Category Archives: Managing Money

Managing Money

Financial Goals To Shoot For In 2016

As we’ve done the previous 2 years, this is our year end, or close to year end, attempt to get you looking at setting some financial goals for the upcoming year. Two years ago we talked about setting goals like budgeting, saving money and increasing income. Last year we looked at 2015 financial goals of generating more income, paying off a significant bill, and finding something to give up to help you grow your money.

Personal finance
Creative Commons License Alan Cleaver via Compfight

Thus, it’s time for 3 more goals to look at, while still incorporating those old goals. After all, those are important, and if you worked on any of them you’re way ahead of the game by now. Yet you’re not done; not sure if we’re ever done. So, let’s look at 3 more things to shoot for in 2016.

1. It’s time to look at protecting your future. This could be seen as saving money but, though that’s a part of it, it’s not close to being enough. This time we’re talking about things like buying life insurance, possibly purchasing long term catastrophic life insurance, checking on your health and automobile insurance, and of course having someone talk to you about your pension or social security.

If you haven’t done any of these things you probably should. If you’re young you definitely need to do these things because they’ll cost you less to invest in now. If you’re older you need to know where you stand when you’re ready to retire.

2. This isn’t necessarily a financial goal for you but your family; it’s time to set up a will. This isn’t the easiest thing to have to deal with mentally but it’s potentially one of the most crucial. Many people think that their spouse will automatically get everything once they pass away and that the spouse will do “the right thing” in distributing assets to other family members.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. Even if there’s only one person who could possibly get all the assets the government is going to get involved. If there’s no will the process gets uglier and the potential recipient might not have the resources to hold out for as long as it could take.

Wills don’t have to be expensive or overly complicated, but they’re definitely necessary.

3. Time to think more about investing. Once you look at everything else, you need to think about ways to help grow the money you already have. You could put it in a bank and earn .5% a year on it but that’s not very significant. You need to think about better ways of growing your money and assessing your comfort level as it pertains to risk.

This is an area where accountants are great to work with. They can help you assess what you already have and where you want to go, then guide you to the proper people who can help you take it further, while helping you determine how much you can afford to risk. If you start early enough you’ll be amazed at how much money you could possibly have to live on in your old age.
 

Managing Money

A Way To Pay Your Bills On Time

Here at T L Wall Accounting, one of the things we talk about helping people with is paying their bills. A part of that is helping people budget their money, personally and professionally. Another part, which we don’t talk about all that often, is setting up processes to pay your bills.

Did you know that you can set up every single monthly bill you owe to be paid automatically through your bank? It’s not only a way to make sure your bills get paid each month, but it puts you in better control of your money than allowing a third party to take money directly out of your account. That might not be an option when it comes to things like life insurance, but in general everything else can be set up that way.

Depending on the bank, it can be a pretty easy process, although in many cases people feel more comfortable having someone else help with it. As long as who you have to pay has an account number it can be done. Many people pay their mortgages this way, along with things such as utility bills, car insurance, cable… everything.

Once it’s set up, you can always go online and change the amounts at any time, since it’s accessed the same way you access your bank account. For instance, say you and your spouse or partner make payments on something and one of you pays more than normal at some point. If you have the ability to skip a payment or make a reduced payment for one month, you can adjust it easily. Also, suppose that you’ve gone over your data usage on your smartphone and they’ve imposed a penalty, then you could go in and adjust the payment to make it higher.

Your payment will go out on whatever date you tell it to. It might take up to 3 days before it registers as a payment for some vendors, but for most they’ll see it in a day, even if it takes a few days to clear. No mess, no fuss, and no more late payments.

If this is something you’d like to do and you’d like some help with it, feel free to ask us to help you.

Managing Money

Work Towards Now, Plan For The Future

A couple of years ago we posted an article here titled Setting Financial Goals. The, at the end of 2014, we posted another article asking people if they were going to set financial goals for the new year.

Riches
Creative Commons License Sheila Sund via Compfight

Like almost everyone else, we like to stress the reality of knowing how much money you’re making, being able to pay your bills, putting money away for a rainy day and still being able to have a fun life. Yet, we’re not sure that there’s enough emphasis put on the “now”, the more immediate needs of life.

Talking about the ability to pay one’s bills is pretty immediate, but maybe not immediate enough. For most bills, you’ll get them and have at least 21 days before there’s an expectation of payment. If you don’t have enough money and you know the bill is coming, that’s an extreme amount of pressure to deal with. If it’s multiple bills… way more pressure.

An article we wrote 3 years ago talked about whether it was better to pay off bills or save for retirement. Our conclusion was that paying off bills with higher interest rates is the wisest move, which is something one has to address while still working, because carrying debt into retirement will drain your limited income faster. Thus, you should be working towards a “now” mindset instead of thinking only of long term goals.

There was also an article on another blog on financial issues that gave a plan where, if you started young enough, you could have significant savings when you retire by learning how to put money away monthly, increasing it by $10 every year from age 20 to 40, then continuing that same investment amount for the final 25 years.

It’s a good plan but it still means that one has to think more of “now” than later. As a general question, how many of you are ready to start investing $100 a month into a long term savings plan and still pay all your bills and have a regular life? Actually, hopefully most of you do, but it’s something you might not think you’re ready for, which means a mindset change is needed into understanding the “now”.

What if you really don’t have that $100? Scary to think about isn’t it? This is why we talked about finding ways to increase income a couple of years ago, as well as talk about budgeting all the time. It’s also why we often mention working with an accountant if you need help in figuring things out; it never hurts to work with professionals on your financial goals.

Working towards “now” involves these things:

* having a significant enough income now
* paying down your most significant debt now
* budgeting what you have now
* being comfortable now

Think about it, and if you have anything more to add, let us know.
 

Managing Money

How To Determine Whether Something Is A Scam

Last year we wrote a post titled 4 Scams Looking To Take Your Money. At that time, there were some specific types of scams going around that we wanted to alert people to.

This time around, we thought we’d indicate some ways that you might be able to figure out whether something is a scam or not.

Thousands of people fall for scams every year. Many of them get away relatively unscathed, but some people have been scammed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you really get scammed, even a lawyer might not be able to get you out of trouble. That’s because sometimes these people are elusive and hard to find. Also, sometimes it’s the person’s fault for not reading a contract before signing it.

We’re going to help you out. These things should seem like common sense but, sometimes, they’re not.

1. If you get a check in the mail and it’s not from anyone you know, it’s not a real check. Many times it’s an advertisement for something; just rip it up and don’t look back because they’re trying to trick you.

2. If you get an offer in the mail for a drastically large loan or line of credit and it’s not your bank, rip it up and immediately throw it away. No one ever gets that high loan and, if you check the fine print, you’ll see the interest rates can be pretty high. It’s not worth your time to even look at them.

3. We’re mentioning this one because, even though it’s the oldest type of scam on the internet, people are still falling for it.

If you get email from someone who doesn’t mention you by name and tells you that a relative has left you money but doesn’t tell you who the relative is, it’s a scam. If you receive email telling you that you’ve won a lottery, it’s a scam. Actually, any email you get from someone you don’t know is a scam; just ignore it.

4. While we’re at it you need to be wary of email you get from entities you know. There are a lot of emails sent out from banks and sometimes it looks like your bank is sending you something. Almost no banks are ever going to offer you potential loans or credit cards via email, though it can happen here and there.

A way to find out if it’s a scam or not is to copy the link the site gives you and paste it into your browser without having it go to the site. The reason you do this is to see if the initial link is actually going to your website or to a different site. For instance, if you do online banking at Chase, the link might begin http://www.chase.com. If it’s a scam email from Chase it’ll begin with http://www.somethingelse.com/chase; they’ll leave “chase” in there because many people won’t pick up on it but now you know.

These are just a few more things to help you avoid being cheated out of your money. We hope they’re helpful.
 

Managing Money

How To Evaluate Which Charities Are Real Or Not

Last May we posted an article titled 4 Scams Looking To Take Your Money. We identified one that, on the surface of things, always sounds legitimate but isn’t.

The problem with all the phone calls we get from this or that charity is that many of them are legitimate charities trying to raise money for whatever their purpose is. That’s why it’s so easy for us to be scammed. No matter what the rest of the world thinks about Americans, overall we’re probably one of the most generous countries in the world when it comes to donating our money to good causes.

Few of us are rich enough to give the kind of money all these charities want. We certainly don’t want our money going to fake charities, or charities that don’t really do what we hope they’re doing with the money. In that vein, we’re making some recommendations of what you should do when you’re not sure whether a charity is real or not.

The first thing is recognizing the name of an organization. Ever hear of the American Heart Association? What about the American Heart Foundation? The first is real; the second isn’t. However, when you’re on the phone, sometimes the person on the other line can make it seem like it’s the same thing. If you’re unsure of what you heard ask them to repeat it. If it sounds fake, tell them you’re uncomfortable giving our your credit card information over the phone and ask them for a link you can visit online to donate.

The second recommendation is to tell them you need to verify who they are and see if they can call you the next day. Most of them will hang up. Some of them will try to push you into foregoing all of that and making a payment anyway before they hang up. For the few that are willing to do so, check them out online, but while you’re at it also make sure you put into your search engine their name followed by “review”. Some sites can look really good, making you think they’re legitimate, but reading reviews will help to tell you whether they are or not.

The third recommendation, even if you know the organization but not the person you’re talking to, is to ask if you can pay them online. Not only is that still more secure (although some people are still scared putting their information online like that, it’s actually much safer than it used to be), but you’ll then have an opportunity to do a further search to see just how much of that money goes to the charity and how much of it is eaten up in administrative costs.

The final recommendation… look at this list. It highlights the 50 worst charities to give money to, and was put together by the Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting. Some of these are legitimate but their administrative costs leaves them little to use for the purposes you’re giving. You’re probably better off giving to a local organization, which uses the money the way you hope it will.