Face your financial issues head on. Open your bills, pick up the phone, call your lender. If applicable, tell them you’re struggling and explain why. If you lost your job or took a pay cut, be ready to prove it.
You’ll get the biggest bang for each buck by paying off the highest interest rate debt in your portfolio first, while making minimum payments on the remainder. It’s called the avalanche method, and it gets you out of debt cheapest and fastest.
I’ve never met a budget that I couldn’t coax a few extra dollars from – and I’ll bet that you can do the same. For instance, you’re probably buying more minutes and more cable channels than you use. Oh, and how many black skinny jeans do I count in your closet? You have enough money, just the wrong priorities.
Web banking lets you monitor your spending, tweak your budget, schedule payments, and more, particularly if you marry your online bank with the personal-finance management tools available online.
Anticipating a boomerang child seems the odds-on thing to do. Think about furnishing – hello, sleeper sofa – with this in mind.
Whether it’s fly-fishing, taking your camper to the Everglades, or just traveling, everyone has got a little retirement dream.
No purchase is so urgent, no bargain so rare, that you don’t have time to research it thoroughly, despite what they might have you believe. This applies, in particular, to infomercials that urge you to ‘Call now, while supplies last,’ or ‘Call in the next 10 minutes for a free gift.’
If you have had the same dishwasher for 10 years or more, don’t bother repairing it. The average dishwasher is expected to last nine years, and you’ve most likely squeezed as much life out of it as you can.
Just because someone will lend money to you doesn’t mean you should borrow it.
If salary is your most important consideration, make sure you don’t take too much time off beyond the allotted 12-14 weeks of maternity leave – and certainly don’t leave altogether.
Automate your savings so that you have money taken directly from each paycheck and deposited into a 401(k) or other workplace retirement account. If that’s not an option, automatically have money transferred out of checking into savings each time you get paid.
You may be basing a portion of your self-worth on your bank account without even realizing it. Try to pinpoint the activities and qualities that, free of charge, fulfill you.
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