Managing Your Money 101
Managing money is a life skill that everyone must learn. It's a skill that will help you meet financial obligations, avoid serious debt, use credit responsibly, buy a car and a home, create and stick to a household budget, save and invest wisely, and plan for a comfortable retirement and have some fun!
The information below can help you manage your personal finances successfully.
Take a look at www.consumered.com for additional information on purchasing and managing credit.
- Sort Out Your Values
- Establish Realistic Goals
- Determine Your Monthly Net Income
- List Your Monthly Expenses
- List All of Your Debts
- Write Down Your Daily Expenditures for One Month
- Look at Your Credit Report
- Set Up a Payday-to-Payday Spending Plan
- Begin Saving Now
There are a number of programs that will help you understand how to manage your money as well as develop positive relationships with banks and other financial institutions:
$ Education Cents 
was created by CollegeInvest, with the goal of helping you understand financial matters to provide the tools you need to help finance your and your family's higher education.
$ NEFE High School Financial Planning Program® — Free for download — The HSFPP consists of a seven unit student manual, instructor's guide, and a dynamic suite of Web pages that offer a large, continually growing collection of resources, articles, and financial tools for teachers, students, and parents from the National Endowment for Financial Education.
$ MoneySmart (en Español ) — Free Online, friendly, easy-to-use tool that teaches you about money management in 10 self-paced lessons
$ Jump$tart Coalition has pages of free materials and lessons that students can order to help with financial planning.