When I walked into the bank last week on Friday I went in to only deposit a check and order some checks. However, I saw a brochure about Financial Advisors and I grew curious so I asked my banker about what a financial advisor was and how to get in contact with one. Well lucky for me he just happened to be one so he asked me what I wanted advisement on and I told him retirement. Yet, little did I know I would be leaving with more than just info on retirement.

My bank is Wells Fargo and they have this amazing tool called My Retirement Plan- Savings Calculator which asks a series of questions such as age, emergency household savings, annual income, how much you have saved for retirement, and how much you contribute monthly to the savings. My banker put in all of this information and fixed the calculators assumptions (such as longevity) and my retirement plan came up. Well good news I was ahead of the game and if I kept on contributing the amount I was contributing with a 3% interest continuously until the age of 67 (the ageI would like to retire) I would make about 4,552,890 (this is including social security). I know that is a lot of money!

He then showed me how changing how much I contribute can change how much I will have saved up. And the change was surprising, but then he told me how changing when I start saving up for retirement can also affect how much I have by the time I want to retire. It really fascinated me because it was amazing to see how saving at age the age of 19 compares to saving at age 45 for retirement (which I was informed was when most people actually start saving for retirement! I could not believe it!). The lesson was astounding and made me really want to start saving, but then he asked me if I have any loans or any other expenses within the next few hours. And that is when things began to change.

We reviewed over how much are each of my loans , the type of repayment for the loans (deferment, interest only, and interest and principal amount), the interest on each and how much I am paying towards them. Well after reviewing them he informed me that the amount I have been paying towards them will actually cause me to be owing more and in fact was not making a dent at all! But thank the Lord he was there because he helped me to make a plan on how to deal with these loans and not be in debt all of my life.

First he told me I should not focus on retirement as I need to focus on getting these loans out of the way and paid off. Then he went over my loans with me showing me how long it will take to pay off each one and which ones need my attention right away. I will not give specifics how he pretty much explained it to me was that I need to look at the loans and see which ones are the greatest amount, have the highest interests, and time of repayment.

After organizing them this way whatever one has the highest interest rate should be repaid first so I need to be paying that one the biggest amount but, if I have one that is incurring interest even in deferment then I need to pay the biggest amount for that one instead. Well lucky for me one of my loans just happened to fit both of those bills. Then it went down onto how much I should be paying for each loan every month. And how we figured this out was super easy it was literally based on the amount of the loan and the interest! Simple as that once I looked at it. Plus he showed me how bigger of a dent or even less of a dent I would be making by paying certain amounts.

Then to further help me he showed me how I can split my paycheck each month to make my payments and save up for my wedding! Then finally at the end of our very long appointment he gave me some budgeting sheets to really budget myself so I can make these payments but still get necessities. Once he walked me through all of this and explained more about repayments, loans, interests, and credit I felt this huge weight come off my shoulders, but then I got frustrated because no one ever talks about information like this or even fully explains!

In high school we eventually learn about economics typically in our senior year. In this class they can cover anything from personal finances, credit, loans, stocks and bonds, the stock market, the history of economics and how the economy works in our nation (though other stuff may be included). However, for me we mainly focused on investing, the stock market, some history on economics in our nation, how it works, and a little bit on credit and loans. There is nothing wrong with this as I learned a lot that did help me a year later, but it did not fully prepare me at all. Which I believe is a major problem!

Some may argue that Econ should not only about finances and fine sure go with that, but there should be a class and/or a major part of it should be about personal finances. When I say personal finances I mean how to budget, why budgeting is important, how do you start investments and how do you know what a good investment is versus a bad one, what is credit, why do you need credit, how does credit work, what affects your credit, and how do you get credit?

Which by the way if you do not know credit is used for pretty much everything it can determine mortgages, whether or not you can buy a house, how much your APR rate is going to be on loans and credit cards, for buying cars, and the list goes on. You also always want to pay more than the minimum amount on any payment, always pay on time because that will affect your credit positively, hard inquries on your credit brings it down but soft inquiries on your credit do not affect your score, and I might just write an article on an explanation on credit at this point.

For retirement tell us more about it besides we should start saving for retirement. Exactly how do we go about saving for retirement? Do we open a savings account, an IRA? What the heck is an IRA?!

And please explain to us about loans! If my advisor had not explained more about interests and how much I should actually be paying every month I could have seriously been in trouble! But no one really goes into detail about these things and that is a problem.

You cannot expect for people especially teenagers who are just starting out to automatically know this or even know who to talk to about all of this. Most of the time what happens is we continue to do what we are doing which can include using all of our limit on our credit card and only making minimum payments (just an example) and then finding out our credit is out of whack and now we are struggling because of our bad credit.

So here is my piece of advice if you are curious about something when it comes to finances and/or if you are struggling when it comes to finances, go to your bank find out if they have any programs you can use or advisors you can talk to about your finances. However you go about it, make sure you find out more information and get your questions answered. Start while you can and be ahead of the game so you are financially secured and not screwed in the future.