Planning - Where did the money go?

I am sure many of you have been in a situation where you needed to make a purchase and realized that you did not have enough money. There were probably other times where you looked up and made the statement “where did the money go?” expecting to have more available cash than what was in your pocket or checkbook.

Unfortunately running out, or running low on available cash, happens to more of the population than you might expect, you are not alone. Getting out of living day-to day, week-to-week, or month-to-month will take a little effort on your part. First and foremost you must decide to change your current financial situation. Secondarily, you must develop the discipline needed to follow-though with a financial plan. Following-though with the plan might mean temporally giving up some non-essentials, which individually might not be much, but collectively and in total could add up to significant savings.

It is extremely important that you develop a plan, and in order to develop the plan you must first have a complete understanding of your current financial picture. Purchase a personal financial application that can place your current financial situation in a form where it is more easily seen and manageable. Unfortunately, visibility alone is not enough; the application must be able to present your finances in a manner that displays your financial potential. Displaying your financial potential will open the doors to achieving your goals.

Living Budget Pro is a personal financial planning and management tool that can answer, meet, and exceed your financial management and reporting requirements and can help you achieve your goals and improve your financial position. Consider purchasing Living Budget Pro today!

Planning - Do you want to purchase a house? Does your credit stink?

Are you one of the many thousands of families that are looking to purchase a home? Are you having problems qualifying because your credit scores are too low? As you have probably noticed, low and poor credit costs you dearly. Generally, low or poor credit means if you qualify, you will be paying more interest on loans. This is actually costing you significantly over the life of your loan.

The goal here is to improve your credit, and that can be accomplished by first and foremost paying your bills early or on-time. Secondarily, if you are carrying substantial debt in the form of high balances on credit cards, you will need to implement a strategy for paying them down as well. You might be saying, “How am I going to pay all these bills since I am already against the wall”? Please know there are always alternatives and ways to get out of your current situation. You should know that a lack of knowledge is all that stands between you and success. In today’s world it is easy to find the information you need to overcome your current situation.

Again, first and foremost, you must start paying your bills early or on-time. If you are having problems in this area, then I would suggest that you purchase an advance planning and budgeting software tool. The software should allow you to easily input in all your income and debt sources, which when complete will show you the current state of your financial affairs. The software should also show you where you are short and don’t have enough to pay a debt.

After reviewing the results and determining that you truly don’t have enough to pay the debts, you need to determine what you can pay. In determining what you can pay you must determine how much money you need to live on and or otherwise maintain your household. Be very realistic and careful as you determine these needs. A good financial planning software package will provide the tools for you to document your need and see the actual impact of those needs against the total budget. Additionally, the software should provide a means for you to determine how much you can actually pay each one of your creditors.

Armed with knowing how much you can actually pay each creditor, call them up and discuss lowering your payments. Most creditors would rather discuss payment structures rather than see the account lapse and move into collections. You should know that creditors loose money by having to sell accounts to collectors which pay far less than the amount of the loan. And by the way, don’t say within yourself, “I can’t do that”; determine within yourself that you can do it, and place the calls today.

If you found after using the financial planning and budgeting tool that you can pay your bills early and on-time, determine your actual household needs as previously discussed. Work with the software to determine the excess spendable income which became apparent when you scaled down you actual household needs. Next consider applying the excess spendable income to your high interest credit cards and pay each one down.

Finally, be patient. It took a while for you to get into your current financial situation and it might take some time to repair it and become financially stable. Goals have a tendency to keep us focused and on-track, use the prospect of that new house or car as a goal to stay the course and spend within your means according to your budget.

Living Budget Pro from CLB Systems LLC is more than a budgeting program, financial planner, or personal finance application. Whether you have good credit, bad credit, need financial advice, money saving tips, or you just want to maximize your cash flow, Living Budget Pro can help. Besides revealing your financial potential, Living Budget Pro’s visual approach and methods will help you develop good financial habits. Living Budget Pro easily accomplishes all the tasks described in this blog plus more. Consider purchasing Living Budget Pro today!

General - My spouse spent all the money, now what?

Are you running into a situation where every time you go to pay your bills you find that the money has been spent? Is your spouse spending without regard for, or without consideration of the ongoing monthly expenses? Well unfortunately, this is an all too common scenario in most households.

As with most problems your goal should be to discover the root cause of the problem. Getting to that root cause however, requires that you expose the problem. You might be thinking “I have already told him or her about the problem”, and you might recall the times where you have presented the list of extra charges and late fees which were a direct result of the overspending. Well, let’s consider a different approach to providing visibility to the situation.

Most of the time it is not enough to just provide visibility to your financial situation, you will need to provide incentive in order to get a positive response to the picture being presented. This incentive should be in the form of dreams and goals. Your mission then is to start by providing a clear picture of your current finances. Once the current picture is presented, begin presenting a picture that represents the path to reaching those goals. Again, most people will find incentive to stay the course when they can clearly see a path to success.

The approach we have presented should work for people who have problems keeping focused, and truly desire to reach their goals. Unfortunately, this approach might not work for individuals who have deeper issues, but following this plan couldn’t hurt, and would at least provide you with more knowledge of your financial position.

If you are looking for a tool that can clearly provide the types of visibility described in this blog, consider purchasing Living Budget Pro. Living Budget Pro was designed to help people achieve their goals and improve their financial position.