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Since I just happen to be the world’s bet communicator and financial guru package all thrown into one ( don’t worry, I am definitely joking), I think we should spend some time talking about discussing finances with your significant other. This just happens to be one of the big things that couples do fight about and if you don’t work on your communicating and discussion skills, you just might make things alot harder than they should be.
Now I’m not saying that you won’t have a hard time talking about finances with your other half, but even difficult conversations can be successful. Let’s go over just a few of the basic points that will help you in talking to your significant other.
- Make clear what you want to talk about. If you don’t put the main point of your conversation up in the first minute or two, then you’ve lost direction of what your wanting to achieve.
- Stay on topic. If something else gets brought up, just write it down or make a note of it and go back to the original topic.
- Make sure that you and your other half say what your goals are for that topic (we’ll use saving for an emergency fund for this example). Once you both have what you want out on the table you can start to meld your two sets of goals together. You probably won’t meld things perfectly, but as long as each person knows that their thoughts and feelings are heard and considered, it will be much easier to reach common goals.
- Wrap up the conversation with a definite outcome. Kind of like writing your conclusion to a paper, you want to make sure at the end of your conversation that you say what your goals are and what y’all have agreed to. This closure to the conversation will make things much easier.
This is a basic conversation outline and will work for you when talking about your money. If you need to write points out ahead of time or whatever helps you to have a focused discussion, then do it.
DO NOT start being negative and critical of each other. This is really hard not to do when one of you is the spender and the other is the saver. Yes your different and both of you will have to make some changes, but stick to the goals you have set together and it will be much easier to achieve when your both running in the same direction.
Consistency seems to be the most important thing for training my dogs. In the same manner, consistency in your finances will help you to have much more peace of mind. When one or both of you seem to stray from your goals, bring the goals back up and make sure that you both still agree on what your saving for. Slip ups will happen, but you have to jump back on the horse and keep making progress.
You can achieve all sorts of great things with enough teamwork and dedication. Working on good communication skills
So I know that I’ve been gone for a while. I took some time off to take care of things. But now we go back to the all important thing of remembering to stick to the basics.
So what are the basics of financial management? How do you adapt and change the basic fundamentals to work best for you?
The absolute basic rule that you need to know about money is that you need to make more money than you spend. This is the basic rule that needs to be followed before anything else. So before you go any further, make sure that you are following rule number one. If you are on a downward spiral into debt, the first thing you have to do is stop moving backwards. Once you firmly decide and act against spending more than you make, you will start to see process. It might take a little while for you first success, but after the first one, you will see how much better things become.
The second rule of financial management is that you need to save money for your future use. This is a category with plenty of elements in it. If you are just starting on your way to good financial management, make sure that you only do one or two things in this category. I put this as the second rule because at the beginning you will be focused on getting out of debt, but the accumulation of wealth is a long and slow process and should be started as soon as possible to allow for the maximum return possible. At first you should just start some basic savings and then you can diversify and work on retirement, emergency funds, and extra savings for other expenses.
The third rule that you want to follow is to pay off your debt. When you have debt, you are paying your money and interest to someone instead of being able to use that money for yourself. There are a couple of exceptions such as buying a house, but you still want to pay that off as fast as possible. I can tell you from personal experience that when you no longer have to pay $500 dollars a month to debt, your life is tons better. This is while I wasn’t making very much and that was way more than I thought I could afford or deal with. With lots of work and effort, I was able to get out of that debt and the increase in cash that I could use for me was a gift from God.
The fourth rule is that you have to stay out of debt. This sounds like it makes sense, but a lot of people think that it won’t happen to them, but there are people who get out of debt and then get back into it. I have done this and it was because I stopped paying attention and got sloppy. So after you have gotten the basics of these four rules going, you can spend some time customizing a financial plan to yourself.
Considering that traveling and exploring is a hobby of mine, I have put a fair amount of time into figuring out ways to do it for less. The main things that I normally talk about are the main things. Think about that, it really does make a lot of sense. Most of the time we get caught up in things and don’t remember to keep the main things as the main thing. But for today, I think we should talk about some of the finer points of traveling.
The best thing you can do before you go somewhere is to talk to somebody who has already been there or done that. You can save yourself tons of time and money by learning from their good and bad experiences. Of course this is also going to help get you more excited about going on the trip as well. Not only will you get good ideas and information, you could find out about some neat things that they did to save money or that were a lot cheaper than they expected.
Buying in advance is great and horrible at the same time. For big things, such as a plane ticket, your normally going to find a great deal after a fair amount of detective work. I have found that on my trips that some of the things I needed, such as an electricity converter, were cheaper where I traveled to, plus I didn’t have to deal with packing them on the way there. Perhaps a phone or phone card are cheaper there than here.
Slow down. If you want a great experience, especially if it’s another culture, then you need to slow your pace of life down to that of the locals. Sightseeing has it’s time, but talking to people who live there can give you a much more fulfilling experience. I took a trip to Washington DC a few years ago. Instead of just eating at a McDonald’s or something, we asked some security guards what they normally did. We found out about a great place that everybody went to. It was just one more great experience that we would have missed if we didn’t spend some time talking to people.
When your talking to people, don’t just hammer them with questions for information. Let them tell you about themselves and what they are doing. Most people love talking about themselves, so find something they are passionate about and get to listening. Being a good listener will not only make your traveling experiences better, but you might even make some friends along the way.
People are always talking about their finances and money. There are hundreds and thousands of websites out there to talk about money and finances. The biggest problem that I always end up hearing about is somebody not really knowing where to go or start. Most people have a basic understanding of, “I make money and pay bills, then spend the rest on fun.” This mentality along with the invention and heavy advertising of credit have encouraged people to spend more than they make.
Let’s take a systematic approach to figuring out how to survive and then how to thrive with our finances.
This simple principle of NOT spending more than you make is the one and only principle needed to keep you out of debt. This is enough to keep you out of debt, but is a short term paycheck to paycheck mentality. This will keep you afloat in the water of live, but it sure won’t help you swim.
Saving for things to come. This principle is a heavily stressed idea only. Most people only have a basic understanding of putting money away for future use. Many companies have a 401k or other plan. Most of the time, this is only enough to survive during retirement, not thrive. In order to thrive at retirement age, you need to begin an educational assault on learning about retirement as early as possible. Learning about where your money is a few years before retirement is pointless, if you haven’t been taking care of it since day one.
Planning for the unexpected. We know life throws surprises at us. So don’t go bury your head in the sand and expect everything to be okay. This is a different amount per person, but everyone does need to have some money set aside for emergencies and such.
So the general way of the finance warrior is this:
Spend less than you earn.
Save and educate yourself for retirement
Plan for unexpected expenses.
These are the basics that will systematically help you control your financial life. By adhering to these basic principles, one can get a grip on their life and money. This is the way to survive. You must first learn to survive before you learn to thrive. Once you have learned self control, you will be able to thrive on what you have and open up the endless possibilities that will show themselves once you begin to thrive.
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