Browsing Tag

financial planning

Family

5 Tips For Financial Planning In Your 40s

By the time we reach our 40s, life can often be rather complicated. Many people are stuck between a rock and a hard place, with kids still at home and elderly parents needing increasing amounts of care. You may have left starting a family until very late, in which case your children are very small, or you could have teenagers about to fly the next. Either way it is an expensive business and if you are not careful, you won’t be in a good financial position by the time retirement looms large. So if this is you, here are a few tips to help you better plan your finances.

1. Pay Off Debts

Most people have at least some debt. Mortgages, car loans and credit cards are common, but by the time you hit your forties you need to make debt reduction a priority. Get to grips with what you owe and create a sensible plan to reduce your debts. If you have a lot on credit cards, look for cheaper deals, or use some savings to clear the debt. The aim of the game is to reach retirement debt free, so start working towards this goal.

August 20, 2015

Investing

How To Create A Personal Financial Plan

What is it about money that makes it so hard to keep track of? And what is it about the seemingly inescapable tendency for our expenses to always meet our income? If you’ve ever had a substantial raise or have come into a small sum of money, you probably know just how quickly your lifestyle can change to meet your current net worth. If you know this experience all too well, then you are desperately in need of a financial plan. Without a financial plan, it won’t matter how much your salary grows – because you won’t know how to make your money work for you. If you have no idea where to start, here are a few pointers on how to create a personal financial plan.

August 4, 2015

General

Helpful Advice For Making Wise Financial Decisions

Despite the fact that capitalism is a major part of our daily lives, few of us reach adulthood with the knowledge necessary to make wise financial decisions. If we’re lucky, someone has taught us how to balance a checkbook somewhere along the way. But most people don’t even know how to create and adhere to a basic budget, much less use credit cards appropriately or set up an investment portfolio. In short, it’s no surprise that so many adults find themselves facing a mountain of debt with no real hope of digging themselves out. But you have the capacity to learn the ins and outs of basic personal finance, and you don’t have to wait for the consequences of bad decisions in order to learn your lesson. Here are just a few helpful guidelines that can get you started down the path to making wise financial decisions.

You might want to start by taking a personal finance class. You can often find such offerings at your local community college, adult continuing education center, or even through your community center. In some cases these courses are available online. And the benefit of taking such a course is that you’ll get a broad overview of personal finance, including household expenses, retirement accounts, investments, and more. But you may also have access to specific and practical lessons like how to create your own budget or pay down credit card debt.

September 6, 2014

General

How To Create A 5 Year Financial Plan

Creating a five year financial plan is a great way to map out your future and plan your life accordingly. We might not be able to look into a crystal ball to see how our lives play out 20 years or more down the line, but we can usually get a clear idea of what our fiscal future will look like in the next five years by drafting a simple plan. A five year plan will also help you set certain goals and help you meet them. Perhaps you would like to start a family and you want to know if you will be able to afford things, like a new house and all the other costs that go along with having kids.

Here are some ways you can create a 5 year financial plan:

For one, you want to know exactly how much money you make in a certain year, after taxes. You also want to add up all your regular expenses and forecasted expenses to give yourself a little bit of a cushion. By doing this you will get an accurate reading of how much money you will be able to save in a year. This way you can add up the savings for all five years to get a macro perspective of your savings, after taxes and after all your expenses.

April 5, 2013

Investing

Do You Need A Financial Advisor?

Money is so simple conceptually, but so complicated in reality. Everyone understands exactly how it works. You perform a service or sell some sort of product and you are compensated with money you can then turn around and use to purchase the services or products you require. It’s black and white, right? While the concept is plain enough for anyone to grasp, the market economy is by no means as easy. How to navigate the world of credit, how to organize your finances, how to grow your savings and how to make your money work for you are all strategies people grapple with during the course of their lives, sometimes successfully, but often with disappointing results. That’s why financial advisors exist. Their job is to look at your goals and help you realize them. But how do you know if you need a financial advisor?

The first thing you must look at is if you can afford one. Financial advisors earn that title by graduating with an advanced degree and logging many years on the job. But their job isn’t done after they hang that diploma on the wall. Financial advisors must stay current on changes in the market, what strategies are proving successful, and which investment tools are no longer attractive. It’s a constant juggling act of research and client hours. With this sort of work load you can expect a quality financial advisor to demand a significant salary. You will be just one of his many clients, and pay an hourly fee for his time. So if you don’t have a significant portfolio and money to spare each month you can’t go down this road.

February 4, 2013

Older Posts

Newer Posts