Retirement Cures

First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day. Hope you have taken time to let someone you care about know it today. It usually doesn’t always have to be a big ordeal. Just a quick phone call or letter can make a big difference in some one else’s life.

Setting Up A Personal Budget

Last time we were discussing what’s the best way to save for retirement. Part of that training showed you the power of automatic withdrawals to savings. This week, the topic will build on the other. To be able to save for retirement in the first place, you got to know where you money is going. Just as you would in a business, you have to keep track of what comes in and where it goes out. Unfortunately, you can’t run your finances like the Federal Government and just spend your way out of your problems. (Note: This never has worked and to think it will ignores all principles of finance. Kind of like saying if I step off of a taller building, I won’t fall to the ground this time.)

Developing Your Balance Sheet

Ready to develop the You, Inc. balance sheet? Here goes. Start with all you income streams. For most of us, this is very simple. You have one, maybe two, depending on how many jobs you are working or if your spouse is working. This goes on the income side of the balance sheet.

Next comes the expenses. These are the tough ones, because if you haven’t done one before it might seem a little overwhelming. Actually it is quite simple. Here’s what you do. Carry a piece of paper with you through out the week and write down every thing you spend money on including the use of your credit cards. Do this consistently for 4 weeks or for the whole month depending on whether you are paid every two weeks or once/twice a month.

Expenses Can Be Shocking

Once you complete you tracking process, list everything out and set up various categories which make sense to you. Remember, this is your money and your own You, Inc. Typical categories might be food, utilities, gasoline, clothing, car payments, house payments or rent, credit card payments, credit card purchases, amount put in savings, etc.

Totaling Your Balance Sheet

List Income first and below that list the various categories of expenses second. The subtract all of your expenses from your income and see if you have a positive or negative number. If it is positive, you can at least say you are already headed in the right direction. However, if this number is negative, you may have some challenges ahead and some immediate action is required.

Correcting A Negative Balance Sheet

How can you right the ship and get your balance sheet showing positive? The answer is easy but not always simple. The answer is to cut your expenses. Review what you are spending your money on and look for the easy things first. The easy things are things like how often are you eating out instead of taking your lunch to work. Could you take your own coffee from home and not spend it on a high priced cup at a local coffee shop? Instead of buying soft drinks from the vending machine, maybe you could buy a 2 liter off brand for half the price of a smaller vended one? One of the easiest yet hardest ones would be to leave your credit cards at home in a safe place and not carry it with you. That way it will require you to have to make an extra trip before making a purchase giving you time to think about your purchase to see if it is something you really need or just want out of convenience.

Taking swift action in many of these areas could save you any where from $5 to $10 a day. That totals to $150 to $300 a month. This is newly found money not to run out and buy more stuff, but to help you work with making your balance sheet even more positive. Remember that the more positive your balance sheet is, the better your retirement can be if you follow the simple approaches to creating an automated saving system.

Hope this issue of Retirement Cures has helped. To learn even more details on this whole process, you can get the free retirement savings plan from our main web page.

Until Next Time….

We recently had a reader ask this question as they have had a hard time being able to find enough money to put aside each month. The biggest challenge is if you look for money that is left over at the end of the month to put aside, you probably won’t find any. Like most people, you have more month at the end of the money. You just don’t seem to make it through the month.

What’s The Best Way To Save For Retirement?

This is actually easier than you may think. If you downloaded our Free Retirement Training, you will have learned the answer to this question. What I had to do was just decide that I would set up an automatic withdrawal from my checking account. Now most people are some what afraid to do this thinking if they cannot save it them selves, how will this automatic withdrawal work any better.

Set It and Forget It - The Power Of Paying Yourself First

That is really how it works. By paying your self first, you will actually not notice it as much. Each year I have looked for ways to put a little bit more aside automatically. As I get pay raises, I look at how much of that money I can add to the automatic deposit program for my retirement. Instead of being like most people who say to themselves, how much more things can I go out and borrow to purchase.

Two Suggestions To Make This Work

If you truly want to make this work, we are going to recommend two things for you to do. First one is totally free. Start by getting the Free Retirement Training Program that Retirement Cures offers its readers. After that, we recommend a book called The Richest Man in Babylon. This little book is an amazing story that will demonstrate the power of paying yourself first. Put these principles into practice today and in a few years you will be glad you did.

Until Next Time…

Well after many attempts to make this work, we finally got our video uploaded to Viddler. Not sure why it wouldn’t upload but on the 4th attempt, we finally got a confirmation. With that said, let’s take a look at what today’s video training has to offer.

Questions About Retirement

We have been asked many times by readers and even our own friends and family the following questions:

• How Do I Plan For Retirement?
• How Much Do I Need To Retire?
• Can You Give Us Some Good Retirement Advice?

All of these questions and more are what future retirees are wanting to discover. But how can you know all the answers at once? How do you know if you are getting sound advice given the shaky futures people are looking at having to live? We have found that it is best to focus in on one main principle which sums up the challenges that people may have. It is called the Retirement Wealth Ratio.

We have written a lot about this, but we also know that people like to sit back and watch/listen at the end of a hard day, so we have put this together in the form of a short instructional video. We hope you like it.

What do you think? If you have questions, feel free to post them and we will see if we can address them or point you in a direction to get the answer that works for you. Keep in mind you can get our Free Retirement Training Course from our main web page for Retirement Cures.

Until Next Time…