I think the two can go easily hand in hand. When I was younger, I went through a few divorces. This makes it very easy to try to just make it through the day, so you can make it through years, to eventually get the heck out of there and out on your own. The major problem being that a lot of the time, all the practical advice and techniques on how to be financially secure kind of get lost in the muck, if ever brought up at all.

If I were to sit and write about all the things I didn’t know and all the wrong turns I took in dealing with life as it was handed to me, we’d be delving into a novel. So, instead, what I hope to do, is drop a few of my financial problems I endured when I was younger and tell you how I should have handled them. Hopefully allowing you to pick up on some simple, practical advice, before walking down the wrong paths.

I was nineteen when I was ready for my first apartment. Still remember like it was yesterday. Had my first months rent, clothes all packed, enough hand me down furniture to make each room resemble what it was supposed to be, oh, and my boyfriend. Unfortunately, I was lacking any sense of understanding in how to take care of my personal finances. We were sure we had it all figured out. There was plenty of money coming in for rent, food, and gas. We had a joint checking account, and could both easily take care of any bills that needed to be paid.

Ah, there it is. If I knew then, well you know the rest. See we knew what the bills were, what we made, but the right hand never seemed to know what the left hand was doing. If I could go back, we would have had separate checking accounts. Not only would this keep each person on track of the money that they had coming and going, but when bill time came there would have been accountability for each half. Once you have money problems, it’s real easy to let the solution get lost in the “you did this”, “oh yeah, but what about when you” of a typical relationship.

At ELGA it is easy to manage this situation. There is no problem with having several savings accounts, and have them labeled whatever you would like. You could even have your paychecks direct deposited . Then if you had a joint savings just for bills, you could easily have money automatically allotted to that bill account. To go a step further, you could then get on our bill pay system and pay all of your bills online. Obviously this would be a great thing to do in a relationship or not. It is much easier to have your money out of sight and out of mind when you budget to have all bill money into a separate account.