Women are becoming more knowledgeable about finances, becoming more confident managing their own investments and talking more openly about moneywith their kids, colleagues and peers. This, according to new research conducted by Citi's Women & Company.
I recently chatted with Lisa Caputo, president and CEO of Women & Co, and she says that it's about the recession and its aftermath. "Women are ushering in this new era of responsibility. They're stepping into the role of 'Chief Financial Officer' and building quality lives for themselves and their families."
They're going to graduate school. Starting companies. Becoming breadwinners. Even outgrowing the number of men in the workforce -- for the first time in American history. "We're taking the financial lead," says Caputo, "and becoming more empowered."
Here's how you can do it -- at any age:
In Your 20s
Time is on your side - use it to build a solid financial foundation.Start living on a budget, identifying financial goals and putting a plan in motion, and most importantly, setting aside income, says Caputo. Ideally, aim to set aside 15% of your gross salary. Not possible? This money doesn't have to come out of your pocket so it's not be as painful as it seems. For example, say you're single, and making $50,000 a year. If you have just $250 a month of pretax dollars automatically deducted from your paycheck, and deposited in your company's 401K plan, and if your company matches those contributions (50 cents on the dollar up to 6% of your salary), you're already more than halfway there!
In your 30s
Set up an emergency fund (ideally, 6 months worth of living expenses), max out the contributions, and "define your investment strategy and structure a well diversified portfolio," says Caputo.That may require your working with a financial advisor, particularly since you're probably having a tough time budgeting given your new status (married? kids?). You can find one through napfa.org.
In your 40s
You may be juggling the needs of a growing family and aging parents, but don't take a break from retirement savings. And think about protecting your legacy, says Caputo. "We're talking wills, naming guardians for small children, and getting life insurance if you have dependents."
In Your 50s
This is when you want to get serious about crunching the numbers -- specifically, estimating your retirement expenses and your projected income.There are calculators on the web to help you do this. Once you're age 50, you can add an extra $5,500 in catch-up contributions to your 401(k); IRA savers can throw in another $1,000. Take advantage of this. Caputo says you should also rebalance your portfolio, and review your life insurance coverage at this age.
In Your 60s
You're eligible to collect Social Security benefits beginning at age 62 -- the median retirement age -- but if you can wait a few years the payouts will be bigger. In fact, every year you delay drawing Social Security between age 62 and 70 increases your eventual payout by about 8% a year. Just something to think about, says Caputo, who also suggests you go back to budgeting basics as you learn to live on a fixed income, and that you additionally update your estate plans.
When I recently discovered that my local bank had finally been added to Mint, I immediately signed back up. MakeUseOf did an overview of Mint back in 2007 when it was in its beta release. Since then, it has grown and added more features so it’s time for an update post.
Mint is a free, automatic online finance tracking and budgeting platform much like Microsoft Money and Quicken. Since adding my financial accounts (Paypal, credit cards, banking), I‘ve stopped using similar software applications on my Mac and iPhone. Mint does all the personal accounting work for me. In this article, I’ll share some tips on using the features of Mint to track and budget your spending.
How to Make a Mint Budget – Setting Up Categories
When you add your financial accounts to your Mint account, about a year’s worth of your past and current transactions get added to your account. Using your past transactions, Mint assigns your transactions to various categories. For example, credit or debit card transactions you make at Target will be assigned the Shopping category. A transaction from Best Buy will get assigned to Electronics & Software. You may find that many of your transactions get assigned appropriate categories, but you can also change or create categories for any transaction.
Here’s how to do it.
- Open your Mint account and click on Transactions in the menu bar at the top of the webpage. Select the transaction for the category you want to change.
- Select the current category for the transaction and click on the triangle in the selection field to either change the name of the category or see if there’s a sub-category. So if say your transaction is from Amazon, you can leave the default category as Shopping or you can assign it a sub-category, such as Books or Clothing.
- Now that you have changed the category, you will probably want all future transactions from say Amazon to all be labeled Books instead of just Shopping. To make this happen, you need to change the rules set up for this type of transaction. Click on the Edit Detail tab.
In the resulting dialog box, select “Always rename Amazon as Amazon and categorize as Books.“ This new rule will change all existing and future Amazon transactions. Notice also, you can assign tags to transactions, which is great for keeping track of tax related expenses as opposed to personal expenses. By clicking “Manage your tags“, you can change, add, and delete tags.
When you first set up your account and add transactions, you may find there are numerous transactions which are uncategorized. Taking the time to set up rules for uncategorized transactions will inevitably help you monitor your spending. Also, one useful tool in this regard is that you can click on the “Show all“ button on the right side of your Transactions page to get a list of the total spending for all transactions for a particular category, sub-category, or store.
Setting Budgets
One of the best reasons for using Mint and taking the trouble to categorize transactions is that you can make Mint budgets, especially for discretionary spending items and services. For example, I like to make sure I’m spending a limited amount of money on books and iPad/iPhone apps per month. If I don’t monitor my spending on such items, I tend to overspend and even sometimes waste money by not tracking those expenses.
Again, when you set up your Mint account, Mint creates a few default budgets which you can change or create new ones. To do this, click on Planning in the menu bar of your account’s page. Select the budget you want to change or update. Or click the Create Budget button to create a new budget.
For an existing budget, you can increase or decrease the amount by clicking on the left and right triangles. You can make additional changes by clicking the Edit Details tab, in which you can change the time period of the budget, and check whether or not you want the selected budget to roll over to the next month. As you spend money toward those budgets, the bar color will change from green to red when you are over your budget.
Almost everything about Mint is automatic. So once your transactions are updated for your accounts, all your categories and budgets get automatically updated. You never have to manually input that data.
Setting Up Email Alerts
Another useful Mint feature which helps you monitor your finances is by sending you email alerts for when you’ve gone over budget, when your balance is low, when a bill is due, and so on. You can configure the settings for alerts by clicking on Your Profile on your accounts page. In the drop-down box, select Email and Alerts to set up changes.
Get the Free Mint iPhone App
If you‘re an Apple mobile user, you can download the free Mint app to view your online account. Transactions, however, may not immediately show up on your Mint account. It may take an hour or two to get updated. But using the mobile app also allows you to add tags and/or change categories for new transactions. Your new alerts also show up in the app.
There are many more features in Mint, and once you get your accounts set up, you’ll see that it provides you with a wealth of information about your finances, as well giving you tips on how to save money.
Mint.com may not be the best solution for say tracking a large business account, but for personal and small business accounts, the service is a huge time saver. The biggest drawback to the service, however, is that it doesn’t provide a way to print out reports of your transactions, categories, and summaries. You have to download the data and then set up a spreadsheet to create reports. Hopefully the developers of Mint will address this problem in future updates.
Let us know if and how you use Mint.com. Has it helped you budget your spending?
penis enlargement
Personal financial planning is neither a mystery or an art. It is a methodology and discipline. It is about getting rich slow. There are no shortcuts and no magic tricks. The younger you start, the better. Here are the steps you need to follow.
First, eliminate credit card debt. High interest credit card debt is the biggest threat to most peoples' financial well being. The interest you pay can run over 30% per year. That's money you could put to work in investments. When you pay that money to a credit card company you get nothing in return. Eliminating bad debt like credit card debt should be your number one priority.
Establish an emergency fund. There is no such thing as job security. A job loss could occur any time through no fault of your own. It's necessary to establish a savings fund against disaster. Traditional wisdom says a six to nine month reserve is need. I recommend 9-12 months, especially during times when the economic outlook is negative and jobs at a premium. Keep this money in a liquid form such as a savings account or money market fund.
Review your insurance coverage. If you are single or married without children you probably don't need life insurance. If you do have children estimate how much your spouse will need through their college years. This is the ideal amount of insurance you should have. Purchase term insurance. It is pure protection. Other forms of insurance, like whole life, have an investment component. You can do better elsewhere. Your house insurance should cover the value of your property and replacement cost for your belongings. Things devalue quickly and if you don't have replacement cost coverage you'll have a real problem if a crisis occurs. Liability coverage on your home and automobile should be at least five times your income or double your net asset value, whichever is greater.
Ask what money you will need in the next five years. A house down payment is the number one answer. Set up a savings pan for this goal and contribute regularly. This money should be kept in a safe and liquid asset such as a savings or money market account.
You are now ready for investing. The first thing to do is to review your employer's 401k plan. This money grows tax deferred. If your employer is matching contributions contribute up to it's maximum match first. This is free money and should not be left on the table. The return is actually great enough that it can outstrip the negative of credit card debt. If your employer does not match contributions, invest first in your Roth IRA. The one cardinal rule is to never invest in your company's stock. If your company runs into disaster you lose your job and your investment. Think Enron.
Open a Roth IRA. Use a discount stock broker or mutual fund. company. This money is contributed after taxes and grows tax exempt. When the account has been held five years money may be withdrawn tax free. When young this money is best invested in stock oriented securities. As you get older you can change your investment mix to include safer instruments, such as government bonds. Unless you are willing to follow the market and your companies closely do not invest in individual stocks. Get diversification by buying mutual funds or exchange traded funds. Specify that you want your dividends reinvested. You do not have to make your annual contribution all at once. Make monthly or quarterly contributions . This will make your saving easier and also allow you to dollar cost average into your investments.
Lastly, remember to pay yourself first. Make your investment contributions and then you are free to live off the remainder of your paycheck.
Sources: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/01/061301.asp
http://www.rothira.com/
http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/financial-planning/401k.htm
http://www.statefarm.com/insurance/identify_insurance.asp
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