Looking for personal finance tips to improve your financial positions and to avoid money problems ? Spending less doesn’t mean you’ll have more. Saving is a good way to stabilize your finances, but you still need to invest. “Pretend there are two islands,” advises Aliche, who is also known as The Budgetnista: “Financially Stuck Island and Wealthy Island.” She says that your savings can be like a car—you can’t drive off Financially Stuck Island without a bridge. Investing is the bridge to financial success. “To get from one island to another, you need to get in your savings car and drive it over your investment bridge.”
To Understand Your Finances, You Have to Track Your Net Worth: Similar to a budget, it’s important you calculate your net worth, no matter how ugly it might be. The difference with this and budgeting? I actually look at my net worth monthly. It also can keep you on track and help you visualize where you are financially. There are some cool apps and online tools to simplify this process like Mint and my favorite, Personal Capital. See additional info on Make Money Tricks.
70% of Americans don’t have a will. If you have dependents, no matter how little or how much you own, you need a will. If your situation isn’t too complicated you can even do your own with software like WillMaker from Nolo Press. Protect your loved ones. Write a will. If you don’t keep good records, you’re probably not claiming all your allowable income tax deductions and credits. Set up a system now and use it all year. It’s much easier than scrambling to find everything at tax time, only to miss items that might have saved you money.
Have Financial Goals: If you want to accomplish financial goals, you need to figure out what goals are important to you first. Having a clear goal can keep you motivated and help you come up with a plan to reach that goal even faster. Now, don’t think that you need to set outrageous goals. If this is your first time thinking about personal financial goals, start off small and work your way up from there. I’d suggest coming up with a few different goals in each of these categories: What you want to achieve in the next 3-months, In the next year, In the next five years. This way you’ll have some short-term goals to look forward too, and some long-term goals to work towards as well. Your short-term goals may even be small stepping stones towards your bigger goals. So, remember to set long-term and short-term goals, and keep track of them too! Write them down somewhere and set a day each month to track your progress. Source: aspiretomoney.com.