HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) – April is National Financial Literacy Month, and a certified financial planner is debunking some common money myths.
Ken Tumolo, a certified financial planner based in East Lyme, said he finds there are three big misconceptions about finances.
The first misconception is that you can wait to save for retirement. Tumolo said the earlier you start, the earlier you can take advantage of compounding interest.
“I’m going to say magic number: as soon as you can, and what I mean by that, too, you don’t have to put your whole paycheck into a savings account. For example, my youngest son, 23 now, he started saving when he was 20, and all he would save is about $50 a week. But now that $50 over time has turned into over $1,000 in a retirement account,” Tumolo said.
“I’d probably say the big one I always run into is when to start saving,” Tumolo said.
The second misconception is that you can make quick money on the stock market.
“You just don’t magically make a whole bunch of money all of a sudden in the market. Look at what’s going on now with the war over in Iran. People are actually losing money in some of their accounts, and so things do pass, and the market does go up and down, but it’s more of a long game,” Tumolo said.
The third misconception is that all debt is bad.
“For an example, a young person starting out, especially in college, I would say, just having like a student credit card, and a lot of times the student credit cards only have $500 or $1,000 credit limit on it, but it’s a good start for kids to learn. If I charge this, guess what? There’s a bill at the end of the month that I’m going to have to pay. See, so now they’re starting to learn how things work. And on top of it, they’re building their credit because one day they might buy a house,” Tumolo said.
Tumolo said getting a credit card is only a good thing if you’re paying it off at the end of every month.
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