Of cable and cash flows

Well, after living for a year without any cable TV.  We finally broke down and got cable again.  It was kind of a convenience thing since we were moving and setting up new utilities.  Thought that we would give it a try.  Now that we have gotten rid of all of our credit card debt.

The only two debts that we have are student loans and a house payment.  The way that we have tried to structure things is an organized simplicity model.  What we have done is to take all of the things that are going on and simplify them into fewer accounts.  The fewer bills that come in the mail, the better chance that we won’t miss anything on accident.  So now that we have streamlined our ability to monitor our cash flow, we are now working on managing our cash flow in a way to decrease the chance that anything would not get paid on time.

Working on our cash flow is extremely important.  The biggest problems that people run into after being in debt, is a matter of cash flow.  There are plenty of times that people are making enough money to pay their expenses.  Many times though, the time that their money comes in versus the time that their bills are due are conflicting.  How do you combat this?

I have found that the best way to combat this is to do a little research into my finances.  I know that I need a cash buffer in my account to cover my expenses.  How much of a buffer do I need.  That’s any easy one for me.

The first way to find out the amount of a buffer that you need is however much your largest bill is.  So if your largest bill is your house or rent payment.  You need to make sure and keep at least that much in your account.

The second way is to find the three day period where you are going to be sending out the most money.  This way, if you have a couple bills all at once you can make sure that you have that much money.  By using this model or the one above to decide how much of an account buffer is needed, you can make sure that you will have very few if any cash flow problems

Your cash flow can also be tracked very easily in order to find times of cash flow crunches so that you can avoid them.  A really easy way to do this is with online banking or account management software.  What you want to do is make a spread chart.  This is going to be a chart that has the balance of your account and the amount that was spent per day as the second part.  You want to make your chart with the daily balance of your account as one bar per day and then put the amount spent per day as the second part.  Now you just need to look and see which days or groups of days have the largest difference or spread.

By spending some time analyzing where your money is and how it changes through the month, you will be able to take care of your cash flow and make a more fluid and less stressful life.

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