Money is such a crazy, emotional topic. 

It’s still taboo to talk about it too much. We’re all just encouraged to quietly make showy displays of our wealth. 

And when we do finally start to talk about any little part of it, suddenly everyone’s got an opinion. 

But their opinion is about you and what you’re doing wrong, not about them. 

It’s almost laughably funny if you flip the tables in your head for a second and think about how unbelievably pissed off the person hating on you would be in you were commenting on them and their choices. 

The thing is, everyone has missteps in their past. Sometimes it’s a ridiculously high credit card balance you racked up at 18. Sometimes you rack it up at 41. 

Sometimes that credit card balance is keeping you afloat when nothing else could. Sometimes it’s way too many shoes and you literally don’t even know what you were spending on. 

Maybe your financial mess is over a hundred grand in student loans that you just kept adding onto and adding onto without tracking. Maybe they’re literally the minimum amount of loans you needed to get through the program and they still feel impossible to pay off.

Maybe you bought a house at the wrong time. Maybe you bought a house at the right time and it’s actually just a money pit. 

Perhaps you’re just keeping it together, but you’re one disaster away from not having enough money. 

Heaven forbid you ever got really sick, because even with a lot of American health insurance, you’re likely going to be digging out of a financial hole there. Maybe it wasn’t even you, god forbid, maybe one of your kids has a chronic issue that’s costing you an arm and a leg. 

So, so, many people are in the last category and passing a lot of judgment on the people in the previous categories, and for some reason, the people who are a little comfortable and a little ahead can sometimes be the worst of the worst haters. 

It’s really easy to judge someone else’s life if you don’t have to live it. 

Everyone also has certain amounts of risk and debt that they feel ok with. I know that I’m constantly like, “omg, get rid of it all!!! GET RID OF ALL THE DEBT!”

I think this is ok because: 

1. You come here to read my blog. It’s like inviting you into my virtual house to chat with me, so I totally get to rave all the things that are my opinion. 
2. It’s an opinion. Everything on this blog is totally an opinion. You’re welcome to have a different one. Heck, you can even comment with your different ones and maybe we can discuss them and then your comment can help out someone else who has a different kind of mindset than I do. 

Here’s another thing I know, omg, get rid of all the debt isn’t the most “optimized” form of money management. 

You could spend a lifetime parsing down numbers to get the optimal way to spend your money without wasting a cent. This includes figuring out which debts to pay at a minimum while trying to figure out how to max out your investing. 

I kind of think you’d probably be wasting money though during that time when you’re trying to figure out the most perfect approach. 

And personally, how I feel in my gut about debt is pretty nauseous, so I’m a happier human without it. 

What is extra weird to me is the way we sometimes attack anyone who is trying to improve their life. I think if you’re taking any steps to improve your finances, you’re doing better than most of America, so congrats! 

Let’s look at a work analogy here:

Right after college, I went out on a cruise ship. It was dumb luck I got the job, and when I got on the ship, I realized that the automation and technology were like 10 steps beyond what I had any clue about. 

My only goal quickly became not to kill anyone. Luckily, I had an amazing first team of technicians. And over time, the job went from wildly overwhelming to so easy I was bored. 

How does this compare to my money journey? Well, I learned a few important things from that. 

1. Find a good team! If the group giving me advice about my money are jerks, I don’t stick around. I don’t read those blogs that have a nasty community or spend time talking about my finances with people who are unnecessarily mean. 
2. I always appreciated people who were speaking at my level – which actually changed over the years – but the amount of technical info I could handle at first was way lower than it is now. The same with my money. Some blogs are so far ahead of me on their personal finance journey, that when they are throwing out a bunch of technical terms and splitting hairs over stocks and bonds, I glaze over. I’m done. 
3. Similarly though, I try to get involved in communities that are like one to two steps ahead of me. I don’t mind being the most behind in the room, if I can still follow what’s going on. When you work or learn from people more skilled than you, you become more skilled. 
4. Finally, I try to never forget that original WTF feeling the first day I stepped onstage on the cruise ship and the rigger started showing me all the automation points. I was incredibly lucky both of my first two riggers sized me up immediately as having no idea what they were talking about and they both dumbed things down* initially until I could understand them. I try to remember that if someone is stepping onto the stage of personal finance for the first time, they might also be overwhelmed by all the different things on the stage with them. So start simple and with the most important points. 

*I use the phrase dumbed things down with a grain of salt because it’s a phrase that sounds so negative, but the fact of the matter is that it was a subject I was dumb in and had to get smarter about. Everyone starts out kind of dumb on new subjects. If a rigger started out by explaining Igus cables in detail rather than just showing me where the emergency stop buttons were, we could’ve been in real trouble.

So, if you’re just starting your personal finance journey, or are a thousand steps in, don’t forget that everyone was at the beginning once, not everyone’s opinion is worth acting on, and any progress you’re making is awesome!