It’s All About Balance

Many of us have struggled to juggle our financial commitments and goals at some point. It’s all about how you adapt and balance it all. Balance is so important within your finances. You have to have a happy medium between spending and saving you money.

Goal Setting

Goal setting is one of my favorite things to do because I am a very goal driven person. Setting goals means discipline. You have to stick with your budget in order to meet your goals on time. Saving money tends to be easier when you have a certain purpose in mind. To develop a clear plan, these goals must have both a time frame and a dollar amount. Once you have listed and quantified your goals, you need to prioritize them. You may find, for example, that saving for a new home is more important than buying a new car. Be specific with your goals.

Pay Yourself

Save and invest 5-10% of your gross annual income. Of course, this can be much harder than it sounds. If you’re currently living from paycheck to paycheck, begin by creating a solid budget after tracking all monthly expenses. Once you figure out how you can control your discretionary spending, you can then redirect the money into a savings account. For many people, a good way to start saving regularly is to have a small amount transferred automatically from their paycheck to a savings account or mutual fund. The idea: If you don’t see it, you don’t miss it.

Have An Emergency Fund

Before you commit your savings to investments, make sure you have at least three to six months’ worth of expenses saved in an emergency fund to see yourself through difficult times. Keeping it liquid will ensure that you don’t have to sell investments when their prices are down, and guarantee that you can always get to your money quickly. If you have trouble deciding how much you need to keep on hand, begin by considering the standard expenses you have in a month, and then estimate all the expenses you might have in the future (possible insurance deductibles and other emergencies).

Generally, if you spend a larger portion of your income on irregular expenses that you could cut easily in a financial crisis, the less money you need to keep on hand in your emergency account. If you have dependents, you’d want to keep more money in your emergency fund to offset the greater risk.

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Have a Debt Repayment Plan

If you’re trying to save while carrying a large credit card balance at, say, 19.8%, realize that paying off the debt is a guaranteed return of nearly 20%. Once you pay off your credit cards, use them only for convenience, and pay off the balance each month. If you tend to run up credit card charges, get rid of the plastic and go back to using cash. Don’t buy it unless you can pay with cash. You never want to increase your bad debt unless absolutely necessary. It’s easiest to create this plan after you have figured out your monthly expenses and how much you can potentially put towards your debt each month.

Utilize Tax-Deferred Investments

If your employer has a tax-deferred investment plan like a 401(k) or 403(b), use it. Often, employers will match your investment. Even if they don’t, no taxes are due on your contributions or earnings until you retire and begin withdrawing the funds. Tax-deferred savings means that your investments can grow much faster than they would otherwise.

The same is true of IRAs, although the maximum amount you can invest annually in an IRA is substantially less than what you can put in a 401(k) or 403(b). You should also consider diversifying your investments. All investments involve some trade-off between risk and return. Diversification reduces unnecessary risk by spreading your money among a variety of investments. Aside from diversification, the single most effective strategy is to invest continuously over time, with a long-term perspective.

Create a Will

The simplest way to ensure that your funds, property and personal effects will be distributed according to your wishes is to prepare a will. A will is a legal document that ensures that your assets will be given to family members or other beneficiaries you designate. Having a will is especially important if you have young children because it gives you the opportunity to designate a guardian for them in the event of your death. Although wills are simple to create, about half of all Americans die without a will. With no will to indicate your wishes, the court steps in and distributes your property according to the laws of your state. If you have no children and die without a will, it’s even possible that the state may claim your estate.

To begin, take an inventory of your assets, outline your objectives and determine to which friends and family you wish to distribute your belongings. Then, when drafting a will, be sure to include the following: name a guardian for your children, name an executor, specify an alternate beneficiary and use a residuary clause which typically reads “I give the remainder of my estate to …” Once your will is drafted, you won’t have to think about it again unless your wishes or your financial situation change substantially. I intend on re-evaluating my will every ten years.

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How Retirement Works

For most people, it’s like this: you reach a certain age and start thinking about spending your days on the golf course or on a beach. Then you look at your bank statement and freak out and think about taking on a second job instead. You should be doing less and less work as you are getting older. Retirement accounts let you do less work. All you have to do is start a retirement account NOW, which I’ll show you exactly how to do.

How do retirement accounts work:

Many people mistakenly think that retirement accounts are just places for you to save money until you’re 65. Actually, they offer you humungous benefits if you agree to save for a long-term horizon. Let’s compare regular (taxable) investing accounts with how retirement accounts work.

Regular Investing Accounts vs. Retirement Accounts:

Regular Investing Accounts: When you open up an account at ETrade or whatever, you’re generally opening p a regular investing account, which is also called a taxable account. This means that when you sell your stocks, you’ll pay taxes on your gains-and if you sell your stocks in less than a year, you’ll pay a huge amount (regular income-tax rates, like 15% or 30%).

Retirement Accounts: Retirement accounts, quite simply, give you huge tax/growth advantages in exchange for your promise to save and invest for the long term. Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to hold the same stock for 30 years. You can buy and sell shares of almost anything as often as you want. But with a few exceptions, you have to leave the money in your account until you get near retirement age.

Here’s how retirement accounts work, and where the magical benefits kick in. In a retirement account, you get big tax benefits. While 10% or 20% may not seem like much in a year, when you compound that over 30 years, it becomes a gigantic amount. In fact, start a retirement account next week and two things will happen: (1) You will be more financially prepared than 99% of your peers, and (2) you will be rich. If you start a retirement account in your early 20’s and you fund it regularly, you will be rich.

Understanding Your 401(k):

A 401(k) is a type of retirement account. If you work for a company, chances are you already have one offered to you. Here’s how it works: You put pre-tax money into the account, meaning you haven’t paid taxes on it yet. In regular, taxable investing accounts, you pay taxes on your income and then invest it. So for every $100 you make, you might actually only be able to invest $85 of it. 15% (or whatever, depending on your tax rate) goes to the tax man. There’s an extra benefit, too: Your company might offer a 401(k) match. For example, a 1:1 match up to $2,000 means that your company will match every dollar you invest up to $2,000, therefore, investing $2,000/year really means you’re investing $4,000/year. Basically, your money goes into an investing account where a professional investing company manages it. You can choose from a bunch of different investing options, like aggressive, mixed, international, etc. Don’t worry about switching jobs; if you leave your company later, you can take your 401(k) with you. And be aggressive with how much you contribute to your 401(k) because every dollar you invest now is worth many more times that in the future. The hardest part is making the first phone call to HR to get it set up.

401(k) Restrictions:

            The 401(k) isn’t tax-free. The government has to get its tax revenue sometime, so you’ll pay ordinary income tax on the money you withdraw around retirement age. You’re currently limited to putting $19,000/year in your 401(k). You’ll be charged a big penalty of 10% if you withdraw your money before you’re 59.5 years old.

401(k) Summary:

  • $19,000 annual limit
  • Pre-tax money
  • Company matches supercharge growth even more-this is free money you must take

Understanding your Roth IRA:

            A Roth IRA is another type of retirement account. Every person in their 20’s should have a Roth IRA. It’s simply the best deal I’ve found for long-term investing. A Roth IRA is different than a 401(k). A Roth uses after-tax dollars to give you an even better deal. With a Roth, you put in already taxed income into stocks, bonds, index funds-whatever- and you don’t pay when you withdraw it. Here’s how it works: When you make money every year, you have to pay taxes on it. With a Roth, you take this after-tax money, invest it, and pay no taxes when you withdraw it. If Roth IRA’s had been around in 1970 and you’d invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines, you’d only have had to pay taxes on the initial $10,000 income. When you withdrew the money 30 years later, you wouldn’t have had to pay any taxes on it. Oh, and by the way, your $10,000 would have turned into $10 million. You pay taxes on the initial amount, but not the earnings. And over 30 years, that’s a stunningly good deal. The maximum you can contribute into your Roth IRA is $6,000 per year.

Roth IRA Restrictions:

You are penalized if you withdraw your earnings before you’re 59.5 years old. (Exception: You can withdraw your principal, or the amount you actually invested from your pocket, at any time, penalty free.) There are other exceptions for example, buying a home or for emergencies. There’s a maximum income of $137,000 to make full contributions to a Roth.