Installment #5 kicks off a beginner-friendly finance series by showing how money doesn’t vanish—it leaks through habits, choices, and lack of awareness. It breaks down the fundamentals: setting goals, knowing your net worth, tracking spending, understanding opportunity cost, and fixing small financial “cracks” before they flood your life. The core message is simple and empowering: money works best when you’re intentional, aware, and building a system that fits your reality.
There’s this moment when you’re pouring water into a cup with a tiny crack you didn’t notice. At first the cup looks full, the water feels secure, and everything seems fine. But give it a minute and suddenly the water level drops, your hand gets wet, the cup is leaking, and you realize half of what you poured in is gone. That’s the exact feeling most people experience the first time they sit down and look honestly at their finances. Money doesn’t disappear in a dramatic explosion—it slips away quietly, invisibly, one drip at a time.
This installment begins with that cup because personal finance is really an exercise in spotting the cracks. And strangely enough, the cracks aren’t always in your bank account—sometimes they’re in your habits, your attention, your choices, or the way you think about money in the first place.
Before we go further, here’s the disclaimer: much of the information in this finance series comes from the book Personal Finance 101 by Alfred Mill, which breaks down the fundamentals. I’m not reinventing the wheel—I’m giving you a version of the wheel that rolls better for teenagers, beginners, and anyone who wasn’t handed a financial instruction manual at birth.
This is Part One of a ten-part series. Think of it as your financial foundation—the blueprint before you build the house.
Setting Financial Goals: The Starting Point
People think money begins with earning, but it actually begins with deciding. Specifically, deciding what you want your life to look like. Setting financial goals is like setting GPS coordinates. You can’t expect your money to “do the right thing” if you haven’t defined what “the right thing” is. Want a car? Want travel money? Want a college cushion? Want to start a business? Want to not be financially anxious every time you buy food? Whatever your goal is, clarity is power. Without it, money floats around like a balloon with no string—cute for a moment, but gone with the slightest breeze.
And once you know your goals, you need to know your starting point. That’s where net worth comes in. People hear the term and picture billionaires on yachts comparing numbers like Pokémon cards, but net worth is actually just a simple math problem: what you own minus what you owe. Even if you’re 16 or 17 with a debit card and twenty dollars, you still have a net worth. Think of it as your “You Are Here” mark on the financial map. Without it, you’re basically wandering. You don’t have to love the number. You don’t even have to feel proud of it. But you do need to know it. Awareness is the first step in every financial story.
Once you know where you’re starting, you have to figure out what you want—really want. Not “what do people think I should want?” but “what do I want my money to do for me?” There’s a difference between a desire and a default. A desire is intentional. A default is what happens when you don’t think. Most people don’t spend according to their desires—they spend according to whatever shows up. A notification, a sale, a craving, a friend who texts “yo let’s go eat,” a TikTok link, an ad that pops up while you’re half asleep. And because money responds to movement, it follows the path of least resistance. That’s why deciding what you want is so important—it creates friction around financial decisions and makes you pause long enough to ask yourself whether a purchase aligns with your values or not.
Tracking Your Movement
But clarity alone won’t take you far unless you’re checking your progress. Evaluating your finances is like stepping on a scale—not because you’re obsessed with the number, but because you’re trying to see whether your habits reflect your goals. Did you save what you planned? Did you spend intentionally? Did your money flow in the direction you wanted? Did you move toward your goal, or did you drift? These check-ins aren’t about guilt. They’re about navigation. Planes don’t fly in straight lines—they course correct thousands of times from takeoff to landing. You should too.
Budgeting is where a lot of people bail, because they think a budget is a financial straightjacket. In reality, a budget is more like a mirror. It shows you what you’re already doing. It reveals patterns you didn’t notice. It gives you permission to spend confidently and save consistently. A good budget isn’t restrictive—it’s empowering. It says, “Here’s what you can afford without stress.” It turns chaos into clarity.
Money Awareness: Fixing the Leaks
One of the biggest concepts in both finance and life is opportunity cost—the idea that choosing one thing means sacrificing something else. Remember how we talked about this in the last installment? Money makes opportunity cost painfully obvious. If you spend $10 on something forgettable, that’s $10 you can’t save, invest, or use for something meaningful later. If you save it, that’s $10 you can’t flex today. Every dollar has a destiny, and you choose its path. No dollar is neutral. Every one of them echoes.
Once you understand that, you have to face the question that scares people the most: Where is my money actually going? This part hits hard, especially for teenagers who are just beginning to manage recurring payments, debit cards, subscriptions, or inconsistent income. You don’t realize how much your money is evaporating until you track it. The DoorDash order that was supposed to be $20 somehow becomes $35. The $5 monthly app subscription you forgot about keeps renewing. The “It’s only $10” mindset happens ten times. You wake up one day and wonder how your account got so low so fast.
That’s why knowing where your money goes is one of the most powerful wakeup calls in personal finance. When you see your spending clearly, you can control it. When you don’t, it controls you.
Monitoring your budget doesn’t have to be intense. You don’t need spreadsheets, color-coding, or an accounting degree. Just check in enough to stay conscious. Budgeting isn’t about perfection—it’s about awareness. And awareness is the difference between a drip and a flood.
Eventually, every financial journey leads to the same crucial realization: you must fix the leaks. Leaks are the quiet little places where your money sneaks away. It’s not the big purchases that ruin people financially—it’s the tiny repeated ones. The coffee you buy every morning without thinking. The monthly payments that auto-renew without your permission. The impulse buys. The convenience charges. The small purchases that slip through the cracks like grains of sand. Fixing leaks doesn’t mean eliminating joy. It means eliminating waste so you have more room for the things that matter.
Simplifying the Process
That’s why I use my 1/3rd budgeting hack, especially as a teenager with irregular or fluctuating income. It helps simplify everything. I take whatever net profit I make and break it into thirds: One-third goes into reserves. This is money I don’t touch, money that collects and builds my financial foundation. One-third goes into conditioning. This is my everyday spending—small purchases, food, hanging out, living life. One-third goes toward wants and needs. This is my flexible zone. It covers bigger purchases, things I’m saving up for, and expenses that require more planning.
This system works because it scales with my income. If I make a lot, the system still fits. If I make a little, the system still works. It’s not about having the “perfect” budget—it’s about having a budget that fits your reality.
That’s the secret: customize your financial system to your lifestyle. Don’t force your life to match a rigid budgeting model. Build a model that supports the life you’re creating.
This is the end of Part One, and now you have the foundation: your goals, your net worth, your values, your spending habits, your leaks, your progress, your budget, and your decisions. You’ve learned how money moves, why it slips away, and how to catch it before it leaks out of the cracks.
And now? Now we build the engine.
What’s Next
Next Installment Preview: The Real Wealth Engine
Part Two is where the financial world starts to open up. Next time, we’ll break down: the miracle of compound interest, why inflation is not your friend, how to build an emergency fund, how to boost your savings, what kind of bank you actually need, how banking protection works, and where to stash your cash.
Money doesn’t get easier. You get smarter. And you’re already on your way.
TheAlonzoJones 