and no one cares more about it, or even as much about it, as you do.

You work hard for your money, so don’t give it away so easily.

Do your homework. Conduct some research. Ask a lot of questions.

Once you are comfortable and things make sense, then you can move forward with it.

If the product or service is so complex that you don’t understand it or how it works, then avoid it.

And if the person selling you on it can’t describe it in a way that you can understand it, then it is time to say thanks but no thanks.

There is nothing wrong with walking away.

Likewise, think long and hard about other financial decisions that could have a lasting impact on your finances, like not paying off your credit card debt.

Just saving yourself from making a few bad choices with your money can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

32 thoughts on “The Worst Financial Advice To Avoid”

  1. I’ve made many of these mistake myself. I’m glad I know better now. What about lending someone money? When you do this is changes the relationship, or could end it. If they are struggling with managing money, lending them more wit not fix their problem.

  2. I agree with most items in this article except for the part about whole life insurance. Agreed some insurance companies whole life products don’t offer much cash growth. However there are good whole life products out there that also offer dividends and in some policies like 20 Pay the cash growth exceeds the amount of money deposited within 8 to 10 years of owning the policy. Also for risk averse investors the cash growth in these whole life policies is vested – that means the growth in the policy will never drop even if the stock market crashes.

    1. I’d just say to be cautious with the fees that involved with these policies. That is where most of them become very bad deals.

  3. These are awesome advice.
    If you make “$80,000 we could buy a house for over $500,000”. This is really absurd. They would let you borrow 6.26 x your base earning.

    The situation would be better if it’s a 4-plex, you live in 1 and rent out 3 others. And your ROI comes in at 10-15%. I’d go for it.

    1. I still can’t believe they would approve us for that amount of a loan. Completely absurd, but during that time, even housing prices were absurd.

  4. Taking out a mortgage for your qualification amount is insane! The first time we bought a house, we were astonished by the figure the broker told us we qualified to borrow. We purchased roughly half (or less) of our qualification. When we moved for a job relocation, we didn’t even ask about the qualification amount. Never crossed our mind. We knew what our budget could afford. And we stuck to that. Now, we can aggressively invest, both in the market and mortgage repayment – coincidentally the topic of Mr. Maroon’s latest ramblings.

  5. Great article.
    I agree with not taking a mortgage for the full amount the bank will loan you. Seriously, how do they work out those numbers? We were 2 young professionals earning over 150k pa and were told we could borrow up to 800k.
    What no one tells you is that the minute you take a loan that big you are giving up the option of being a stay at home parent because you need 2 incomes to make the mortgage payment. We ended up buying for 225k with a 10% deposit. It needs a bit of work but our mortgage payment is almost half of what we would pay to rent the same property and totally manageable on one income.

    1. Wow! I guess I’m not the only one who was quoted an outrageous mortgage amount!!

      Good to hear you thought things through and did what makes the most sense for you!

  6. Awesome post Jon! I can tell you that I’ve definitely fallen into the trap for at least a few of these like the whole insurance/investment one, the “I deserve it” attitude, etc. I also almost fell into the timeshare trap (those guys are incredible salesmen) but thankfully didn’t drink the Koolaid before it was too late.

    1. I’ve heard that those guys are good. They wear you down over time until you just give in. It’s almost like an interrogation by the police. Too bad you can’t complain against cruel and unusual punishment!

    1. As long as you learn from the mistake, that is the goal. Of course, not making the mistake in the first place would be better, but no one’s perfect.

  7. There are some real good examples here. For whatever reason, the one on wedding debt jumps out at me. I just can’t see how two people who are starting a life together would actually go into debt for a one-day celebration. I don’t think there is a correlation between spending big on a wedding and happiness in marriage.

    1. It would be interesting to see a study on amount spent on a wedding and how long the marriage lasted.

      I agree 100%. As I said, money is the #1 reason for divorce, so why put your backs against the wall by going into the marriage by adding a ton of debt?

      I think the wedding industry is just very good at marketing/convincing brides and grooms that they “need” to have this and that.

  8. Don’t forget about “loaning money to friends and/or family.” If you ever expect to get the money back because you need it, not only will you ruin your finances, but you’ll also ruin the relationship.

  9. Good advice. We just got married in June last year and we spent very little on our back yard wedding. It was a shock to see how much venues were charging for a 4 hour, under 50 guest wedding. We spent less than that on a wonderful honeymoon in Europe.

    1. I agree Felix. When we were researching places, I checked out a few venues I thought would be really cool to have the reception. That ended when I did the per person math and realized just the venue was going to cost $28,000!

      We said screw that and did a destination wedding for 1/6th of the cost.

      1. We found a beautiful golf course where the reviews were saying it was cheap, but they gave us a $10,000 quote for 4 hours/less than 50 people. I think our honeymoon in Italy was less than $5,000. And our backyard wedding was more our style, and very cheap. I’m curious, where was your destination wedding? I think that’s an awesome idea.

  10. These are good examples of bad advice. Haha. I’m in the midst of planning my wedding and really only care about the food, music and booze. I’m sure that’s what the guest care about the most. I never remember what centrepieces, favours or what type of guest book the bride and groom had. Just whether or not they had decent food and open bar. 😛

    Regarding stocks, I can’t help but check how my stocks are doing everyday in GoogleFinance. The constant ups and down with some stocks I have (such as Ali Baba) are annoying, but my ultimate goal is to buy and hold for the long-term.

    1. Great job on figuring out what is important to you in terms of your wedding. That is the best route to take.

      As for the stocks, you have to break that habit ASAP! Sooner or later you are going to give into emotion and sell when the market tanks. When you get the urge to check, try to distract yourself somehow.

  11. Clients who try to do what friends or work mates do financially are the worst. They end up only knowing half the story. What works for one hardly ever works for another. Clients will say my friends adviser told him to do this. And it probably made sense for them but it usually does not for the person asking.

    Everyone’s situation is different. The plan must be individually designed.

    Jeff

  12. These are are excellent. The only thing I would add is to avoid making any major purchases or financial decisions when going through major tragedies (death in the family, major illness, divorce, etc.). Try to refrain for a while until you have a clear mind. Therefore the bad financial advice which you should ignore is “Spend some money when you are emotionally distraught. It will make you feel better.”

  13. Becoming a cosigner for someone who has not done the work to acquire their own good credit is the best way to lose your credit and your relationship. People don’t respect what they don’t work for. Say no and you may lose a friend, but will keep you good credit.

  14. I can think of one more piece of advice that shouldn’t be followed: Loan Money to a Friend. It is the best way to lose money and lose a friend, no matter how much of a return they offer you.

  15. It is good examples of bad advice. Haha. I’m in the midst of planning my wedding and really only care about the food, music and booze. I’m sure that’s what the guest care about the most. I never remember what centrepieces, favours or what type of guest book the bride and groom had. Just whether or not they had decent food and open bar.

    1. This is what my wife and I did. Only cared about the food and the music. 5 years later everyone still says how awesome it was. No one remembers or cares about centerpieces or favors.

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