#39: This Lady Knows What’s Up
This is not a controversial take, unless you don’t know anything about finances. This is just good solid advice. One of the biggest financial problems people face is lifestyle creep: if you get a raise, instead of saving that money so that it can grow into more money, a lot of people just take it as permission to start buying more expensive cars and clothes and food.
I don’t mean to sound like your dad, but it’s much better to take the new money and do something sensible with it. And she’s right: tax refunds, as much as we get excited about them, just mean that the government withheld too much in our taxes and got to use that money for a year while we didn’t get the benefits of it. Another reason the tax system is kind of a mess.