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Finding My Voice
Day 1
Today I am taking a step back from my regularly scheduled “how-to” guides for finance because I want to proactively develop my writing voice. I’ve noticed that good writing is typically comprised of consistent output, conversational tone, and the writer’s personality. I think I need to work on the personality part.
Educating on personal finance is very important to me because I always thought that control over money was a mystery. Either you had it or you don’t. During the great recession I would keep seeing commercials for credit card debt consolidation. They would always start with “If you owe more than $10,000, $20,000, etc. call this number, and we’ll [insert some promise that was probably a personal loan]”. This, coupled with meeting my first real mentor who was a corporate CFO, inspired me to study accounting in school.
Accounting made sense to me because everything had balance. When money comes in from work you debit (increase asset) your cash on hand and credit (increase income) revenue. When you buy a new Xbox you credit (decrease asset) cash and debit (increase expense) miscellaneous expense. This framework of balance helped me to rationalize and compartmentalize events that I observed that were both in and out of my control. It is an odd reassurance. Even if something is bad I could describe it and understand WHAT was happening. This typically manifested itself through unexpected…
