How To Create a Family or Personal Budget

HOW TO CREATE A Family or Personal BUDGET

First Step - Write down all your fixed expenses (house payment/rent, utility bills, insurance Car payment, etc).

Second Step - Under your fixed expenses, write down all of your basic needs expenses (food, gas, clothing, toiletries, etc.)

Third Step - Add all of these amounts together and subtract it from your total monthly paycheck amount. The amount you have left is what you have left for budgeting.

Fourth Step - List all of your other purchases for the month. Write down every single item you spent money on, no matter how much it cost. Be honest with yourself. This is your budget!! (Every newspaper, pack of gum, cup of coffee, every candy bar, every meal, your nails & hair, make-up, etc.). Write down every single item!

Fifth Step - Add up the amount you spent on all of those items and subtract that amount from the amount you had left for budgeting. Did you Spend more than you made in salary? If you were totally honest about all your purchases you will probably be in for a big surprise.

You can now see where you are spending every penny of your money and what are necessity's? and what are want's? "Needs are things you want but can do without." These are the things you can being to cut out or cut back on if you have a budget shortfall at the end of the month.

Start your budget today!! The sooner you know what you have left over each month the faster you can begin tackle that moutain of debt or find money to save for a rainy day.

Until next posting
Terrance Givens
Motivatinal Speark & Financial Advisor

Are You in a Fiancial Crisis?!?!?

Time to Pay the Piper for your Bad Financial deeds!!!

I had decided to dedicate this blog to helping others get there financial houses in order during this our current Recession. Yes i said it. RECESSION!!! In case nobody told you, we are in one. And it could very easily become a Depression if some financial guru's are correct.

Some of us have spent ourselves into a financial hole that may seem Impossible to ever dig yourself out. Well, i will teach you some financial techniques and disciplines that will put you on the road to cleaning up your financial mess and giving you your life back.

I personally think we are in a new age where debt is the new servitude or slavery. You become a slave to working for little pay at a job you don't like much, but you can't or don't leave because it "just pays the bills" and keeps you afloat.

What if you didn't owe $10,000 to credit card company's? Would you be in a better position to save some money to better position yourself for the tough times ahead?

Well here is the Real Deal.... Im not gonna hold back and pull any punches here people.

• You must ACCEPT responsibly for your situation!!! Or you become Paralyzed
• You MUST change your lifestyle and your beliefs about money.
• You MUST learn Financial Discipline!! Stop living for & Spending NOW and PLAN for TOMORROW!
• You MUST live within a budget! (Spend less then you make)

So many of us have spent so far beyond our means that we are all now shaking in our boots at what this Huge financial crisis is going to mean for us. If your Debt Free, this will mean nothing to you.

If you have lots of credit card debt and other debt, we have lots of work to do, right away!!

Credit Card debt is the Worst Debt for a number of reasons.

1. Extremely high Interest Rates.
2. Variable Rates of Interest (rates can change, just like a variable mortgage)
3. Credit Card Company's can Change your terms ANYTIME they want!!
4. Fees and other Charges to take your money.

Things should never do with your credit cards:

1. NEVER PAY LATE!!!
2. NEVER go Overlimit
3. NEVER Do Cash Advances

If you ever pay your credit card as much as 1 Day late, You most likely will have a 10-20% interest rate increase, as well as a $15-$50 late fee.

Just imagine, as i did, having a $4,000.00 balance on your credit card at 6% interest and making your payment 1 Day late and my rate skyrocketed to 29.99% OUCH!!!! Try getting ahead with rates like that. You will be paying until the day you die unless you can pay off more principle.

This really happened to me. But i had a plan already. Many people may not be able to do this, but this is where pre-planning comes into Play. I know the credit card company's always send you those low interest rates checks, usually when you have a Big balance already.

This is to there benefit. If you have an Interest rate of say 19% and you carrying a balance of $4,000.00 and you get a check offer for 6% until payed off. Sounds like a great deal, so you use a check for $2,000.00. BAD FOR YOU!! and GOOD FOR THE BANK!!

why? you ask: Well, you must read the fine print on those checks and your cc agreement. Most say: The bank has the right to allocate your payments in anyway they want. And they almost always pay off the lower balances first. So that means you must pay off the $2,000.00 at 6% first and the bank makes more money on the $4,000.00 (previous balance) at the 19% higher interest rate which, thanks to them you will now carry for a much longer period of time.

Here is what i Did:

1. I dipped into my emergency cash fund and payed off my entire balance
2. I waited 1 Week and I used a new check they sent me for 2.99% interest Until paid in Full.
3. I took more than my previous balance and left a little room for interest (don't go over your limit)
4. I used the the extra money to pay off another credit card balance and now it's all at the 2.99% interest for life. (UNLESS I PAY LATE)!!
5. I Set up Automatic payments from my bank to the credit card so I Never Pay Late!!
6. I have now used the banks money to my advantage. It is very hard to beat a 2.99% interest rate, That almost like FREE MONEY in these tough financial times.

I'll end this post here for today. and leave you with a quote and a few links on the Ehow.com website which has some great information for financial management.

The Worst thing to do is to do Nothing!! TAKE ACTION!!! DO SOMETHING!!

How to Absolutely Pay your Debts - Ehow.com

http://www.ehow.com/how_2291420_absolutely-pay-debts.html

How to Destroy your Debt with Temporary Extreme Measures

http://www.ehow.com/how_4524702_destroy-debt-temporary-extreme-measures.html

Best Wishes until next time.

Terrance Givens

Financial Advisor & Motivational Speaker

Steps to Improving your financial health

No matter if your $10 in the hole or $100,000 in the hole. There are steps you can always take to improve your financial health.

Here are a few Basic steps you can use to begin to transform you financial situation.

You need to get a clear pictures of your finances and know what you have coming in and what you have going out.

1) The best method for doing this is to set up and create a budget. Most people shutter with fear when they hear the word budget. Simply, a budget is no more than writing out how much money you have coming in (salary, side jobs, child support,etc.) and then how much you are spending and paying out to creditors (gas bill, telephone bill, mortgage bill, car payment, etc)

2) After you have established a budget the next step is to make sure you not spending more money than you have coming in. (if you making $1200 per month and spending $1500 per month then you will never get ahead) You must make changes to insure you have a positive cash flow at the end of each month.

A few methods i recommend for reducing your spending is to reduce some of your excess spending.

a) Eat out a few times less during the month. Pack your lunch for 1 or 2 weeks each month and save the money you would have spent eating at McDonald's or going out to dinner.

b) Turn the Air Conditioning in your house up a few degrees, move the thermostat from 70 degrees to 75 degrees and or turn if up to 78 or 80 degrees when no one is home. This can save you quite a bit of money over the course of 1 year.

c) Shop the Clearance racks when you go shopping for clothing and shoes. I save hundreds of dollars shopping this way. I get the same new clothing and shoes as everyone else, but i just pay must less for them.

d) Instead of going out to the movies with friends, Rent a DVD and have a movie night at your house and everyone bring something for snacks (popcorn, soda, beer, etc.)

Stock Watch

New Stock i have been watching lately and has been on one heck of a run.

ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd

Stock Symbol - CKSW

CKSW moved up sharply today, (52 cents in after hours), with a lot of talk (rumors) in the chat rooms about the company possibly being a buyout target. (meaning some other company may purchase the entire company).

This could create more demand for the shares and further driving up the price.

Always do your own research and learn everything you can about a company before purchasing shares of a public company.

ClickSoftware Technologies, Ltd.
Earnings Conference Call for (Q2 2007)
Scheduled to start Wednesday July 25, 2007 at 9:30 am EST

You can listen live by going to: www.Yahoo.com , then enter the CKSW symbol.

Go directly to the Yahoo conference call link by clicking here:

http://biz.yahoo.com/cc/3/82303.html

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