4 Ways Single Parents Can Look Out for Family Finances

Looking out for the financial well-being of your family can be tough, and it’s an even harder task to take on if you’re going at it by yourself. When money is tight, it’s easy to spend in the moment and difficult to plan long-term, and for many single parents, creating a stable financial environment for their family seems like an unattainable feat.  If you’re stuck in this mindset but want to improve your monetary state of being, here are a few steps you can take to relieve some stress and create a brighter outlook for you and your family.

Insure to Be Sure

No one is quite sure what tomorrow will bring, and while it’s great to have an optimistic demeanour, it’s important to be sure your family could handle a worst case scenario. If your family is living off of your income, it’s vital to take the measures to be certain that if something unfortunate were to happen to you, your family could recuperate financially.

As much of a dent that another monthly payment might make in your budget, insurance really is worth investing for when looking out for your family’s future, and while there are many types of insurance on the market, income protection and life insurance are two of the most practical options for a single parent to consider. Income protection insurance is there to help keep your source of cash flow coming in if you were to suffer from a serious illness or accident that prevented you from being able to work, and life insurance helps provide your family with some monetary security if you were to pass away.

Address the Important Issues First

It’s easy to want to spend the weekend taking your kids out on the town or enjoying a road trip to the beach, but make sure you have the important considerations worked out first. As the sole source of income to a household, you have to shoulder the responsibility of planning for the future, so make a list of the monthly expenses that cannot be put off of or pushed back to a later date.

Rent, groceries, and bills are the easy choices to put on that list, but make a note of other things that are just as important to save for even if you won’t necessarily be paying them off right away; for example, retirement and education funding are easy to neglect because you don’t see the pay-off from the start, but it’s still important to start a savings pool for those items as soon as you can. To help keep you on track, establish a minimum amount that will go into your savings account every month, and treat that payment just as serious as you would any other bills.

Start a Finance Journal

To really help you stretch your dollar further, it helps to get an accurate representation of where all your funding is actually going, and starting a finance journal is the easiest and simplest way to do this. By logging every purchase you make, you’ll be able to see where each dollar of your income has gone, and analysing your spending habits will make it much easier to see where you can cut back and improve. It’s usually the little things that add up the most, and if you’re spending five dollars on a coffee every morning, you’ll see how much you can save simply by brewing your own at home; the point is to figure out where you’re doing well with your finances along with what areas you can benefit from changing.

Look Realistically at Your Current Job Situation

When you’ve been employed with a company for a long period of time, it’s easy to accept that your current job is where you’re at, but it’ s important to never stop shooting for something better. Whether it’s occasionally sending your resume off to other employers or asking your current boss about raises, promotions, or benefits, it’s necessary for the well-being of your family to keep pursuing more lucrative opportunities. Even if you’re earning enough to make ends meet, be realistic when considering what your time and skills are really worth, and if you feel that you could be earning more, step out of your comfort zone and strive for a more stable opportunity.

It can be easy to feel a lot of pressure when you’re looking out for your family by yourself, but it’s a rewarding feeling getting your finances on the right track. It takes some careful planning, budgeting, and analysing, and while it’s normal to feel scattered and stressed from time to time, try to keep in mind that you’re doing it all for your family’s sake; if your actions can help your family have a better life both today and tomorrow, the initial frustration and anxiety is always worth the payout. 

Thanks to Arlene Chandler - a freelance writer who enjoys helping people overcome their financial obstacles. She currently writes about finance advice and insurance for Suncorp.

This post is not meant to endorse, promote, or recommend any specific financial service or company.

Improve Your Personal Finances By Asking Yourself These 3 Questions

 Quick Way to Improve Your Family's Financial Situation

A huge mistake that I see repeated constantly among new investors is the desire to setup a portfolio without any meaningful rationale behind the action besides a generic, "I thought I should do something to begin preparing for retirement," or "I'm an adult now, so I should have a retirement plan because that is what you are supposed to do."

While this attitude is certainly better than the alternative of not caring about your family's income statement and balance sheet at all, it is not an optimal way to go about your mission of making money.

1. What Are You Trying to Achieve with Your Investment Portfolio?

The best place to start is often identifying your objectives:

•          Why are you saving money?
•          Why are you interested in making money from your investments?
•          Put another way, what, specifically, are you trying to accomplish?

It is shocking how many investors never actually sit down and ask themselves that question. Instead, they hurl their cash at a random index fund or throw it in savings bonds, hoping that it amounts to something by the time they dip into their piggy bank.

Don't just say, "I want to move somewhere warm in the future." Be specific! Say something like, "Within 4 years and 2 months, I want to move to a home in the Miami area at least 2,500 square feet, paid for in cash so there is no mortgage."

These are important considerations because money is nothing more, and nothing less, than a tool. By itself it has no intrinsic value. The sole purpose of it is to be there when you want to convert it into goods and services from society. It requires planning.

2. How Much Money Do You Need to Achieve Your Objectives?

Once you've figured out what it is you want your money to accomplish, you need to figure out how much it would take to do it comfortably. I'm a fan of using the monthly after-tax cash income model.

Under this technique, you figure out exactly how much liquid, cold, hard, cash you need sitting in the cheque account every month, after paying all expenses and taxes, to live the way you want to live.  Ambiguous platitudes such as, "I want to be comfortable" are next to useless. You need specifics because it is only when you have a clear benchmark that you can determine if you are succeeding or failing.

The figure at which you arrive is going to be different from everyone else. Some people can be as happy as a lark on $3,000 a month. Still others require $15,000 a month. For others, it would take $100,000 a month. That is because each of us has a unique psychological profile, passions, hobbies, and comfort level at which we thrive. For some folks, driving a brand new Lexus or BMW seems like a complete waste of resources. Another individual might feel as if it is one of the greatest joys in life; an experience that makes driving to the office or dropping the kids off at school far more enjoyable. There is no right or wrong answer here, but you do need to be completely honest with yourself.

3. What Is Your Strategy for Making Money?

It is amazing to those of us who work in finance and have enjoyed success how few people actually try to make money in any meaningful amount. Most people are so brainwashed by the post-Industrial Revolution socioeconomic structure that they think the only way to make a living is to sell their time for a pay cheque.

Yet, almost all of the truly successful in society did no such thing. I've said it before but it is worth repeating:

•          Ray Kroc sold hamburgers through his McDonald's chain.
•          Bill Gates sold software through Microsoft.
•          Walt Disney sold Mickey Mouse cartoons and theme park tickets through his entertainment companies.
•          James Cash Penney sold everything from men's dress shirts to toaster ovens through his retailer, J.C. Penney.

You can sell your time and do well, especially if you are a member of the upper management at a large corporation or a not-for-profit such as a regional hospital chain. It is not, however, the only way you can do it.

How are you going to make your money? When you buy an investment, you are really just acquiring an asset that is selling something for you other than your time. If you own shares of Colgate-Palmolive, the dividend cheques that get deposited into your brokerage account came from the sale of dish soap and toothpaste.

What is your strategy? Are you going to focus on oil and natural gas assets? Are you going to buy up businesses such as retail shops or hotels in your home town? Find a way to focus on your strengths so you can minimize your risk. Stick with it, let compounding work its magic, and you might just find, like so many before you, than "money begets money", to paraphrase the self-made genius, Benjamin Franklin.

Source  :  http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/planningforthefuture/a/Improve-Your-Personal-Finances-By-Asking-Yourself-These-3-Questions.htm?nl=1

First 5 Steps to Achieving Great Things

Greatness doesn't just happen. The best leaders take steps to ensure that when they do something, they do it better than anyone else.

You're good. You wouldn't be where you are if you weren't. But you know you're capable of better than good. You're capable of achieving truly great things.

Problem is, days go by, then weeks, months--maybe even years--and you're still cranking out good. You've yet to design that unbelievable product, write that great novel, dominate that market. Everyone admires you, but you've a growing sense of disappointment in yourself.

How do you change that dynamic? How to you move from delivering good, to delivering Holy Cow!every time? Try these five steps:

1.       Prioritize.

First things first. If you want to achieve something great, best decide what it's going to be.

This may seem like a flash of the blindingly obvious, but I've noticed an interesting and consistent positive correlation between those who know what they want to achieve and those who achieve great things. As my mother used to say, "If you aim at nuthin', you'll hit it.".

Can you jot down on a notepad the two or three great things you want to achieve? No? Then start there.

2.       Plan ruthlessly; execute relentlessly.

The highly successful leaders I work with distinguish themselves from the merely competent by one thing: They have a plan, they work the plan, but they aren't trapped by the plan.

While this sounds like a simple mantra, merely competent leaders stumble in its execution--specifically, they either design a plan, but don't work it; or they work the plan, but shudder to a halt when they reach a barrier or uncover a problem.

The answer? Once you start implementing, don't stop until you've finished. Adapt on the fly, improvise as best as you can, but unless something truly horrendous will happen otherwise, keep going.

Here's a small example of what I mean: I deliver a lot of online webinars. Some of them are "canned" (recorded in advance) and some of them are live. I've noticed that with the canned webinars, I'll often start and restart many times, unhappy with my choice of words or the tone I've struck. With the live webinars, once I've started, I've no option but to keep going. And guess which webinars almost always turn out to be more vibrant, and better received? The live ones.

3.       Get out of your inbox.

Leaders in thrall to their inbox, once only apparent when you visited someone at their office, now, you can see it everywhere: peck, peck, peck; on airplanes, at lunch, during rest room breaks. Any where, any time there is a minute to spare.

Here's the thing: if you're in thrall to your inbox, you're working to other people's agenda, not your own (a view I was intrigued to see shared by one surprising individual).

It may be over-promoted and it's often over-complicated, but the ability to achieve Inbox Zero (or something close to it) isn't optional for great leaders. If you're serious about achieving great things, you need the time and space to do it, and if you're using every break available to scroll through your inbox (or your social media stream), then I have news for you--you ain't doing great things.

4.       Get out of your office.

You truly want to achieve great things? Get the heck out of your office.

Not just because it removes you from all the interruptions and distractions that being in your own environment makes you subject to, but because it takes you out of the comfort zone of maintenance activities.

Your office desk, chair and computer monitor is where you do the 80 percent of merely good work, day in, day out. Find a retreat space, a unique corner somewhere, where you can specifically go to work on your major achievements. It may be a conference room down the hall, it may be the local coffee shop, it may be a broom cupboard--doesn't matter--just find a space that isn't the place where you do 'normal stuff'.

5.       Review, revise, adapt, push on.

It's day two. You've made a start on your great project. What to do today? Try this formula I arrived at in achieving one of my own big goals: Review what you did yesterday; revise anything that looks a little off; adapt your overall plan as necessary, and most importantly, push on.

Source  :  http://www.inc.com/les-mckeown/5-steps-to-achieving-great-things.html?cid=em01017week25a&nav=su