With recent reports from the Federal Reserve finding the average American household in $137,063 of debt, it’s clear that the common view and therefore treatment of finance is an area ripe for improvement.

I think it’s important to identify the commonly forgotten principle that our views influence our actions.

Because the common view of finance is as a restricting and painful topic we avoid taking ownership over it. This results in a poor understanding of the topic and in tandem a fear of what we do not understand.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. – H. P. Lovecraft

I think in many ways this view is the root cause and catalyst for poor spending habits that focus on the short-term and accumulate debt.

Finance is an incredibly powerful tool to be leveraged to serve you.

The first step is to change your mindset, if your current view is negative and be purposeful in adopting this positive perspective.

It’s up to you to adopt and act in accordance with that belief.

Below I’ve included my top three resources to help empower you to financial flourishment.

A few highlights are that it debunks a lot of the poor financial advice commonly delivered, discusses systemic spending the principle of evaluating how any particular piece of spending improves every other context of your life – aside from the original context.

The primary conclusion being (spoiler) that the safest investment is the thing you have the most control over; yourself.

If you regularly invest in skills you’ll find that it’s the most recession-proof bubble proof, bad decades proof, layoff-proof, investment strategy in existence.

2. Creating a budget

Again this is where mindset takes a big role. Creating a budge does not have to be something scary!

There are amazing resources like the mint app.

This app will help you with things like budgeting, where you can easily create budgets and see their suggestions based on your spending. The app also tracks bills and alerts to when it’s time to pay, ensuring you don’t miss a payment.

Mint helps you manage credit cards and scores:  I talk more about credit cards in my article “Financial Literacy for Young Adults. 

Similar to philosophy – to have no philosophy is a philosophy and to have no budge is indeed a budget.

This book is a classic about a boy who gets to see the difference in how the rich dad of his best friend and his real father the poor dad view and treat finances. An easy and straightforward read clearly identifies key differences between how the rich view money and how the poor view money.

And particularly the ways in which both men shaped the authors’ thoughts about money and investing. The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.

My goal is to empower you to live within your means and start leveraging your finances to serve you.

(This article was primarily inspired by my friend Lauren. I hope this helped friend!)