If you feel that your finances are on life support and you
have little hope of the situation improving, I want to you to provide you with
a little ray of sunshine by showing you 4 easy ways to jumpstart your finances.
1. Start
Giving More
I know what you are thinking, how can you jumpstart your
finances if you are giving your money away! Truth be told, getting onto a healthier path with your finances has less
to do with knowing what to do and
more with doing what you know. If you truly believe that God is able to
provide for your needs, then you acknowledge that by giving back to God. If you truly believe it is better to give
than to receive, once again, you demonstrate that by giving to others that are
less fortunate. Your money attitudes are
crucial so by learning to give first, you will have no choice but to learn to
live on less and that is the cornerstone of personal finance!
2. Start
Tracking Your Spending
There is no secret that people who don’t run out of money
at the end of the month are the ones who spend less than they make. Keeping a spending journal for two weeks can
really make a big difference in your spending patterns. I think most of us know how much we make; the
problem is that many of us have no idea exactly what we are spending each
week. If you want to spend less so you
can save more and pay off debt, you must know what you are spending your money
on and then decide what expenditures you can eliminate or reduce. Consider using cash for two weeks instead of
using your credit cards or debit card. I
have heard that it hurts to break a $20, so maybe using cash can help you to start
spending less of your hard earned money.
3. Start
Knocking Out Your Debt
Don’t be one of those people who justify their debt by
thinking that as long as you can afford to make the minimum payments on your
credit card you are ok. You must start
paying more toward your debt which will reduce the amount of interest you will
pay over the life of that debt. Also by
paying more towards your debt, you will be able to pay that debt off faster so
you can start putting that money towards your savings and start earning
interest instead of paying interest. Finally,
do not be afraid to call your credit card company to negotiate a lower interest
rate. The worse that can happen is that
they say no!
4. Start
Saving, Start Saving, Start Saving
Between making excuses, having good intentions, or just
breaking the promises we make to ourselves, it’s easy to understand how we
oftentimes fall short of achieving our goals, but we have to start saving money
now! For our short term savings,
consider opening a savings account at a financial institution different from
where your checking account is (to make it a little harder to get to) and set
up a bill pay or draft where you pay yourself each month before you pay any
other bills. In addition, start putting
money away towards retirement because retirement isn’t a question of if, it is
a question of when. If your company offers
a match where they will contribute a certain percentage of pay if you are setting
aside some of you earnings into a company plan, you are leaving money on the
table by not taking full advantage of this benefit. For example, if your company will match $.50 of
every dollar you set aside into your 401k up to 5% of your salary, by putting
anything less than 5%, you are basically saying no to free money. The last simple tip when it comes to saving
is this: saving something is better than
saving nothing and whatever you have been saving, start saving more!
Steve Repak, CFP® author of 6 Week Money Challenge For
Your Personal Finances
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