Avoid these 5 money red flags if you want to grow your wealth

Putting yourself in the best financial situation possible will likely require personalized advice to ensure you’re making the right moves, even if it looks different than your peers.

But there are still plenty of money habits and attitudes many of us share that could be holding you back from feeling financially secure — or getting rich. 

Here are five red flags money experts see when creating financial plans for their clients, and what to look out for if you want to be smarter with your own money.

Do you really know how much you spend each month? If it’s more than you can actually afford, that’s a red flag.

Every financial planner and wealth manager CNBC Make It spoke with highlighted how common it is for first-time clients to look for advice without really knowing how much money is coming in and going out each month.

Plus, young people may be especially susceptible to overspending, Emily Safford, a certified financial planner and wealth advisor at Girard, a Univest Wealth Division, based in Pennsylvania, tells CNBC Make It.

She often sees young people focused on designer items and tying to keep up appearances, “but on the backside you might be really squeezing yourself financially in order to do so,” Safford says.

“[Credit card debt] can snowball and get out of hand very quickly and when you’re young, you’re putting yourself at a real disadvantage moving forward.”

Not only can everyday buys add up, but you may also want to focus on big-ticket items, like a wedding or a house. While you probably won’t pay all cash on those occasions, Safford recommends still making sure you can continue to meet all your other financial obligations, such as saving for retirement.

“It’s really easy to fall into [a mindset of] ‘OK, let me pause everything else and just focus on this one goal and not save anything and maybe lower my retirement savings contribution at work,’ and things like that,” Safford says. “But it goes back to making sure you’re living…