A solid financial plan can be the difference between achieving financial success and living pay to pay. Here’s how to create a concrete plan for the next five years that’s actionable and may be easier to stick to. More »
One of the common problems with finance software is that it needs to link with your bank account to give you useful financial information. If the thought of authorizing another webapp to see your financial data makes you queasy, try Spendful, a new service that offers transaction tracking and budgeting tools to help you figure out where your money is going, just without the link to your bank. More »
Personal finance blogger J.D. Roth is on the road towards making his money system completely paperless. Direct deposit, automatic savings transfers, Quicken, and auto bill pay gets most paper out of the way. Then Roth scans any paperwork that does come in to PDF with our favourite scanner—the Fujitsu ScanSnap—and then he shreds it. Nice to see how several parts of his paperless system has also evolved into an automated finance system, too. How do you make your money go without too much paper (or intervention)? Let us know in the comments. My Paperless Personal Finance System: A Work in Progress [Get Rich Slowly]
If you started investing $448 a month at 30 years old, Yahoo Finance says that a reasonable 8% return would put your savings over the million dollar mark in 35 years. The problem, of course, is finding that extra $450. To help ferret out every quarter in your couch cushions, the article suggests seven different potential expenses that, with slight adjustments, could easily produce the extra cash you need to start down the road to a million.
New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber offers a seven-word guide to choosing how you invest your money. Lieber writes: The author Michael Pollan offered an elegant seven-word mantra in his best-selling book “In Defence of Food” that provides clarity amid the bounty of choices on supermarket shelves: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Boiling down investing is a similar exercise: Index (mostly). Save a ton. Reallocate infrequently.
Personal Finance blog Funny About Money tweaks the concept of a “freedom account”—a single stash for irregular-but-common expenses like car repair and clothing—and comes up with targeted accounts. That means opening up a money market or similar small account for each kind of expense, based on how often it occurs, rather than track a bunch of expenses from a big fund. For example, I look to the irregular little surprises that can happen at any time (plumbing or car repairs, vet bills, etc.), annual expenses (car and home owner’s insurance, property tax, income tax), and long-term expenses (purchase of a new car, about once every ten years; major repairs or renovations on the house, which I hope don’t happen more often than about once every eight or ten years).
That way, the author states, big walloping expenses like car repair don’t throw off your budget and give you a clearer view at what you’re spending. Targeting your emergency savings [Funny About Money]
Mint, the web-based financial management application that took us by storm a few months back, is adding investment tracking to their already impressive feature set. Mint’s investments, currently in beta, tracks everything from the performance of your Roth IRA to the value of your 401k, all from its attractive, easy-to-understand interface. As with Mint in general, you’ll need to be comfortable trusting your data in their hands (if you’re curious, you can read more about their security measures here). Mint investments is currently in private beta, but if you follow the link, they’ve set up a page for Lifehacker readers to sign up. You should get access to Mint’s investments sometime next week, and we’ve been assured that there’s no limits on signups. In the meantime, hit the jump for a closer look at Mint’s investments interface.
In addition to your traditional checking, savings, and emergency accounts, financial weblog Get Rich Slowly suggests setting up another money bucket for irregular or unexpected expenses. Sock away money in a “Freedom Account” for expenses like clothes, vacations, and car maintenance. Setting this money apart from your regular monthly bills ensures you keep a tighter rein on what you spend on irregular expenses, and it also helps you set savings goals for larger purchases. Whether or not you’re already doing something along these lines, let’s hear how you track and manage your irregular expenses in the comments. Use a Freedom Account to Prepare for the Unexpected [Get Rich Slowly]
The Simple Dollar financial blog offers up a guide to creating a “Master Information Document”—a single piece of paper that’s locked away securely, explained only to family and very close friends, and which has all the information someone would need to put your finances and will in order if something happened to you. Blogger Trent recommends writing down information on all your open accounts, a list of all your debts and assets, and any estate-related documents, like a will or trust, in a filing cabinet or other secure place. We’ve offered a bigger-picture guide to organising your family’s information in case of emergencies, but Trent’s advice is sound, especially for anyone who hasn’t even glanced at the idea of emergency planning. Making and Maintaining a Master Information Document [The Simple Dollar]
