Budgeting

You will have limited success saving money if you don’t make a budget.

There are a wide variety of apps and computer programs to help you create a personalized budget.

Apps make it easier to stay within budget – you can look at it anytime on your mobile device along with your banking apps. Let’s face it, no one leaves home without their smart phone!

Some apps are free, but don’t have a feature to link your banking information and they don’t categorize it automatically for you. Then you have paid app versions. Some of these have advanced features and analytics to keep your finances up to date.

Where do you begin when making your budget?

1) Calculate your monthly take home income and how often you get paid (ex. weekly, bi-weekly, monthly)

2) List all recurring bills or expenses and their due dates:

  • Rent/Mortgage (due 5th of the month)
  • Car payment (due 12th of the month)
  • Food 
  • Gas
  • Phone
  • Car insurance (due 10th of the month)
  • Student loan (due 20th of the month)
  • Cable or Streaming Services (due 20th of the month)
  • Utilities (electric due 1st, gas due 5th, water/sewer/trash due every other month)
  • Savings withdrawal

3) Using the amounts and due dates above, establish how each paycheck will be allocated

There may be some expenses you aren’t going to be able to keep, but this is exactly why we are making a budget. This will give you an opportunity to remove or reduce excessive bills or unnecessary expenses and get you back in line with your earnings. Always remember – LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS!

A budget is a living document that can be adjusted to meet your changing needs. There may be a month you need more gas money and you’ll need to make some adjustments, taking away from another “bucket” or category. Do not to use credit cards to supplement the budget as a cushion or additional income. If you can’t afford it now, then contribute to a savings account to afford it later.   

Investing 101

We all wish we could go back in time and correct that one mistake we made when we invested in the wrong stock or sold the right stock too early.

I tell myself all the time if I had only kept my 1000 General Motors shares, that I bought for $1, in 2008 I would be a lot better off now. Truth is I did what needed to be done at the time.

Three ways to invest in 2020:

  1. Not ALL of the good stocks are out of my price range.
  2. Invest in Real Estate
    • Start with starter properties, something in your price range, and trade up over time.
  3.  Stay focused on your investments
    • Look over your investments often. 
    • There is no set it and forget it when it comes to your money.

Spending

Today is the first Saturday of 2020 and some are enjoying their first paycheck of the new decade!

We made it through the holidays and, if you’re like me, you’re not looking forward to seeing ‘the damage’, aka the gross overspending many of us partake in over the holidays, and the ensuing credit card bill arriving the first of January. I enjoy spending the money on family and friends so I’m ok with ‘the Damage’, but you still must spend within your means.

It’s a new year and we get to start over with 20/20 focus on saving and budgeting. Budgeting is key to help us focus on our spending. It’s ok to spend your money, you earned it and you should enjoy it, but it is also very rewarding to save it. However, you can’t keep spending forever, you must pick a time to pay off your debts, but that is directly a result of your own motivation on the path to financial freedom.

So how do you handle overspending around the holidays, what’s the best way to eliminate ‘The Damage’?

1. Pay off your holiday expenses first

Any major or large purchases you made to either provide for or visit friends and family, focus on paying those expenses off first. These expenses usually aren’t accounted for in a monthly budget, and by eliminating these costs you can get back on track with your normal budget.

2. Eliminate your smallest debts

Pay off any additional debts incurred either on new credit cards opened (which definitely isn’t a great way to debt free life – opening new lines of credit) or other accounts that aren’t in your usual financial routine, won’t let you forget you spent on those accounts and put you in a bind later on when bills are due.

3. Unsubscribe

We mentioned subscriptions and the danger they can be to our monthly budget in the last post, but any free trials or coupons used to sign up for streaming services will most likely be ending soon before January is over. Retrace your steps and unsubscribe from any new services you wanted to try or use just for the holidays.

Remember, spending is OK! But you must spend within your means, and within your budget.

How to be a MoneyHugger

Welcome Back to MoneyHugger!

Today I’ll talk about saving money. If you want to be a true MoneyHugger then you have to keep your money. In my life I’ve noticed that if I have easy access to my money I’m going to spend it and pay little attention to where it goes.

Easy Access

  1. Don’t PIN your ATM. 
    • We pin our bank cards so we can swipe it anywhere we go. Those $2 and $5 charges throughout the day and month add up. You remember the commercials say “for the price of 1 cup of coffee a day you can support (insert cause here)”, because it’s true. So I’ll say save the price of one cup of coffee a day and you will be well on your way to keeping your money. 
  2. Create a separate bank account
    • When you create a separate bank account do it with a bank that you can’t easily walk into and withdraw money. I mean you need to have access to it for an emergency, it’s just going to take you some effort to get to. 
    • Set up the direct deposit into the separate account. If you don’t see the money on your check, or have to manually move it to the account then it will be easier to save. You know, just like the taxes that are taken out. I would have a real hard time paying my own taxes if I had to each check.    
  3. Put money in your personal safe
    • Each paycheck take the amount you want to save, in cash, out of the bank and put it in a small, affordable personal safe in your home, like this one. If the money doesn’t reflect on your statement then its easier to forget about it. It’s also close by in case of an emergency. 

Welcome to MoneyHugger!

Welcome to MoneyHugger Blog!

We are going to talk about everything related to money, especially how to keep it. 

We will talk about everything from spending, saving, investing and budgeting. In this community blog we will share our mistakes and our successes. Let’s face it no one has done everything right 100% of the time, but we all hope to get it right most of the time, right? 

We often seek advice about money from family, friends, neighbors and even our co-workers. They don’t always want to talk about their successes or mistakes. Sometimes they are worried about giving bad advice when it comes to money since this can be a very emotional topic. 

In 2020 our vision is to bring your finances into focus. It has been said if you care about something you will focus on it.