Money management is a problem that afflicts many people. While the current state of the economy is dictating more saving and less spending, knowing how to manage your assets is a crucial part of your own economic success. It is important to begin this process at an early age. If college students can begin learning how to manage their finances while still in their teens or early 20s, they are more likely to continue doing so throughout their adult lives.
There are publications available that can help teach money management skills. One very useful book is Christian author Larry Burkett’s Money Management Workbook for College Students. In this volume in his series of God and money matters explores how the economy and changing times relate to the Christian consumer. This useful workbook provides students with information about the national economy and explains how to set and obtain goals as well as create a personal budget. This includes practical knowledge guidance on managing finances and offers useful tips on how to use credit cards without acquiring a large amount of debt. Also, included is information on how to properly balance a checkbook and even on how to obtain and manage college loans. The worksheets it contains are easy to use and are a great way to learn how to plan for the future.
Other books by Burkett include Money Matters for Teens which teaches adolescents how to manage various bank accounts, prepare for how they plan to pay for college and provides very useful information on how to obtain a job. His Bible-based wisdom has inspired Christians of all ages and taught them the true virtue of remaining debt free.
Debt plagues many people all over the world. Almost everyone who has a credit card knows how easy it is to acquire debt and subsequently have difficulty decreasing it. Often times people begin to feel helpless as they watch what they owe rise and how much they have left to spend in order to pay it off fail. There are many ways to control debt, but following the Christian wisdom has been shown to get the best results. Just imagine what would happen to the economy if everyone began paying attention to money management while at a very young age. The knowledge and skills used to do this would matriculate on down through generations and more and more people would find themselves owing less with more money in the bank. While this is a truly ambitious prospect, it is certainly not impossible.
If young people begin to consider ways to plan for their future, however, the end result will be a more economically educated generation. The time to plan for such a generation is now and there are many invaluable tools available to help with this process. The books mentioned in this article are just the beginning.