Aug/100
Long-Term Personal Finance Goals
You’ve probably heard the old cliché, “If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?” Well, it holds true in the area of family finances, too. Establishing long-term goals for yourself and your family helps to keep your current financial picture in perspective.
For example, if one of your goals as a couple is to have a full-time parent at home when the new baby arrives, you can start cutting back on spending now in order to get out of debt and establish some savings before that big day arrives. Keeping your long-term goals in mind will help keep you on track whenever you’re tempted to spend money on extras.
A necessary step toward working together as a financial team is to establish your life goals and review them with your significant other. Ask yourself the following questions to help you determine your long-term financial goals:
What hobbies do I want to pursue to add recreation and fun to my life? What place does education hold in my future or that of others in my immediate family?
How important is home ownership in my future? What are my career goals? What further training, if any, do I need to reach those goals?
How much time, money, and effort do I want to give in the near future to charity or church-related activities?
What character traits do I value most and want to develop in my own life and the life of my children? Are my personal financial goals and decisions in line with those character traits?
What are my retirement goals? How will I take care of future healthcare concerns? How soon do I want to pay off any outstanding consumer debt? At the end of my life, what things might I regret if I choose to spend my money on less-important pursuits?
Writing out your goals and the values that are important to your family can go a long way toward keeping your life and finances on track.
But even if you don’t write down your goals, thinking through your priorities and keeping them in mind as you make decisions (financial and otherwise) is an excellent habit.
If you have trouble keeping to a written budget, you may choose a life partner whose greatest joy is keeping detailed written records of every flower growing in the yard or every penny spent on bubble gum by the kids and imagine you balance each other out in the process. Having differences is healthy, but we also know from experience that these differences can test your limits of grace and reason.
If you’re the primary money manager in your family, you will probably shoulder most of the responsibility for turning your family’s finances around.
However, the cooperation of your spouse or partner and family is essential. Although you may pay the bills each month, you and your spouse or partner both spend your family’s money, so he or she has a very direct effect on the success or failure of your financial program.
The support and cooperation of your spouse or partner is essential to getting your family’s finances back on track. One of you can’t be pinching pennies while the other is spending like there is no tomorrow. Both of you should be totally committed to getting out of debt and reducing or eliminating the use of credit.
Jan/090
Mint – The Best Free Personal Finance Software Online
Mint is fresh, intelligent online money management. Not only is Mint free, it saves you money. While existing personal finance software packages require hours to set up, a passion for accounting (is that possible?) and hours of weekly maintenance, Mint is virtually effortless.
With Mint, you can achieve better online financial management in less than five minutes. After that, revolutionary, patent–pending Mint money management software does the rest, with virtually no more work required. It automatically pulls together your bank, credit union and credit card data, and provides up–to–date and amazingly accurate views of your financial—life from the big picture to specific details, in a friendly and intuitive way.
In addition, Mint goes beyond visibility and analysis providing personalized money–saving and money–making suggestions. Mint provides users an average of $1,000 in savings opportunities during their first session. Plus, Mint is proactive—alerting you when you are exceeding your personal budget, have a low balance, need to pay a bill, and more.
Mint is safe and secure online money management: we never know your identity and we provide bank–level data security.
How Mint works
Mint is a modern, powerful, easy and secure Web–based solution for online financial management. And it’s free. You register anonymously using any valid email address, and then add the log–in information for the online bank, credit union, credit card and investment accounts you want to consolidate in Mint.
Mint connects to more than 7,500 US financial institutions. Your account information is updated daily. Mint automatically categorizes all your purchases, showing you how much you spend on gas, groceries, parking, rent, restaurants, DVD rentals and more, with amazing precision. Mint automatically analyzes and graphs your investment performance, showing you how you’re doing versus relevant market indicies like the S&P 500 and highlighting the fees you’re paying in each of your accounts. Mint’s advanced alerting system sends you email or SMS messages (your choice) on any unusual activity, low balances, fees and upcoming bills so you’re in constant contact with your money — effortlessly.
Mint goes way beyond just reporting and budget tracking. Using a patent-pending search algorithm, Mint constantly searches through thousands of offers from hundreds of providers to find you the best deals on everything from bank accounts to credit cards; brokerage accounts; and more. Mint’s suggestions are unique to you — as they’re based on your individual spending patterns. For example, if you have $20,000 in a bank account that’s earning no interest, Mint’s certain to find and recommend a high interest bearing savings account for you. Acting on that suggestion could give you an extra $900 in interest income over a year.
Key Benefits
You don’t work for Mint, it works for you. It’s an entirely new approach to personal finance software management. The over half a million Mint.com users tell us they love Mint because it’s:
- Easy to use: You’re up and running in less than five minutes. And Mint does virtually all the rest.
- Comprehensive: Mint provides visibility into virtually all your financial relationships with a single, secure login.
- Visual and Analytical: Mint gives you powerful insights into your personal finances making–it easier to practice smart financial management.
- Constantly working to find you savings: Mint typically finds users $1,000 in savings opportunities in their first session—minutes after registering. And Mint keeps looking for new ways for you to save every day—continuously comparing your needs to product, service and bank offerings most relevant to you.
- Secure: Mint provides bank–level data security and industry–leading identity protection. Its security and privacy have been validated by VeriSign and TRUSTe.
- Always On: You’re automatically notified of upcoming bills, low balances, and any unusual activity in any of your accounts through one (m)interface.
- Anywhere/anytime access: You can get to Mint anywhere, anytime over the Web.
- And it’s Free!
To Learn More about this software Visit Mint.com
Jan/090
AceMoney – Free Personal Finance Software
AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite is a freeware personal finance sotware manager. It has all the features of its big brother except multiple accounts management. As AceMoney, AceMoney Lite helps people organize and manage their personal finances quickly and easily. It supports all the features required for home or even small-business accounting needs:
Track your spending habits and see where the money goes
Generate any report by categories or payors/payees, including pie charts. Now you can see at a glance how much you spent on food last month. Find all your withdrawals and deposits by any parameter.
Create and manage budgets
The program has more than 100 predefined spending categories. Setup budget limits for every category and track the difference between actual and budgeted values.
Track performance of investments
Track 401k, Stock options, Employee Stock Purchase Plans or any other investment activities. You don’t need to enter the stock quotes manually: AceMoney will download them from the net!
Do your financial math in multiple currencies
The software supports more than 150 different currencies and automatically downloads their exchange rates from Internet.
Enjoy the convenience of on-line banking
Download and import information from on-line banks in QIF and OFX formats. If you run a small business, export to HTML, Text, or CSV formats to generate statements or perform complex statistical analysis.
Don’t miss the next deadline for bills
AceMoney takes control over your bills and shows you when they should be paid.
Double check
Enjoy the security of password protection of every file, scheduled backups and many other features without having any experience in accounting!
Plan debts and mortgage payments
AceMoney provides a loan calculator to plan debt payments and a professional mortgage calculator to estimate future morgage payments if you are planning to purchase real estate.
Do e-business with AceMoney
Are you selling goods on eBay? Are you in a shareware business? Do it with AceMoney! AceMoney automates input of orders coming from PayPal, RegNow, RegSoft, SWReg and Plimus.
On top of that, AceMoney is available in English, Dutch, French, Galego, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Slovak and Turkish! People all over the world use AceMoney for their personal needs.
download: http://www.mechcad.net/downloads/AceMoneyLiteSetup.exe
homepage: http://www.mechcad.net/