You don't need to waste money on a fancy program or app to do a basic budget. I've been using a simple Excel spreadsheet since 2005 to track my monthly budget.

My first piece of career advice is find your gifting. Find the thing that you are skilled at and figure out if you can make a living doing it.

The key to making sure your credit stays good is paying the bill on time. If you are paying the balance off even if there is something on the card in recent purchases, you are good.

If you haven't saved, your child may have to work. But do what you can to NEVER take out student or parent loans.

The sad thing is many people learn how to manage money after they've made a lot of financial mistakes, some that take decades to fix.

A foreclosure does not define you financially.

We all only have a certain amount of money and that means yes, we have to make choices and sometimes those choices mean we don't get what we want.