Frequently Asked Questions

By maintaining a Personal Budget, you will know how much money you have at any given point. This will also help you know what you are spending your money on and where you are spending it.

It is important to track expenses vs. income and make sure you are funding savings and investments not just paying bills each month. A personal budget gives you one place to track and monitor all these activities.

Another benefit is: You can use it to set money aside for big purchases like a down payment on your next car.

• Emergency fund – Everyone should have an emergency fund. Why? Because if you lose your job or have an expensive home repair like a new furnace it will be less painful financially
• Vacation fund
• House down payment fund
• Car down payment fund
• Car repair fund
• Big purchase fund (i.e., a new couch)
• Holiday gift and birthday fund

If you fund all these each month when the time to use the money comes it will be less painful because the money will all be there ready for you. Plus, if you have an emergency fund the emergencies will hopefully prevent you from touching all your other savings funds.

Well, my philosophy is dividing your net pay into three buckets 55% for bills, 21% for wants and 24% divided between savings and investments.

So, when starting out I recommend at least 12% for investments from the 24%.

Because it takes a long time to build a comfortable retirement nest egg. In this instance the more time your have the more your money can grow for you over time.

So, fund your company 401K and take advantage of the company match, add you own personal or Roth IRA to that and invest as much as you can.

The answer is “Yes” for some and “No” for others.

You need to have financial discipline and good money habits - to make sure you’re saving money every pay period and remember this is you paying you.

If you can master this then you can apply this same philosophy to investing money each pay period as well.