Planning your life to achieve financial freedom and a high credit score

"There are two kinds of man: the ones who make history and the ones who endure it."

- Camilo Jose Cela, Spanish novelist

History is written all around you every day. It may not be history that makes the college textbooks, but it's your history just the same. Do you make your own history? Or do you endure the life that others make for you? When you choose a direction and dedicate yourself to it, you make history. When you listen to naysayers who convince you that it can't be done, you endure history. When you set your priorities and stick to them, you make history. When you get distracted by things that you find useless, you endure it. When you decide to have a good day, you create a life you want. When you allow outside forces to dictate your mood, you get the life that's given to you. When you do what is expected from you without questioning whether or not this is truly what is best for you, you endure history.

There are many things that society expects from us that are not necessarily the soundest things to do. For example we are all expected to go to college but not all careers require a college degree, many business owners don’t have college degrees or have degrees in areas completely unrelated to their business and they usually make more money than the average salary employee. Real estate brokers are not required a degree either, although in today’s economies they are not making as much money as they used to but this used to be a very lucrative job. I’m not arguing against higher learning, it is in some cases useful such as careers in science and engineering but my aim is to challenge some ideas that we have ingrained in our brains, such as that a college degree needed to secure a good job. In an article by msn money they calculated that the higher salary earned by degree holders doesn’t make up for the cost of the college education and the debt from the student loans. I not trying to make people shy away from college degrees but if you choose to pursue one do it because it is necessary to achieve the career path that you have chosen for yourself and not because is what your parents want you to do.

Another thing that people are always expected to do is to buy a home and buying a house by the traditional method is the worst financial prison that someone could get into
There are several ways in which buying a house can become a prison; first in order to buy a house you will need a mortgage and for that you need credit and while it is possible to have credit without incurring in debt , the average adult credit holder has a revolving debt of $3752. Building good credit takes some financial education and most people fail to get educated this topic, and start to spend their money with the credit cards and incur in debt. Adding to that the average national monthly mortgage payment in the United States is $1,687, in most cases it eats up half of the salary. If instead of buying a house early in life, one would stay at home with ones parents, given that they allow you to or rent out a room. In a couple or years one could save enough money to either pay a house in full or give a large down payment and pay a lower rent that allows you more financial freedom.

Then again the point I’m trying to make is that at least one time in our life we should sit down and question the preconceived ideas that we have and wonder if the plan that we have for our lives is truly what we believe is best for us and not what other believe is best and if the path that we have taken is aligned with our dreams. Plan your life, determine what career will help you fulfill your dreams, study finances and understand how the credit score works. Most importantly stick to the plan and make your history.