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Informative Articles

About Natural Mineral Makeup
As a cosmetologist, I wanted to share some of my findings/experience with you concerning natural mineral makeup. Natural mineral makeup has been around a few years, but it seems the average person either hasn't tried them, and many have...

Giving Thanks for Online Opportunities?
Giving Thanks for Online Opportunities? © 2002 by Liz Hekimian-Williams Have you noticed that during the holidays a lot of us start reflecting about our lives more? We think about the meaning of life, our hopes and dreams, things we regret,...

How to Make Money
For years I believed that if I only had more money all of my problems would be solved. Then I would get a raise or change to a better paying job and my money situation didn't change. I just couldn't understand why. The fact is that most people...

Money Worries?
If you are worrying about your money problems it's time to STOP IT NOW! Easier said than done, huh. In my 25 to 30 years working with personal money management problems I have never seen worry help solve the problem. In fact it has just the...

Picking a New Dentist on Your new Dental Plan
Most people you talk to dislike going to the dentist, it’s definitely not one of life’s most exciting moments! Finding a dentist that you like and feel comfortable with going too doesn’t have to be difficult but it will require you to do some...

 
How To Stick To Your Budget

I've had a lot of people tell me that setting up their
budget was simple but when it came to living by it
payday after payday they admitted losing interest in
a very short time.

Let's face it. The day to day drudgery of trying to
figure out how to best spend your money isn't the most
interesting aspect of our lives.

Let me see if I can make the budget process a little
more appealing to you. I don't have any magic or secret
process to tell you about but I do have a method that
will show you why a budget doesn't have to be boring.

I can do this with one word. GOALS

When we think of goals most of us look far into the future
to our retirement. That's the problem. It's hard to
imagine when your 20 what you will need when you are 65.

Accomplishing your goals doesn't have to take a lifetime.
Even when they do you can set milestones along the way to
break it up and get a sense of accomplishment much earlier.

If you have problems staying on a budget try setting some
short term goals. We can start with an easy one. Try to
save $100 without missing it.

Unless you have no income at all this is easy. Don't spend
any coins for any reason. If you buy something for 25 cents
break a dollar. Then all you have to do is put the change out
of your pocket or purse in a jar every day.

This sounds simple enough and you've probably heard about
saving change before. If you are a skeptic like I was you
probably think that this isn't going to lead to any real
savings at all.

Let's get back to that $100 I was talking about. How long
do you think it would take you to save enough change to
equal $100. 6 months? 1 year?

The fact is that the average person can save $100 in less
than three months. In some cases even sooner. That's not
very long to accomplish a


goal.

Now let's look at setting milestones using the same method.
Roll your change once a month to see how close you are to
your goal. Write down how much you saved that month on a
piece of paper and put that and your rolled change back in
the jar. Keep doing this until you've reached your $100
goal.

Now, what do you do with that $100? You could put it in a
savings account and earn a little interest but it still
wouldn't be worth much more than $100 even after a year.

My suggestion would be to pay it on one of your credit cards.
That way you could turn that $100 into much more with
the interest you would save.

It may sound like I strayed from the topic of this article by
talking about saving your change. Actually a budget is just
a system of reaching goals. You do this by working backwards.
You decide what it is you want to do and then make all of your
money decisions based on that end.

Setting up and maintaining a budget is going to take
organization and discipline. This task will be much easier
if you are working toward something you really want.

To learn more about Budgets you can visit The Complete
Budget and Bill Organizer
http://www.homemoneyhelp.com/BBOonline.html
to find Budget Stretcher's free budget system complete
with all of the forms and worksheets.


About the Author

Terry Rigg is the author of Living Within Your Means - The Easy
Way http://www.homemoneyhelp.com/ebookadpage.html and editor
of The FREE Budget Stretcher Newsletter and Budget Stretcher
web site http://www.homemoneyhelp.com. He has 25 years of
experience counseling individuals and families concerning their
personal finances. Use this email link to get a list of all of
Terry's articles by autoresponder at:
mailto:articlelist@budgetstretcherpremium.com

 

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money.cnn.com
 
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Personal Finance - Get financial advice and information from Forbes.com.
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Personal Finance Newsletter
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Content Menu
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