Monday, January 26, 2009

Some Personal Finance Advice

By Pete Ronn

Have you ever wondered why some people seem so financially sound? You might be surprised at the simple things you can do to be just like them. The key to good finances is careful management of your personal finance. Getting your personal finances in order will allow you to gain total control over where your money is going.

There are a range of topics covered under personal finance. Personal finance includes focuses like budgeting, retirement, savings and debt management. Personal finance covers everything involving your money, from knowing how to spend your money to knowing how to invest your money.

The part of personal finance that helps give you direction is your budget. Most people fail to budget and this can cause problems with personal finance. The idea of making a budget can be made more complex than it really is. The thing that makes budgeting most difficult is that it takes away your abilty to just spend impulsively. For this reason, having a budget is a big help.

When you spend without any concern of the consequences you end up with debt. To gain balance in your personal finances you need to be debt free. This comes when you get control over your expenses and be in control of your spending. Preparing a budget will help you to do this.

Budgeting is all about knowing what you need to spend verses what you want to spend. Your budget is the plan for where your money must be spent and the options you have for non-essential spending. You will see where your money is going and you can then decide if that money is being spent well or if it needs to be allotted to another expense.

There are five areas in financial planning that will be essential in letting you reach financial freedom. These include: assessment, setting goals, formatting a plan, executing and monitoring the plan and reassessing the plan as needed. By following these five keys you will end up on the right road to financial freedom.

Assessing your finances is a necessary part of budgeting. This will allow you to really see what you are doing with your money. It will let you see exactly where your money is going and give you better control over it.

Setting goals allow you to make definiative decisions about your finances. When you have goals you have something to work towards. This makes things like investing much easier because you have a definite point to work towards.

Your financial plan sets out how you will attain your goals. The plan creates the steps and things you will do to reach your goals. It will help you to know what you have to do to reach your goals.

Executing and monitoring your plan will help to act like a check system so you will reach your goals. You need to just get started and put it in motion and then ensure that you stay on track through doing regular checks of your progress.

There will come a time when you may need to reassess your plan. This may happen if your financial situation changes or you get of track. Reassessing your plan is just another step to ensure that you are doing what you should be to reach your goals.

The last bit of financial advice to help you towards that goal of financial freedom is about credit cards. Credit cards can bedangerous due to high interest. However, you do not have to get rid of all your credit cards. You just need to get control over your credit card debt.

If you have a credit card account that isup to date on payments then you can ask your credit card issuer for lower interest rates. It can be as simple as a phone call to get your interest rates lowered to a more manageable rate.

In the long run lowering credit card interest rates will help you to save a lot of money that can go to good use elsewhere in your budget.

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