5 Ways to Improve Your Money Management

5 Ways to Improve Your Money Management

5 Ways to Improve Your Money ManagementWhile it ranks below feeling connected to family and friends, having your finances in order through good money management ranks right up there with excellent health as an accomplishment that makes for a higher quality of life well into your Golden Years. Unlike excellent health, however, with its uncontrollable genetic component, good money management is, for the most part, available to everyone.

Whether you’re a natural whiz at managing the ins and outs of your money, or you’ve worked for years to make it look natural, here are five tips that will guide you to improve your money management skills.

5 Ways to Improve Your Money Management

1. Set Specific Goals

Setting goals is something all good money managers do, but how specific do you get? If your goals are as broad as, “Manage money better,” how will you know — until you experience the unexpected effects of managing money poorly — whether or not you’re succeeding? You have to get specific. It isn’t enough to set a goal of saving more money; declare how much you’re going to save each month and then set about doing it.

Likewise, it isn’t enough to say you’re going to pay down debt. Set a specific goal of reducing your debt by a certain percentage by the end of the year, and then, craft a plan that will help you follow through. Only by getting as specific as you can about every financial goal you have will you be able to take the steps necessary to reach them.

2. Always Track All Your Spending

The rise of the debit card has allowed for far too much wiggle room in many people’s spending — even the spending of self-professed excellent money managers. Whether it’s a $2 coffee or a $.50 newspaper, tracking all your spending all the time is the only way to truly know where your money is going.

Not only does keeping track keep you attentive and aware of the places in which you may need to tighten your belt, but it will also keep you safe against unauthorized charges or a rare mistake committed by your bank. Don’t trust the system, and don’t trust your memory. Write it down as you spend it, and you’ll always know exactly why you did — or didn’t — meet your financial goals.

3. Save and Invest

Many good money managers are good at saving money, but if you aren’t yet investing, your money isn’t working as hard for you as it could be. Investing can seem tricky. Especially if you didn’t grow up in an investment-savvy family or major in finance or banking in college, figuring out how to invest might seem daunting. If that’s the case, seek out help.

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Lessons Learned from Selling My First House

Lessons Learned from Selling My First House

Lessons Learned from Selling My First HouseMy wife and I finally received an offer on our home. We had been selling my house, after failing as landlords, for about six months now. Looking back over the time we’ve owned the home, there have been quite a few lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Becoming a landlord had been my idea. My wife didn’t want to rent out our home after we had to move to a new state thanks to my job. I had dreams of having a real estate portfolio that threw off thousands of dollars in passive income in retirement. It was part of my grand scheme, buckets of passive income in retirement. I had dreams of becoming the next Donald Trump.

Lessons Learned from Selling My First House

Becoming a landlord isn’t for everyone. It takes guts, especially in this economy, although the housing market is starting come back in many regions across the United States. I thought that I could stomach swings in the stock market and in real estate prices because of my long time horizon until retirement. I’m only in my mid-thirties. I have another 30 years of working, saving and investing before the gold watch of retirement calls my name. But, I was wrong.

Being a landlord really opened my eyes, and my wife’s eyes too, as to what our risk tolerance truly is. We found that we didn’t have the appetite that we thought.

A Good Realtor Makes All the Difference

I cannot stress enough the importance of having a great real estate agent. I’ve always said that you don’t want to pick professionals like a real estate agent, lawyer, doctor from the Yellow Pages. You need to get recommendations from your friends, family and coworkers. You also want to interview these professionals to ensure that you’re both the right fit for each other.

Your personal finance team, in which a real estate agent will be a prime player, will help to lay the foundation for your financial life and the moves you make now and in the future. Think of your real estate agent, lawyer, certified public accountant and certified financial planner to be members of your own board of directors.

My wife and I found our first real estate agent from a mutual friend. My wife and I were moving to a new town, and one of her girlfriends knew an excellent real estate agent that specialized in working with first-time home buyers. It was a match made in heaven. It was a great experience when my wife and I purchased our first home in the spring of 2009.

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Is the Gold and Precious Metals Turnaround On?

Is the gold and precious metals turnaround on? As global markets plunge, bullish momentum is driving up the price of gold and investors are standing up to take notice. The Dow Jones plunged by as much as 531 points on Friday 21 August – a massive drop that had investors scrambling to cash out before taking on further losses. The decline marks the biggest drop in 4 years, but it wasn’t the only index that was down. All around the world major bourses slid as news spread of weak growth and slack demand in China. Whenever an evaluation of the gold market is undertaken it is especially important to consider the state of equities markets. Why is gold and precious … Read more

A Quick Experian Credit Score Workout

Your credit score isn’t going to increase on its own. Well, it might, but only for a little while before jumping back down again. This is how the unobserved credit score works. Without specific action taken to keep your Experian credit score on the up and up, it’s never going to get much altitude at all. People tend to get discouraged with their credit scores. After all, they think, I’m careful with my money. I guess there’s nothing else I can do. In fact, there are plenty of things you can do to boost your credit score. Credit scores are subtle things, and until you start to understand the consumer behaviors that cause them to rise and fall, you’ll never be able … Read more

Reader Question – Can I Rent Out Property After Hiring A Property Manager?

This is the next installment in the Reader’s Questions Series, which highlights questions emailed to me by you, the readers of Money Q&A.

Be sure to find out at the end of this article how you can receive a free copy of Dave Ramsey’s book, The Total Money Makeover if I feature your money question on a blog post. If you’re not familiar with Dave Ramsey’s book, you should run right out and get it. It’s one of the top ten best personal finance books you should read. 

Today’s question comes from Jeff who asks about renting his house by himself even after hiring a property manager.

I have been working with a property manager for a few months now to try and find a renter for my home. My wife and I are moving and didn’t want to sell our home. After a few months of trying to find a renter, the property manager still didn’t have the home rented. I started placing my own ads for tenants and finally found someone. Can I still rent out my property to someone after hiring a property management firm?

Rent out property with a property management firmThis question raises a couple of red flags. It makes me wonder if you have chosen the right property manager. There are many questions to ask a property manager before you hire them to ensure that they are a good fit for your family and that you feel comfortable with their work. After all, you will be entrusting them with your most valuable asset, your home.

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Fitness As An Investment Tool

14382191717_331b04a04e_bThis is a sponsored post that contains affiliate links.

Professional investors have pretty stringent definitions of what is and isn’t an investment. Depending on who you talk to, an investment may only be a narrow band of financial allocations, to which sophisticated improvements may be applied.

Such investors tend to deride lots of other forms of investment as mere speculation. But this is a very narrow way of thinking about investment, one which will leave most people out.

More broadly considered, investing is a simple allocation of a finite resource to a (hopefully) profitable end. Regular people make investments of time every day. They invest in products and appliances. They invest their attention in entertainment and conversation. These applications don’t often result in direct profit, but they’re investments just the same, ones which can be adjusted to start seeing more beneficial ends across the board.

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