Bradford Exchange - Valentine's Day

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Personal Finance-Plan, Reduce, Maintain


Title Personal Finance – Plan, Reduce, Maintain

 

 

Personal finance should be a plan that outlines your strategy for making, spending and investing your monies. Investing will be a variable depending on your monetary situation. Paying your expenses as they arise and not having a personal finance plan most likely will leave you short of money before your next paycheck. A plan that is tracked and reviewed on a regular basis will help you avoid and protect against financial hardships. It is a good idea to form long term goals for your finances once you have established and implemented your initial plan.

Personal Finance Plan Tip 1 (Plan) – It is a good idea to get a notebook and track your income, bills and living expenses daily. The first item you will enter at the top of the page is your total income for the week, bi-weekly or monthly depending on how you earn your income. You will then list your expenses underneath your income subtracting out those items from your total income. List your income and expenses by date.  This will give you an idea of how much money you spend as opposed to the monies you take in for a period of time. If you find that your expenses exceed your income it will help you decide more systematically which expenses can be reduced or eliminated. Review your expenses on a regular basis to evaluate which ones may be reduced or eliminated. Make sure you enter any bills paid as they are paid. This is key to improving your personal finances.

Personal Finance Tip 2 (Reduce) – Review your plan periodically and you will find that you may be able to reduce expenses by eliminating non- essential costs. You may also reduce your costs by using coupons when you do your food shopping as well as other items of needed. You may want to look for cheaper plans for your cell phone, cable services and internet services to assist in reducing costs. Shopping around for gas stations that sell gas cheaper may be something to help reduce costs. When purchasing any item you should always ask yourself “ do I really need that?” If it’s not essential you may want to eliminate that expense. You may also consider eliminating eating out often, massages and fitness programs on a temporary basis to help improve your personal finances. Review your debt owed and number the least of the debt to the highest of your debt sequentially. Set up a plan to pay off the lowest debt first by paying more towards that debt while pay the minimums amounts on the others. This will help improve your personal finances steadily overtime.

Personal Finance Plan Tip 3 (Maintain)- Review your plan on a regular basis and make sure to maintain your cost saving items. This will eventually improve your personal finances. Eventually you will have more to spend on the luxuries you eliminated and will enjoy a better financial situation.

You may want to check these sites out:

www.intacct.com –free accounting software guide and know your options

www.ehow.com –personal finances

www.personalcapital.com –complete money management for the next generation investors.

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