Having a well-managed retirement plan is what each and every person should do. But then, how to save for your retirement when you are having enough trouble keeping up with your bills every month?
I believe this is the situation many, if not most, of us faces these days. With the uncertain economic outlook, retirement planning can be a little bit trivial. The question may of us ask to ourselves is: “How can I find enough money to safe for the future when today is already difficult enough?”
Take heed – here are a few suggestions you and I can benefit from to help our money-saving endeavors easier (although not that easy to achieve.)
First of all, to get things work out your way initially, you must have the willingness to make a few changes, especially in your mindset and financial policies. In fact, it all comes down to one, single big change you must make: making a commitment. Without a commitment – and the right financial planning to go along with such commitment – most likely nothing will never change, ever.
Here is what you should do. Make a commitment to yourself (or to your loved ones) that you shall do whatever it takes to change things for the better. Make a commitment that no matter what, you have to make your financial situation better.
For sure, the change wouldn’t happen overnight. So, give yourself a reasonable time frame through milestones and goals-setting to make it happen. Write down your commitment, and put it in your most-commonly visited place, e.g. your office desk, your bedroom, etc.
Next – get ready to make things happen! Here are some tips for saving money to get you started in your retirement planning; these tips will work wonders even when money is tight:
First, take some time to read your commitment each and every day. The more you believe in what you are committed to, the more you will be willing to take action and start seeing results.
Second, find and think of ways to make extra money. Here are some suggestions:
- start your own business
- sell stuffs around your house that you don’t need any more (tips: do a garage sale or sell them on eBay!)
- get a part-time job
- make money online (hot!)
Third, take out your checkbook and start writing down a list of your expenses for the last three months (or at least for the last month.) You have to write everything, as hidden things are often pile up quite a lot. Next, you must decide which expenses you can eliminate (I’ve warned you before – this won’t be easy!) You must also decide which ones of your expenses that can be reduced:
- cable TV
- cell phone
- internet service
- newspapers
- magazines
- entertainment
- eating out
- luxuries
- anything else you can live without
Be creative. Be honest. And be committed!
Last step – secure your excess cash in a place (e.g. bank account) that you know you would ‘kill’ yourself if you lay your hands on it.
To sum it all up – For your retirement planning, you need to be committed, follow the right money-saving strategy, and secure your excess money in an ‘untouched’ account. Repeat and rinse. You will soon see you are becoming a master of personal finance and will most likely build up a retirement fund in an amount that you are actually surprising yourself for being able to commit!
To note, your retirement account is not your investment account. Unlike what many think, your 401K plan and similar retirement plan is nothing more than an investment account (which means they follow how the money market moves.) Again, consider separating your retirement account with your ‘retirement’ account.
Whenever you wish to fulfill your dream of having your own house, you ask yourself “how much can I borrow for a mortgage“. Whether or not you would qualify for a loan, depends on your gross monthly income, interest rate, debt payments and other monthly liabilities.
Calculate how much u can borrow
You can use a “how much can I borrow for a mortgage” calculator to find out how much loan you can borrow. The calculator requires the following inputs:
• Your total monthly income before tax deduction
• Monthly payment towards your existing debts
• Your monthly credit card payments
• Child support and monthly alimony
• Your desirable rate of interest ,time period of the loan (years) and down payment
• Yearly property taxes and insurances you expect
Factors determining the amount you can borrow
When you apply for a home loan, you often think about “how much can I borrow for a mortgage”. The maximum loan you can get is the amount your lenders think you can manage. The maximum loan amount that you can be offered depends on:
• Your gross monthly income: Your income is used to determine how much monthly payment you can afford.
• Your outstanding debts: Lenders consider your existing debts and how much monthly payment you make towards them.
• Debt to income ratio: The debt to income ratio can be a front-end ratio or a back-end ratio. Your gross monthly income divided by your new home loan payment (including the principal, rate of interest, property insurance and taxes) gives the front-end ratio.
Back-end ratio is your gross monthly income divided by the portion of income that goes towards paying your monthly liabilities (including the new mortgage payment, existing loan payments and credit card payments). “How much can I borrow for a mortgage” largely depends on these two ratios.
• Loan to value ratio: Loan to value ratio is the loan amount (the purchase price of the property minus the down payment) divided by the purchase price. Lenders evaluate this ratio to determine the loan they can offer you.
If you are concerned with “how much can I borrow for a mortgage”, you must work on improving your credit score by eliminating negative listings on your credit report. This is because lenders consider the score to approve you for a mortgage.
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Do you print a lot? I do. I print my own business cards, greeting cards, calendars, to-do lists, organizers, and many more. Do-it-yourself (DIY) does save a lot. Or does it?
I just realized a while ago that one of the biggest misconceptions in your personal finance’s cost-cutting endeavors is DIY. DIY is thought to be less-expensive than buying printed products in stores or buying/hiring someone to print for you. In fact, in some cases, DIY is a bad practice in budgeting for your personal finance.
In printing, you might get things at lower cost by doing DIY, but quite often you forget to consider your time, energy, electricity and other materials for the DIY purposes. Quite often, discount printing service such as PsPrint can offer you a better overall resource-saving that is budget-friendly.
Printing stickers for your kids’ school project doesn’t always come cheaper by DIY. Instead, ‘outsource’ your sticker printing to printing services can save a lot of time, even money, on your side. More examples: If you are going to send greeting cards to your friends and family with your pictures in them, it is probably better for you to get your printing job done with the help of discount printing service provider that can offer you low-quantity printing solutions. For your business needs, you can also ‘outsource’ your Business checks printing with the help of a discount printing service.
Let us consider Pareto’s 80-20 law – DIY can cost you 80% of your time for only 20% result, whereas getting the job done by a discount printing service can get you 80% job done using only 20% of your time – Just think about this and you’ll realize how much time we waste in order to minimize our spending.
All in all, following some common sense can avoid you from unnecessary uses of your limited resources.
To make your budget more effective and work efficient, you must know about the budgeting tools. You can maximize your savings and earnings with the effective means of budgeting tools. Here is how to seek for the right budgeting tools and software for you.
If you are preparing your personal budget, you require a budget tool that would help you to figure out what are your expenses on monthly basis. For example payment of rent, electricity, water, internet, phone bill, groceries, shopping for clothes, fuel for your car, movies and DVDs.
On the other side, the budgeting tool will also give you an account of your earnings in the form of salary, property income, investor income or any other income. So, this tool will help you in making an assessment of your earnings on one side and expenses on the other side. This is a personal budgeting tool.
Another budgeting tool which will help you to manage your finances and this tool would detail your expenses, savings, credit card bills and a complete list and pattern of your spending. With the help of this tool, you can assess where you are spending more and can make suitable changes in that area. Controlling your expenses is also a budgeting tool that that helps you to make an assessment about monthly expenses.
There are plenty of web sites on Internet which will guide you to download budgeting software programs. Once you install the budgeting tool software in your computer, you can work on it by entering your income, expenses and savings. This work sheet will help you to identify where exactly you are spending more money and how you can lower your expenses and stay within your budget limit. One personal budgeting software Money Estate recommends is Money Tree.
Another type of budgeting tool is online budgeting tool. Some of the best budgeting tools available online is free to use. Money Estate’s choice for this online budgeting tool is Mint.com. Mint.com downloads and categorizes your balances and transactions on daily basis – automatic – and present them in graphs and stats for getting a better view on your personal finance.
It will also help you to cut your costs and would give a clear picture of your personal finances. So next time when you are working on budgeting tool search for software that suits your needs and that helps you to maintain your budget.
None of us would like to stay in debt. Because when debts mount, our good hours of sleep are disturbed and we are of the opinion that we must work some how to get rid of debt. So we would like to work on ways and means to plan and find good ideas to get rid of debt.
There are plenty of reliable and good sources available to help you to get rid of debt. Whatever may be the reason of debt, if you have your lost job because of job layoff or any other unforeseen factor, you can easily come out of the problem.
Here are some practical tips that can save you from the threat of personal bankruptcy:
Firstly, you should find out the sources of companies, agencies who give you proper guidance and support for you.
Secondly, approach them with honest presentation and with a sincere request to help you to get out of debt. Discuss and put forth all the necessary information that they require but ensure that you are with good and friendly people who would be willing to help you with the best remedy.
The remedy they provide should be useful to you and must not create any further debt problem to you. Therefore, you must make a good selection of debt relief company for the present and for your future financial plans.
Financial planning is a very crucial subject for every individual, company and industry. This is to ensure that our funds are managed well and we maintain our income, earnings and profits.
Financial planning is essential, even crucial. Therefore, if you are unsure about what you are doing in financial planning, you might need help from a financial planner instead of doing it yourself.
Financial planning has to be learned from fundamentals. If you are planning to buy a home in a span of five years from now, you need to have your financial planning so that you can have savings in your bank account to help you to buy your own home. In order to make more savings, you need to cut your expenses wherever possible.
Financial planning for your taxes, retirement and business are special and unique in its importance and each category of financial planning requires a specific planning. Some of the needs (often disguise as ‘investment’) can be postponed and those that can purchased now which are required for the present needs, can be purchased. All of those need proper handling, and doing it wrong today can lead you to opportunity losses in the future.
Therefore, again, if you do not have much knowledge about financial planning, you should consult a financial planner who would be able to give you proper advice and suitable guidance on your financial planning.
The job of a financial planner is to give you the best guidance and support to help in your wedding, buying you a perfect home, see that you have sufficient money in your savings account when you retire from your employment. If you are in business, financial planner would help you with various models of financial planning.
Therefore, always hire an efficient financial planner who can give you an excellent financial planning schedule which helps you to increase your finances and also keeps you safe from financial situations. While discussing with your financial planner about your financial planning, be honest and sincere in your presentation and that will help your financial planner to guide you properly with a professional advice and suggestion.
You also need to go by the advice of the financial planner for financial planning, and you can deviate from the plan as it will increase your expenses and may not help you further. Therefore you must know that the financial planning is an effective tool that will help you to stand ahead of your situations.
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When we have our income before us every month, we immediately think about our monthly expense. We have to pay our rent, telephone bill, electricity bill and fuel bill.
These are quite common expenses that every one has to pay. Apart from this, if you have to pay your credit card bills for your jewelry shopping or clothes and accessories, or if you have purchased a new car, budgeting is very much necessary to take account of each and every expense that goes out of your savings account.
Whether at corporate level or at personal level, budgeting has a unique identity with strong fundamental concepts of income, expenditure and savings. At personal level, monthly budget plan is very simple and easy to prepare.
First and foremost important thing is to prepare a work sheet either in Microsoft Excel or download budgeting software program. Enter your total money receiving as earnings on one side and your expenses on the other side. Total your earnings and total your expenses.
If your earnings are above expenses, then you are moderate in your spending. But if your expenses are above your earnings, you need to work on budgeting. With easy access to Internet, you can download financial management packages for your use and benefit. These software programs are very effective in budgeting and would also help you to become efficient in your personal budget.
Once you begin to practice your budgeting, you will begin to go by the guidance of the budget and this will help you in becoming a money saver. This is due to the fact that, whatever that you have mentioned in your budgeting sheet, you will practice and may not be willing to spend beyond your earnings.
For example in a span of four years time, you wish to buy a home and if you plan your budgeting in such a way that you make proportionate savings in your account that help you to buy a home, it is a goal for you and you want to achieve as you wish to have your own home. This cost and expense monitoring has to be made both at personal level and at corporate level. Because anywhere expenses send the money out of your savings account, while reduction in your expenses will increase the money figures in your bank account.
Practice budgeting for your own benefit.
Online money management has become an easy task with the assistance services which supervise your accounts along with other monetary details. There are numerous sites amongst which Buxfer, Mint, Geezeo and Kublax are significant rendering necessary information along with the required data that enables you to make more prudent monetary decisions.
Buxfer offers easy tolls for quick management of your money. With Buxfer you can link your bank accounts as well as credit cards to the website. If you have an association with major monetary institutions such as Bank of America, you will be asked whether you are interested in synchronizing your accounts. In yes then you will have to enter the username of the bank along with the password.
What makes Buxfer outshine is its simplicity. In this service the customers are offered tabs that can be easily comprehended as well as step wise instruction on ways to put in accounts, view reports, plus formation of budgets. The whole procedure of forming accounts plus budgets is speedy and easy. It is ideal for the newbie as it is extremely responsive.
If you are sorting out for extra assistance further than keeping a track of your monetary details, then the best option for you is Geezeo. However, it fails to furnish you with wide data that keeps you well informed like Buxfer. Geezeo is user friendly that makes it alluring for the beginners. This service keeps a track of all the amendments taking place in the added accounts. Armed with all the essential details, Geezeo goes a step further by formulating a budget for you along with setting objectives to eye the way you manage money. Along with this by generating regular reports it assists you to chalk out your overall financial condition.
The most hyped feature of Geezeo is its community. Apart from rendering monetary information the company allows you to link with its other users to seek any monetary advice from then. Within the community, groups can also be formed amongst the like minded people to carry out a discussion concerning their monetary objectives. For those questions you find hard to crack, you can seek the advice of experts.
Another service that you can opt for is Mint. Besides the standard features it offers, the core function of Mint is to keep a check on your habits of spending along with making suggestions that will enable you to curtail your expenses. If you possess a credit card having high rate of interest then the advertising network of Mint will propose you to log in for a particular service after conducting a research.
Of all, I recommend Kublax – A comprehensive online money management made easy. It is as easy as buxfer to use, while can help you budget and control your spending pattern as well as Mint. Kublax calendar and alert system are very useful to avoid late fees by paying your bills on time.
Image by lusi.
With the pressure of recession is surmounting in our daily life, smarter budgeting tactics are needed to ace the bad economic weather. The right budgeting methods can help you survive, even prosper today, without the need to live below your mean.
These tips involve nothing related to live below your mean, as it is probably the worst budgeting strategy and financial advice someone can offer you.
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To have a successful financial relationship that allows you to reach your financial goals it is important for every couple to be on the same page when it comes to creating and following a budget.
Here are some techniques that every couple should learn when it comes to creating a budget:
Making the budget together is an essential way to ensure that the both of you are on the same page. When it comes to the finances, there is often one member of the couple that is a saver and one member of the couple that is a saver. It can be difficult to match the finances if you do not work on the budget together and create a plan that works for both people in the relationship. There may be aspects that you have not thought about but when it comes to the budget, listening to each other is an essential part of the financial planning process.
Living on one income allows the couple to learn to live on one income, just in case anything were to happen to one of the members of the couple and they were forced to live on one income. In most cases, couples that depend on living on two incomes can run into trouble if there is a decrease in the finances such as one of the parents taking parental leave after the child is born.
Saving for the future is an essential part of preparing the finances for the days and even years to come. Taking advantage of emergency funds and retirement funds can add up to substantial amounts with small contributions each and every month. Saving for the future is one of the most important parts of the financial plan and should not be underrated.
An emergency fund is an essential part of preparing for the future. Experts have recommended that an emergency fund should include from three to six months worth of the expenses within the budget. This includes fixed and variable expenses.
Facing debt as a couple can be stressful. It is important to avoid debt as it can lead to financial distress and stress within the relationship. If you have already brought debt into the relationship than fifteen percent of the income should be used to repay the debts that have been accumulated.
In order for the couple to be aware of the financial future and maintaining the finances it is important to stay on the same page. Go over the financial statements and bills every single month to determine a plan that involves budgeting and the repayment of debt.
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