Part 3 Plan the Life You Want: Getting Started by Setting Financial Goals How to lead the life you want to have. It only takes a bit of financial planning to shape things so that our life is lived proactively and we can have more of the things we want. We all get thrown a curve ball now and then, but if we’ve thought ahead it will be easier to respond to the unexpected. Planning helps us get the most for our money on a day to day basis, even if we are currently living pay check to pay check. When we look at the overall financial picture, it is easy to see how each financial decision affects other areas. We are better prepared to make intelligent decisions, adapt to changes as we enter different stages of life and to set regularly updated priorities for our finances. It is the road ... [Read More]
Organization
Organize Your Financial Life Part 2 — I.C.E.
Whenever we travel by car, Wheels adds a pair of rubber boots to the cargo. Weather insurance, he says. If he has them along, it won’t rain. You have to know their twisted sense of humor to get the laugh out of that statement that he and Bytes do – but it has worked! Wheels has never had to wear those boots. Our topic today is like the “boots in the trunk”. No guarantee of sunny weather but you’ll be prepared – and everyone hopes those preparations are never needed. In the first post in this series, I told you we would use the information gathered for tax purposes for several other things as well. First of all, that nice neat pile of tax papers from that post is going I.C.E. In. Case. of Emergency. Most of us, if traveling for a year, would likely leave ... [Read More]
Organizing Your Financial Papers – Part 1 Preparing for tax time
Part 1 - Preparing for tax time Running a family is very much like running a business. We make projections, purchases, plans and provisions for the future. In order to do those things, we need basic financial information. Without it, we are operating in the dark, missing who knows what opportunities. Every family needs to know: what are the sources of our income and how much does each source provide, what is the total expenditure of our financial resources and where is it going, how are we going to manage income and expenses to maximize our finances. Each family needs plans for emergencies and for the future. The basics of all this information can be found in the material gathered for tax preparation. If you gather information as you go along and as the year end paper work ... [Read More]
Solving the wrong problem
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago . . . . Whenever I wanted to hang some pictures or fasten down a piece of renegade trim it took forever! Rummaging around in the garage for nails, tape measure, hammer. Shoving stuff around on a crowded shelf, unseen little boxes of little nails would shoot out on to the garage floor. Clean up the mess – of course, they were not what I needed for my project – and continue the search. Then one day I saw a little red toolbox Wheels cast aside – not big enough for him, but just right for me. I thought. I gathered up all the little nail packages and then as I found them or acquired new nails, hooks, fasteners and other miscellanea I threw them in the little red box. And congratulated myself on being “organized”. After all, we had a little red ... [Read More]