If you struggle with over-spending, you’re not alone. The key to overcoming over-spending is creating systems. Financial Expert Amanda Steinberg shares her system in this Manilla Mini.
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Money Management
Combat Over-Spending
Financial Success for Life
Linda Descano, Managing Director and Head of Digital Partnerships, Content and Social, North America Marketing, Citi, and President and CEO, Women & Co, shares her tips for a lifetime of financial success.
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Daily Deals: Is It Worth It?
Financial Editor Farnoosh Torabi teaches us that daily deals can sometimes be money wasters instead of savers. Find out when to nab the deal and when to pass it up.
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Manilla – One Organized Place for All Your Financial Statements
Manilla.com is the leading, free and secure service that helps consumers manage everything in their lives, all in one place. With a single sign-on, customers can manage their bills, finances, travel rewards, subscriptions and more — all through Manilla.com or the 4+ star user-rated mobile apps for the iPhone and Android.Manilla gives customers an automated, organized view of their account information; text and email reminders to pay bills and renew expiring daily deals, subscriptions, and travel rewards; and unlimited account document storage forever, for free.
I found Manilla very helpful because I want to go paperless with my financial statements. I have been manually scanning or downloading the statements from individual financial institutions and the process is very time consuming. Manilla does all the work for me and saves me a lot of time. Now I can just log in the account and see all my statements in one place, and they are all in digital format The documents are stored forever in Manilla. I no longer have to find physical storage space to store all the paper documents.
This is one of those tools/service that is a must-have for people who want to organize and track all their financial statements.
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4 Ways to Get Your Family Out of Financial Distress
Being financially challenged is one of the most stressful and emotional experiences that a family can face. The feeling of helplessness can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to see how you could possibly get out of the cycle you’re in. Luckily, there is plenty that you can do to help yourself and your family become debt free. Here are 4 ways to get your family out of financial distress.
Assess the Situation
To accurately decide on a course of action, you need to first determine how deep your debt problem is. Sit down and work out exactly how much you owe, to whom, and on what rate of interest. Which repayments are you struggling with the most, and which bills or loans should have priority? Obviously you should be working to pay off the largest debt with the highest interest first, but there are other options available to you, such as consolidating your debt into one loan. You can consolidate any unsecured debt, which will get rid of your multiple credit cards or personal loans.
This eliminates the confusion of coordinating multiple payments, and gives you the benefit of a low rate of interest. Having only one monthly payment makes it easier to budget and plan for, and can get your debt level down a lot quicker than paying all of your loans and credit cards off separately.
Notify your Creditors
As soon as you have trouble making any repayments, your first step should be to inform your creditors. They are surprisingly open to helping anyone experiencing genuine financial hardship, and you can form an agreement to change the frequency or amount of your payments so that they are manageable. Before you talk to your creditors, try and have a solid repayment plan in place, so you can let them know when you can pay and how much your payments will be. This increases your chance of having their support.
Focus on a Budget
Once you have a thorough knowledge of your financial situation and have notified your creditors of your current difficulties, you can start working on a concise and comprehensive budget. This will take quite some time, so set aside several hours for a few days when you won’t be disrupted. You will need to be quite harsh on what is a necessity and what is a luxury in order to free up some extra money to reduce your debts. Make meeting repayments an absolute priority, especially if your creditors have been understanding in reworking your agreement. Your budget will be an essential tool in reducing your level of debt.
Get Help
If you’re tried everything on your own and are still struggling, or are worried about the stress of where to start, consider enlisting the services of a professional debt solutions specialist such as Fox Symes free debt assistance. They can help with every stage of the process, from budgeting advice right through to debt consolidation, personal insolvency and even bankruptcy assistance if needed. The consultants can also take over all negotiation with your creditors, as well as working out payment plans and agreements for all of your outstanding debt. Getting into debt is easy, it’s getting debt-free that is the challenge. By admitting that there’s a problem and seeking help, you’ve already taken the first step towards getting your family out of financial distress. Remember that taking action early is vital, and that there is plenty of help out there to assist you in freeing yourself of debt. A professional debt solutions specialist can be the key to a debt-free life for you and your family.
Where Do You Stand Financially?
An overview of “the big picture” is a big deal when it comes to your money. Sometimes we get so focused on the small details that we forget to take a step back and see where we are in terms of the entire financial plan. Or, perhaps you have focused so much on one aspect of your finances that you have neglected other aspects. In either case, you need to take a financial time out from what you’re doing and assess the whole situation, as well as the component parts.
If you really want to make sure that you are on track for a secure financial future, you need to get an overview of your entire money situation as it stands right now. Only then can you take the practical steps needed to move forward. If you want an easy way to see your current situation, MyMoneyCheckUp (Spanish website) is a great resource.
MyMoneyCheckUp from the NFCC
The National Foundation for Credit Counseling has provided a web site devoted to showing consumers where they stand. MyMoneyCheckUp is a free tool that looks at the numbers related to your financial situation, as well as your own attitudes about money. Some of the items addressed with MyMoneyCheckUp include:
- Budgeting
- Debt
- Savings
- Your home
- Retirement
These are major aspects of your finances that you should be considering as part of the bigger picture. You are also asked questions about where you get your financial information, how you feel about your situation, and what you understand about how money works. That this tool assesses how feel about your situation is important. It means that it can help you figure out how to arrange your money matters so that you enjoy greater peace of mind, as well as increased financial stability.
It sounds like the whole thing should take a long time, but the tool is very good at getting right to the heart of the financial matter. You can complete the questionnaire (which is also available in Spanish) in 10 to 15 minutes. It doesn’t take very much time at all, and is well worth the investment of your time.
Take Action to Improve Your Finances
Not only does MyMoneyCheckUp tell you whether you are on track in major areas of your financial life, but it also provides you with actions you take to improve your situation. Since 1951, the NFCC has provided financial education, and MyMoneyCheckUp is no exception to this mission. The tool tells you specifically what you can do to improve your situation in each of the main areas of financial fitness. You also see links to various resources that can give you additional information about topics of interest including retirement, purchasing a home, credit, and insurance. If you feel like you need even more personalized help, you can contact the NFCC.
Overall, this new tool provides you with big picture information on your finances, as well as actions you can take to improve. MyMoneyCheckUp is free, only takes 10 to 15 minutes of your time, and what you learn can be vital in helping you improve your finances going forward.
The Big Bang Theory Teaches Financial Responsibility
The CBS TV show, The Big Bang Theory teaches financial responsibility and discipline.
In Season 2 Episode 14, Penny needs money to pay rent and Sheldon lends her money. Sheldon lives below his means and saves up for the rainy days. In contrast, Penny lives “hand to mouth,” or paycheck by paycheck. She sometimes overspends and is often behind in bills.
Penny could not make rent and tells the story to Sheldon. Sheldon generously and gladly offers Penny his “secret” stash of money. He spends only what he needs and saves the extra money.
The lesson that can be learned here is that if we practice financial responsibility, i.e. spending less than we earn and have the discipline to control our spending we can avoid financial disasters like not making rent such as Penny does.
Smart Investing Strategies Start With Financial Planning
All consumers have a financial obligation to themselves for their future stability. Investing money towards retirement is an important aspect that many people delay either out of lack of money or due to basic misunderstanding of the investing world. Retirement may appear to be years off but people need as much time as possible to save enough cash towards the future.
Ideally, every working individual should begin stashing cash away for retirement starting with their first job. Employee-sponsored retirement savings programs should be reviewed and understood by young adults new to the workforce. Often the importance of saving for the long-term future is not even a consideration by the younger generation who wrongly believe they have plenty of time to worry about retirement. The reality is that the sooner people start investing for retirement, the more money they will be able to save in smaller increments. This makes investing and savings plans more reasonable and likely easier to achieve.
Fear Prevents Action
For working individuals that are not familiar with the basic strategies of investing, it can certainly help to start with a basic plan. Rather than become significantly overwhelmed by the investing world and the many vehicles available for goal- reaching, people need to start small and continue getting financial understanding of the next steps and the riskier investments.
A good place to start building your investment foundation is using a personalized retirement savings calculator that will allow you look at an estimated ‘big picture’. You can get a real-time look at what your projected investment earnings for retirement would be based on your current balance and the anticipated interest rates of the future.
Because many working people fail to create a visual of what the financial future may look like, few realize the importance of being timely and consistent with their retirement investing. Many have not set any goals towards their retirement future at all, making it much harder financially to get on track at a later time.
Time to Take on Opportunity
As you develop a solid understanding of the basic investment opportunities that are inline with your financial abilities and your future needs, you can begin exploring the other possibilities to make your money work for you. Investing does not just involve a solid savings plan it also involves growing your money with good interest rates. It involves making investments into assets that will increase in value and make your financial portfolio stronger.
There are many investment strategies that are riskier than others and the only way to determine what is worth the risk is by continually understanding the world of investments and by acknowledging where you stand financially. Maintaining a home budget with a budget worksheet is an ideal way to continually know how your money is being spent and allows you to allocate more cash to investments and retirement savings when necessary.
It is imperative that all working individuals place a priority on their savings plan for both the short-term and the long-term. Staying organized and progressive in your investment and savings pursuits allows for more financial decisions to be made. Even if you aren’t confident in your abilities to invest your money and choose to seek third-party broker help, you still need to be knowledgeable about your own financial affairs rather than set yourself up for failure by allowing someone else to control how your money works.
Debbie Dragon is a finance writer providing articles for Vertex42.com, a site that
offers a large selection of free spreadsheet templates and financial calculators.
Smart Money Management Tips – May 2011
Part of entering the “real world” is learning to manage your own finances. Money can be a drag. For something that is so essential to our lives, money certainly does cause an endless amount of stress. To stay on top of your finances and reduce the amount of stress that money causes you, follow these three
money management tips.
1. Automate Things: One of the best ways to save the money you make is by making it as painless as possible. Though it may sound trite, using automatic transfers each month to put some of your paycheck into savings can be one of the best ways to manage your accounts. All too often, we have our paychecks automatically put into our checking accounts and then we end up spending them. By scheduling an automatic transfer from your checking account to your savings account every two weeks or so, your savings will grow without you really realizing it. Furthermore, arrange to have your bills taken directly out of your checking account when they are due. This will make it easier to budget and you’ll never have to worry about forgetting to them. Building savings can be painful. Having to take a chunk of your paycheck each month and put it into savings can feel like you are losing money. Make things easier on yourself, by making this transfer effortless.
2. Know Your Credit Score: If you’ve attended college, bought a car, or owned a credit card, you have a credit score. Once you borrow money from a lender, that lender reports to the nation’s three credit bureaus and the bureaus calculate your credit score. This score is generated from your credit usage and payment history. With catchy jingles and numerous silly commercials, people hear about credit scores all the time, but rarely know the actual number attributed to their credit. This number is used to determine what loans you can get and at what interest rate you will get them. Needless to say, your credit score is important to managing your money. Many landlords check credit scores before renting to you. Also, some perspective employers may evaluate your credit score before offering you a job. Your credit score can be an indication of your level of responsibility. Review your credit report periodically to make sure that it has no mistakes. Keeping on top of your credit score will force you to better manage all of your finances.
3. Prepare a Will: Though this may sound morbid, preparing a will early is important. A huge part of managing your money successfully is being responsible with it. Part of financial responsibility includes managing your finances after you are gone. Hire a lawyer to craft a will, a durable power of attorney, and a living will. Though this may cost you a hefty sum up front, it may save those you leave behind thousands in taxes and fees. Furthermore, through the process of crafting a will you will have to gain a thorough understanding of your financial situation and take a look at your future financial prospects. Developing this plan and fully understanding your financial circumstances is essential to properly managing your money.
While money can be a difficult and even painful subject, it doesn’t have to be. Learning to carefully manage your money early is key to handling your finances without significant stress. Follow these three steps to gain strides on the path to financial security.
By-line:
Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about accredited online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.
5 Quick Tips To Put You On The Path To Financial Freedom
Getting yourself on the road to financial freedom may seem like a daunting task right now, however it’s actually a lot easier than you might think. All you need is to follow some basic guidelines to help yourself to stay away from temptation and to start rebuilding your financial life. Here are five quick tips to put yourself squarely on the path to financial freedom:
1. Carry A Notebook With You
This is probably the single most powerful piece of advice you’ll ever get for getting yourself out of debt and forever on the path to financial freedom: Simply carry a notebook with you and write down every single thing you buy and what it costs.
The simple act of jotting down the cost of an item will often make you decide that it’s simply not worth buying the item after all. The reason it’s so effective is that it prevents you from making those little impulse purchases that we all like to make when we go shopping.
Plus, even if you don’t get stopped by the initial experience of having to stop and think before making a purchase, seeing all the money you’ve spent over the course of a week or a month written down in black and white is a powerful psychological motivator to get you to change your habits.
2. Imagine That You Saved the Money for Retirement
Another great way to put yourself on the path to financial freedom is to consider any big ticket purchases as if the money had been invested for the next 30-40 years instead of being spent now. The rule of thumb for this is to double the money for every ten years until retirement. This means that the 60” 3D HD TV you’re lusting after for $1,500 should not be looked at as just a $1,500 investment.
Instead, if you’re 25 years old, imagine putting the money into an investment for 40 years which compounded until you were 65 years old. Now, your big screen TV set has cost you a cool $24,000. Ouch. Not such a good deal now, is it?
3. Make a Shopping List Before You Go to the Store
Stores of all shapes and sizes love impulse buyers. That’s why they always have a nice big display of knickknacks right at the checkout counter. The idea is to get you to drop a few more things into your shopping cart before you pay. Never mind all the other tempting things all over the store. Instead of buying all that junk you don’t need, just walk in with a shopping list and stick to it. Not only will you actually remember everything you went in to buy, but you’ll also save money in the process.
4. Have At Least a Small Savings Account Available
The standard advice from most financial gurus is that you should have between 3-6 months worth of salary put away for a rainy day. Unfortunately, for most of us, that amount just seems impossible to achieve. If you are earning say $50,000 per year, that means you need to put aside between $12,500 and $25,000 and keep it sitting around in a savings account. Most of us simply can’t fathom how we could save up so much money and so we don’t even try.
Instead of trying to save up such a large sum of money, try saving up between $500-$1,000 and having that available for emergencies. Having that relatively small amount of money available will mean that you are now prepared for most emergencies (i.e. your kid calls from college and is a few hundred dollars short of rent this month or your car breaks down and you have to pay for a tow). This means you’re not going to whip out a credit card every time something happens and you’ll actually start to pare down the credit card balance.
Plus, once you get to the point of having that relatively small amount of money put aside, you’ll find it’s much easier to put aside larger sums of money and eventually to get to that 6 months worth of salary.
5. Leave Credit Cards At Home
If you love to go shopping (and who doesn’t?), a simple tip to put yourself on that road to financial freedom is to simply leave your credit cards at home. Carry $50 or $100 in cash instead. That money will then be the basis of your spending and you know you cannot spend more, no matter how cute that pair of shoes in the window looks because your card is sitting safely at home, where it can’t step in the way of your path to financial freedom.
Summary: Getting yourself on the path to financial freedom doesn’t have to be really difficult. Try these simple tips to make it easy.
George Gallagher is a personal finance and economy blogger. He is currently working in the college space helping students find private student loans that fit their needs through cuStudentLoans.
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