.The Best Financial Advice I Ever Received
Sheiresa Ngo

Bad financial advice can ruin your long-term plans and potentially rob you of the future you had hoped for. However, good financial advice (when applied) blossoms and continues to flourish in all areas of your life, even improving the lives of others along the way.

The Cheat Sheet took some time to speak with top experts in the field of personal finance about the impact of good and bad financial advice. We spoke with Certified Financial Planner Jeff Rose of the blog Good Financial Cents, The Money Coach Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, and CreditCards.com’s Matt Schulz. We asked them to share the best piece of personal finance advice they ever received. Here’s what they had to say.

.7 Important Money Moves to Make in the New Year, According to Financial Advisors

By Holly Johnson on 7 January 2020

It's easy to think you'll get your finances together "next year" or when you finally get the promotion you've been after. Unfortunately, time keeps on ticking away, making it easy to spend years dreaming of financial security without making progress toward your goals.

Now that 2020 has arrived, it may be the perfect time to stop making excuses and start making moves. After all, it's more than a new year — we're in a brand-new decade.

But which moves have the potential for the most impact? We interviewed several financial advisors to find out which steps they think nearly everyone could benefit from in 2020 and beyond, and here's what they said.

.Magnitude Matters

Rand Spero  |  January 16, 2020

WHY DON’T WE spend our time and energy on financial issues that have the greatest impact? We’ll drive to a more distant gas station to save 10 cents a gallon, but fail to do all the maintenance needed to extend the life of our car. What lies behind this sort of behavior?

The savings from getting the best price per gallon is concrete and immediate, while maintaining our car is long term and abstract. It’s simply easier to focus on the 10 cents.

I have a relative who stayed at a $500-a-night luxury hotel in downtown Boston. He emailed me to bring him water when I visited, because the hotel charges $5 per bottle.

.The Laws of Investing

By Morgan Housel

Think of how big the world is. And how good animals are at hiding. Now think about a biologist whose job it is to determine whether a species has gone extinct.

Not an easy thing to do.

A group of Australian biologists once discovered something remarkable. More than a third of all mammals deemed extinct in the last 500 years have later been rediscovered, alive:

We identified 187 mammal species that have been missing (claimed or suspected to be extinct) since 1500. This number includes all such mammals for which we were able to find key variables for analysis. In the complete dataset, 67 species that were once missing have been rediscovered.

A lot of what we know in science is bound to change. That’s what makes science great, what makes it work, and what distinguishes it from religion. Science is filled with rules, evidence-based theories, and probabilistic observations. Laws – immutable truths lacking exceptions – are rare. Most fields only have a handful.

.How to Find Your Money ‘Why’

By Katherine Fusco | November 8, 2019

There are lots of reasons to spend money, some good, some bad, most compelling. Of course, this is by design.

Not spending money, though… that’s a trickier thing. The reasons not to spend—or to save, if you’d like to put it more positively—are often vague, rooted in a fuzzy sense of what one should do.

When people are tired or temptations are especially aggressive (hello, holiday season!), the vague I should pay off my debt crumbles in the face of beautiful store displays or delicious scents wafting from strategically open bakery doors.

More than this, advertising often appeals to our sense of self, frequently tying products to concepts or feelings that we truly believe in. How many bath bombs have been purchased on credit cards in the name of self-care? How many unused vitamins and supplements under the name of wellness?

.What to Do When Money Causes Friend Drama

By Rachel Miller  Jan 15 2020

When a pal keeps suggesting restaurants you can't afford or making snide comments about your salary, it's time to say something.

Knowing you have to have a money conversation with someone is stressful. Even fairly straightforward situations can lead to endless procrastination followed by an hour of strategizing with a close friend before you finally text your roommate… “Hey, could I get the rent check from you later today?”

 But the anxiety makes sense: a person’s finances can be deeply intertwined with their ego, identity, beliefs, and sense of self-worth. And because talking about money often means communicating a desire or a need, it can leave us feeling very vulnerable.