In finance, and in life generally, there are steps and elevators.
Steps and elevators take us to where we want to go.
When it comes to money, eventually we want to wind up in a nice place. A paid home. A retirement fund. An opportunity to slow down and enjoy the fruits of our work.
The basic concept of the Life Sucks Budget is that for many of us there is just not enough money to pay the claims of bill collectors AND to pay the really important things of life, like retirement savings, emergency cash accounts, mortgage payments and modest family vacations. Something has to give, and too many of us put ourselves last and pay nothing towards our future needs and dreams so that we can just get by another month without receiving embarrassing phone calls or letters. The Life Sucks Budget is a call to rebalance this relationship and to put our legitimate financial and family needs first.
The fact is, many of you are already on the Life Sucks Budget but you don’t realize it or perhaps you are reluctant to confess that is what you are doing.
Spending 25 years interviewing clients about their financial habits reveals that at least half of the people I meet have no hope of being financially successful. They just want to get through the week and find a little peace in their day. They do not believe that they can win financially, and that mindset has a radical affect on their behavior.Continue Reading Life Sucks Budget: Part II
Rule #1 of credit counseling is when you are trying to get out of debt you must forgo some expenses while paying off debt. The advice is universal. Decrease expenses. Increase income with a part-time job. Sell some stuff to raise cash. Get the debt snowball rolling. Suck it up and double down on the smallest debt and then the next smallest until all the debt is gone. Live like a crazy person until you can scream out loud I’M DEBT FREE!
And if your debt problem is that you spend money like a moron and you just need to grow up and cut expenses and work a pizza delivery job at night until you pay off the debt, that may be good advice. Dave Ramsey has built a 55 million dollar financial empire by giving out such advice.Continue Reading Life Sucks Budget
In performing financial autopsies for my bankruptcy clients over the past 25 years I have noticed one common mistake people make. They fail to prioritize their money.
Priorities matter. Successful people have a common trait–they prioritize their day and do he most important tasks first. They write lists. They have WRITTEN goals for their day. They plan their day in advance, and then they go out an kick butt.
But when it comes to money, especially money in marriage, even organized people get messed up about how to set priorities with their money. Why is that?
I think part of the answer lies in those sappy marriage courses we take before our weddings. You know, the ones that say how a man and women become one and cease to have separate identities. No secrets in marriage. Everything is shared. Mutual submission. Love is generous and we support one another give all that we have to each other. Sound familiar? And somehow out of this marriage class people conclude that in marriage you should have a single joint bank account that is shared and all money earned goes into it and all expenses are paid out of it. No secrets. Complete transparency. Mutual submission. Yeah, what could go wrong with this plan?
When all of your money sits in a single bank account you effectively have no money priorities.
It is moronic for a married couple to handle all of their finances out of a single bank account. This is pretend land. It’s crazytown. When all of your money sits in a single bank account you effectively have no money priorities. Buying pizza has the same priority as paying the mortgage or insurance or saving for emergencies because when money is not divided into separate accounts there is no priority to the spending, and that is just not true.
Some expenses are more important than others. We all know that. Paying the mortgage or the insurance premium or saving for emergencies is vastly more important than paying for temporary needs, like a slice of pizza. And even if we verbally agree with this statement, if we just nod our head and do nothing more, then nothing has changed. Establishing priorities means taking action. It means dividing money into separate accounts based on their priority level.Continue Reading Pay Yourself First Part II: How to implement it.
There is one simple habit that all financially successful people do–they pay themselves first.
That phrase has always annoyed me. Pay myself first? What exactly does that mean? I heard financial gurus say that phrase over and over, and it just came off as cocky and glib.
“Want to become rich boy? Well, it’s simple. Just pay yourself first!” What? You can’t just pay yourself into wealth. You have to create the wealth. Build the business. Land the great job. Earn the money, and THEN you save money and become rich. Right?
Wrong. Want to get rich? Pay yourself first. Want to pay off the mortgage in retire with money in the bank? Then pay yourself first. Have financial problems? Pay yourself first.
In fact, the less money you earn the more important it is to pay yourself first.Continue Reading Pay Yourself First
Money is a complicated topic. It is often very obvious what a person must do to improve their financial situation, but getting someone to change their financial habits and attitudes is hard. Good financial advice seems to go in one ear and out the other as clients continue to repeat the same destructive patterns over
Do you know where you want to be in 20 years? What does that picture look like?
When facing debt problems, it is very important to envision what you want your financial life to look like in 20 years. Because when you fail to have a clear vision of what the ideal life looks like,