Ten Things You Need to Know About Money

Few things affect your quality of life more than financial literacy.

The basics go well beyond being able to open up a bank account or get a job. They entail knowing how to make a wide variety of financial decisions throughout your life.

Understanding and applying these financial basics to the money you earn is likely to make you wealthy. Not having a grasp of them can leave you in a perpetual financial bind.

Here are the 10 essential financial basics:

Credit Cards

In today's world of credit, it's vital to understand credit card basics. Credit cards can be an asset or a liability depending on how you use them.

Learning the basics of how credit cards work -- and how you can use them to your advantage, while not using them when they aren't to your advantage -- is one of the most important financial lessons that you can master to ensure that your finances stay in order.

Compound Interest

: To grasp the full potential and power of investing, you need to understand how compound interest works and what it can do over time. Save $150 a month (approx $5 a day) without compound interest, and in 30 years you'll have $54,000.

Save the same amount with a return of 9% compounded interest and you'll have nearly $275,000 after the same 30 years. When you understand the fundamentals of compound interest and time working together, you see how saving even small amounts for your retirement years can have a huge effect.