On the topic of Debt, I'd like to quite this interesting piece from Steven Marshall's blog (he posts here as lionhearted, he's a pretty cool guy, eh makes money and doesn't afraid of nothing):
You're American, yes? Okay, do you have a credit score? If not, here's the easiest way to get one. Go to your bank, put a small amount of money in a certificate of deposit, and get a secured loan against it that pays off automatically. Basically, the CD will pay you 2% interest or whatever, and the secured loan will cost 3% interest... so if you put $1,000 into the CD, you lose $10 to do this, but it massively increases your credit score (it's automatic payment of revolving credit, which is good for a few reasons - I won't get into the exact details, just trust me and do it). You can do it with as low as $100 I reckon, I did it with a $1000 and it was good. After a few months of this, you'll have an established credit history. I'd recommend you apply for the Amazon credit card, which gives a big discount on books, so you can get $50 of free books or something. Then you get points which you can use for more free books later. Much later on, when you have higher spending, you'll probably want an AMEX gold card, but secured loan + Amazon credit card is probably enough for now. Do this ASAP, I lost a lot of money once when I couldn't get a mortgage on a very good buy because I didn't have a credit history. Trust me on this. By the time you start thinking of needing credit, it's too late to build it. Do it now.
Never, ever, ever get into debt. Just don't do it. If you have debt (student loans, credit cars, etc), pay them off as soon as you have any cash at all. Debt is okay for a mortgage on a house, and that's about it. I think education debt is a bad idea personally, and that universities exploit young people who don't understand the value of money yet, but I'm in the minority on that. Maybe take university debt if you need to, but much better to save and pay cash if possible. If you take on debt, absolutely no buying toys or partying with your money until your debt is paid off. Debt cripples a man's ability to do what he wants with his life. Stay away from it at all costs.
What do you guys think of this, US Citizens and others? My dad used to go even further than this, he always taught me one should at least try to live with only half one's income (after taxes) and invest the rest in savings. As a result, we've lived in pretty shoddy conditions for the last couple of decades, but we have gained a lot in terms of freedom and security, compared to families of similar income who spent most of it in consumer goods.
I agree with Steven Marshall and with your father. (I am a US citizen but living elsewhere.) Living on about half your income, on fairly plausible assumptions about the present and future performance of the economy, gives you good prospects of being able to retire nice and early. At which point, of course, you don't have to retire -- you may enjoy your work too much, or feel obliged to give a lot of money to charities, or have the urge to get rich rather than merely comfortable -- but knowing that your employer no longer has the ability to dump you into po...
As I inventoried my personal library and classified it using the Universal Decimal System, I found out about lots of fields of knowledge I was only dimly aware of or didn't even know existed1, and one of those that piqued my curiosity was home economics, domestic science and housekeeping (field 64). I was kinda bluffed, actually; I always thought of home economics as that thing that shows up in American high school sitcoms, that elective "for girls" where people get to cook stuff on campus. Now I find that it fully occupies one of The Tens of the UDC! I finally realized it; this is Serious Business!
I thought of the permanently shoddy state of my bank account, of all the money I had spent in books (no less than 215 physical books, and then there's Kindle!), fancy gadgets (were those Marshall headphones really necessary? What about that sandwich-maker?), fancy food (even though I always seem to end up "cooking" the same boring, unbalanced crap), unnecessary or excessive heating and air conditioning, and so on and so forth.
I've come to realize how much I had underestimated this field, the duty towards oneself of taking care of one's house, and the advantages of so doing. I want to catch up in terms of planning my budget and my cleaning and my cooking and my buying furniture and appliances and so on and so for. I suppose I could figure it out by myself, but why reinvent the wheel?
So I thought to myself: asking your mates at LW has had awesome results when it came to getting your library in order, why don't you ask them about Home Economics? They probably actually went to those courses in High School, or have otherwise taken an interest just to optimize their homes! I mean, their literal livelihoods and well-beings are at stake, so why wouldn't they2?
So, yeah, if you guys know which reference books to start with, or have any practical recommendations in terms of resources or bibliography, and the handling thereof, I'd love to hear it. Who knows, maybe a good top level post may come of it?
1This triggered my imagination on a completely unrelated topic: a gamified education system in the style of an RPG skill tree.
2My Inner Critic obligingly suggested "Arkasia and, given the demographic, a compounded disdain for manual labor, pedestrian and materialistic concerns, and girly stuff. Why else didn't you?" I told it to step aside and go have a swim in the North Atlantic.