Family Finance: 5 Reasons Why A Financial Plan Is Always A Good Idea

A financial plan is crucial to your future for peace of mind. It pushes you to look past the short-term and into your long-term financial goals, making them more attainable than if you didn’t think ahead. 

A common misconception is that only wealthy people need to have financial plans, however everyone benefits from thinking for the future. A comprehensive plan includes provisions for education, emergencies, savings, insurance, investments, and retirement. 

Luckily, there are professionals out there, such as those with the UBS-The Burish Group, that can help find the best financial plan for you. Here are five reasons that explain why a financial plan is critical to your family finances.

Establish Goals

Establishing goals allow you to know what you’re saving money for. You can establish a reasonable time frame to achieve them and determine if your goals are realistic. 

Goals tend to focus on education, becoming debt free or saving for a down payment on a house. 

They are realistic, but the timeframe in which you want to accomplish them might need to be extended once you start crunching the numbers.

Prepare for Emergencies

Emergencies are bound to happen. Medical, automobile and home insurance protect you from these types of problems, but other emergencies such as car repairs can throw the plan off track. 

You might not have enough insurance for your needs or have a deductible that is too high to realistically pay during hard times. Being prepared for unexpected events keeps your financial goals on track and ensures you don’t have a financial disaster.

Evaluate and Change your Financial Habits

Seeing where your money goes makes you more aware of your spending habits. You might realize how much you’re spending on eating out or on interest for your credit card debt. 

It might make more sense to pay more on your credit cards due to high-interest rates than it does to put extra in a savings account with a low rate of return.

Maximize Investment Earnings

Looking at where your funds are going aids in building up your savings and allows you to evaluate where the best potential is. 

If the rate of inflation is higher than your investments, you might need to move them from one type of investment to another.

Have Security in Retirement

Retirement isn’t as far away as you think. Utilize resources such as a 401k, especially if your employer offers a matching program. It’s free money and there’s no reason not to take advantage. Don’t rely on social security alone to fund your future.

Financial planning is a part of a responsible future. By having a solid financial plan you can make sure that you are ready for the unexpected and can have enough money for the things that you really want and need. 

This is definitely a great way to plan out your life just a little bit better so that you don’t always have to always stress about your finances. Getting a plan may seem like a lot of work, but it is well worth it for the peace of mind.

Risks and Rewards: 5 Tips for Confident Investing

Risk is at the heart of any lucrative investment. Rarely is it possible to invest a sum of money where there is no real risk involved. 

As an investor, it is your job to not only size up an investment opportunity, but also learn ways to mitigate loss to ensure that your investment capital is as safe as possible. With this in mind, let us look at some sound tips to making better investment decisions.

Never Panic

One of the major reasons investors lose their shirts is because they engage in overly emotional investing habits. 

With their finger on the trigger, these investors look for the first sign of trouble and jump ship, allowing fear to guide their investment strategy. When it comes to successful investing, fear is not an option. 

If you are afraid of the risk of losing capital, it is better not to invest. It is best to invest when you have first overcome the fear of great loss and can make investment decisions with a clear head. 

This is a part of risk assessment and management that every savvy investor must endure before they can become a truly great investor.

Do Your Homework

If you slap down a huge wad of cash on an investment you did not research first, then chances are good that you will lose every penny. 

All great investors spend loads of time researching each investment opportunity to make sure that the potential for reward is worth their initial risk of capital. 

When you have done your due diligence in the homework department, then you will be informed enough to make an intelligent decision as to how to best approach an investment decision. 

Or, you may find from your homework that the investment is not good and know immediately to walk away from the table with all your capital in hand.

Take Your Winnings

It is an amazing phenomenon to watch people leave money on the table. Investing is not simply a game of risk and reward, it is also knowing when to take your winnings and come out ahead. 

Too often investors will watch their investment increase, start to expect things to continue going up and then watch as their profits drop like a rock back into negative territory. 

When it comes to investing, the only sure bet is the one where you are making a reasonable return on your investment and actually take your winnings. Allowing greed to cause you to hesitate could be costly. 

Sure, your investment could always increase more, but there is no guarantee that such an outcome will occur. As the old saying goes, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

Investing in Yourself

Sometimes the best way to limit capital risk is to invest in yourself. Whether this is through furthering your education or starting a new business, spending money to make yourself a better person in a better position is priceless. 

Because sales is such a great way to earn additional money, investing in a quality MLM-based business, one like ACN's MLM-based business opportunity, can provide you with a lot of control over your earning potential. 

Since an MLM-based business pays you on the efforts of people in your downlines, accumulating sign-ups under you can generate a lot of additional cash flow for a reasonably small initial investment.

Speculating

If you watch some investors, they just seem to have a good feel for which investment opportunities are the ones worth investing in and which are not. 

A closely guarded secret of many of these investors is that they learned how to speculate. For example, many investors take the time to learn how to bet on horses. 

While there is some skill involved in interpreting the odds, much of betting on horses boils down to the same types of intuitive thinking that a person like you must have when betting on a stock, currency or other investment vehicle.

Conclusion

Investing covers a range of skills from being able to perform seasoned analysis of data to learning how to engage in taking a good bet. 

If you practice investing on a regular basis, the skills needed to become a great investor should present themselves with each investment opportunity. Even if you experience a great loss of capital, it is comforting to know that almost every exceptional investor has gone through that as well. 

It all depends on what you choose to learn from such experiences that makes all the difference.

Apply for a Personal Loan in a Medical Emergency

Although we try not to think about it, medical emergencies can and do happen from time to time.

It’s very rare that we’ll be prepared for these situations, and if the emergency is particularly serious, you’ll need to have a sizable amount of money on hand to treat yourself or your family members. That’s where an emergency personal loan comes in.

But how do you apply for an emergency loan? What are the conditions you’ll need to satisfy? 

What are Medical Loans?

When emergency conditions arise, you can ask your bank for an emergency medical loan, which is offered when treatments such as surgery, therapy, and other procedures are needed to get you or a family member back on your feet after a debilitating illness.

These loans are what we usually know to be personal loans, meaning that they are unsecured loans. The amount that you can qualify for depends on a number of factors, including your profession, your current salary, among others. 

If your medical emergency qualifies to be valid, then a bank and NBFcs will be ready to help you out with a personal loan for emergency. 

What are the Interest Rates that I can Get for these Loans?

Since you are essentially applying for a personal loan, the rate of interest that you will get is generally the same as any other personal loan.

If you want to see if you are eligible for a personal loan, go online and find a personal loan eligibility calculator, usually available on the website, such as Bajaj Finserv’s calculator, where you can enter all the necessary details and find out if you are eligible for a personal loan.

If you find that you are eligible, you can go ahead and apply for a personal loan at their office. 

What can I do to Get a Lower Rate of Interest on my Personal Loan?

If you’re looking up on what is personal loan interest rate for your medical emergency, there a few things that you should be aware of. As is the process with all loans, you will be subject to a financial check, to ensure that you can pay for your loan.

If the bank finds that you have a good credit history and proper time for payback of your bills and previous loans, they will usually charge a lower rate of interest.

Another thing that you can do is find a financial institution that is trustworthy and offers a lower rate of interest than others. This will help you avoid paying too much in the way of interest on the loan, since it can rack up to tremendous amounts over time.

One thing to be aware of is that your emergency has to be recognized by the bank as a valid medical emergency, so check up with your bank to ensure that you have a condition that can be valid. Otherwise, your application may be rejected.

Medical emergencies can be distressing to experience. The emotional aspect of the same can be compounded when you know you don’t have the money necessary to properly treat it.

That doesn’t have to be the case with emergency personal loans. With financial institutions such as Bajaj Finserv, you can rest assured that there is always a way to get yourself or your family members back on the path to recovery without too much worry.

Teaching Teens Financial Responsibility

Raising a child in today’s tumultuous world can be the biggest challenge of your life. 

It becomes especially apparent in the teen years, when the contrast between what you try to teach your child and the influence of peers and the media seem to be in direct opposition.

There’s one area in which many pop-culture trends go in direct opposition to actual good practices and principles that we want to instill in our children: finances. 

Maybe many of us avoid the topic because we are still trying to become financially literate ourselves. But whatever your current state, financial responsibility is an important lesson to teach your children NOW. 

It might not seem as important or damaging as drug use, but just like illegal substances, it can have a permanent effect on your child’s habits, brain, and happiness. 

While financial happiness may seem like something that’s only important on the surface, it’s important to note that financial woes are among the greatest causes of long-term depression, divorce, and stress that contributes to life-threatening illness. 

So, how can you raise fiscally responsible children in a world that just wants them to charge credit cards right and left? Here are some ideas: 

First of all, make sure that your child understands what a credit card is. 

Many parents give their child a credit card as they hit the teen years or enter college so that they have some emergency money just in case. 

Additionally, as your child hits the age of majority, credit card companies will start to pounce, advertising low interest rates and attractive fringe benefits. It’s important that before they have any access to credit cards, they understand that credit cards are not free money. 

Rather, they’re a very temporary loan that can snowball into crippling debt if not handled properly. Teach your child smart credit card habits, like those found here, and consider starting them on a debit card instead of a credit card until they gain some more experience with money management. 

Encourage them to set a long-term savings goal

This could be one of the most powerful habits that you instill in your child. After all, as you grow and your financial responsibilities become more complicated, there’s always something that you’re saving for (usually several things). 

Teach your teen to prioritize for things that aren’t coming for a long time yet. Let them have practice weighing the benefits of instant gratification against their goal to save enough money for a new car, or an epic summer vacation. 

Help them learn a habit of always setting aside some money for savings.

Let them get a part-time job. 

There’s nothing that teaches us the value of a dollar like having to work for it ourselves. Help your child understand that the cost of a pizza could equate an hour of hard work. 

They’ll start to look at price tags completely differently when they do the math. (“This shirt is three hours of work, that movie ticket is one hour, and this car repair is 10 hours.”) 

Give them a dinner night

One interesting way to teach your child responsibility is by putting them in charge of dinner every now and then. 

Give them a budget and challenge them to do both the shopping and the cooking themselves. Help them realize that, while ordering pizza is an easy solution, it can break the bank after a while. It can also teach them about incidental costs, like tips, transportation, and add-ons. 

This can teach your child about both money and nutrition. It can be a dramatic lesson to see the difference between the cost of eating out and making spaghetti at home. 

Set a fixed budget for a trip. 

Managing our money while we travel is hard for all of us. Unexpected costs can throw our budget off every day, forcing us to re-adjust. 

If your child is taking a trip, whether with your family or with their friends, give them a fixed budget and challenge them to stick to it. If they run out of money with three days left to go, they’ll learn that they need to start prioritizing better. 

This can also save you the stress of having to say no to their various costly requests throughout the trip. Instead, you’re putting the choices in their hands and letting them deal with the consequences in an immediate way. 

Teach them to make a budget

This can be difficult when your teen’s costs are so different from yours, but setting the habit now can help them be more wise when they manage all their own living costs. 

Remind your teen to factor in insurance, gas money, and savings first. This will help them realize how much is really available for their optional costs, like eating out or doing activities with friends.