Personal Finance Questions...SO LOST!!!?

Ollie Desalvo: In any system if the rich become richer ,the poor naturally become poorer .Simple!Think of bringing about a change in the system that ensures equitable distribution of national wealth.Individual cases carry little weight

Cody Petrulis: All your answers have been a HUGE help! I just went grocery shopping, went coupon shopping online as well, and came in way under what I wanted to set aside for my food budget for the month! One thing I am begining to notice, though, is that your budget tends to change slightly from month to month...such as the unexpected bills (like the ones I have had this month of changing auto insurance to save money and a vet bill cause my pup got an ear infection) as well as the unexpected income (FASFA and tax returns, for example). I do have a bill book, as I call it, where I write down what I have due each month, and I usually know the round about number of the bills for each (cells are 150, cable/phone/internet package 170, ! electricity around 100 each month, rent 600..and so forth) but it seems that after all this is paid out...all the money just goes POOF and paying off those old debts isn't ever going to happen. Should I call them and set up small payment plans to get them paid off?...Show more

Vernon Martorana: the correct answers are 1 C 2 D 3 B 4 D 5 D 6 C 7 B 8 A 9 A 10 D

Cliff Tyre: It's great to see that you have goals set and have a time line for these goals. I definately understand the full-time college situation, as I am *almost* done with college myself. Anyway, some advice I've learned in my personal finance classes:Before you start budgeting, you need to do two things to understand what you are dealing with:1) Track every single penny you and your husband spend for at least 1 month. In our class we did this in check registers, but an excel worksheet would also work, or a notebook if you want to go that route. 2) Save every bill that comes into your mailbox for at ! least 1 month. This includes rent, cell phone, tuition, credi! t card, store credit cards, and any other utilities or loans you have in your name. Organization:1) Once you have this information, organize it into categories that make sense to you -food, clothes, tuition, whatever you think needs to be a category for your spending. 2)Add up all the costs for each category so you know how much you are spending each month on each thing. Add up all your available, take-home income, so you know how much money you have to use in your budget. 3) Subtract your expenses from your income. If it is a positive number, congratulations, you aren't in a major financial crisis, but if it is negative you will need to do a lot more work to pull yourself out of the situation. Budgeting:1)Pay yourself first. Everyone says this, but many people don't actually do this. Even I am having trouble paying myself first, as I am trying to get through college without taking out an institutional loan-its tough! Set aside $100-$200 per month for this purpose ! right away, and always put that money in your savings account before paying other bills. 2) Make sure your essential bills are paid each month: housing, food, and anything else that you need to survive in your situation, such as cars or your tuition. If you track your spending for multiple months, take an average of the amount. 3) If you still have money left over at this point, you can look at your other bills and put them into your budget as you see fit. Eliminate things you don't have to have, such as cable TV or pedicures. For these things, see if you can cut back on them, to reduce costs. 4) This step is tricky. Gather up the latest statements you have from any debts, and head over to http://www.powerpay.org. This is a great site to help you figure out what bills to pay off first and how to get rid of debt fast. Add these payments to your essential bills, and remove non-essential spending if you are over budget. *A budget will change from month-to-month, so i! t will need more attention than just setting it up. You can change it ! as your situation changes. This is a lot of information, and if you want more help contact me and I can give you some more specific help. Good luck!~Elle...Show more

Weldon Totaro: Sorry! You've already got some long ansewrs. I tried to shorten this up. I actually wrote it for my church group, where I'm the treasurer last month.Get rich slowly. In my own family, on my mom's side, my grand parents' generation were farmers. They had an expression, "Farmers live poor and die rich." Farmers work very hard: they get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and just keep on going. Farming is hard work. But, if you own the farm, it is a nice investment in real estate, and when you go to retire, you can sell it to a developer, who will put in a shopping mall.Another expression, "Live poor -die rich; conversely, live rich - die poor." Investing is a very personal activity and reflects your values, preferences, personality, family situation, life-style and even your faith.A famous 100-yea! r study was done on American investing, analyzing the stock and real estate markets. The results indicated that over 100 years, the rate of return on large-cap stocks was about 11%, small-caps about 12% and real estate about %11. Knowing this, if history is any indication of the future, the long-term returns could be comparable - long-term.Here's some math. Invest conservatively in large-cap, conservative equities, preferably in mutual funds for diversification and risk-management, and in the long-term, you can ear 11%, before taxes. put the money in a retirement account, and pay the taxes later, when you are retired and in a lower tax bracket.11% compounding is 23.2% after two years and 36.7% after three years, 51.8% after four, 68.5% after five, 87% after six years and 108% after seven. So what this means is that you are doubling your money every 7 years. Invest for the long-term, and you will get the additional; benefit of not having to go through the emotional roller-co! aster rides of the day-to-day market fluctuations, unless you just enjo! y that kind of thing. So here's the model. If you are 25, you can invest $10,000 and have $20,000 when you're 32, $40,000 when you're 39, $80,000 when you're 46, $160,000 when you're 53, $320,000 when you're 60, $640,000 when you're 67 and $1,280,000 when you're 73 - should you live so long - theoretically.99% of the get-rich-quick schemes, and there are literally millions of them, benefit the persons promoting them and not you. after all, if there was such a good deal available, why wouldn't they invest everything they had in it? Why would they spend their time trying to tell you about it? Are their motives charitable? I don't think so.So it's up to you, ultimately. My best advice is here, what I just wrote. I'll close with a story. There was a very wealthy man, who also lived a lavish life. He had a lady secretary, who carried out his investment orders on a daily basis. Little did he know that his secretary was a very smart lady. She knew that he was a good investor. So e! very time she executed one of his investment orders, she bought some on her own account, with her own money.In the end, because of her modest life style, she became very wealthy, and the wealthy man, because of his lavish spending, eventually lost everything he had."Unrealistic", you say? No, not at all. This little story is as real as it gets, and it's played out a hundred and a thousand, and maybe a million times every day. Read the life story of a little boy who saved his money, named Warren Buffet...Show more

Herma Ellebrecht: My best advice is to go to www.Dave Ramsey.com or buy his book the "Total Money Makeover" it will walk you step by step on how to get organized, budget, get out of debt and how to then get ahead and become prosperous. this is no gimmick, this is common sense and lifestyle change that works.

Bryan Avinger: I second what cridler and Dave R said. The book "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey quite literally changed my life. I am s! o much more financially sound than I was two years ago when my sister g! ave it to me.

Robt Betker: Hey, totally feel where you're coming from. Budgeting is tough, but it's something you'll better at the more you do it. There are lots of guides online to making a budget, though my personal fave is Dave Ramsey. (No I'm not him and have no relation to him; my last initial is just a coincidence)The way you deal with bills that pop out of nowhere is by building an Emergency Fund. Dave differs from other financial gurus in many ways, but one of which is that the first step of his 'plan' is to set aside $1000 for an emergency fund. THEN start paying off debt. The idea is that the 1000 dollar cushion will keep you from putting those unexpected bills on your credit cards and keep your budget on track. I wish I had an easy solution! Seriously though, check out Dave Ramsey and do everything he says and you'll be in a very different situation in 6 months. http://www.daveramsey.com...Show more

Alden Soldano: I have some suggestions, not ! as an expert:Make a run down total of all of your outstanding debts or request a copy from all credit report agencies to see your outstanding debts and your credit score.Stop buying on accumulate intetest or compound dividends credit cards.Use your bank debit cards only when it is necessary to pay your bills and make purchases...Control your spending on your grocereies purchases, save on your energies used by watching for only 5 days a week and cut your long distance phone calls usage.Save as much you can, just being afraid to withdraw money for uneccessary used, don't waist money.Invest your money instead on a good mutual funds with long-term/ low yelds or short-term/ high yields growth fund, speak to a broker from a major brokerage firm...Be cost saving and invite your friend at home for a small feast...when you can, rent movies or buy them at a retail store....Show more

Gerardo Greist: You should get The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. This will cure all your ! ills.In the mean time I have an article I will share that was written o! n my blog about budgeting: http://personal-financial-advising.blogspot.comPersonal Financial Freedom: Personal Financial Advising - Budgeting Personal Financial Freedom Mini Series: Lesson 1This personal financial freedom mini series is intended to help the average person gain a knowledge about that concept of personal finances and help enable them to manage their own personal finances in a responsible way. If you are a first time visitor I suggest you go back to the previous post and catch up on all that this Personal Financial Freedom Mini Series is about.Okay, now that you are up to speed I want to get into today's lesson. The topic for today's lesson is Personal Finance Budgeting. The first step in becoming financially responsible is to begin with a personal financial budget. Without a personal financial budget there is no way one can possibly track their income and spending properly.Before moving on to what personal finance budgeting is I want to explain why budgeting! is so important. Okay, lets say you decide to start a new business. We will say a personal financial advising firm (just for the sake of this subject). When you start your personal financial advising firm the first thing you would do is plan out all of your expenses. Any person would logically budget for their expenses before they began because without planning out your costs you would have no idea of whether our not your personal financial advising firm would succeed. The next step would be to plan out your expected revenues. Then you would take the difference between the two and see how the numbers came out.This is exactly what a personal financial budget is for a business and people should handle their personal finances in the exact same way. When making a personal financial budget it is important to include everything that involves your money. This includes all income and expenses.A personal finance budget should include the following components in it (The components l! isted below are just a sample and many different ones can be found on t! he Internet). You can also find personal finance budgeting software on the Internet. This software is made so that you can easily enter all your income and expenses and it does everything else for you.The components included in a personal financial budget are both income and expenses. Examples of income in a personal financial budget include job income, gambling winnings, capital gains, social security, tax refund, etc... Examples of expenses in a personal financial budget include savings, electric bill, health insurance, cell phone, groceries, books, shoes, clothes, car insurance, gas, entertainment, travel, miscellaneous. This expense list is my no means complete. Anything possible thing that you can think of that you might need to spend money on should be included in your personal financial budget.I have to go off on a little tangent here. I know that some of you readers are thinking to yourselves "Savings? What? That's not an expense!" Wrong!! As a personal financial ad! visor I'm here to tell you that savings should indeed be considered an expense. Each month people should personally budget for a certain amount of their income to go into savings. This should not be a "if I have money left over" situation. It should be definite and as automatic as writing that check for your house payment each month. The most fundamental concept of persona financial budgeting is to control spending and use your money wisely so that you have money left over rather than having no money or being negative (going into debt).After listing all of your income and expense on your personal budget worksheetyou need to subtract the expenses from your income and get a Net Cash Flow for the month. The goal is to include all income and costs and come out with positive net cash flow on your personal financial worksheet. If the number comes out negative then you have a problem and your expenses will need to adjusted accordingly.So now you know exactly what a personal financ! ial budget is and how to make one. The next thing I would suggest for y! ou to do is run a few Google searches and try to find a template of a personal financial budget worksheet. I would suggest searching "personal financial budget", "personal budgeting worksheet", or "personal budget template". Actually, I'm gonna run a few searches my self and see if I can provide a link or two for you (I hate to drive track away from my website by providing links). Here is a link to a Personal Monthly Budget Template. This is made to run with excel and come from the Microsoft website. It is the best one I could find.I know, I know, you just read my link and are saying what??? A Personal MONTHLY budget template. Yep, that's right! You need to keep a personal financial budget for every month. No, you cannot simply make one personal financial budgeting plan for the whole year and stuff it away in a drawer somewhere to forget about it. Every month things change. Our income levels change and your expenses change and these changes need to be accounted for.What you! need to do to be successful with your personal financial budgeting plan is make out a projected personal financial budgeting plan for the whole year. Then as each month goes by you can make individual monthly adjustments. The other important thing to do is keep track of your actual income and expenses and compare that to your personal financial budgeting worksheet. You want to make sure that your original estimates were correct or at least close.When making comparisons between personal financial budgeting estimates and your actual financial a situation you want to adjust everything to make it work.The great thing about a personal financial budget is that it helps set you up for success and helps keep you from needing to use credit cards to get by. If you have set up your personal financial budget then you will be prepared for those unexpected financial burdens in life. If you have been sticking to your personal financial budget for six months and saving, say $100 a month, ! and also end each month with a positive $50 cash flow then there should! be no issues when your car breaks down and you suddenly need $300 to fix it. All is good because you have $600 in savings and an extra $300 from your positive cash flows each month.This is the essence of personal financial freedom, personal financial adivising and personal finance budgeting. If you can eventually build up a good level of savings then you can begin to be at ease with your personal financial situation and now be stuck worrying about how the next bill is going to be paid. Most people are clueless and don't realize that their unplanned/unwritten actual personal finance budget includes something like $2500 of income and $2700 of expenses each month.That should be about it for today's lesson. I know things were a bit jumbled and all over the place but I hope I was at least able convey what a personal budget is and why it is important to have one. I hope all of you can now go out and create your own personal financial budgeting plan. And for those that find it to! hard, employing a personal financial advisor might be a better option.Next time I will take a short break from the Mini Series and instead suggest a few personal financial budgeting software programs that are available out there.I hope this helps out. Feel free to read all the other articles at my website if you find them useful...Show more