#Tiny planet weston full

Vigeland loved her work in public radio - until she didn’t. The philosophical: Develop interests outside of your job. “I got myself in deep credit debt throughout my early and mid-20s, because I lived life like I had my parents’ bank account, when in fact I had a tiny fraction of that,” Vigeland says. The practical: Never, ever carry a credit card balance if you can help it. She, too, has both practical and philosophical advice for her younger self. Tess Vigeland is host and senior producer of The Wall Street Journal’s “As We Work” podcast. “Do the work to heal your pain, so you aren’t creating more unnecessary problems for yourself,” de Leon says. She wishes her younger self had spent time in self-reflection and therapy to work through her psychological issues. De Leon says she didn’t earn enough for years because she wasn’t convinced of her own worth and bought expensive things she couldn’t afford, hoping to get validation from others.

#Tiny planet weston full

But a head full of knowledge about money concepts was no match for what de Leon calls “a deep-rooted scarcity mindset” and a profound sense of inferiority. The second piece of advice: Deal with your pain.ĭe Leon graduated with a degree in finance and a minor in economics. Saving can feel futile on a small income, but the amount you save is far less important than the habit of saving that you’ll develop, she says. Paco de Leon, author of the book “Finance for the People: Getting a Grip On Your Finances, ” has two bits of advice for her younger self. SAVING, SPENDING, EARNING: THEY’RE ALL IMPORTANT “That debt wasn’t as much of an albatross as I’d feared,” Woods says. Woods, a New Zealand native, landed a job as an analyst for his country’s treasury department and was able to pay off the loans in a year. Woods wishes he could reassure his anxious younger self that the loans were a solid investment in his future. “The lesson I learned was to look at my own individual situation and invest based on my timeline and goals,” Singletary says.ĭarian Woods, a reporter and producer for “The Indicator from Planet Money” podcast, says he can no longer remember exactly how much he borrowed to get a master’s in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley - just that his balance was “in the tens of thousands of dollars” by the time he graduated. Singletary later realized that someone in their 20s has decades to ride out stock market swings, and that she could have afforded to take much more risk with her investments. Singletary says she avoided investing for many years because in her first job out of college, an older co-worker - one who was close to retirement age - warned her that stocks were too risky. If the stock market scares you, nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary can relate. I invited some personal finance experts to share what they wish they could have told their younger selves about money. Those of us who write and talk about money for a living tend to have our financial acts together.