Family Money Management: The Importance of Agreement
By: Douglas Hanna
Are you having problems with debt? Are you afraid to answer the phone because it may be an angry creditor calling? Do you have problems getting from one paycheck to the next? The simple answer is that you need to budget. But for that budget to work, both you and your spouse need to be in total agreement.
If one of you loves to shop and doesn’t worry much about credit card debt while the other hates spending money like death, you have a problem. You can create budgets till Honolulu freezes over, but it won’t work and chances, are, you and your significant other will end up fighting constantly.
Even before you start to create a budget, the two of you must sit down and discuss your life objectives. Get out a piece of paper. Make a list of long-term objectives the two of you can agree on. One might be to get out of debt. Another might be to make monthly contributions to a college fund for the kids. A third could be to begin a retirement fund. Or you might decide it’s important that one of your get some specialized training that would lead to a higher salary.
Once you agree on your objectives, the two of you can start work on a budget. Step one will be to decide how much you will need to save (or spend) monthly to meet your objectives. You should subtract this first from your monthly income so you can see how much you have left over to work with.
Next, subtract your “secured” debt. Typically, this would be your mortgage payment, car payments, and any other loan payments where an asset such as a boat or RV secures the loan. Then, take a hard look at your other expenses and debt – for example, your rent, food, membership dues, clothing or credit card debt — as these are the only areas where you can hope to make cuts.
It is important that you both agree as to where those cuts can be made. No matter how strongly you feel about drastically cutting a budget category such as clothing, if your spouse doesn’t agree, you’re going to have problems. A better solution is to find a compromise – a number that gets you closer to where you think the spending should be but one that your spouse agrees is at least fair. Then, look for another category where you can make cuts to get your final budget number down to where it needs to be.
You should then sit down with your spouse twice a month to review where you are vs. your budgetary goals. You will most likely find that you’re under in some categories and over in others. Don’t worry about making adjustments at this time. Just make notes as to where you’ve over and where you’re under.
After the first two months, you should know where you’ve been spending more than you budgeted and where you’ve spent less. The two of you can then discuss what adjustments you need to make. There should not be a lot of arguing because you have goals you’ve agreed on and a budget you created by working together.
The important thing is to keep the discussion from becoming accusatory. If one of you has been the “budget breaker,” it’s better to ask “it looks like we’ve got a problem here, what to you think we can we do to fix it?” then to say, “you really screwed up this time.”
What can you do if you or your spouse just can’t control his or her spending and keeps busting the budget, month after month?
Unfortunately that’s an issue that probably needs the work of a good marriage counselor.
Debt Management And Planning
Author: Prima Nero
Debt management is an essential element of financial planning. Make a note of your streams of revenue and incomes generated from the various investments. Sometimes it becomes imperative that we take loans, since this helps us to save tax. For example mortgage payments give benefits in tax planning. However the interest payments are real and must be accounted from the income that you have.
Thus make sure that you have the income to repay the debts. Normally a bigger down payment will mean that you have to make smaller interest payments. The opposite is true where there would be larger interest payments if the down payment were large. Interest payments vary according to the period that the debt will run. Too short a period and the interest payments will burn a hole. Too long a period and the interest payments can become bothersome. Therefore the period should be such that it benefits you.
If the interest rates go higher, then the lending agency will increase the time period to recover the costs of interest rates. if they go lower, they may not revise the same rates downward. This is because in any circumstances, they need to make profits. However you can negotiate for lower rates with the lending agency, if you know that the interest rates have fallen. This can save you precious dollars, which is very important.
In fact lower refinance rates and mortgage rates can also be negotiated with the lending agency. The better your debt management, the better credit rating that you would have. This will ensure that you are able to take debts in the future. There will be positive credit rating against your name. If you repay old debts, then you should intimate this to the credit bureaus, as it will increase your credit rating. You can obtain your credit report from the credit bureaus by simply paying a small fee.
