Personal Finance Tips #3: Be Honest

June 7, 2010 by Victorino
Filed under Personal Finance Tips

Honesty is known to be the best policy. However, only few people practice it. Seemingly because being honest may give you some instant troubles. People tend to depart from honesty to escape some of life’s immediate troubles. What they don’t know is they are just pushing their selves into bigger problems which are even long-term rather than temporal. Persons who are fun of hiding in the darkness instead of in the light are the people who always fall into the trap of financial troubles, as well as in the claws of debts. They are the ones who usually don’t achieve financial freedom and the ones who often become slaves of lenders. Honesty, though difficult and requires a lot of patience and self-control, is an effective virtue that can help us achieve our financial liberty and get us out of debt.

So how is your personal finance doing? Do you have many debts and don’t have financial stability? If yes, what do you think is the problem? Have you been an honest person all these years? Maybe you have obtained a loan you know you can never pay? Or you have not done your vows or promises to pay your debts, resulting this to double your debts because of interests and penalties?

A simple piece of dishonesty can bring a person lot of financial troubles. People who can hardly say “no” or refuse or resist a thing that should be resisted often slide into a whole financial mess. I remember one person who didn’t have enough money in his pocket or in his bank account. He was encouraged to have a grand birthday party by his friends. Because the man cannot be true to his self, he did not say no to them and he gave his vow to realize that party. Consequently, he resorted to creditors and owed money he could never afford to payback. Eventually, the party happened and the increase in his liabilities also occurred. With that story, we can tell that should he became honest to people and unto himself, he should have escaped lots of debts.

Dishonesty is also common in paying taxes. Many people, who wish to save their money, don’t pay the right taxes. They resort to tax evasion which is a great practice of lying. These people gain temporary financial relief because they don’t pay bigger current taxes. However, as the IRS conducts audits, these people are caught with more penalties. That means more expenses which result to additional financial burden.

To strengthen our personal finances, we should also strengthen our attitudes and behaviors. This includes strengthening our virtue of honesty. As we all know, the truth will set us free. The truth and the light can give us financial freedom and stop us from becoming slaves of our creditors. Honesty is difficult to practice, but if practiced constantly, will truly help us in gaining our financial stability. Therefore, let us embrace in our everyday conducts that honesty is still the best policy – even in our financial policies.