Happy New Year! One important step in setting financial goals is establishing or reviewing your budget. After all, how can you tell your money where to go if you don’t know where it’s been? Continue reading “The Number One Budget Breaker and How to Avoid It This Year”
As I reflect on the past year, I have plenty of personal milestones to celebrate (getting married and starting my career at Financial Finesse top that list), a couple things to mourn (my family lost two of our beloved pets), and quite a few more things to keep working on (this WILL be the year that I get back into those designer jeans!). Spending some time performing a “year in review” can be therapeutic. Recognizing how far you’ve come, even if you’re not quite where you want to be yet, is important to keeping you on the path to your goals. Continue reading “Start 2016 Right With This Reflective Exercise”
For some reason that I can’t quite figure out, I’ve been getting a bit contemplative about my future lately. Maybe it’s because my daughter is about to turn 20 and she’s been reminding me that I’m very old and falling apart so I should think about my future while I am still lucid. Letting my mind wander a bit to what my life could look like when my youngest goes away to college and I’m officially an empty-nester (unless they move back in!), I realized that I have a lot of options on the table. For my job, all I really need is a telephone, a good Wi-Fi signal and an airport. Those three things are available virtually anywhere on the planet. Continue reading “Nomads Don’t Have To Be Hobos”
Our newest blogger, Cynthia Meyer, wrote an excellent blog post on Monday about a “two hour a week money prescription.” While I think her suggestions can work perfectly for many people, others may find that even two hours a week seems like an unrealistic amount of time to be spent on finances. If you’re in that camp, don’t worry! Continue reading “The Less Than 2 Hours a Week Money Prescription”
My friends often laugh at how quickly my life changed within about 18 months. I was happily single with plans to be a working woman with no husband and no kids. A friend of mine told me that I needed a life and suggested I check out a dating website. I said “never” but was intrigued… Continue reading “From Single to Married With a Baby”
When one of my colleagues recently sent me an article titled “The Five Biggest Myths About Saving Money, According to a Millennial,” I was intrigued. After all, it can be fun to bust myths, especially about something as important as saving money, and hearing a Millennial perspective is interesting, both because I might be one myself (I was born in 1979 and Millennials are sometimes described as being born in the late 70s and other times in the early 80s so maybe I’m actually something called an Xennial) and because they (or we) are the future. The article features the views of Ethan Bloch, the 30-yr old founder of Digit, an online financial company. Here are the “myths” about saving that Bloch aims to correct: Continue reading “The Five Biggest Myths About Saving Money?”
Joining the planner team at Financial Finesse was a game-changer in my career and in my life. After years of frustration and creative effort to find ways to provide people with unbiased truth about how to make the right financial decisions for themselves, I’m finally free of the shackles of compliance, the pressure to sell and the need to gather assets. The sad reality is that there are very few avenues where financial planners can provide unbiased information while making a living and staying within the regulations of their industry. Continue reading “3 Things I Didn’t Tell Clients as a Financial Advisor”
As a former financial advisor turned financial educator, I enjoyed my relationships with my former clients. I watched my former clients go from single, to married, to having kids and unfortunately in some cases, to divorced. I have cried with them over divorces, job losses, and deaths of a spouse or parent and cheered with them at the announcement of a child, a promotion or the start of a new business. The earlier a client told me about their situation, the easier it was for me to strategize the most cost-effective way for them to transition into their new situation. In many cases, I would find out after the fact. Continue reading “You Better Contact A Financial Advisor If…”
Want free help with your finances? From the beginning of Oct to the beginning of Nov, the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING™ Board of Standards, the Financial Planning Association®, the Foundation of Financial Planning, and the US Conference of Mayors are offering Financial Planning Days in cities all across the country. At each event, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals will be volunteering to provide free one-on-one financial counseling and education sessions to members of the public without selling products, giving out business cards, or collecting contact information. Continue reading “How To Get Free Help With Your Finances”
Did you know that this week is the Financial Planning Association’s® 14th annual “Financial Planning Week?” The purpose of the week is to raise awareness of the financial planning process and to enable individuals and families to make prudent financial decisions. You can visit FinancialPlanningDays.org to see if a one-on-one financial planning advice event or educational workshops is being offered in your area. In the spirit of smart financial decision making, here are 10 ways to celebrate Financial Planning Week along with some of our thoughts on how finesse your personal finances: Continue reading “10 Ways To Celebrate Financial Planning Week”
I was talking with a young man today who was facing a rather large debt load and was looking for a way to effectively manage that debt so that it doesn’t ruin his life or at least make it difficult to feel anything other than trapped by his debt. He bought a relatively inexpensive ($20,000) car, has around $8,000 in credit card debt and about $80,000 of undergraduate and graduate school loans. His salary today basically allows him to pay rent, his debts and a little bit of discretionary money for entertainment. He said that his life was not very much fun right now and he feels like he is suffocating. He sounded very frustrated and he joked that at this stage, he’d be willing to sell an organ to raise cash to pay off some of the debt. Continue reading “Here’s Your Next Superhero!”
Figuring out how to prioritize the various things you could do with your money is one of the key quandaries of individual financial planning. Should you use extra money to pay off your car loan, boost college savings for your toddler or finally take that trip to Australia? There are countless options, depending on your individual values and goals. But before working toward any of those goals, there are four aspects of your finances that should be in place, no exceptions: Continue reading “4 Financial Ground Rules For Everyone”
I recently was having a conversation with my niece and nephew about their future again. Have you ever tried to have a meaningful conversation with a 20 and 22 year old about finances? After about 5 minutes into the conversation, I could still see their physical bodies but I knew their minds were on another planet. So after what was a 5 minute conversation to me but probably felt like a 3 hour lecture to them, I stopped. Then I asked what it is that I was saying that rendered them brain dead. Continue reading “How To Talk To Twenty-Somethings About Money”
As newlyweds, my husband and I are just getting started on our money journey. To get and stay on the same page, we have a bi-weekly money meeting where we dig into our finances, which saves us from money fights and also keeps us accountable to completing tasks needed to get us to our goals. One thing we’re working on is creating our family financial plan to make sure we are fully aligned on money going forward, using these 8 steps. Even if you’re not a newlywed, you can follow these steps to get a plan in place for your family. Continue reading “The 8 Step DIY Financial Plan for Newlyweds”
Recently, I was talking to one of my fellow financial planners, Teig Stanley, about how his day was going. When he told me he was going to a funeral parade, I asked for more information since that is not a normal weekend activity. His comments about his friend who passed away, Manfred, and life in general were so thoughtful that I wanted to share it in his own words: Continue reading “The Future Gift – One of the Secrets of Amazing People”
Okay, I am going to call this Confession Tuesday. I have spoken to so many people that struggle with creating a budget. I can hear the guilt and even shame in what seems to them like their inability to live within their means. Continue reading “How To “Budget-Bust Proof” Your Spending Plan”
The issue of paid maternity leave was in the news again last week when Netflix announced it was giving most of its workers a full year of paid leave upon the birth or adoption of a child. I’d like to think this is a growing trend for American companies and that by the time I’m ready to take maternity leave (no, Mom, this is not an announcement), it will be the norm instead of news. But the reality is that most workers who receive a maternity leave still only get the FMLA-mandated 12 weeks off and then only sometimes with pay. This means that in addition to planning for the added expense of a new person in your family, having a baby includes planning for a temporary (or sometimes permanent) reduction in household income. Continue reading “How Non-Netflix Employees Can Plan For Maternity Leave”
In a story that may or may not eventually turn out to be true, two men claim to have found a train that allegedly vanished at the end of the Nazi regime and it was (in theory) loaded with valuables. They are offering to share that location with authorities if they are given 10% of the value. There are all kinds of legal, ethical and moral questions that would surround a found former Nazi treasure trove should this train actually exist and should they be given a nice finder’s fee. That could, if it’s a whole train filled with valuables, be quite the fortune! What are they going to do with it? Continue reading “What If Money Fell Into Your Lap?”
We recently received a question on our Facebook page from a couple in their 50’s who are trying to decide between a fixed universal life insurance policy with a quoted return of “7% minus fees” vs paying off a mortgage with a 3.5% interest rate. This combines two common question topics: using permanent life insurance as an investment and paying off a mortgage early. Let’s take a look at some things to consider: Continue reading “Permanent Life Insurance or Mortgage Payoff?”
I am a big fan of the KISS principle when it comes to having a written financial plan.No, I don’t mean the Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons version of KISS. (Although I’m a big fan of Rock & Brews every time I’m out in El Segundo, California.) I mean Keep It Simple Stupid (or keep it simple smarty-pants if the word “stupid” is deemed offensive in your household). Continue reading “Is Your Financial Plan Too Complicated?”
