16 traps a Financial Hot Girl avoids like the plague

3. Taking money advice from the people who financially raised you.

This list might hurt some feelings, and if it does, remind yourself of who you are versus who you want to be when reading. I haven’t written this with the average lifestyle in mind, because the average lifestyle is not what I’m personally aiming for.

The more I’ve settled into my 30s, the more I realise that lifestyle traps exist in the most sneakiest of ways. They really are disguised and embedded into our daily lives so much so that it takes proactive effort to side-step them. They limit your future without you realising it’s happening. Some are unavoidable, but most are hard to reverse. Nobody around us pushes us to think critically about these, because a lot of people have been entrapped themselves.

𝜗ৎ 16 lifestyle traps to avoid (with the exit route for each)

1. The 35-year mortgage

A 35 or 40-year mortgage taken at the absolute top of what a bank will lend you is a decades-long commitment to a specific income or job market (not to mention a specific relationship if it’s joint). The affordability calculation the bank does is designed to work for the bank, not for you.

My opinion: buy less house than you can technically afford, and take a shorter term where you realistically can. Every extra year on the mortgage adds tens of thousands in interest and locks you into more career risk than most people register at the point of signing. Honestly, we don’t need to commit to our forever homes or get on the property ladder in our 20s. Not in this economy.

The exit route: