90 Days to Financial Stability

I know I have written on budgets before but because it is such an important topic, here are some more tips. When creating a budget, there are a few rules you may want to use. One of them is the 50/30/20 format. The theory behind the 50/30/20 is that 50% of your income is applied to housing and bills. 30% is allocated for wants and entertainment and 20% goes to savings, investments and paying off debt. There is also the 80-20 rule: 20% for financial goals as in savings etc. and 80% for everything else. That is the ideal. Sadly, many of us can’t adhere to those rules. I live in Vancouver, BC, which is a very expensive city to live in. Property is expensive and so are rents.   50% of income going to pay rent or a mortgage is not unheard of. Too often, people don’t have the funds to be able to put away 20% of income. So what do we do? The best we can. Personally, I would feel hopeless whenever I read some of these budgeting rules. I would feel desperate – wit...

Have you ever said to yourself, ‘I will start the new diet... tomorrow’; ‘I will start my exercise routine ... tomorrow’; ‘I will look for a better job...   tomorrow’; ‘I will take action on paying off my debt... tomorrow’. And guess what? Tomorrow never comes! The consequence of this is that we get fatter, less fit, more miserable at our jobs and deeper in debt. I know how this works, I have been there and done it. Until you decide that the pain of staying where you are in life is greater than the pain of making changes, your tomorrow will never come. I have talked before about taking action and deciding to do something is taking action. You could say that making the decision to do something is the first step. The next one is to create a plan, set a definite date to start and stick with it! Don’t get to your start date and push it until later. Start on your start date and even when the road to your goal gets difficult, stay with it. Humans are great procrastinato...

Jill is a divorced woman in her forties. She lives from paycheck to paycheck, trying to make ends meet. There are months she isn’t sure that she’s going to have enough money to meet her obligations and then Jill has to scramble, taking money from one bill to help pay another. She makes a decent income but doesn’t know why she is always broke.   She knows she has to do something so she decides to start a budget.   She makes a list of her income and all her expenses and sticks with the plan. For a little while. Soon though, Jill finds herself slipping back into her old habits and struggling to pay everything. Jill is convinced that she can’t stick to a budget and budgets don’t work. Does that sound familiar? Have you ever gone through something similar? Have you started a budget only to fall off it within months? You aren’t alone, many people do this. There are many reasons this happens. 1.        The budget is too ...

Does that title sound contradictory to you? That you can live a great life on a budget? Many people won't believe it. After all, the word budget suggests a limited amount of funds because, if you had unlimited funds, you wouldn't need a budget, right? I can see the logic in that but let's look at budgets a different way. The majority of us live on a specific amount of money and that money has to cover the basics such as the roof over our heads, food, clothing, utilities and transportation as well as the extras like entertainment. Some people live their lives by spending everything they get when they get it then either suffering until the next pay period or living on credit to survive.  I've done that and it isn't fun - I was always waiting until the next time money came in and counting the days until I would again have money in my pocket. Instead of living each day to the fullest, finding joy in just being alive, I was wasting my life waiting for more money! Are...