Your Top 5 Lifetime Expenses

[jpg7n16]

Found this article on yahoo: it talks about how your top 5 expenses may account for over 1/2 your total lifetime spending.

Not surprisingly, these are the expenses many people struggle because of on these forums.

Yahoo! Finance - Financially Fit

[snshijuptr]

That's a nice summary of the advice commonly seen on these forums and elsewhere. Thanks!

[disneysteve]

Home, Car, Kids, Education and Retirement.

That pretty much covers the big goals. I'd say the first two are where most people tend to get into trouble. We see that in posts here all the time. Education is another biggie as people borrow ridiculous amounts to get a degree where they can't ever hope to earn enough to justify the expense.

[jpg7n16]

Yeah, it was a short article, but I think it gets to the point.

We see a lot of people dealing with student loans also. Because they couldn't afford the school they wanted, so they borrowed the difference. Now they have a big mortgage, big car payment, school loans to repay - so they get squeezed and end up putting the difference of the lifestyle they want on credit cards.

Then spend so much of life paying off all this debt that they don't start properly saving for retirement until much later in life.

Funny how these 5 expenses can ruin you if you let them.