Doing these 3 basic things will make you better with money than most Americans (2024)

Do you think you're more money-savvy than the average American?

If you'd like to be, there's good news: It's not that difficult.

From wagering hundreds of millions on the Super Bowl to keeping their finances on co*cktail napkins, most Americans have a long way to go when it comes to financial savoir faire.

Here are three (pretty easy) ways you can be better with money than most of your peers.

1. Eliminate wasteful spending habits.

As I've written before, Americans find plenty of waysto waste money.

If you placed a bet on this year's Super Bowl, you're certainly not alone.

$119.4 million was wagered on the 2014 Super Bowl in Nevada's 183sportsbooks,according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. That clobbered the record set in 2013, $98.9 million, by a whopping 21%. (And that figuredoesn't include quasi-legal online sportsbooks).

You may not be a gambler, but take a hard look at your other spending habits: Are you wasting money on something?Unused subscriptions? Tobacco? Too much alcohol? Mobilegames? Cutting out spending that doesn't meet a need (or worse, is harmful) should be your first priority.

2.Create a system for tracking your spending.

One in three Americans track their monthly expenseson a scrap of paper,according toa survey by Moven (an app I reviewed in 2013).

This is not a survey of 10 people, mind you, but 1,178 adults polled in late October. The finding shocks Moven President Alex Sion, who can't understand why a digital-savvy nation uses the budgetary versionof a stylus and clay tablet.

"It's the equivalent ofpeople still writingpaper memos despite the existence of email," he says. "What that says to me is that despite the obvious power and benefitof all this technology for personal money management, we still lack a simple experience that meets the average American's most basic needs."

Additionally, 23% of those surveyed don't keep a budget at all.

So stop what you're doing. Look around your office or favorite bar. Unless the room's empty, someone you just spotted has a wad of paper jammed in their jeans with all their monthly bills on it. And about one in four won't have any paper in their pockets at all, because they don't budget. Not even for beer.

Is one of those folks you?

If so, get a system to track your spending. Now!Any of these great (and mostly free budget tools) will help.You don't have to obsess over every penny, but you should have a picture of where your money's going that's bigger than a co*cktail napkin.

3.Just say 'no' toinvestment fads.

I’ve committed my share of financial fumbles: behaviors and dice rolls that make those Super Bowl investors look like business school profs.

Here's one: Starting in the mid-2000s, I began buying pricey guitars. It didn't hurt that I was a musician and any excuse to buy guitars was a good one. I was lured by visions of the 1956 Gibson Les Paul "Gold Top," so named for its metallic-Champagne color.

In 2002, the Gold Top sold for $5,500. By the end of 2006, its value had skyrocketed to $85,000. Then it dropped to $35,000 in 2002 — still a tidy profit by more than seven times from 2002, but one reached by a rollercoaster ride. The guitars I bought weren't nearly so expensive, but I did purchase them as substitutes for traditional investments.

I did this not on anyone's advice, but a hunch.How out of tune I was.

Right now the investment guitar market is in the tank. I've recently sold off many axes for less than I paid, though a few for more. (I’m trying to sell them all, in fact, just to clear my closets.) Then I took all the money andtucked it into a three-month emergency fund— something I learned to do by writing this column.

There's a similar speculative trap going on with bitcoin investment, as huge spikes in the cryptocurrency's value lure the gullible and greedy.

If you'd timed it right — and that's a big "if" — you bought a single bitcoin for $13.30 on New Year's Day 2013 and sold that slice of digital currency for about $1,150 less than a year later, on Dec. 4.That's more than 86 times the original investment.But if you timed it wrong, you invested that same dayand saw the value plummet by more than halfby Dec. 22 — just 18 days later.

That may explain whythe Securities and Exchange Commission watched bitcoins for all of 2014,warning that, "a new product, technology or innovation — such as bitcoin — has the potential to give rise both to frauds and high-risk investment opportunities."

Meanwhile,there's still something irresistible for some about the "scrap of paper" trick … which, as bonehead financial planning goes, rivals jotting down notes on a $100 bill.

"I was meeting with a client with more than $12 million to go over the comprehensive financial plan I had prepared," Rajo-Miller recalls. "And she came to the meeting with her own version of the financial plan completely sketched out on the back of a napkin."

What advice do you give a person like that? Maybe it's this: "Don't wipe your mouth, or you might get wiped out."