# Personal Finance: A Guide

> A free guide to personal finance for beginners: the financial planning process, budgeting and spending, saving, investing basics, taxes, insurance and retirement.
## Intro

The goal of this guide is to teach you everything about personal finance for beginner to intermediate level situations. Advanced personal finance will not be covered as it is likely to require specialized advice or the help of professional counsel to implement. This guide will also not include investment strategies as that will be covered in a separate guide.

*Disclosure: This guide is for informational purposes only. Please consult professional counsel.*

**What is personal finance?**

Personal finance is simply the ability to manage one’s money. Human nature makes personal finance more difficult as we naturally crave status and higher wellbeing. And for this reason, money is the number one stressor for American families and number one reason for divorce.

Understanding money, how to manage it, and how to make it work for you will lead to a happier, more fulfilled life.

This is why it is crucial to gain the basic skill of personal finance.

**Let’s begin.**

## The Process

When the wealthy work with a financial planner, they all go through the same basic steps. This is called the financial planning process.

- **Understand your current financial standing**
   To do this, you’ll need to gather all financial information. For most people, this involves gathering tax documents and bank documents. These have crucial information like your salary, taxes paid, investment assets, and liabilities like a mortgage.
- **Set goals**
   There is no point in amassing wealth with no way to spend it. Money is a tool that is used to enjoy life. Therefore, you must set goals that allow you to spend your money to enjoy your life.
- **Analyze courses of action and their alternatives**
   Within personal finance, there is the “3 Alternative Rule” — there are at least three alternatives that could lead to the same goal. It is a matter of choosing the best one that makes you feel the most secure.
- **Develop the plan**
   After choosing all of your courses of action, you must develop the final plan by putting it together. This will be your personal finance bible — the document you live by.
- **Implement the plan**
   Now that you have developed your plan, you have to go through with it. A plan not implemented is failed from the start.
- **Monitor progress and update accordingly**
   Albeit, life is not perfect, so you’ll need to edit your plan as you go to better fit the today version of you.

## The rest of the guide

The other 7 chapters (Current Situation, Spending, Saving, Investing, Taxes, Insurance, Retirement) and the PDF are free with an email address at https://justinhuynh.com/personal-finance#get-the-ebook.

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