Financial Planning: The Basics Steps To Financial Success

“Establishing a home, a career and a budget in a few short months is daunting, but few things in life pay off like having a plan.” By Terry Savage

This crash course in financial basics can help you to take control of your finances. Here, are five simple but effective steps that working in conjunction and can help you to have a better financial life.

Inside this Financial Success article:

1. Keep track of every cent you spend
2. Develop a badget3.
3. Review the contracts
4. Earn extra money
5. Optimize your account

1. Keep track of every cent you spend – What does it mean to keep track of every cent you earn? Before to read Your money your life I struggled with debt for years. In a nutshell this ebook recommends that you keep a Daily Money Log. Your awareness of your money habits allowing you to control your money and improve your situation.

Image Credit: Cajie

The following are things you can use to tracking your own spending:

• Some transactions without a receipt, or online transactions, are easy to forgotten. Be careful with these kind of transactions that you can be forget. Take note each time you make these transactions in order to remember it.
• Don’t try to go to do more transactions per day. I know it is hard to do, but If I make more than two operation, I can’t find a receipt, I can’t remember a transaction, and so on.
• Stop using credit card for most of your purchases. I’m not saying credit cards are bad, but they could lose you the control of your balance.

2. Develop a badget - Tracking your spending is one thing you should make for a few weeks(or months). Once you’ve made it, you can use the data you’ve found and develop a budget. If you read The Millionaire Next Door, you discover that 55% of millionaires keep a budget.

If I had to decide what is my favorite balanced money formula is that Elizabeth Warren’s: 50% to Needs, 20% to Savings, and everything else to Wants. Simple but effective. However, there different of budgeting methods you can choose. In a nutshell, to develop a badget you need to:

• Calculate your monthly income. Make sure to calculate the amount after all of your taxes and other deductions are removed.
• List your monthly expenses. Here are some items that you should include on your monthly expense chart: Cable or satellite TV, Cell phone, Mortgage or rent payment, medical insurance premiums, automotive, Credit cards, Entertainment
• Put remaining money into an emergency fund. Create a fund that is separate from your savings account for emergency. It is become very important today that you have an emergency fund for unexpected problems like an emergency car repair.
  

This NCN’s video explain the concept in a simple and clear way.

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3. Review the contracts - Make sure to review the contracts and formal or informal agreements(at least once each year) you have with different banks, in order to check up if still covering your needs. Contracts and agreements are part of daily life, and yet they still confuse us. Also, review your financial accounts to be sure everything still works for you. In particular:

• Check up your services in order to see if you you’re only paying for what you need.
• Read your own agreements, than if you need, asking questions for clarification.
• Cut your Cable Bill. You can make this in only 4 step:
  • Review Your Service
  • Reduce Your Package
  • Compare Costs
  • Use Free Services
• Check your asset allocation – For instance, the stock market soared more than 50 percent in 2009 In china and India.
  

4. Earn extra money - Sure, you can saving a lot of money by using the right tools and reducing your spending. However, the better ways to make progress with your finances is to earn extra money.

• Ask for a raise – Negotiate your salary in order to improve your finances. Here are some tips to help you do that.
  • Check out how much others working in your field are earning in order to know about typical salaries in your field.
  • Check out how much you can earn through a salary calculators. To do this, consider the length of time you’ve worked, and the number of years you’ve been working for your current employer.
• Use your hobbies – Have you thought to making money through your hobbies? Many people have their own hobbies and earn a little extra income from that.
• Tutor – You are a grammar pro? an engineer? Have you never throught to and transform your knowledge into a paycheck. Then, become a tutor. Just advertise where you can be found – at the library, in the newspaper, on campuses, and so on.
• Blog – Have knowledge that you’d like to share with the world? Have you never throught to set up a blog, and monetize it. So, I reccomend to reade my month-long series of post here at the3dtechnologies designed to walk you through 31 step that you can use to start a successful blog from scratch.
• Sell things – To do this you can use service like eBay, Craigslist, garage sales, and the Amazon Marketplace. The money you earn can help you to reduce your debt.

5. Optimize your account – Check up if your bank account make you pay other fees from services where you do not earn no interest. Often, bank includes in your account additional fees like “service charge” that will influence your balance. You can:

• You an open an online high-yieald savings account where the money you deposit earns greater than average interest.
• Open a rewards checking account, so you can keep the money you’ll be using soon.