NASHVILLE (WSMV) – The new year is a great time to get your financial house in order because. For a lot of us, it is partly psychological because you think about the new year meaning a fresh start and doing things differently.
Our personal finance house can be part of that fresh start in the new year. There are a lot of folks who don’t put together a budget and kind of live life by the seat of their pants.
Others create a budget but then because it is so rigid. They end up not following it. So, they are not much better off than someone who doesn’t have a budget at all.
These days, especially for younger people, it may make more sense to think in terms of broader categories or bigger buckets. This means prioritizing what I absolutely must spend money on.
What are the things that are nice to have, and then how much am I going to save?
The 50-30-20 budget that we typically call it focuses on wants needs and savings.
The fact that you don’t have any money right now is not necessarily a good excuse not to save. But it is certainly a common one.
Setting a smaller more realistic goal, and maybe even gamifying it where people do the 52-week savings challenge where a dollar is saved the first week and two dollars are saved the second week and so on.
That’s kind of fun and may keep your interest and may make you try a little harder to reach the goal. There are two reasons why I see personal finance issues being intimidating to a lot of folks.
One underlying issue is math and numbers, and so a lot of us just don’t like math. That intimidation and that feeling of being left out and not included in the markets is very real for some people.
But there is a solution, and that solution is learning more. However, you can or feel most comfortable receiving your financial education.
That’s something that you should focus on and invest in because it is an investment in you, your family, and your future. That’s very important and very valuable.
Experts say that another suggestion when it comes to saving money is to take yourself out of the equation.
Send a direct portion of your paycheck to auto-deposit into a savings account.
In that case, you are more likely to forget about it –and most importantly – leave it alone.
