If...

My Personal Finance Blog
asks If......you could turn back time, what would you have changed financially?


Well, I'd have to say that I would change a few thingsif I could go back knowing what I know now & knowing what to change to get the desired results.

(Hind site being 20/20 and all aside)

I would have definitely still signed up into "the MLM", I just would have been smarter about thinking for myself & not blindly spending money we didn't have to do things we didn't need to do. I would have operated it more as a casual business & spent less out of pocket for things that were not necessary. Maybe not even the MLM (it was just the first business idea offered to us as a couple), it gave us knowledge about business & how we are better off having one. So without our involvement in "the business" I don't think we'd have the ice cream shop or our corporation today.

So I would have saved tons of money not going to 4 major functions a year for 5 years = $6000 ( should be 8000 but I figured we would have gone to at least one a year, tax deductible vacation!). Tools savings =$3000, we would have not gotten standing order tape & bought our books used or from cheaper sources (I am aware of the current business tools issues & I can say that I knew everything coming out now, then & did it anyways, it just didn't seem so malicious then... DUH)

I would have graduated college, I wouldn't be doing what I started for, it would have taken an extra semester, but I'd have the diploma. I could have gotten a better paying job for the few years I did work & it would make going back to the workforce easier when the Princess starts school full time. Savings = $20,000+ interest. Because I would have had a higher paying job I could have paid down my student loans faster, instead of them still being unpaid-off today.

I would not have let dh talk me into getting my 401K disbursed under the hardship clause. Not my fault that he was unemployed & now I have 4 shares of GE stock in a Roth IRA...instead of the thousands $$ it would be if I had left them alone, I could have transferred them all to one fund.

I would have continued to use my credit responsibly, by only using them to get the rewards of cash back & paying them off monthly.

I would have kept control of our family finances even though I wasn't working. I let dh take over, because as he said I wasn't contributing. I have a better head for $ than he does, I am also better at being a realist. ~Can you believe he actually was going to book us an overnight for Valentine's Day & get tickets for a winery tour...I am not sure how we will pay the mortgage this month & he wants to go on vacation, grrr~ I really can see where money if the number one fight among couples (those that have it & those that don't, just different reasons to argue).

I think my ultimate I would have, is I would have waited to get married until I graduated college. We waited until he graduated thinking he could be working & I could finish school. It didn't happen that way & he has never let me forget it. Except he was the one that lost job after job (I think he went through 5 jobs in the first 2 years of marriage, with lengthy bouts of unemployment in between). So knowing what I know today I would have prepared myself better for our family's future. I think he was too insecure to go off by himself & find a place for his career, and at that time to insecure to let me go do what I needed to do to be where he wants me to be today (I didn't pick that route because I didn't want to have to work overseas & I would have 100% guaranteed)