You may feel a bit overwhelmed right now. The creation of a spending plan will take time. Spending even a little bit of time each day for a month or two can make a major difference without seeming so overwhelming. Set yourself an appointment for 20 to 30 minutes a day to work on this […]

Reducing expenses and payments, getting debt paid off and planning for the future more purposefully by creating savings accounts and paying yourself first may be enough to get you where you want to be. Another option is to increase income.

The likelihood is if you have been incurring debt, especially credit card debt, you have been spending more than the income that has been coming in. This is a situation you must deal with if there is going to be an improvement in your financial situation. This is not going to come quickly. If you […]

You have choice here. For example, say when you calculated your variable expenses you determined that you were spending $300 a month on groceries. You can work to reduce this amount to $275 to have funds to spend on other choices. Maybe you do this by using coupons, by changing to a lower cost grocery […]

Currently in your fixed expenses and your debt payments you have tied up future income to pay those expenses. Take the total inflow and subtract these fixed expenses and debt payments. The difference is disposable cash that you have some options of how to spend.

Cash outflow is the amount of money that is going out to support your current lifestyle.

Understanding the concept of compound interest may help you see why starting early can be one of the most important steps you can take towards reaching your financial goals.

What about your Credit Cards & Loan Payments? If you pay your credit card off each month and are not carrying a balance, you would have accounted for all the expenses on your credit card. These would have been included in your fixed and variable expenses above as you examined your credit card statements.

Start a new expense list reflecting what are you spending money on monthly that varies from month to month. Again, review your credit card statements and checkbook. Average two or three months of expenses together to make sure that you have a good number to input into your spreadsheet.

Start by listing the fixed expenses that you know you will incur every month. Fixed expenses are expenses that are the same amount every month with little variation.