Remember the song,  The Twelve Days of Christmas, listing all the things “my true love gave to me”.  I thought in honor of the season, I would give Twelve Ways to not becoming a Millionaire Nurse.

So here goes:

1. Not paying attention to my money-no spending plan, budget, or clue of what to do.
2. Paycheck runs out before the month does.
3. Buy/lease a new car.
4. Purchase any item without planning/study of item and how it fits into your budget.
5. Not having an emergency account.
6. Borrowing money for college, beyond the bare minimum, and not being able to pay the student loans off quickly. (Such as borrowing $100,000 for a job that pays $25,000/year-just doesn’t make sense, but people do it all the time.
7. Carrying a balance on a credit card.
8. Forgetting  those once per year bills and not saving for them- such as insurance,  or taxes.
9. Shopping without a list/plan.
10. Eating out/fast food daily.
11. Borrowing money for routine purchases-not saving and paying cash  for the new “blank” that you really need.
12. Not saving money for retirement, and building wealth.
13. Wasting time-TV, online, video games, reading celebrity mags.

Yes I gave you a baker’s dozen just to see if you were paying attention.  Which to me is the number one thing that will help most folks manage their money-just pay it a little attention-give it some love as the saying goes.  Make it a priority in your life to learn about and understand how money works, how savings grow over time in an interest bearing account.  Learn what your money mistakes are and make a plan to deal with it.

And if you need Emergency Money Resuscitation, check out my free ebook.  I will also send you my free mini-course on personal finance.

Please let me hear from you about your most common problems involved in managing your money-I want to help, and the way to getting better is to admit the problem, so please make a comment or ask a question.

I have also posted this question-” What are your most common money mistakes ?” over at Cash Commons-check out those answers too.