Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

[Broken Arrow]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

Another idea: before you buy anything, dial my 1-900 # and for $2.99/minute, I'll talk you out of it.

Literally!

[annscash]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

I have a friend who helped me with this type of thing a lot. She was great at managing and saving money. Her trick was just that. She tricked herself. She was not naturally a good manager or saver. It sounds like you are really OK except that you think you have money to spend when you actually need it for bills.

I would trick myself this way.

Have 2 checking accounts.
Have 1 savings account - preferrable a distance from home and work.

When you get paid, put the money for bills in checking account #1, put a reasonable amount to save in the savings account, put the balance in checking account #2.

Checking account #2 is the only one you deal with daily. When it is time to pay bills, get out checkbook for account #1 and pay bills. The rest of the time leave it in a drawer at home. When you look at the checkbook you carry, all it has in it is the money you have to spend.

The reason for having savings far from home is that you will have to travel (make it very inconvenient) to pull money from it. This forces you to really want the money from savings--you will not pull it casually.

Look around and find banks that will give you free checking. Most will for DD and you can arrange DD for your paycheck to more than one place. I would set up the DD to go to all 3 accounts (2 checking, 1 savings).

If you still find yourself overspending with this approach, then you have a much bigger problem than you appear to have from your post and you will need to do some very serious work to retrain your thinking about money.

[Kris10Leigh]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

Annscash, that is kind of what we do.

We have 2 separate checking accounts. One is far away and depositing cash (outside of direct deposit) means a 2 hour round trip drive. We use this account for paying all of our bills. It's padded and I watch it carefully. All funds are set up to be automatically deducted or automatically paid out. The fact that it is so far away makes it so that I do not care to spend from it for anything outside of the bills.

Our second account is for living expenses. This is the account I have the most trouble with! Living expesnses are not as clear, cut and dry as the bills.

Finally we have a savings account. Right now, I use this savings account as a freedom account. Eventually, once we dig ourselves our of our CC hole, I plan to put savings into the far away savings account so that it is not easily accessible.

[greedy4chips]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

You know, I've always wanted to manage other peoples money and get paid for it. For $100/month, I'll manage your money, pay your bills, and give you a very small spending account. I'll provide you with one monthly summary statement. And, I'll help you save for the future. Only catch, you can't spend money without telling me.

She doesn't need a nagging husband...lol $100/mn is usually the hubby's allowance when any wife I know has control of the budget.


QUESTIONS
It seems to me your problem is money burns a hole in your pocket. Temptation and impulse purchases are your enemy.

Leave the cash, checkbook, and credit cards at home. Any item you don't really need but just gotta have, wait one week and see if you still want it...then wait a month more before you ever look at it.



My budget is simple. I put as much money into an envelope much like people put coins in a piggy bank and count it all the time. It sure feels good to know I have $1640 in an envelope which gets put into CDs every time it hits $2500. We have a goal of opening a $2500 CD every month for the next 12 months! It is plain and simple I love cash and it is very hard for me to spend on stuff!

I haven't purchased a pair of shoes in 18 months. 1 pair of jeans in a year. I just take care of the stuff I own.

I donate plasma and earn $50 for 2 donations per week. It takes me 3 hrs total and whenever I see something I want I always look at it in terms of how many donations does it take to pay for it. I just cannot see paying $20-$50 or more for a pair of tennis shoes when I earned that money by donating plasma.

Between my wife and I we can make $5000 per year and if we do that for the next 20 years and earn 5.5% in CDs we will have $175,000 in CDs on top of our other investments.

My goal is to retire with 2 million by at 60, or at least have the choice of when I want to retire.

$2,000,000 at currents iSeries bond rates of 6.73% is $134K per year income.

We are currently tossing around the idea of burying our CDs into the iSeries Bonds for the additional 1.2% interest. This move would yield us an additional $24,000 without any additional risk. No taxes on the interest income if you use the money for tuition expenses or your children's by the way.

[naturalwoman]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

leave your debit card at home. take emergency cash. 15/20 dollars and a cell phone for other emergencies.

have you always been this way or is this emotional spending?

try a budget form, i have some one my website that i download from microsoft.com.

[The Budget Man]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

Even though I read money saving tips and try to be good with my money I end up being in the negative every month.

I don't have a too serious problem yet. I have a credit card but don't use it in case of emergencies.

I just spend a lot of money. When I go somewhere I buy anything I want without even thinking. I always think I have the money for it because when I look at my checking account I see $900, not $800 for rent, $100 for insurance, $30 for gas. I just see the money and think oh, I'll be fine when the bill comes. I end up having to go into my savings every month and pay rent. I never been able to save more then $2000 in my life.

I was wondering if you could help me out? I really need someone to teach me how to manage my money.

You already know that you are going to do something about your situation... or you wouldn't have posted your story. One of the greatest breakthroughs of budgeting this century has been the "BANKING TRIANGLE".

The idea behind the banking triangle is that there are only three places you can spend your money. We draw a triangle and at each of the points write the following...

1. Day-To-Day spending including groceries and anything that you have a choice about purchasing.

2. Bills - this is where most of your mney goes. You have already decided that you will pay the rent, electricity etc.

3. Savings including investments.

Now here's the good bit. If you have a bank account where your money goes for paying all the bills, you don't have to worry about spending the money set aside for the bills as it is separate from your Day-To-Day account.

Your Day-To-Day money is easy to keep track of as there are no bills being taken from this account.

Which brings us to the bottom line. You no longer have to worry about overspending as you always know what you have available.

There's a very useful FREE 20 minute online workkshop at.

http://www.personalitybudgeting.com/pb_workshop_1.php

Enjoy Your Money
The Budget Man

https://www.PersonalityBudgeting.com

Budgets can be easy

[The Budget Man]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

Even though I read money saving tips and try to be good with my money I end up being in the negative every month.

I don't have a too serious problem yet. I have a credit card but don't use it in case of emergencies.

I just spend a lot of money. When I go somewhere I buy anything I want without even thinking. I always think I have the money for it because when I look at my checking account I see $900, not $800 for rent, $100 for insurance, $30 for gas. I just see the money and think oh, I'll be fine when the bill comes. I end up having to go into my savings every month and pay rent. I never been able to save more then $2000 in my life.

I was wondering if you could help me out? I really need someone to teach me how to manage my money.

Hi

It seems like you've got a lot of good advice from lots of people. I'll just add a key that I've found to work for me. This key has also helped many thousands of others along the way.

The key is to use your bank accounts as if they were your friends.

Here's what I mean. If you are paying bills like rent and Day-To-Day expenses like milk from the same bank account it becomes nearly impossible to keep track of how much you can afford to spend.

The solution is simple... have three types of bank accounts

Account 1 is where your income goes. From this you automatically have your bills and savings sent to other bank accounts. This means tha whatever money in in this account can be spent on daily living.

Account 2 is your "Bill Account". In this account you put enough money each pay to cover your bills. Use a budgeting program such as "The Personality Budgeting Program" to help you determine how much you need to put here each pay.

Account 3 is your savings account or accounts. Treat savings as a bill and you'll always do it.

By setting up your banking in a logical way the rest all flows.

By the way... if people start suggesting that the cost of three bank accounts is too much, just think of the cost of having to eat into your savings each month or the interest costs on your credit card when you run out of money for the month.

Enjoy Your Money
The Budget Man

www.The BudgetMan.com
Where budgeting becomes simple

[bjl584]

Re: Can You Help Me Manage My Money?

Defenitely need to find out where your money is going. Write it all down like others have said. Then you need to create a budget and be disiplined enough to stick to it. All the planning and budgeting in the world are worthless if you don't follow through on it. Whenever you feel the urge to go splurge on something you may want to just turn around and leave the store. Go home and sleep on it and really think "Do I REALLY need to buy this?" 9 times out of 10 the answer will be no.

[johnbuchmiller]

Hello,New to the boards and few days later i was hoping to get some financial advice. I had a rental mortgage (and a renter) that had a higher balance than the house was worth and a home mortgage that had a higher balance than the home was worth. I make enough to comfortably cover payments on both every month as well as have a fair amount of money leftover every month.But i was confused then i contact IRS Lawyer and take advice and then i feel satisfaction.

[sv2007]

Even though I read money saving tips and try to be good with my money I end up being in the negative every month.

I don't have a too serious problem yet. I have a credit card but don't use it in case of emergencies.

I just spend a lot of money. When I go somewhere I buy anything I want without even thinking. I always think I have the money for it because when I look at my checking account I see $900, not $800 for rent, $100 for insurance, $30 for gas. I just see the money and think oh, I'll be fine when the bill comes. I end up having to go into my savings every month and pay rent. I never been able to save more then $2000 in my life.

I was wondering if you could help me out? I really need someone to teach me how to manage my money.

The key is to live a life style costings less than your income.

I've been there; I've lived on very little money.

During grad school, I earned $800/mo (stipend) and (during summer) $2.5k/mo (internships). This means an annual income of $13k. I was also saving about $3000/yr.

Adj for inflation, that's an annual of $23k today and saving $5.4k.
Now, do you earn more than $23k?

What's your biggest expense?

Housing? How about roommates?

Car? (add monthly payments,insurance, registration, maintenance, parking costs)
How about public transit or sharing a car with a friend?

Start with your biggest expense and work from there.

You can do it and still live happy. I'm very fond of my grad years; I was poor, but I didn't know it : )

[corn18]

10 year old thread

[sv2007]

ah, didn't notice.
We keep getting new posters who dig up really old threads for some reason.

[corn18]

They try to get to the minimum posts required to post a link and then post some spam with a link in it. Idiots.

[Deepali Mohite]

Managing money

Why don't you simply transfer the money to your savings account and keep only small amount for your monthly expenses in a different account.

Keeping money with you will always make you tempt to buy unnecessary things which you really do not want and then regret it.

[clatoden99]

3 steps to maximize your savings

- Monitor your spend - Know how much you spend under different categories and separate essential spending and non essential spending. Analyse and see where you overspend to make corrections
- Set budget - Set budget for different categories and see how much you can save after setting your budget
- Save before you spend - When you get your salary or income, lock in the surplus amount in an investment plan that suits your risk profile. Or in liquid funds if you want to keep as cash equivalent. Keep 10% buffer over your budget in bank plus an amount equal to 3 months' expenses in liquid funds. Liquid funds can be liquidated at a day's notice so its better to keep money in liquid funds which yield 8-8.5% against savings account where you get 4-6%

If you are a credit card user, monitor your spend carefully to ensure that you are not exceeding your budget.

An automated tool like WealthPack - Expense Manager (on Google Play Store) may come in very handy to monitor and manage your expenses. It has a range of visual tools which help you analyse your expenses investments etc.

Repeat the above month after month and you'll start saving much more!