By Jessica Bower
Managing money isn’t for everyone. If you have long term financial goals, consider these aspects associated with gaining control of your personal finances.
Unless you are in the top 1 percent of people in this country earning far more money than you could ever worry about spending, you probably fall into the category of folks that need to manage their money. The challenge is trying to understand all the things that are important and should not be forgotten when it comes to handling your personal finances.
One of the first things you’ll want to consider when managing your money is getting a very clear understanding of your financial goals. Like most people you are likely to have short, intermediate and long term goals. It can be easy to push off the goals like retirement planning. That’s not going to happen for so many years, you have time, right?
Well, the more you plan now and begin to implement with regards to your long term planning the better off your money will be. Interest can help your money work for you, so taking the time to consider those far away goals now will reap you numerous benefits later.
For some, their money managing focus tends to be on the here and now. And that’s fine as long as you have the ability to take decisive actions that will benefit you sooner rather than later. It can be hard for some people to cut back on their spending. Whether you like to buy shoes or purses, or simply enjoy eating out several times per week, all those expenditures are going to quickly deplete your bank account.
One aspect of managing your money deals with implementing constraint on your regular expenditures. This also applies to those irregular purchases you tend to make on the spur of the moment. If you are able to exercise some discipline and keep your credit cards in your wallet more of the time, you’ll be well on your way to successfully managing your money.
When you have a plan and are shooting for certain financial goals, you’ll find that it is in fact easier to have the discipline you need to stay on track. If you do find yourself continually straying, perhaps your financial goals are not compelling enough. Why not up the ante? For instance, if you’d like to move into a larger, nicer apartment, but just don’t seem to be able to save money to make that happen, why not increase your goals to buying your first house? That could provide just the impetus you need to regularly stash away money towards your down payment.
Don’t forget about your regular needs and desires. Just because you’ve made personal money management a priority shouldn’t prevent you from having or doing things in your life which make you happy. If you love eating amazing food at the best restaurants, perhaps you can cut down on a few of those nights out every week and instead start learning how to be a master home cook. Not only will you save money, but the increased passion for food and great meals will more than make up for the decreased fine dining visits.
At the end of the day, personal money management is not something which can be shunned, at least not for very long. There are a number of high quality digital solutions which can help make the process of controlling your personal finances easy, fast, and actually quite interesting. When you are able to see a graph of your current and proposed financial status, it can be easier to understand. With that understanding tends to enter passion and motivation.
BIO: Jessica Bower is a freelance writer for Quicken. Quicken offers personal finance software that makes money management easy. Quicken’s products help people get their spending under control with helpful budgeting tips.
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4 Responses to Top Things to Consider When Managing Your Money
My husband does the majority of money management in our family and he does a great job. It has allowed me to retire at 55 which I am very thankful for.
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There are a variety of philosophies out there about managing money and we have noted that just within our group of friends. We know a couple who make a lot of money and also spend a lot of money. They say that you only live once so live it now because you might not be around for the future.
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My husband and I enjoy our life but always tended to save instead of spend. We could have upgraded to a nicer home,taken expensive trips and driven a high end new car with the income we make. However, we chose to put the money away, stay put in our current home (which is plenty big enough for the two of us now), take trips within the United States and drive cars that were comfortable but not high end. As I stated before, I have already retired at 55 and my husband will do so in a few years.
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I also have always been of the thinking that if something happened to my husband and I before we could reap the benefits of our savings after retirement, our sons would benefit from it. To me that is a win-win situation.
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My husband also does most of our money managing. Actually, he does all of it. He used to work in bank so I trust he knows what he is doing. Our goals basically are to save for retirement (hopefully, early) and four university tuitions. So we try to contribute the maximum amount into our RRSP’s (401K)and RESP for the kids. We live a comfortable (but not extravagant) lifestyle with vacations and perks. My husband has a Gold Starbuck’s card. That’s a lot of coffee!
I do all the money management here, you can always take a simple business course at a local community college to show you what you should be doing in todays money management. If you are in business, things change so fast you need to be on top of it all the time.
I remember my Grandpa saying, spend your dollars and save your quarters. He always said women should be involved with paying the bills as most of the time they will out live their spouse. From someone raised thru the depression I was stunned as how he wanted my Grandmother to know everything.
Snickers,
I totally agree with you regarding women being involved. For years, I was the one that paid the bills and did a lot of the management. Quite a few years ago my husband wanted to take it over and put everything on line and I was very happy to give that over to him. I also insisted a couple of years back that we get things more in order so we recently finished putting everything in a trust and I have copies of all details of everything in our safe.
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The investing part is something I am not that knowledgeable about and my husband is. I let him do most of that but we have it set up on the computer so I can watch it all and I am becoming a little more knowledgeable about it.