How to Create a Monthly Budget
Does the word budget send chills up your spine? It shouldn’t. Budgets allow you to have some control over what you spend. A monthly budget can help you to decide how to spend your money, plan for your [more…]
Financial Planning with Your Family
Your financial plan should involve the dreams, goals, resources, and responsibilities of the entire family. If you have a spouse, partner, or children, you may need to provide guidance as your family develops [more…]
Examining How Your History Affects Your Financial Attitudes
Early messages you got from your parents about money influence how you manage your money today. By reflecting on the messages you received and how they may be impacting your money-management decisions [more…]
How Much Money Do You Really Make?
Regardless of the size of your paycheck, not every penny you make is available to spend on what you want. What you have left after you take out all your must-pays — like taxes — is your [more…]
Budgeting First Steps: Separating Needs from Wants
After you determine your actual spendable income, you can focus on how that remaining money needs to be spent. The first step to creating a budget is to sort expenses into three categories: needs, wants [more…]
How to Track Your Expenses
Tracking your expenses is especially useful when your outgoing cash flow exceeds your income. Fortunately, you don’t need to go back and tally up months’ worth of checking account registers, credit- and [more…]
How Much Debt Can You Afford?
Just because a mortgage or credit-card company will give you money doesn’t mean you should take it. According to your lender, you may qualify for more debt than you can afford in your current situation [more…]
Assessing Your Current Debt Situation
To begin assessing your debt, you want to get all your debt listed in the same place so that you can see it all at once. The first step is to list all mortgage and consumer debt, including credit cards [more…]
Managing Your Money with Automatic Withdrawals
The American way is to spend everything you bring in. But just because most people in the United States are doing it doesn’t mean that this way of managing your spending is healthy or smart. The best way [more…]
Sharing Money-Management Responsibilities with Your Family
Allowing your family members to participate in the family’s financial decisions and money-management responsibilities is beneficial. The more informed everyone is, the more you can work together to achieve [more…]
Raising Money-Wise Children
Involving your children in money-management discussions and decisions is extremely valuable. Children can be helpful or very challenging when it comes to effectively managing your money. Here are some [more…]
Teaching Your Children Financial Responsibility
Financial responsibility begins by understanding that everyone has duties and responsibilities. If you provide your children with an allowance, you can teach them about the direct correlation between work [more…]
Examining Your Attitudes about Managing Money
Your thoughts about money influence your ability to manage your money. Positive thoughts lead to positive money management behaviors. Negative thoughts lead to financial ruin. Try to maintain an open mind [more…]
Examining Your Emergency Cash Reserves
Whether you have a substantial investment portfolio or haven’t started investing yet, you need to understand the fundamental building blocks of an investment portfolio. Keeping cash in hand to cover several [more…]
What a Budget Can Do for You
A budget is a plan for spending the income you have, building savings and using credit wisely. In short, a budget allows you to control the direction of your financial future. Here’s a list of things a [more…]
Choosing Your Path to Wealth
There are nearly as many ways to create wealth as there are people thinking about how to do it. Your financial plan leads you to your destination, and if you want to create wealth and make millions, you [more…]
Considering Your Financial Future
Managing your personal finances requires a balance between what you need and want today and what you’ll need and want in the future. Always going for instant gratification leads to constant dissatisfaction [more…]
How to Construct the First Nonprofit Budget
In many businesses and nonprofit organizations, the annual budget is made by looking at what happened in the previous year and adjusting numbers up or down based on the work that lies ahead. When you're [more…]
