When building financial plans for my clients one common question I get is “how do you manage your personal finances and what do you do with your money?” So, in this post I am going to share with you how I run my own financial life on a regular basis.
One thing to know is that you do not have to be wealthy to reach financial success and in fact any dollar amount can work. Success is always relative to your personal goals and objectives.
The actions you take are more important than the specific dollars.
Read below to see my actions!
Please note: I am not telling you how to run your life, I’m just showing you all the things that I do.
Money
- Every morning I check my checking, savings, credit card and investment balances. It only takes 2 mins.
- Every month I automatically transfer a small amount of money to an online money market account for emergencies.
- Every month I contribute a small amount to 529 plans for my kids college.
- I contribute 13% of my salary every month to my retirement plan.
- I pay monthly for my life and disability insurance . This is to protect my family if something were to happen to me.
- I make small additional principle payments to my home mortgage to cut down on the life of the loan.
- I use my credit card for 99% of all purchases, so I can track them better. I may carry a small balance here or there but do my best to pay off my cards every month.
Lifestyle
- When making a big purchase I try to get at least 3 different price quotes.
- I bring a lunch to work every day and a large water bottle that I fill up at home.
- During the work week we take out something for dinner in the morning so we aren’t scrambling at night.
- We go out for dinner or bring in on the weekends.
- For our family of 4 (2 kids under 4 years old) we spend roughly $85 a week at the grocery store on weekly necessities and $200 at Costco every 6 weeks on bigger, non-perishable items, including frozen meat and chicken.
Financial success doesn’t just happen. It takes a lot of work. I am still on my journey but these are the things I do to stay on track.
What do you do?
-Jared S. Friedman
