Women's Money Week - Money in My 30s

This post is part of the Women's week series to educate women on personal finance. Today's topic is Money in my 30's.

I am a natural saver and I love to work! As long as it's something I enjoy doing, I could work 24 hours a day. I started working at the age of 12 delivering newspapers, my mother taught me to save once I started my first job. I became addicted to saving that by the time I was 20, I purchased my first home, at 26 I purchased my second home and at 32 I paid off both properties and became mortgage free. Now that I am 32 years old and I look back at my money habits when I was 20, I realize that nothing has changed.

I once heard Oprah say that money makes you more of who you already are. It definitely has for me, I am much cheaper now than I was when I was 20. Don't get me wrong, I give more, save more and spend more, but I am much more conscious about where and what I spend my money on.

I started working in the banking industry as a teenager and have seen many people mismanage their money. I've also seen people manage their money well. This helped me a great deal to learn how to manage my own funds. After all, unless you have some great money teachers in your life, or you read a lot of books on money, or your exposed like I was working at the bank, you probably wouldn't have a clue how to manage your money. Which is the boat many people are in.

I still to this day don't quite understand why money is not taught in schools. The reasons why people go to school is to graduate, find a good job, and make some money. But yet we're not taught how to manage it.

The responsibility lies with you to learn all you can to manage what belongs to you. No one is going to do it for you. Even if you hire someone to take care of your money, you still need to mange your own funds. At the end of the day, no one will ever care as much about your money as you do, so learn about different types of investments and only invest in things you understand. If you can't explain it to a 12 year old you probably shouldn't invest in it.