5 Things I Want to Help You With

My blog exists to help people manage their money and finances. I want to help you with these five things:

1. Help you understand how and why you spend money

So many times we behave in certain ways out of habit, without ever really stopping to think about why and how we’re doing something.  Habit, along with our past experiences, influences our behavior with our money as well.

Our past life experiences shape our present attitudes and behaviors in virtually every area of our life, including our feelings about money, savings, and financial security. When you were a child, the ways that you observed the adults in your life behaving with money shaped and influenced your developing attitudes and beliefs about money. Regardless of whether you are aware of it, the way you handle money now results from your experiences in the past.

2. Provide resources to help you track your spending and create a budget

The demands of life–work, family, and just getting by–never stop. We’re all working harder than ever, and at the end of a long day most people don’t have any time or energy left to devote to analyzing their spending patterns and developing a financial plan.

Yet we have all heard that old saying about when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. A strong financial future begins in the present, with your figuring out how much money you have coming in and how much you have going out. Tracking your spending and creating a budget are both vital steps in putting your finances in order as well as making progress down the path of financial security.

3. Recommend ways you can cut expenses and save money

Whether you have a lot of money or a little bit coming in, you have to figure out a way to live on the money you have. When our expenses exceed our cash flow, we start to take on debt,  compromising both our present and future financial security.

Instead of going into debt with credit cards or loans, we need to live not just within our means but beneath it, saving rather than spending our extra money. Most unnecessary expenditures are not for big-ticket, expensive purchases. Instead, it’s the little purchases that add up, five ten, and twenty dollars at a time. Cutting costs in small ways adds up to big savings over the long term.

4. Help you develop good financial habits

Everywhere you look, you are surrounded by ways you can spend your money as well as images that make you feel like the most desirable lifestyles require you to spend lots of money. From fashion to food to family, the things you need to achieve the lifestyles the media promotes exist to separate you from your hard-earned money. Along with traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores, the internet offers a 24/7, 365-day a year global shopping bazaar that never closes. Our surroundings have conditioned us to be impatient and want things now, now, now!

Delayed gratification. It’s an old concept that’s not very popular these days. But in order to achieve financial stability, you must delay gratification and curb spending. Old habits die hard, so replacing bad financial habits with good ones can be a challenge at first. As with any other behavior, once you get used to the change, good financial habits become second nature.   

5. Provide information to help you achieve financial security

Although everyone’s circumstances differ somewhat, we are all facing a lot of the same challenges when it comes to budgeting and taking control of our money. You don’t have to make the journey to financial stability alone. I am here to help you. By writing about some of the challenges all of us face as well as offering strategies and methods for overcoming the difficulties, my goal is to provide you with reliable information that will enable you to make sound financial decisions, keeping you on the right track for achieving lifelong financial stability and security. Money can’t buy happiness, but money can provide us with opportunities to pursue our best life possible!

Conclusion

Taking stock of our personal finances will enable us to take control of our money and navigate the course of our own financial future. Although your present financial situation may seem discouraging, you can take control of your money, get out of debt, and get your finances in order for the future. The process is simple, but not always easy. Together, we can accomplish more than just one of us can ever do alone!