Financial Planning

Do you find that staying on a budget makes you ill? Budgeting is necessary to help you keep track of your income and expenses. What financial goals do you have? You’ll never get there if you can’t plan it. If images of bad credit reports and working until your death bother you, there are solutions. That doesn’t have to become a reality. Here are six pointers that actually work.

1. Figure out your income Before you do anything you need to know exactly how much money you earn. There are two numbers you want to learn. What are your gross and net income amounts? If you don’t know this, you could put yourself in financial ruin. Look at your paycheck stub or if you work for yourself subtract your expenses from your gross income to determine your net income amount.

2. Determine your outflow Where is your money going each month? You need to know what you are spending your money on. Expenses are just as important to figure out. Utilities are unfortunately bills that you cannot eliminate. Credit cards and car loans are some that you can. If you are also losing money to unnecessary items you can eliminate these to help pay down any debts that you have.

3. Savings is necessary

You should have a savings account. This is vital to budgeting. You need to plan for unforeseen events. If your car breaks down and not covered by a warranty you can pay for it with cash. You can eliminate the use of your credit card except in extreme emergencies. It might take you a while to build this up. Start with any money you can. A few bucks a month will start you on your way.

4. Keep records

You must keep records to be successful. When you are starting out, it might seem a pain to write every little detail down in a log. But once you start to see a pattern of your spending it will help you to eliminate any bad habits and minimize unnecessary spending.

5. Communication is vital

Communication is the key to staying on a budget. If you share a budget with others you cannot do this alone. Everyone needs to be in agreement for this to work. If you make decisions for someone else they will resent you and it will fail.

6. Treats keep you on track

Budgeting is not a bad word. You can make it useful and fun. Make sure that you do keep aside money for fun treats. You should pick a figure that won’t derail your goals. This will allow you to stay on track and won’t make you feel like you are on a budgetary diet.

Today more and more people are now thinking about retiring early. Now people see retirement as a way of finally getting to do the things that they enjoy and could not do whilst they worked. But if you are seriously thinking about retiring then you need to look at and calculate early retirement figures in order to make sure that it will be beneficial to you.

When considering retiring early there are two issues which makes be thought about first.

1. Can you really afford to retire early?

2. Do you actually really want to retire early?

In order for any one to retire early then will need to calculate out how much they will actually need in order to live comfortably.

1. First you need to determine your pay out period. This relates to the length of time you will need your retirement funds to last for. So really what we are asking here is what is your life expectancy? A great way for finding out what your life expectancy will be is by looking at the Life Expectancy Tables provided by the IRS. However, it might be advisable to add on a further 5 or 10 years on to the figure that they come up with and this will be your pay out period.

2. Once you have determined what your pay out period is going to be you can then calculate the inflation adjusted withdrawal rate. During this part of the calculation you will need to think about how much risk you are willing to take.

To calculate what your expenses will be on an annual basis in order to calculate early retirement. What you do is take your annual expenses and then increase them by 5% in order to provide you with a ball park figure of what it is likely to cost you to live comfortably each year during your retirement. In to this equation you will also need to include an inflation rate. So I would recommend that you say put this at about 4% as during the last 20 years it has sat at around 5%.

So by using the pointers provided above a person should be able to calculate early retirement in order to see if it would be beneficial to them to do so.

Personal Finance Tips for You includes twenty-four topics covering an array of areas. The author states in the introduction “it is important to know as much as you can about managing your personal finances in these economic times.” Some of the areas covered are credit card traps, keeping on track to pay your bills, handling your checkbook, the price of gas, identity theft, catching up on retirement planning, what to do if you receive a lay off notice from your job, checking your credit report and talking about finances if you are planning to get married. These are just a few of the topics. There are many more.

The first topic covered is Don’t Get Caught Up in The Credit Card Trap, Stop Yourself Before That Happens. This is a very important chapter for everyone to read because it is so easy for this to happen in tough economic times. The author offers several excellent tips to help anyone who has this problem. It is clearly explained why it is so important for you to pay down the credit card debt.

Another important topic covered is How Do I Keep On Track to Pay My Bills on Time. The author gives the reader some tips on creating a budget and keeping track of your income and expenditures.

How do you survive the high cost of gas? We all know, not long ago the price of gas kept soaring. The author gives us many tips on how to save money by doing some simple things like consolidating trips just to name one of the pointers. There are many tips mentioned that I never thought of myself.

How do you establish your credit if you are young and just starting out on a job? Nocita Carter tells you exactly how to go about doing this.

Do you think you can save any money by just saving your change? This is one of the tips made by the author. I can personally vouch for this one because each day when I purchase an item, I take the change and add it to an old coffee can. After a few months, it gets quite full. I am always surprised by the amount of money I saved from my loose change.

I could go on and on with each chapter because there are so many good points in this book but I think you get the message and would get more out of Personal Finance Tips for You if you purchase it and read it yourself.

There are several aspects of this book that I really liked. It is written in language that is very easy to understand. It is not like some of the other books on finance that require you to have a dictionary by your side as you read. The book is very organized. Each chapter starts with an introduction to explain the topic. Once that is done, the author lists several tips to help the reader accomplish these tasks. Nocita Carter has written this book in a manner that makes the reader feel like they have a personal finance expert right there beside them. Personal Finance Tips For You is recommended for any age. It will be a valuable tool for younger people who are starting their first job. On the other hand, one is never too old to find something they did not know in this book. After reading this book, I learned quite a few tips to help me with my finances. You will find this an excellent resource guide to keep by your side at all times.