No matter how careful you are, there may come a time where enough bad events happen that you simply cannot afford your bills any longer. While there are certain things you can do to protect yourself from ever being in that situation (building an emergency fund, practicing frugal living, etc.), they don’t really help when you have no money and there’s a pile of bills that need to be paid.

If you find yourself in this situation and don’t know what to do, here are some practical steps you can take to get started on the road to recovery.

First of all, don’t bury yourself in guilt and shame. Everyone makes mistakes in life, and you’re certainly far from the first one or the only one. I was in a situation that was quite desperate once upon a time.

Also, realize that there are solutions to your problems, no matter how bad the challenges are. Just because you don’t immediately see the answers doesn’t mean that the answers aren’t there. There are answers, and there is a path to a better situation.

The biggest step you can take is to explain your entire situation to someone and ask them for ideas. This is why checking your shame at the door is so important - in order to be able to talk to someone else about your situation, you need to minimize the shame factor and be willing to lay it all out there.

That being said, be careful about who you choose to advise you. Don’t choose someone that you feel as though you must hide pieces of the story from, or else they won’t be able to offer you strong advice. Similarly, it must be someone you trust who will try hard to offer you a valuable and accurate opinion and help you piece things together.

Similarly, do not ask this person for money, and make that clear up front. Many people will enter such a discussion with some serious concern that it will turn into a money request, so make it clear up front that you don’t want a dime - just some strong advice. Then stick to that pledge, no matter what. Their advice will be more valuable than whatever pocket money they could hand you, anyway.

Don’t be insulted by the advice they give you. If you’re in this bad of a situation, the advice you’ll hear is going to hurt. Expect that, and don’t be insulted by it. The person giving the advice is not trying to hurt you, they’re trying to help you to get in a better position.

Get multiple opinions, if you can. The more input you have, the more likely it is that you’ll find a path leading towards financial freedom. Thus, it makes sense to find multiple people to give you advice about your financial direction.

Start making the small changes now. Stop spending wasteful money now, even if you haven’t figured out the big solution yet. If you’re worried about making ends meet, but dropping $10 a day on lunch eating out, join the brown bag club. If you’re in dire straits, avoid going shopping or charging you credit card. Make those little changes now to pave the way for a brighter financial future.

When implementing solutions, check your ego at the door. One of the best things a person can do is to commit strongly to frugal living, and that might mean giving up some status symbols in your life for a while. Don’t let that drag you down, and really attempt to appreciate the smaller things you can do for yourself.

Don’t be afraid to move on to professional help. Sometimes, you may need to consult a professional (an advisor or a lawyer) to get your situation straightened out. If the people you talk to point you in this direction, don’t hesitate to go forward with it, because the longer you hesitate to make change, the harder it will be.

As I read personal finance book after personal finance book over the last year, I came to realize that a lot of concepts in various books were exactly the same. In fact, there were a handful that were mentioned in a majority of the books, which would indicate something close to a universal truth about personal finance management.

I went through the notes I collected on all of the books and tried to filter out the ten universal truths about personal finance shared by a large number of the books. Here’s what I found.

Spend less than you earn. This is the number one key, and it shows up again and again in almost every personal finance book that I read. You are never going to get ahead if you spend as much as you earn or more than you earn over any lengthy period of time.

Sit down with all of your accounts and figure out where you’re at. Every day you don’t have control over all of your accounts and can’t really estimate how bad the situation is is another day you’re going to be chained to your job and worried at night about it. Spend the time to sit down, spread everything out, and figure up your total financial picture. There are a lot of different ways to do this - I think that just listing every account you’re aware of (and the balance of that account) is the best way to get started.

Set small and big goals. Small goals are ones like commitments to not spend any extra money this week. Big ones are goals such as paying off all of your debts. State the goals clearly and effectively, and keep track of your progress towards these goals so that you’re constantly in the fold of something bigger than the minutiae of your day to day life.

Get a small emergency fund before you do anything else… The first step in any financial turnaround, once you’ve stopped spending more than you make, is to build up a small emergency fund so that you don’t have to put a minor crisis (like car issues, for example) on your credit card. $1,000 is a pretty common target number.

… then eliminate all of your high interest debt. After you have a small emergency fund, start dealing with your high interest debt immediately. There are differing opinions on how to do this, but the general consensus is you should start with either the highest interest debt (fastest route to recovery if you’re committed) or the smallest balance debt (provides success of some debt elimination the fastest).

Check your credit score regularly to make sure nothing bogus shows up. Go straight to annualcreditreport.com to get your report via the FTC. Don’t use other sources, like freecreditreport.com, which act as a middleman and tack on extra stuff for the same service.

Put at least 15% away for retirement (including what your employer matches). Some books say to put away 10%, but they often mention in the fine print that they’re not including employee matching in that number. Generally, to be on the safe side, you should be putting away at least 15% into your 401(k) and/or your Roth IRA.

Automate what you’re doing. If you’re investing, automate the investments and have a certain amount moved over from your checking each month. If you’re saving for a goal, automate transfers into your savings account. Automate as many of your bill payments as you can. The less you have to remember and encourage yourself to do, the better - plus, it takes extra effort to not do it once you’ve set it up.

Similarly, always look for ways to reduce your required spending each month/year. Any method you can find to reduce your monthly bills is incredibly worthwhile. Even simple things, like swapping your light bulbs for CFLs, buying EnergyStar appliances, and canceling some of the unused options on your cell phone plan and your cable plan, will really add up over time.

Invest extra money into low-cost broad-based index funds unless you have tons of time to do research. Almost a majority of the books indicated that this is by far the best way to invest. Just buy some Vanguard or Fidelity index funds and sit on them until you have a need for the money. Better yet, keep buying in regularly in an automatic fashion. If you have a ton of time for research and homework, you can make somewhat better money in individual stocks, but they’re riskier and require much more time investment.

These are the nutshell ideas behind many of the books I read, and these ideas usually pop up in some form in almost every single personal finance book. Why? They’re universal truths - or at least as close to truths as you’ll find in the world of personal finance.

Some of my most faithful commenters have personal finance blogs of their own, and one of them, Mrs. Micah, asked a question that really got me thinking: where do you get your financial advice?

The more I thought about the question, the more I realized that the answer isn’t as obvious as it seems at first, so I’ll progress through my ideas about that question.

My first and most obvious answer is the personal finance resources that I read regularly, like personal finance books, blogs, magazines, and so on. Most of the raw personal finance information that I absorb comes from these sources.

But that’s the easy answer. Where do I really get my personal finance advice? To me, advice means more than just absorbing information from others - it also includes the situations where people provide direct comment on my own life and how I live it.

In that light, my biggest source for financial advice is my wife. She might not be the most informed individual about how to eke out an extra percentage from my investments, but she does know me - who I am, what our situation is, and where we’re going. Often, I’ll collect the data I need for various points of view and then present them to her, and together we talk through the situation and determine a plan. When I’m trying to make a decision about my financial situation, she is the first person that I turn to.

If that’s not enough, I turn to my parents. They generally offer lots of good arguments for staying the course in whatever I’m doing, simply because things have turned out all right so far since I began turning my financial ship around. Before then, I didn’t really talk to them at all about my finances, but I’ve come to find them to be excellent advisors when I’m troubled. I’m also coming around to talking to my mother- and father-in-law about things, but since my relationship with them is still relatively young, I sometimes don’t ask such strong questions of them.

After that, I listen to my readers. Quite often, if something is still troubling me, I’ll voice that concern in the form of a post here at The Simple Dollar and then take all of your comments to heart. Often, writing the post makes the answer clear; other times, I’ll rely on your comments for guidance. Often, you say what I’m already thinking; other times you rip my ideas to shreds. Either way, you aren’t afraid to pull punches and call me out when I’m getting overly confident or am looking down an inconsistent path.

If that’s still not enough, I turn to meditation and/or prayer. I take in all of the advice that I’ve heard and spend some time in deep meditation. The answer - the truly right answer - then comes from within. I won’t debate whether that’s a subconscious thing or a supernatural thing, but I find that such steps are often the key to me finding the right answer.

Those are my key sources for financial advice. I start with information (books, magazines, blogs), talk to those who love me, reformat that question as an article that addresses my readers, read the responses, then take all of that and meditate on it. In the last year, these sources have served me incredibly well.

When I think back to my high school years, I realize that I didn’t have the faintest idea of what I wanted to do with my life, nor many of the options really available to me. I had a sense that I needed a significant change of scenery for a while because I did not want to follow the paths of many of the people I saw graduating from high school and just sitting around their hometown watching the years go by. The problem was that I didn’t know what I should be doing instead - I was the first person in my family with an opportunity to go to college, thanks to scholarships, and that seemed like the obvious route to take, so that’s what I did.

I wish now that I had the chance to do some things differently, but such chances only come along once in a lifetime. Knowing what I know now, here are five pieces of advice that I’d offer to anyone in high school or fresh out of high school about what’s available to them.

Don’t go straight to college unless you’re absolutely sure
One of my biggest regrets in life was that I went to college directly out of high school. I didn’t have even the faintest inkling of the opportunities available to me, so I just followed the general advice of everyone around me, which was to go to college and get started on that career immediately. I went there without the maturity I really needed to make it work, nor a good idea of what I could get out of college. I treated it as an extension of high school - and because of that, most of my years as a student were largely wasted.

If you can’t explain clearly why you’re going to college (and the generic “to get an education” doesn’t cut the mustard), you shouldn’t go to college - yet. If you’re a bright person, the answers will eventually come to you and you’ll tackle it with the right mindset, but going to college without any real goal in mind, especially straight out of high school, is a waste of your time and money - and that of your parents.

Note that I’m not saying that one shouldn’t go to college - just that one shouldn’t go to college without a purpose.

Spend some time figuring out what you’re passionate about - but don’t waste time
A friend of mine took a “year off” after high school to “find herself,” but she actually spent it not doing much of anything at all. She worked at a fast food restaurant and apparently read a lot for that year, finally starting college fifteen months after high school graduation.

If you’re thinking of spending a year or two before college evaluating your life (something I strongly encourage), spend it doing something deeply fulfilling. Don’t just spend it working to earn tuition or spending money. Here are some things you can potentially do:

Volunteer Find a volunteer or other community service organization and get involved big time. Take ahold of a project within it and push it through to completion or some level of success - it will teach you a lot about people and leadership.

Work an internship Spend some time doing internship work for something you’re passionate about, even if it is just photocopying pages or washing dishes. You’ll get exposure and experience and you’ll also find out if it’s right for you.

Commit to a large-scale creative project If you’re musically inclined, write and record an entire album. If you’re a writer, write an entire book. Paint a set of canvasses. Whatever it is, if you’re passionate about it, do it on a larger scale than you’ve tried before.

Travel and experience new things
My plan for both of my children, provided they are interested, is to give them an ATM card, a backpack, and a ticket to DeGaulle Airport for their high school graduation. Even better, I’d like to do it in conjunction with the parents of a few of their closest friends. It is the absolute perfect time in a young person’s life to explore the world and figure out some things about themselves.

It took me a very long time to figure out who I actually was - I didn’t really figure things out until almost six years out of high school, and that was just the first revelation of many. Part of the reason is that in some ways I didn’t really escape where I came from, so it took some significant time for me to view myself independently and figure out who I really was.

Whatever career you choose, don’t chase money - chase passion
Lots of people will make statements like “you need to major in X because that’s the only way you’ll make $40K straight out of college.” Ignore it. If you’re truly passionate about your topic, you’re going to be among the top people in it simply because of the love and devotion you’ll show, compared to many others who are just there at the behest of others.

Not only that, your passion for the subject will continually reflect well on you. Think of people you know who are passionate about what they’re doing - almost always, you see them as a success or, at the very least, the passion is very clear.

The real key? Learn how to stand on your own two feet - and learn exactly who you are and what you’re passionate about. Do this actively, and with commitment. When you’ve got that figured out, the college decisions and what to do when you get there will become far more clear - and you’ll end up with a happier life over the long haul.

A while back, my wife was leafing through a copy of David Bach’s Smart Women Finish Rich when she asked a very astute question: is it really necessary for men and women to receive different personal finance advice?

I’ve puzzled over how to answer this for months, knowing what I want to say but realizing that this issue is bound to get me in some hot water from some segment of my readership. However, it’s a really worthwhile issue to discuss, so here goes.

It’s not necessary, but it is useful for men and women to receive different personal finance advice. Why? Men and women simply think differently, and a big portion of personal finance success is psychology. Even if there is a clearly optimal way to manage your finances, it still takes psychological effort to achieve it, and if men and women think differently, the advice that will help them achieve it will be different.

So let’s look at this a bit more closely. From that article:

Men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localized processing, such as mathematics.

For example, John Doe would likely be better at tasks such as number-crunching a budget and developing an investment plan.

women are better at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language skills.

Jane Doe would likely be better at making good shopping choice (evaluating a lot of disparate types of data) and keeping the family in line with the family budget (communication and language skills).

Is this an absolute? Of course not. Many women are good at investing and many men are good at shopping and managing a budget. However, the default cognitive bias points the genders in specific directions.

The truth is that there is no “perfect” personal finance advice for everyone. Each person will find advice that works for them. It’s much like dieting. Better yet, it’s like playing The Sims - I play it much differently than my sister-in-law does, but my wife tends to play more like me than her sister. We’re all unique, though, and we all respond to different situations and events differently.

So if everyone has different personal finance needs, how can one possibly find something that will help them? Just keep looking until you find a voice or a set of answers that makes sense to you. It might be a book (like Your Money or Your Life), it might be a blog, it might even be someone on television or radio. Also, you don’t have to blindly follow everything someone says - just use the pieces that fit with you and make an effort to try to understand as much as you can.

A reader who I will call Kathy wrote to me with a rather long but quite compelling story that really struck a chord with me. When I read the story, I saw so much of myself and my wife in it in the position we were in about five years ago, and because of that I felt compelled to write a very long response to their story.

Hopefully, Kathy’s story will strike a chord with some of you as well, and you can offer some advice to them. Here’s Kathy’s tale, along with my thoughts.

My boyfriend and I have been fans of The Simple Dollar for some time now, and really respect and aspire to the lifestyle you write about. The reason I am writing you now, for the first time, is because over the past few weeks we have come to realize that we are on the whole very unhappy with our current situation.

We’re both under 25, have been together for over 5 years and live in the Greater D.C. Metro area. We’ve both got computer science degrees from prestigious New England schools and I have a masters in information security assurance. My boyfriend is a software developer and I’m a consultant and our combined income is well over 100k. We’re making all the right moves in terms of saving (well over 30% of what we’re making) and maintaining a debt free life (aside one very manageable student loan and a car which will be paid for in a few months).

Before we even get to the problem, it’s pretty clear that Kathy and her boyfriend are in a very good financial state. If they’re living in D.C., are debt free, and have marketable degrees and already have workplace experience, the world is truly their oyster.

And we’re miserable. We don’t feel as though we are in the right place at the right jobs to be living the kind of life we want. Everyone around us seems to be very content sitting in traffic for 2 hours a day to get to their jobs where they work 60 hour weeks, so that they can afford another sports car, a $500,000 one bedroom condo and a few more inches on their TV.

They’ve also made a conscious decision to reject a consumerist lifestyle. This sounds just fine to me, living in Iowa driving my eleven year old truck.

After many long conversations we’ve identified the things that make us happy in life and have made the decision that we will do everything in our power to be well on our way down the path toward those things in a year. We want to be closer to nature, and we’d love to be able to afford a modest home. I’d also love to be someplace with a sense of community where I could volunteer my time. As far as jobs go, we’re far less picky, we’re just hoping to find something to support ourselves and eventually a family, but ideally use our skills and have some sort of impact on the world.

So, let’s look individual at the things they want.

They want to be closer to nature. That likely means living in a much smaller town than the D.C. Metro area. If you want nature to be easily accessible, you’re probably looking at living in a town that has at most 100,000 residents - and likely much smaller.

They want to be able to afford a modest home. This also points toward a move to a more rural area. I can’t speak for other regions of the country, but much of the Midwest is very affordable.

They want to live in a place with a sense of community. This, again, speaks towards a smaller town, probably one that’s near an affluent area. A great place to look for this is to look for a small town that’s outside an affluent or educated area, such as a small town within 20 minutes of a college town or a technically adept city. These tend to foster communities of intelligent people who want to live in a small-town environment and often include thriving volunteer work and community activities, both in that small town and in the larger city nearby.

Adding up these points, I would encourage them to look at small towns within a 20 or 30 mile radius of smaller Midwestern cities, particularly those that house a university. In many places, these usually have an abundance of jobs for technically inclined people, but make small town living quite easy. For example, I live within an hour of several decent-sized cities in Iowa, including Des Moines, and yet my backyard has a cornfield bordering it, and there are a lot of technical jobs in this area.

We want to be living a simpler life and because doing what we were “supposed to” up until this point has lead us to very stressful, complicated lives, we’re not really sure where to even start. We’d love to pack up the car, drive across the country (something we’ve always wanted to do, always had the money to do, but never had the time to do) and eventually wind up in our new town.

That’s an awesome plan, especially since you have the freedom of youth on your side.

But how do we find this new town and should we lock down work first? What about health insurance? Should we go down to the courthouse and get married just to increase the odds that we’ll both be insured? Is there any way for people in our situation to purchase affordable insurance to make sure we’re covered for the few months of instability a move like this would cause?

If you buy into the idea I presented above, here’s what I would do:

Make a list of potential matching cities in the Midwest. Look up the state schools for the Midwest, then identify ones that potentially have a thriving research program in areas you might be interested in. This generally means that there are lots of spin-off companies in the area. You should also look for job listings at monster.com for smaller cities in the Midwest - not necessarily to find a job, but just to know who employers are in those areas that might match with your skills.

Narrow down that list. Try to narrow this list down to two or three, then investigate those cities in detail. Are there small towns nearby with palatable housing markets? Are there community features that interest you, both in the larger town where you may find work and in the smaller town where you would live? Most likely, the right place will start to become clear for you.

As for the health care, I would look into COBRA - it’s likely that you can extend your current health care package for a while after you leave your current jobs. Then, when you’re re-employed, get a health care plan that matches what you need.

And more fundamentally, in the long run, will this be a good decision? By staying where we are, we’ll probably both have six figure salaries in a few years, but during those years, we’ll be stressed, won’t have the time to do the things we enjoy and won’t be able to afford a place of our own. Alternatively, if we make this move, we’ll both likely take huge pay cuts (both to our yearly salaries and likely to our lifetime earning potential) and won’t be able to save nearly as much, but we’ll be happy now, rather than in 40 years when we can retire.

It won’t be the big cut that you think it is. Let’s say you can get a 2,000 square foot family home in the D.C. Metro area for $600K. In the Midwest, you can easily find them for under $200K. Consider the difference in those house payments, and you’ll see where most of the difference in salary actually goes.

Any, and all advice you could give us would be greatly appreciated. Right now we’re looking at about 10 months to make a major life change, and while this thought is daunting, we’re willing to do everything necessary to make it happen.

Living in a Midwestern small town isn’t the right thing for everyone, but from my perspective, it sounds like the right thing for you two.

Do any of you have thoughts for Kathy?

My niece is a wonderful young woman - a good head on her shoulders, decision making as strong as you could hope for in a high school sophomore, and an entrepreneurial spirit. My only concern about her is a sense that she hasn’t quite figured out the value of a dollar and that she’s prone to credit misuse.

Last night, I spent some time thinking about the things I wish she knew right now at this point in her life so that she wouldn’t go on to make horrendous mistakes with her finances later on like her uncle did. Here’s what I came up with, and they’re probably applicable to any high school student with a level head.

Do not carry a credit card balance. It’s okay to get a credit card, but pay off the entire balance each month. If you’re tempted to use it to buy something that you can’t otherwise pay for, don’t. Period. Let’s say you buy a Nintendo Wii and a few accessories and put $400 on your credit card, then only make minimum payments for a year. On a typical “first” credit card with a 19.9% APR, you’ll have just watched $80 vanish into thin air. Now, multiply that by twenty and you’re looking at the situation that the “average” American is in, watching literally thousands a year just vanish because they carry a credit card balance.

Put a small amount in the bank each week and forget about it until you’re about to make a big purchase or a true emergency comes up. Let’s say you can put $5 in the bank every week starting on your 16th birthday. That adds up to $260 a year, so if you cash out at your 26th birthday, you’ll have deposited $2,600. But it gets better - you can easily get a savings account that earns 5% interest. You’ll actually get out $3,352. The bank will give you $752 over that time.

Learn how to learn. Most high school classes are pretty easy for a bright person and don’t require much effort to get through. It’s really tempting to take easier options and not worry about it; instead, always take the hardest one you can take. It will force you to learn how to learn, a skill that will serve you well the rest of your life.

Start a side business. My niece already has a small babysitting empire, but most teenagers can find a way to earn some money. Many parents in my area encourage their kids to get jobs - instead, I encourage kids to start a side business. Mow lawns. Trim hedges. Scoop snow. Start a topic-oriented blog (meaning a topic that isn’t you that others might find interesting).

Take a leadership position. Join an organization and make an effort to be involved with it. Eventually, take a leadership position in it. Why? Learning how to manage people and make choices that affect others is another skill that will serve you throughout your life - and if you learn how to do it well, it will make you a lot of money.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. If someone is offering you something for free, there’s usually something they’re getting out of it in return. A free t-shirt is probably an advertisement. A free web service is likely littered with ads in some fashion. The better you are at spotting why things are being given away for free (or for really cheap), the smarter you’ll be about buying things and the less you’ll spend in the process.

If you’ve discovered something you enjoy and you’re actually good at, do it a lot. Almost always, there’s a way to make money from a highly developed skill. Anything from playing a guitar (music can be marketable, teaches hand-ear and hand-eye coordination and dexterity) to playing a sport (leadership skills, health) can work. It’s especially nice if there’s an obvious career path from it, but don’t let that limit you. Even better, if you can find a way to turn that thing you do into a side business, you might be setting yourself up for the long haul.

Another financial story that really intrigued me recently was this one, from a person who wishes to remain anonymous (so we’ll call him/her Anonymous):

My parents are immigrants/refugees from Vietnam. When they arrived here in Australia, they both took jobs and lived an extremely frugal lifestyle, sending all savings to my mother’s side of the family, who still remained in Vietnam. Before butchers realised that some people actually eat stuff other people may discard, they sold these “scraps” for an extremely low cost. So, they lived on broths and stews made from stuff like chicken feet. (I would say instant ramen was more expensive at the time.)

This was in the 1980’s. My sister was born in the early 80’s, my brother, late 80’s.

In 1990, I was born, and my mother’s side of the family immigrated to here shortly before my birth. Upon my brother’s birth and mine, my mother left work to take care of us.

Throughout my younger life, this is pretty much all the detail I knew about my family’s time before my birth, chicken feet and all.

Before my enlightenment on finance, I didn’t think about it much, but for most of my life you could say that I was spoilt. It was done for my benefit, so I could get a good education. Both of my parents didn’t get very far in school.

We still only have one source of income, and that’s my father. My sister moved out, and my brother and I do not have jobs, as well as my mother.

We always had and we still get a fair amount of stuff. Several computers, game consoles, many games and DVDs, 5 or 6 TVs, 3 surround sound systems and several DVD players, double beds.. it just goes on. and it’s been going for probably over 12 years. All on credit cards. We took out another home loan to paint the house. (I objected to this, due to money, and this house containing a few unique properties..).

My dad repairs extra cars on the weekend for some extra cash, which is spent on food. After living a poor childhood and super-frugal life in a new country full of opportunity, who can blame him?

My mother’s side of the family are basically idiots. After they immigrated here, they never helped us, and they still occasionally ask for money. (we always refuse.) They’re not exactly good at finance either. They took out a home loan and threw the money around. We clearly sponsored the wrong side of the family to move over.

I’m about to finish/fail Year 12, and hit with depression. I’m currently not trying to find a job, nor am I interested. I have tons of dreams I wish to fufill, but it all conflicts with the financial situation, so I sit here confused and lost, going nowhere. I’m quite sensitive to discouragement, so I have discarded a fair number of pursuits.

Next year, this should all ease up a little, when my mother takes up a job and if my sister moves back in. But where does that leave me? How do I save everyone?

You could say most of my family is stubborn, and I am as well, in some areas. I don’t want to live an empty life, and have an empty job. But there is a great amount of weight, pushing me down. I feel helpless.

I need encouragement, and people to support this weight. But being hit with depression, I don’t try very much.

So, here’s the summary. Anonymous is a high school student in a family of immigrants with very poor personal finance choices. Anonymous is trying to figure out what he/she can do to make everything better, but is still in school (and apparently having some difficulty there).

Here’s my advice to Anonymous.

First of all, if your family is not dedicated to finding a better financial track, nothing you can do will really help. They’re deep in credit card debt, buying things like surround sound systems and video games. They’ve been doing this for twelve years, which sounds like it’s become a normal part of life. Until the leaders of the household themselves make a conscious decision that something needs to change, nothing is going to change. Additional money will likely be spent on frivolous things, or spent on credit card debt to free up space for more frivolous spending.

That brings on the next point: do what you can to put yourself in a position to really help later on. This means buckling down, finishing school with the best grades you possibly can, and going to college, even if it means incurring debt. Right now is the time in your life where you are putting foundation stones in place for what you’ll accomplish in life - every minute you spend doing that is a worthwhile minute.

What about the need for encouragement and motivation? Seek to surround yourself with positive things - and eliminate the negative influences from your life. Look at your life and find the pieces that weigh you down and make you feel worse, then minimize those. Also look for things that make you feel stronger and better and maximize those. Don’t look at the immediate, either - focus on the things that, when you reflect on them later, make you feel stronger as a person.

One more tip of advice (something you’ll learn naturally as time goes on): people make mistakes and bad choices. It’s part of life. You will always do better if you look at the positives in people and let the negatives slide a bit. One of the brightest people I know has a big self-confidence problem and a pretty big spending problem - but you know what I see? A genius. I know she makes some bad moves, but I try every time I see her to help her see how brilliant she is.

Those things will lay a foundation for success. After you’ve got them down, then start worrying about the dollars. The first thing is to simply spend less than you make. Do that every time and you will succeed in the long run. Everything else financially really follows from that.

Good luck! You’re young and have the world laid out in front of you - don’t be afraid to take it.