Tips for Successful Personal Finances
October is National Financial Planning month!
According to Wallet Hub, 2 out of 5 US adults grade themselves as a “C” or worse on their personal finance knowledge. To see the report and find out where your state stands, click here.
It’s never too late to learn about personal finances. Start by reading something each and every day. Check out my newsletter past issues and sign up to receive, Money Choices it in your inbox.
Well it happened again – this time EquiFax! This is not the first time nor will it be the last security breach.
Here are some suggestions that you may want to take to help to protect your identity:
• Personally, I am not a fan of doing banking on my phone, so I don’t have these apps. But I do have many texts (one for each transaction) and this way, I can catch anything immediately. I will be adding my credit cards to this process.
• In addition, I use two-step authentication for all my accounts. Having a code either texted or phoned to me to use to access my account.
• Check your credit report. I am a firm believer of this and now even more so. If you need reminders to check your credit for free three times per year, sign up for my newsletter here and you will get email reminders to check your credit every four months.
• Monitor your accounts. I typically check in a couple of times a month, both my bank and credit card accounts just to look for anything that I don’t recognize. If you don’t want to do this, make sure you reconcile your accounts monthly.
• You may want to set up credit monitoring service and/or freeze your credit report. You can check out my article on Credit Freeze here.
• Change your passwords regularly.They shouldn’t be easy to guess (use a combination of upper and lower case letters, number and symbols) and don’t you use the same password. Each account should have its’ own individual one.
Take the time now to protect your identity. It’s much easier to do this proactively than to deal with the turmoil of identity theft later.
I love getting a discount. Don’t you?
When we grocery shop, we use coupons, meal plan and shop the sales. We eat healthy with any organic products, so there aren’t as many coupons as in the past. Yes, items do go on sale, but it can still be expensive.
Our grocery store gives us gas points. For every dollar we spend, we get points – 100 points is 10¢ off per gallon. Last weekend we saved 90¢ per gallon. That certainly helps our budget and can helpful to you.
Are you getting all the rewards possible? Learn more on discounts and rewards.
What are the things you are willing to do without or do differently?
In our household, we do our own yardwork and save by not having to pay for a lawn or snowplowing service. The trade off is that it takes time to do these tasks and we had to purchase the lawn mower, weed wacker and snow blower. This can be a big initial expense. But, we don’t have monthly bills.
Our town has private trash collectors, that’s another monthly bill. We take our own trash to the transfer station and eliminated that bill years ago.
What are you willing to do or doing that have helped your finances?
For more tips, please visit my website.
As far as I can remember back, my family has always had a garden.
Ours in smaller, but we grow what we need. Ever spring we start with herbs in a flower box, just outside the back door. This year is rosemary, parsley, basil and cilantro. You can start from seed or buy the plants all for a minimal amount of money and have fresh herbs all summer long. When the weather turns colder, we will freeze the remaining herb for later in the year.
Our garden has tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, broccoli, peppers, kale and more. There is nothing better than to be able to walk out into the yard and pick what you want for dinner.
Everything we grow is that much less that we buy at the store. As August arrives, everything is starting to be ready to pick. This saves money each and every trip to the grocery store.
For more money saving tips, follow me on social media Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and my website.
We all go through stages in our lives where money seems to be going out faster than coming in. In my 20’s, I was a spender and learned my lesson. Now, I keep track of my spending. I want to accomplish my goals and live within my means. It may sound boring, but it keep me out of debt.
If budgeting isn’t working for you, read this.
It’s summer and the kids are home from school, what do you do? Here are some tips to keep them entertained.
Today, I am doing a workshop, Money Make The World go Round at Empower Her for kids ages 8 to 11. We are going to discuss budgeting, wants, needs with the help of a fun game!
We have been dealing with this at our home. We have inherited our parents stuff. We cleaned out the stuff, but now we are on a mission to clean out the personal items – family photos, slides & movies, stuff that may be worth money. Do we really need all this stuff?
Spring is a great time of year! One of my favorites, as the weather turns warmer and the days are longer. For us, it means more time outside and that can be from getting my garden planted and the thrill of fresh vegetables right in my backyard, to having meals outside; either just us or with friends and family. We can open the windows to air out the winter stale indoor air and sleep comfortably with the windows open all night. It means exploring the outdoors, maybe taking a walk in a new neighborhood or park, picnics and movies in the park.
With spring comes weddings and graduations – new beginnings. This can be true for all of us, even if we don’t have a milestone event coming up.
Traditionally, spring makes me think of spring cleaning and tackling the heavier cleaning throughout the house. We can do the same for our finances. For the graduate, you can start them off with the gift of good finances – being able to start to plan their money and finance proactively and make planned purchases versus impulse buying. A great way to start would be the gift of my book, Cash Credit and Your Finances: The Teen Years.
For those who want to get your own finances back on track, 111 Ways to Save or Thrive In Five: Take Charge of Your Finances in 5 Minutes a Day will give you the push you need to get your finances in order.
You can order my books through my website or by order form. If you use the order form, you have the option of me personalizing the book. Just print the order form, fill out the recipient information section, and mail it to the address on the form or fax it to 203-504-7995. For the month of June 2017, we are also offering free shipping on all book sales that are ordered with the order form via mail or fax.
Click here to download the order form.