Financial Mistakes That Can Wreak Havoc in Your Married Life – Avert Them to Stay Safe
It is nothing new that disagreements over financial matters is one of the primary reasons behind couples ending up in the divorce court. Although financial advice for married couples is readily available, yet they prefer continuing their fight over petty fiscal issues. If you and your partner are like most other couples, chances are high that you fight about money.
While you might hear advices that tell you to talk about money with your partner, talking is not always the only trick that works. In fact according to a study by a famous magazine group, it has been found out that 75% of couples talk about money every week. Still where's the problem? The problem is that most of us don't know how to talk about money as most couples tend to be emotional and reactive about money rather than being strategic. When emotions take a grip on you, you tend to take wrong fiscal decisions and this leads to couples drowning in debt. If you want to follow a debt free life, educate yourself on the most common fiscal mistakes that can wreck your married life.
- Combining your finances: One of the biggest issues that the newlyweds usually face is how to handle their finances. Most couples are struggling with this as they wonder whether or not they should merge everything and have a joint single account or whether they should have individual personal accounts and a joint account only for household expenses. A survey shows that 65% couples put their money in joint accounts and the rest of them keep everything in separate accounts. For the newlyweds, the choice should be somewhere in the middle as you should have some autonomy money. When one spouse enters into a hefty debt load, the other spouse can use his/her funds to help the other.
Sneaky ATM Fees
Many banks are now allowing you to take cash out at an ATM even if you don't have enough in your account. This may sound generous of them until you realize they are doing this to make big overdraft fees from you.
Of course, it would be easy for the bank to program the ATM to alert you if you try to take more than you have in the account, so the intention is clear. They want those fees, even if getting them comes from a mistake on your part. To avoid this, check your balance before you make a withdrawal (so far there is no fee for this).
This article comes from Steve Gillman's Secret Information Newsletter. I highly recommend checking out Steve's site: https://everywaytomakemoney.com/
Having THINGS is OK
In a day and age where material excess has been the cause of financial disaster for lots of people, we find that many tend to misunderstand that having material possessions is NOT a bad thing.
The problem is that most don't know how to have balance; they instead are either at one extreme or the other.
What do I mean?
Well, they are either at one end of the spectrum where they are frivously spending money they don't have, maxing out credit cards, over leveraging themselves to purchase things.
Digging themselves deeper and deeper in debt, stressing themselves out to "keep up with the Joneses".
But I've heard it said several times over the past few years, "quit trying to keep up with the Joneses, because the Joneses are broke also!!"
Are You Paying Too Much for Insurance? (Audio Blog)
Sometimes, it only takes a few moments to save several hundred dollars. Reassess your insurance needs and see if you're paying too much.
Membership Doesn’t Always Have Its Privileges
One of the best places to cut back on expenses is monthly memberships. Most memberships people have are not being used enough to justify paying the monthly fee.
Businesses know this, and they realize if they can get you into an ongoing membership, it's a continuous stream of income for them. In fact, they make it easy for you to forget all about it by getting your credit card number once and then conveniently billing you monthly so "you don't have to do anything!"
If you start paying close attention you'll find these continuity programs, as they're called, everywhere. Salons/spas, streaming TV, SAAS, auto clubs, professional associations, nutritional products and just about anything you might think of buying through an infomercial.
You must determine whether the benefits (i.e. discounts, savings, etc.) you get from the product or service justifies the monthly cost.
Create Your Own Personal Finance Strategy
If you’re like me, when making a decision, you like to
research and compare different methods before deciding which way to go. This has definitely been true for my wife and me as we’ve pursued our wealth journey. And once again, if you’re like me, what you’ve probably found is there are so many different perspectives on how to build wealth. It could be enough to drive you mad!
So who’s right? Believe it or not, I would go so far as to say that much of the financial information, strategies, etc. out there is good in it own way. Until discovering my own personal finance strategy,we tried a lot of different things before just narrowing it down to what has worked consistently for us. So I’m not one to say that there is one specific philosophy to follow. Heck, I even encourage you to contrast different “gurus” to see which one works best for you. Because you will find that you are able to pick and choose from different advisors and tailor it to your needs in order to reach financial freedom.
From 6-Figure Debt to Financial Freedom: My 4-Step Plan
Guest post from Trea S. Branch of Trea's Two Cents
- We dream of being able to support family financially without being set back
- We dream of traveling at will, all over the world
- We dream of sending our kids to college, completely paid for
- We dream of quitting the 9-5 gig waaaaay before we’re 65
- We dream of not having to work for money
- My husband and I dream of financial freedom, and here’s how we plan to get there
Cut Your Costs and Spending by Creating an Expense Management Plan
A major step in achieving financial freedom is cutting costs and managing expenses. It’s important to understand how an expense differs from debt.
I define debt as money you already owe someone else. An expense, on the other hand, is money that you will pay someone else in the future. This is a crucial distinction to understand. To give you an example, let’s take paying for your monthly electricity bill. When you receive your bill, it usually comes before the due date. That makes your electricity bill an EXPENSE (for now) because you will pay it by the due date (let’s say the 15th). Now, if the 16th of the month comes and you haven’t paid that bill, it becomes DEBT because you now owe it to the electric company.
A good way to think of it is this:
- Expenses get paid forward
- Debt gets paid backward
Because of this, I don’t classify expenses as good or bad. Instead, I like to think of expenses as necessary or unnecessary.
A Simple Formula on How to Attain Financial Freedom
After several years of research, reading all types of money making books, investing in all types of business opportunities, Gina and I realized a simple way that’s helped many people become financially free.
I won’t pretend that I have the magic formula that will: make you $100,000 in 3 minutes while you sit on the couch, or allow you to retire next week without ever leaving the house! I’m not saying that folks who sell those programs are lying because I haven’t done them all, but years ago, I tried a couple of them and let’s just say the only thing that happened while I sat on the couch was I made an imprint!
Let’s face it: If you truly want to get rich & achieve financial independence, it’s going to take some work! However, if I told you that you could become rich and increase your net worth (regardless of how much money you currently make) by using a tried and true formula that consists of 3 simple steps, would you believe me? Well you should, because it works!
How do I know? Because We Have Used This Formula to Continually Increase Our Net Worth Over the Past 20+ years!