Tag Archives: family

Doing More For The Family With Your Money

your money, family, tips, advice
Picture Source

If you want to start doing more to protect your family’s future then you should focus on your financial situation. Let’s talk about how to do more for the family with your money.

Slow down your spending.

A great idea for anyone who wants to do more with their family finances is simply to create a detailed budget. You need to slow down your spending if you want to boost your wealth. Your income might go further than you think. You could save a lot of money on necessary expenses. You might be able to reduce food costs at the grocery store by searching for online coupons and discount codes. It’s an easy way to save money. You might also want to reduce your electricity bill by cutting back on energy consumption in your household. You could get thicker windows to trap heat, use energy-efficient appliances, and get a responsive thermostat to automatically control the heating. You might also want to do some research on rooftop solar solutions. You could save money on your energy bill and power your house sustainably. Here is a list of the best Texas energy providers to find the lowest rates from power companies you can trust.

Obviously, you need to think about your luxury expenses too. You’ll only see an increase in your available monthly income if you slow down all unnecessary splurging. Remember, this is about managing your spending rather than outright halting it. You can still purchase luxuries such as vacations, for example, but you might want to save money by booking flights in advance and making a travel budget. You could also control your spending with regards to non-essential expenditures by setting yourself a 30-day window. If you still want a specific luxury 30 days after first seeing it then you should buy it. If not then it would have been a wasteful impulse purchase.

Make some investments for the future.

Of course, you don’t always want to avoid spending your personal funds. When you start focusing oninvestingyour disposable earnings, that’s when your wealth starts to grow. That’ll give you and your family more options in the future. If you’re not much of an investor then you should consider the real estate market because properties are assets that everybody understands. You could massively multiply your investments, whether you buy to sell or buy to lease. If you’re a bit more interested in the stock market as opposed to real estate, this can also be a fruitful endeavor if you play your cards right. Utilising the services of a fund management company such as the one found here or another similar would be a good strategy in order to grow your portfolio into a sizeable group of assets.

Save up money.

This might seem like an obvious piece of advice when it comes to the future, but it’s easier said than done. You might want savings for your retirement with your partner and your child’s college tuition fees. That requires some planning. You need to gradually increase your wealth over the years so that you have enough to set aside for big future expenditures. We’ve already talked about achieving this by cutting back on spending and investing in the right assets, but there’s a final crucial component: saving up. Many people earn a substantial income but have a relatively empty savings account because they focus on present needs. If you struggle to restrain yourself and save money for tomorrow then you might want to consider setting up an automatic standing order with your bank. That way, a fixed percentage of your monthly earnings could be transferred from your checking account to your savings account. You could even set up some sort of automatic transfer to your savings with your employer; that would prevent you from wasting your available income every month.

3 Things To Do Before You Have Kids

Having children is obviously enough one of the biggest changes you can ever make in life, and it is something that you absolutely want to be as prepared for as possible. The truth is that most people find that they don’t feel that prepared, and that is something which is likely to be frustrating a lot of the time. Part of the reason for not feeling prepared enough is that it so hard to know what you should be doing to try and ready yourself for such a huge and dramatic change in your life. For that reason, we are going to take a look at some of the things that you might want to think about doing before you ever have kids. As long as you have considered the following, having children will be considerably easier for a number of reasons.

have kids, tips, advice, family, starting a family

Credit

Travel The World

While you might still be able to take the occasional holiday when you have children growing up with you, the truth is that you won’t be able to do any crazy excursions or long haul travelling until they have flown the nest. For that reason, you should think about trying to travel the world, so that you can make sure that you have seen as much of it as you possibly can before you have children. This will of course take time, but it is worth it, and you will feel that you are much more ready to have children as well, especially with all of the experience that such an experience will grant you. Travelling is not just good for you, but good for your children in the long term as well, so it’s definitely something to consider.

Stop Smoking

If you smoke, even just occasionally, you will want to think about stopping it before you bring children into the world, for the simple reason that that is not the kind of example you probably want to set them. If you are finding it hard to stop smoking, as most people do, then you can think about using e juice samples or electronic cigarettes for a while first to help wean you off the nicotine, until such time as you can give it up altogether. This will help you be healthy and to set the best possible example to your kids, so it is absolutely worth thinking about as best as you can for that reason.

have kids, tips, advice, family, starting a family
Credit

Advance Your Career

Whatever it is you do, it is likely that it will be somewhat interrupted by having children, no matter which parent you are or how much you don’t want this to happen. You should therefore think about advancing your career as best as you can, so that you are going to be able to cause it the least damage possible when you have to step away for a while. Then, going back into it will be considerably easier, and you will essentially have managed the best of both worlds.

Separating Family Life & Business Life The Right Way

Working from home is a privilege, but it’s one of those privileges that comes with pitfalls. When you finally find a job that allows you the freedom to work from home, it’s terrific. You can finally ditch the long commute while keeping the same salary level. You can save money for your next family vacation because you do not have to spend it on fuel or work lunches anymore. You get valuable time back that you didn’t have before because you were so busy in the office or commuting all the time, so you have the time to be Dad again. It’s amazing how you can be productive with your time, not spending it away from the kids.

The only downside is that your working persona and your ‘Dad’ persona need to remain separate under the same roof, and that’s not always easy. Setting boundaries with your work life are essential, and you have to maintain those boundaries where possible. Below, you’ll read some of the ways that you can separate your work and family life when you are working from your house.

family, life, work, business

Image Source
  • Keep Work & Family Paperwork Apart. You need a specified office space with room for all of your documentation. This requires you to invest a little in shelving and filing cabinets like this one. If you want to go one further with your mail not being mixed up with the family, you can take a professional route and buy a PO box with web access. It’s necessary for you to maintain a professional image to the outside world, and you can easily do that with some outside help. When you are a telecommuter, your office is everywhere. This means you can work from your local coffee shop if you want to. Even so, you need an office that holds your work and gives you a quiet space for telephone calls.
  • Keep Office Hours. You need to act like you’re in the office during the office hours you usually work. You can, of course, be flexible. You can do the school runs and attend events for your children, but if you start doing it too often, it can really mess up your productivity. Try and keep a consistent schedule where possible so that your family is aware that you need to work and when.
  • Ignore Household Distractions. Chores can wait when you are supposed to be working. The clean clothes that need putting away can wait until your working day finishes. Distractions can pull you away from your work, which will delay you in completing what you need to end your day. Ignore the distractions and wait until after work.
  • Create Boundaries. Don’t mix work into household chores. Opening your laptop while you cook is confusing to the family dynamic. Leave your work in the office and be engaged with your family instead.

It may not always be easy to create a boundary with your family, but it is possible if you want to ensure you don’t bleed your two worlds together.