Planning Your Personal Finances
Posted at by ifydcat on category Personal FinancePersonal finances do not need to be confusing or nerve racking. They can actually be quite simple if you take the time to get organized and create a plan you can use to track them. Use the tips below to develop a course of action to take to get your personal finances organized and under control.
Make a list of all of the income, bills and debts that you have. Be sure that you are as detailed as possible when creating this list. If you receive government assistance, such as cash assistance, disability or food stamps, include them in this chart.
Your next list includes all of your small expenditures. Things like gasoline, lunch, coffee, products of personal habit (beer, cigarettes, snuff etc.), medications and anything else that you regularly spend money on.
A third list is going to include the expenses and debts divided into categories of necessity and luxury. The expenses like auto payments and insurance, mortgage and property insurance, utility payments, etc. will be listed on the necessity list. Other expenses, such as credit cards and cell phones, would go on the list of luxuries. You may think that your credit card and cell phone are necessities, but you could live without them.
The next step is subtracting the total of the necessities from those of your total income. That is the total amount of money that you have left for the luxuries. If you find that you do not have as much left to work with as you may have thought, it is time to start eliminating some of the luxuries. Multiple cups of coffee, bottles of water and other things that you could live without should be eliminated from your daily spending.
If you find that you do have money left over, you need to use it to pay off some of your debts or put it into savings. Just because you have a little bit of extra money, you do not need to go out and spend it on an expensive night out. Use it to pay off debts that you have incurred or put it away so you do not need to incur any more debt if your car should break or you find a problem with your house that you need to repair.
Refinancing your loans may be another way to reduce your expenses. If you have high interest loans or credit cards, look into the current rates and discuss your options with your bank or credit union. You may find that today’s interest rates are better than the were when you took out the loan and that you will save money be refinancing the loan.
Debt consolidation may be a good option for you. You could take the multiple credit card accounts you hold and the personal loans and roll them over to one payment. This way, you are only paying interest on one loan instead of multiple.
You see, organizing and taking control of your personal finances is not as difficult as many people think. Get to work putting together your lists and begin gaining financial confidence today!