I've always been of the opinion that you should only borrow money for your needs, not your wants.
i.e. you NEED a house to live in, you could either pay someone rent and never see that money again, or you could take out a home loan and buy a house, then pay it off using the money that you save on rent, plus a bit. It may cost a little bit more each period until you get it paid off, but after that it won't cost nearly as much, and you're left with an asset worth a few hundred grand.
On the flipside:
You NEED a car.
You WANT a nice car.
Do you go out and buy a brand new [insert make and model here] and pay it off for the next 5-10 years, which ends up costing you $55k, for a car originally worth $35k, that is worth $10k by the time you finish paying it off? ($45k loss)
Or do you buy a shitter for $2k, drive it for 5 years and sell it for 1k? (1k loss)
Is it really worth over a year's pay (for most of us anyway) to drive a new car for a year, which quickly becomes a new-
ish one for a few years?
This is what my parents have drilled into me from day one, and I'm thankful for it.
On the same sort of topic, a couple of my mates started talking about getting motorbikes. I had been meaning to get my bike licence for a while so I went with one of them and did the Q-ride course, and loved it. I'd never really considered buying myself a motorbike but yeah, after that day I started looking. I took a few for test rides over the next few weeks, found one I liked and bought it outright. My mates who are looking at bikes both have car loans and finance on other things, and it doesn't look like they'll be able to afford to buy one for a year or so because they (frankly) had shit financial planning. They each bought stuff that they
wanted on finance and realistically couldn't afford, and are paying for it in the long run.
[/preach]
there are tafe courses if you feel you're knowledge in this particular area isnt up to scratch
I'm guessing that was deliberate?
I never liked english because of the pointless reviews and stuff that we had to write. They're too arbitrary and, as much as it isn't supposed to, the marking depends too much on the teacher's opinion. I do value communication skills though, which probably shows in my spelling and punctuation, etc. But I had all that by the end of primary school.