Alright, with January coming to a close, we’re approaching the end of our guide to improving your success with your resolutions.  This is not to say that you should be calling it quits with your resolutions; the whole goal of resolutions should be to start new habits that can last through the entire year, and ideally, for the rest of your life.  But I’m limited in my ability to cover suggestions on keeping your resolutions; there’s only so many resolutions that are appropriate for a personal finance blog, after all, and even taking that into consideration, I can only cover so many resolutions before, well, most people have completely given up on their resolutions.  Here’s one, I hope you definitely don’t give up on:

Giving More to Charity

Most resolutions that we make are intended to improve ourselves in some way, from increasing our financial standing to getting in shape to graduating and finding a good job.  There are few things we can do that will do more to not only make ourselves better, but also help out others than if make the strongest effort possible to give more to charity throughout the year.  I’m sure you know plenty of reasons to give to charity already (but here are some from Sweating the Big Stuff if you need some help), so our focus is on how to keep up your donations when there seem to be so many other things in your life that require your money.  Here are a few suggestions to help ensure that you give what you can, when you can:

1. Start Small and Build Gradually: If you try to give thousands and thousands of dollars right away, you’re likely to run into trouble pretty quickly.  Trying to put a large amount of money towards any new goal, whether it’s investing, saving, or charity, will likely throw off your normal spending so much that you end up quitting after only a few months and going back to not donating anything.  Instead, start with a relatively small portion of your income, a few percentage points or so, and once you have adapted your budget to your new charitable spending, then slowly increase until you reach your desired giving level.  On that note:

2. Make it Automatic: You might think that this suggestion takes away some of the fun of charitable giving; if you simply go to a site like Just Give, enter an automated investment schedule, and then sit back as your money is taken on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, it might not feel as if you’re really contributing.  But you’ll still be giving, and you won’t have to worry that issues in your personal life (from distractions that keep you from making your next contribution to other expenses that seem to have a greater pull on your money) will keep you from giving what you can to charity.

It feels good to give.

3. Do Your Due Diligence Before You Give: It’s tempting, as you try to give more, to open up your wallet to any charity that pulls on your heart strings.  But giving more doesn’t mean that you have to give recklessly.  Make sure you do research into any new charity to which you want to give, and make to follow up on the charities you are currently giving to, as well.  I’ve written before on researching charities, and the same rules still apply: with how easy the Internet has made it to find out money about any organization, there’s really no excuse to give to frauds.

4. Consider Non-Monetary Contributions: So, you want to do more to help your favorite charities this year, but money is incredibly tight.  By the time you put money towards paying down your debts, building up your savings, and investing toward your future, you’ve barely got enough left to keep food in the refrigerator and the lights on in the house; if you try to give any money to charity, you’d quickly need charity yourself just to make it through each month.  Well, don’t worry, you do have options: most charities are just as happy (if not moreso) to get people volunteering to help them in their work, rather than simply monetary contributions.  If you have special skills, from accounting expertise to cooking abilities, it shouldn’t be hard to find a charity in your area that could use your help.  Even if you lack such skills, many charities simply need able-bodied individuals to handle any number of tasks that would otherwise require paid help; by offering up your time, you can save them money, and possibly end up contributing more than if you simply gave money

Alright, that takes care of how you can increase your contributions to charity this year.  Here’s hoping you have a wonderful year filled with lots of giving, and that the world becomes a much better place because of it.

Alright, we’re two-thirds of the way through January, which means that about two-thirds of people who made resolutions for the new year have given up on improving themselves this year. I hope that you’re not among them; the year has barely started, you can’t already be willing to give up on improving yourself. Still, I know that it can be tough to keep up with resolutions, which is why I’m here once again to share some advice on how to stick with your resolutions and achieve your goals for 2012. This week, we’re looking at one of the most important things you can do to improve your financial situation, namely

Saving More Money

Alright, there are several different ways to approach this particular goal. You can attempt to cut down your spending, a goal that my Frugal Friday posts can help you achieve. On the other side of the coin, you can attempt to boost your salary in a number of ways, from improving how hard much you work at each elemental of your job to how much you are able to earn by working in alternative jobs and earning more money as a result. Better yet, use a combination of the two, earning at least enough each month to cover you expenses and have some money left over. (Remember last week and creating a budget? Probably good to check it out again and make sure you include some money to put towards your savings)

Probably not the best to mix your budget money with your card playing

Once you have a budget that allows you to put some money aside, here are some suggestions to help you save money for the future:

1. Make It Automatic: One of the best ways to ensure that you build up savings for the future is to take advantage of the automatic transfers that most modern banks allow you to do. Figure out how much you can set aside each month (a goal to shoot for when you first start to save is five to ten percent of you income; that’s a small enough amount that it shouldn’t affect your money situation too much, but large enough that you’ll make some progress with your spending soon enough), and set up an automatic transfer from your main checking account. Where should you go with the money; well, that’s the next question…

2. Set Up a Separate Savings Account: Let’s be honest, if you try to keep your savings in the same place, as say, the account you use to pay your monthly bills, you savings will end up be spent; it’s natural when you have such an account like that to use it in that way. What you need to do is create an account that you will use purely for saving. You might want to open up said account in an entirely new company on a new website (a good site for such savings accounts is SmartyPig, which focuses on automated savings accounts); that way, the chance that you feel tempted to use your savings for random spending is limited.

3. Have a Goal for Your Savings: It’s important that you know what you are shooting for; whether you are aiming for $5000 or $50,000 in savings will have a lot of impact on everything from the best methods to use to how hard you’ll have to work to meet your goals. (The smaller an amount you need, the easier it should be to find extra money in your monthly expense account and put it into a fresh account.) There’s quite a bit of debate about how much you should try to save, from $1000 to twelve months’ worth of expenses, but it’s probably best to keep putting money aside until you can cover at least three to six months’ worth of your typical expenses. Speaking of which…

4. Resist the Urge to Spend Your Savings: As you build up your savings account, it will become increasingly tempting to spend the money. Don’t. Alright, a bit more advice than that: part of the reason we want to keep our savings in a separate account from our regular checking account is to avoid the temptation to spend the money. If that alone isn’t enough to keep you from you breaking into your savings, you’ll have to find other ways to keep your savings safe. Things like CDs can provide you with a means of increasing how much interest you earn with your savings, while helping to prevent you from withdrawing the money on a whim (or at least, slowing up the process).

5. Keep Updating Your Goals: As you go through life, the amount of money you need to set aside to keep yourself safe and secure will change; the amount that could supply you for months as a recent graduate might barely cover two weeks by the time you are in your mid-fifties, married, and with a future graduate or two of your own. While this is more of a long-term goal than simply a one-year resolution, it is good to double-check your saving needs every few months, or at least every year, to make sure you still have enough set aside to meet your goals.

There you go, a guide to building up those old savings. It will take some time and some effort, but if you stay devoted to your goal, you should have no problem setting aside plenty of money for a rainy day (or any other purpose). Good luck, and happy resolution completion!

It’s already the 13th, and you know what that means: half of the people who created resolutions for this year have already failed at them. (Conservatively estimated, of course; it’s fully possible that even more resolutions have already met an untimely end.) Here’s hoping that you aren’t among them.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand how it can happen; it takes a lot of time and effort to keep up with even a relatively minor resolution, and more than a few of us have taken on some pretty big ones this year. Still, if you don’t keep up with them and try your best, you’re guaranteeing failure, and that’s the last thing we want when it comes to things like building up our financial foundation. Particularly when it comes to things like:

Creating a Budget

This is one of the most basic things that needs to be done if you’re hoping to improve your financial situation. I’ve touched on the subject of budgeting before, but mainly looking at how to stick to a budget. I was a bit short of advice on how to actually create a budget; unfortunately, simply adding up your spending and your earning, while technically a budget, will leave you in the same sort of situation as the US government, that is, greatly indebted and unlikely to get out.

Don't worry; I'll help you avoid partisan squabbles as you crunch the numbers

How do you make a budget properly? Well, there are few simple steps to help you produce a workable budget, starting with:

1. Watch Where You Spend: Before you can create a budget to get you where you WANT to be, you need to see where you ARE at now. For a month or two, watch where you are spending your money. Record EVERY expense, no matter how small, from monthly bills to that can of soda you got with lunch. To get the most possible out of this, you have to be sure not to change your spending habits; if you live like a pauper while keeping track of your spending but spend like a prince when you don’t, you’re not going to get the sort of data you need to make a decent budget.

2. See Where Everything Lines Up: When you have data from a typical month or two, it’s time to see where how it fits together. Make a table of your income on one side, and your expenses on the other. (It’s helpful to divide your expenses into the regularly reoccurring kind (mortgage/rent, electric, gym memberships, etc.) and discretionary expenses (meals out, shopping, spending on those morning coffees and similar things that can vary from month to month.) Don’t forget to include expenses or income sources that don’t come every month; if you pay your automobile insurance twice a year or get investment dividends every quarter, you’ll need to factor them in, by dividing the amount by the number of months between each event.

Now, you’ll need to see whether your expenses are sustainable on your income level. This is pretty easy to see: simply total up all those expenses, total up all that income, and see which total is higher. If it’s the income, congratulations! You’re already living on less than you take in, the goal for our budgeting plan. (Well, if you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to be sure that you are doing things like putting money aside for emergencies and investing enough for your retirement; if you can do that and still be under budget, great! If not, please read on.) If your expenses are higher, well, then, it’s time to:

3. Trim Your Budget Where Possible: Yup, I know, the least fun part of creating a budget: trying to figure out what to cut. There aren’t too many rules I can give you; everyone’s life is different, and what is essential to me might be nothing but an extravagance to you. That said, things like keeping food in your belly, a roof over your head, enough gasoline in your car, and proper insurance coverage on yourself, your family and your belongings, all should take priority over things like, say, buying all the latest video games or going out to the movies. (That said, don’t give things like food spending a free ride; just because you need to eat, doesn’t mean you need to go out to eat each day of the week.) Your goal should be to cut enough spending so your income meets (or better yet, exceeds) your expenses; not an easy task, even before we look at those retirement contributions and emergency fund building (which do need to be included). When you do reach that point, it’s time for…

4. Sticking to Your Budget: You could make the best, most fantastic budget in the world, one that allows you to meet all your goals, plan for all contingencies, and still have enough money left to enjoy your life. It won’t matter if you don’t stick to it. This is tricky, no doubt about it, but important to really benefit from your budget. There is quit a bit of advice out there on sticking to a budget (much like a diet, it’s an area where many people have trouble). Here are a few tips to help maximize your chances of bucking the trend:

-Make sure your budget allows for some fun and enjoyment: Most of us aren’t would-be monks or hermits; we enjoy an active social life and plenty of fun. While it might seem like your movie budget should be the first thing to go while trying to balance your overall budget, if you don’t include some fun and free money in your budget, it’ll be no time before you simply decide not to follow it any more, period.

-Take advantage of free services: There are a surprising number of places where you can get goods and services that would otherwise cost a pretty penny for free (or at least, vastly reduced prices). Libraries offer books (and increasingly, CDs and DVDs) for nothing to members, there are free sources of information online, and speaking of online, it’s increasingly easy to enjoy all kinds of entertainment through online portals (even without relying on pirated info). Particularly with access to a decent computer (also becoming cheaper all the time), it’s possible to enjoy a full entertainment life without having to pay an arm and a leg (or any body parts, really).

-Make sure to reward your successes: We respond to rewards (and punishments); that’s just the way we are wired. To take advantage of that, try to reward yourself when manage to stick to your budget; just don’t go over budget doing it. Try this: take any money you manage to save during the month by staying under budget and split it in half; one half will be added to your savings (that emergency fund I kept mentioning before), the other half will be ‘fun money’, for you to use as you desire in the coming month. If you get to enjoy the results of sticking to your budget, you’ll be more likely to do so.

Alright, that should be more than enough on how to create (and stick to) a budget in the new year. Good luck, and here’s to a successfully budgeted 2012 for everyone!

It’s January, and that means that all around you, people are trying to improve their lives. More than any other time of the year, January is when everyone attempts to fix past problems and make their lives better. I’m certainly including myself in that group; it’s only six days into 2012, and two of my posts so far have involved my goals for the coming year.

Given that so many people are taking the time to focus on their resolutions and trying to improve their lives, I figured that it would probably make for a good blog entry (or four) to look at some of the more common personal financial resolutions and provide on how to accomplish them. So, for the next four Fridays, I’m going to providing advice on achieving Resolution Success, starting with

Paying Down Debt

This is a perennial favorite resolution: most of us have some debt, and it’s a rare person who doesn’t want to be debt free. Heck, I’ve covered this exact resolution before. (Although, looking back on it, I realize that I wasn’t as clear on how to actually pay down debt as I should have been; ah, the things you can learn by being a blogger.)

It's almost as good as book learnin'

But it’s obviously a tough one to actually achieve, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people who make the resolution year after year. Since I find myself in the same boat as many people, facing quite a bit of debt and wanting to pay it down, it’s an area I definitely want to focus on this year. With that said, here are some tips to help you (and me) pay down debt this year:

-Figure Out a Plan of Attack, and STICK TO IT: As you might guess, the topic of paying down debt is a popular one, which I am hardly the first person to tackle. There are more than a few gurus with their own personal favorite ways to tackle debt, from Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball to Flexo’s Debt Avalanche, and pros and cons of each. Hashing out the best method is not what this article is about (and the best method for YOU is something I can’t tell you, anyway), but the important thing is that once you have a plan you feel will work for you, you need to stick with it. Going from one plan to another to another (or worse, dropping your plan altogether) will be worse than sticking with a single plan, even if that single plan is less than ideal.

-Pay More Than the Minimum: The centerpiece to every debt elimination plan is to pay more than the minimum on one particular debt. (Which one is a major source of debate, of course.) Trying to pay off your debt while paying only the minimum is a surefire method to remain in debt for years, if not decades, longer than you need to be. While some debts, like student loans, are designed to be paid off in a specific number of years (ten for most student loans), others can take decades to pay off at the minimum payments (and may not necessarily ever be paid off at those rates). If you aren’t putting more than the minimum into one of your debts, you’ll need to do so if you hope to ever declare yourself debt-free.

-Negotiate Better Rates, if Possible: It’s a situation of ‘ask, and ye shall receive’, at least sometimes. The simplest way to lower your credit card or other debt interest rates? Ask for lower rates. It really can be that simple. The worst that happens is your creditor says no, and the best is that you find yourself charged hundreds or even thousands less as you work to pay off your debt.  While I can’t say for certain whether your lenders will be willing to cut your rates, asking is the only way to know for certain.  Better yet: find out the rates you could get by transferring your debt to another creditor, and use those rates to negotiate better rates.  Worst case scenario, you know where to get to get lower rates if your current creditors won’t play ball.

-Put as Much Money as Possible Towards Debt Elimination…: Regardless of what particular repayment tact you choose, you’ll be most successful by putting the maximum amount of money possible towards debt repayment. You might say that you don’t have any money available; if you did, why would you be in debt? But there’s usually money to be found, if you put your mind to it. There are probably services you use, from cable TV to subscription websites, that you can cut, at least until your debt is gone. There are likely items in your house you could sell to bring in some extra money. And speaking of extra money, have you heard that some people even make a few bucks online doing something called ‘blogging’? If you put some time and effort to it, you can potentially derive quite a bit of additional to help your debt repayment.

-…But Make Sure to Have a Reserve: It’s tempting to go whole hog when you are paying down debt; after all, every dollar of credit card debt you eliminate is one less dollar you owe, and thus one less dollar accruing interest. But you need to have some money set aside in an emergency fund; otherwise, the moment you run into financial trouble, you’ll find yourself in even deeper debt. How much of an emergency fund to have is another of those issues you’ll hear numerous opinions on, but you should have enough that any foreseeable problems can be handled without having to add further debt.

-Be Careful About Adding New Debt: I’m going to take a different tact here than the average debt elimination adviser. Most sources you’ll read say to not add any more debt as you pay down what you owe; things like cutting up your credit cards and canceling them as soon as you eliminate what you owe. This is not bad advice, particularly if you find yourself spending money you don’t have anytime there is plastic in your wallet. But, I understand that there are times when you find yourself all but unable to avoid adding further debt. Particularly if you are a student and making little, if any, income, you’ll likely have to go into debt simply to keep a roof over your head and food in your belly. The trick is to be careful and only add more debt when it is absolutely necessary. So, food, gasoline (assuming you are going to and from classes or work, not joyriding across the country), and rent: yes; expensive parties, fancy clubs, and high-class booze: no. A good rule of thumb: Try not to add any debt that doesn’t directly help you to earn more in the future.

There are a few tips to help you take that debt off (and keep it off). Does anyone have further suggestions they’d care to share? Or perhaps horror stories of finding themselves in too much debt thanks to doing things wrong? Inquiring minds would like to know!

The new year is well and truly upon us now. The resolutions have been made, the plans to achieve them have been drawn up, and we’re all ready to meet our goals in the coming twelve months. Everything is set, right?

Well, maybe. Chances are, you made some resolutions for last year, too, and probably didn’t get everything you wanted accomplished. After all, it’s sometimes tough to lose fifty pounds, pay down your credit card debt, and dominate the world, all at once. (Although, that last one might just be me.)

As you've probably heard more than once, you can't win the race if you don't run

While it’s tempting to push all those missed resolutions to the back of your mind and never think about them again, there’s much that you can potentially learn by looking back and reviewing your failed resolutions, seeing where you ran into trouble last year could help you see how to do better this year. I tried to do so myself in my latest resolution review, and it did help me to determine how to approach my goals this year.

Here are a few Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind as you look back at the year that was, and consider how to do well in the upcoming year:

DON’T Be Too Hard on Yourself: There are any number of reasons why you might not have gotten everything done that you wanted to do in the past year, many of which were likely outside of your control. Beating yourself up over not getting everything done that you wanted doesn’t do anything to help you improve in the new year, nor does it make the past year any more productive. What it does do is make you feel bad, and put you in a poor state of mind for getting your new goals done.

DO Think About What Went Wrong: This is not to say that you shouldn’t review what happened with your goals in the last year, and try to figure out why you weren’t able to achieve what you hoped to achieve. Looking back on your goals can give you some excellent insights into how to go about improving in the new year. Some possible reasons you ran into trouble could include trying to do too many things at once, making resolutions that were too ambitious (losing two hundred pounds of weight or building up your net worth by $100,000 would both be stretches for the average person), and not creating a reasonable plan for meeting your goal.

DON’T Forget to Learn From Your Mistakes: It’s not enough to know what went wrong if you set yourself up to make the same mistakes again in the coming year. If you discovered that your resolutions were too ambitious, for example, don’t allow your new resolutions for this year to be equally ambitious. Instead, review your resolutions for this coming year in light of what you learned about the past year, and adapt your new resolutions accordingly.

DO Share Your Resolutions: One of the best ways to motivate yourself to get your resolutions accomplished is to share them. Not only can your friends, family, or blog readers (for those of us write blogs, at least) help you to meet your goals through advice or other help, but the simple act of making your goals public can help to make it more likely that you will put in the time and effort needed to accomplish them.

DON’T Get Discouraged: Finally, it’s easy to discouraged when you look back at things you wanted to get done and ended up failing to do. The last thing you want as we start a new year is let past difficulties cause you not to try your hardest. Remember that your success this year is determined only by how hard you try.

That’s some good advice on how to be successful in this new year, if I do say so myself.  Here’s hoping you have plenty of luck accomplishing all your goals for 2012 and beyond!

Alright, it’s a brand new year, and for most of us, that means one thing above all others: resolution time! Yes, as the calendar rolls over, we try to improve ourselves, by focusing on the aspects of our lives we’d like to to improve. There’s plenty in most of our lives that we would like improve, and it tends to be easier when so many other people are also trying to make their lives better.

You might recall that last year, I made a number of resolutions (ten in fact), which I’ve been trying to achieve over the past year. I’ve done a somewhat decent job on achieving them all, but trying to do ten different (if generally inter-connected) things proved to be a bit too much for me to achieve.

Yup, I felt a bit like this at times during the past year

Rather than spread my focus in so many different directions, this year I’m going to make a smaller number of more focused resolutions. Hopefully, if my goals are more focused, I can have more success in achieving them during the next year. So, rather than creating ten different resolutions and dividing them into three categories, I thought that this year, I’d only create three goals to keep my attention more focused. So, with no further ado, here are my resolutions for 2012:

For my Blog, get my Alexa Ranking Under 100,000: I had hoped to reach this point by now, anyway, but things just haven’t quite worked out like that yet. So, rather than five different goals that should get my ranking to this point, I figured I would focus on the hopeful end goal instead. (I have mentioned, when going over my resolutions from last year, that I’m a bit leery about making goals that are dependent on other people’s responses, but I feel in this case that it should be more than possible if I focus on my blogging more.)

For my Finances, Eliminate $5000 in Credit Card Debt: Rather than the rather vague ‘Pay Down My Credit Card Balances’ goal I had last year, this year I’m giving a specific dollar goal and going to try my best to achieve it. It won’t be easy, but by focusing on doing so a little at a time, I should be able to get this accomplished. (As a side note: I will be taking out more money in student loans later this month; any portion of that money which goes to paying down my credit card balances won’t count. The last thing I want to do is simply trade one debt for another while calling it ‘paid down’.)

For my Personal Life, Finish Graduate School and Get a Job: This is another of those that depend on people other than me, that is true, but finishing grad school is certainly within my control, and if I start working diligently on job hunting now, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to find myself some gainful employment. It’ll take some effort, but more than anything else I can do in the coming year, this will help me get my life off to a better start.

There you have it, three new goals for the new year. What do you hope to accomplish in 2012?

Ah, it’s amazing how time flies, isn’t it?  It seems almost yesterday I was sharing some of my goals and resolutions for the new year of 2011, and here it is, the end of 2011 and time to think up new goals for the coming year.  Of course, before I go and start sharing a whole new set of goals for 2012, it’s probably good to sit down and see how well I did on my resolutions.  (The same way I did at the end of the first quarter, second quarter, and yes, the third quarter of this year.)

Hopefully, seeing my overall progress on these resolutions will help me to do better in the future.  To aid in that regard, I’m going to add a review of the resolutions themselves, to share some thoughts on attempting to achieve such a resolution in a single year and how well (or not so well) it worked out for me.  Given that I should come up with some new resolutions in the next few days, thinking back on the pros and cons of these resolutions should be good to help me learn from my mistakes.

Roger’s Resolution Rundown

Resolution #1: Write At Least One Post Per Day
Comments: Well, as I look back at nearly a year worth of writing, I see that I’ve written 199 posts in 2011 (including this one).  That’s 166 short of my goal, and a bit more than half, when all is said and done.  Not exactly what I had hoped to get accomplished.
Grade: C-: Well, I did manage a pretty healthy output of blog entries, even if I fell a bit (or more than a bit) short of my initial goal.  All the more reason to try harder next year, I suppose.
Resolution Review: While not a bad goal, it’s a bit tough to achieve a post a day under the best of circumstances.  While there are clearly bloggers who manage to put up a fresh, new post each day (and sometimes more than one), they tend to be full-time bloggers who can put in eight or more hours a day doing this, not people trying to fit in time to write a blog post between preparing bacteria for research and studying for a test (that is, people like me).  Maybe a more modest goal, three to five posts per week or so, would be more suitable.

Whoo-Hoo! Fireworks to ring in the New Year!

Resolution #2: Write At Least One Guest Post Per Week
Comments: Yeah, if there’s one goal I really, really, REALLY have not done well with, it’s this one.  Still haven’t been able to write any more guest posts; one of my biggest regrets this past year is not doing more in this respect.
Grade: F: Yup, as you might guess, still no improved grade here.  I’ll have to try harder in the coming year.
Resolution Review: It’s a pretty solid resolution, and something I do hope to achieve.  Although, as with the first resolution, it might have been a bit too ambitious; particularly as I work through grad school, it’s tough to even keep up with my blog, let alone write posts for my fellow bloggers.  I’ll need to try better to find the time, though.

Resolution #3: Promote My Blog In More Places
Comments: Not too much good to report here; I’ve been trying to do more promotional efforts, but as you might guess, it can be a bit tricky (to say nothing of time consuming).
Grade: D : Quite a bit more effort to be made here, as there’s definitely quite a bit of room for improvement.
Resolution Review: Not a bad goal to have, although as with so many resolutions, it suffers from a decided level of vagueness; I could say that simply by participating in the few carnivals I did this year, that I DID promote my blog in more places.  I’ll need to be more specific in the future, I suppose.

Resolutions #4 & #5: Read At Least 50 Blog Posts Per Day & Comment On 10 of Them
Comments: If you re-read those linked resolution reviews from previous quarters, you probably know what to expect here: I have been doing some more reading and commenting, but nowhere near the level I hoped to achieve
Grade: F: Yup, you guessed it, another F for this resolution.
Resolution Review: While reading and commenting on fellow bloggers a good goal to have for an up and coming blogger like myself, I was definitely far too ambitious about what I could achieve.  Reading 50 posts a day, for example, would take 2.5 hours at the relatively swift reading speed of three minutes per post.  Add another five to ten minutes per comment, if not more (I tend to be a wordy commentator), and I’d be putting in nearly four hours a day for something that, while enjoyable, doesn’t directly improve my own blog.  (Yes, it helps get the Amateur Financier name out there, and promotes my blog indirectly, but doesn’t do much good if it leaves me with no time for writing my own posts.)  I’ll have to be much, much more conservative if I opt for a resolution like this again, to say nothing of actually getting around to reading more posts…

Resolution #6: Pay Down My Credit Card Balances
Comments: As you might guess, between the holiday season and the normal troubles of being a poor student, I haven’t made much progress here.  A nice goal, but one I couldn’t really achieve.
Grade: D- : Not surprisingly, this is still an area where I need to make more progress.  The goal is tackle this with renewed furor in the new year.
Resolution Review: It’s definitely a good goal to have (although, again, it’s a bit vague).  If I decide to tackle this again as a resolution in the new year, I’ll try to set a more solid goal level, rather than the vague ‘pay them down’.

Resolution #7: Create at Least Three More Sources of Income
Comments: Well, at the end of 2011, I still have only as many income sources as I did at the start of 2011.  So, pretty poor showing here, all in all.
Grade: C : I would put a D or even F here, but I have managed to build my blog into a pretty decent alternative income source, so I’ll call this one a draw.
Resolution Review: Probably my least well thought out resolution; in hindsight, I should have been much more concerned about how much alternate income I generate, rather than the number of places I derive said income from.  (Especially trying to be a Jack of All Trades would likely leave me as the Master of None.)  Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t put some thoughts into my level of alternate income…

Resolution #8: Generate At Least $1000 Per Month in Alternate Income
Comments: Here’s a surprise: I actually earned over $1000 in alternate income in December.  Granted, some of that was once a year offers or others that won’t enable me to earn more in the same place come January, but still, RESOLUTION = MET.
Grade: A+ : Yup, I’m giving myself an A+ on this one; it might have taken me until the end of the year, and I might not expect the same income next month, but hey, I did get this one done.
Resolution Review: I’m a little bit leery about a resolution like this which depends, in whole or in part, on other people (like, say, earning $1000 per month on a blog), but this worked out pretty well.  I’ll definitely have to consider ramping this up next year.

Resolution #9: Go to the Gym At Least Twice a Week
Comments: I’ll be honest: I’ve been slacking in this area lately.  Between the holiday season, studying for finals that came before that, and doing research that frequently kept me in the lab until eight or nine at night, my ability to get to the gym lately has all but disappeared.  It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been at all, and probably since the last resolution update that I’ve been there on even a semi-regular basis.
Grade: C- : Not too good, I’m afraid.  Definitely something I need to do better on in the near future.
Resolution Review: It’s a classic, going to the gym as a New Year’s resolution.  I managed to do better than many (perhaps most) people, but in the end, the same thing that gets to most people when it comes to fitness resolutions, a lack of time in a busy schedule, got to me, too.

Resolution #10: Reconnect with My Old High School and College Friends
Comments: Well, unfortunately, the closest thing to a 10th anniversary my high school had was an informal meeting in a bar near the school in the middle of the week (which ass a six hour drive from where I currently live, during a week when I had tests to study for), but I am connecting more with my old friends and classmates online, so I’ll consider this accomplished (kind of).
Grade: A- :  Still pretty good; not perfect, but given that I’m over three hundred miles away from most of my former classmates, I’m doing alright.
Resolution Review: Not quite the way I had hoped to reconnect, but given the power of modern technology, it’s hard to argue that I couldn’t reconnect with at least some people I used to know.

Extra Special Resolution: Being a Great and Supportive Fiancee
Comments: My fiancee Sondra was reading over my shoulder as I wrote this (and managed to catch a grammar error, so perhaps I should ask her to do so more often), and upon seeing the poor grades I was giving myself for most of my blogging and financial goals, insisted that I include this resolution and give myself an A++ grade for being so helpful and wonderful to her.  Hence, the added resolution at the last minute.
Grade: A++: Who am I to argue with my fiancee on this particular point?
Resolution Review: While definitely an important goal to have, it’s something I’ve managed to do pretty well without needing additional motivation. I’ll just have to be my sweet, wonderful self through the coming year(s), and I should continue to get high marks in this area.

Overall: C- Not too shabby (although, my fiancee’s grade definitely helped shift my score higher), although far from the A I was hoping to have.  I’ll need to try better next year, and try to come up with some better resolutions to try my hand at achieving.

Well, well, well, as crazy as it sounds, the month of September is nearly over, and with it, the year is nearly three-quarters finished. I don’t know about you, but this year has just been going by so quickly, I barely know how to keep up with things. Granted, trying to juggle classes,research, work, blogging, a personal life (including a fairly long distance relationship), and hey, things like sleep, does get tricky, but still, it’s been wild.

Anyway, as I did three months ago (and three months before that), I will go over my resolutions and see how well I’ve been doing on them. I’ll warn you now: with how busy I’ve been lately, it’s not going to be pretty…

Roger’s Resolution Rundown

Resolution #1: Write At Least One Post Per Day
Comments: Last time I updated, I was about two months behind in this goal; now, I’m about three months behind in my one-post-per-day goals.  That’s…not TOO bad; it comes out to about three or four posts written each week.  I still need to make more of an effort to get to this point, or at least, get closer, but I’m not exceptionally disappointed about this progress.
Grade: D+: I’m falling a bit further behind where I wanted to be at this point, but with some time and effort, I should be able to turn this around.

Resolution #2: Write At Least One Guest Post Per Week
Comments: There isn’t much new to say here; I continue to not write nearly enough guest blog posts. One of my top goals for the next few months is start writing more guest posts; to catch up to where I want to be, I need to write closer to two or three posts per week, just for starters. For now, though, I’m falling WAY behind.
Grade: F: I’m not normally an F student, but with this goal, I am definitely failing. I need a lot more effort in this area, including more posts on the Yakezie website and on my fellow Yakezie members’ blogs.

It takes some serious effort to climb a mountain (even if it is only figurative)

Resolution #3: Promote My Blog In More Places
Comments: I’ve really gotten behind in this goal. My promotional efforts all but fell apart during the latter part of the summer, and I haven’t been able to get back to promoting my blog fully with the resumption of classes. Yet again, another area where I need more effort.
Grade: C- : There needs to be a lot more work here, or perhaps I need to think about finding a Virtual Assistant to help me out…

Resolutions #4 & #5: Read At Least 50 Blog Posts Per Day & Comment On 10 of Them
Comments: Pretty much the same situation as last time; I’m not really reading as many other blog entries as I want to (or should, just to keep up with my friends/colleagues/competitors), and I really haven’t been commenting on as many blog entries as I want. I need to really boost my effort in this area.
Grade: F : No real improvement for more than three months; I need to be much better about reading and commenting if I hope to make a dent here.

Resolution #6: Pay Down My Credit Card Balances
Comments: Not much difference from last time around: my credit card debt is still quite substantial, my student loan debt is just increasing, and in general, getting credit card balance under control is still tougher than I hoped. Not quite a failing grade, but still not good.
Grade: D- : Not much good news to report here; I still have plenty of credit card debt, and my student loans are just increasing. Definitely a good area to work harder.

Resolution #7: Create at Least Three More Sources of Income
Comments: A mixed bag here: I haven’t had too much time to spread my efforts around among different alternative income sources, but my blog isn’t doing half bad at earning me a nice side income. I do want to try to open up a few more alternative income sources, but sticking (primarily) with my blog probably isn’t that bad an idea.
Grade: C+ : I do want to make more of an effort here, but I’m still doing somewhat alright in keeping up with alternate income sources.

Resolution #8: Generate At Least $1000 Per Month in Alternate Income
Comments: Well, I’m not quite earning a full $1000 per month yet in alternative income (and barely earning that much as a graduate student, while we’re on the subject). Still, I’m earning a pretty decent sum, and it’s one reason that credit card resolution isn’t even worse.
Grade: B- : This is kind of a tricky one, as many of the alternative income sources out there depend on things not completely in my control (like how often my readers click on the ads on my blog and in my feeds), but still, I’m not doing too bad.

Resolution #9: Go to the Gym At Least Twice a Week
Comments: I’ve gotten out of the twice a week habit; I spent much of the summer with my fiancee (frequently taking care of her after she got dental work done), so I didn’t get to the gym every week. But I have been doing alright, and if my fiancee can be believed, I have been getting into shape.
Grade: B : A bit worse than I have been doing earlier in the year, but it’s been a pretty good three months for getting into shape and going to the gym. A bit more effort, perhaps, but I’m doing alright.

Resolution #10: Reconnect with My Old High School and College Friends
Comments: Not too bad, not too bad; I’m much more social, and have been getting in touch with my old friends and classmates on a nearly daily basis. Still not much luck in meeting them in the real world, but I suppose that’s just the way of the world.
Grade: A- : I’ve been doing pretty well with this, all things considered. If I can keep it up, maybe just maybe I’ll have a real life encounter to report in the coming months.

Overall: D+ A little worse than last time around, and definitely plenty of room to improve. I need to make some serious improvements (those Fs and Ds need to be bumped up, just for starters), but I’m sure that I can get a handle on things.

 How are you doing on your resolutions?  Have you actually been keeping track of them, or have you completely forgotten about them?  What grade would you give yourself on completing them?

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(Once again, I have the pleasure of presenting an interesting and helpful guest post.  This time, you get some advice on how to set resolutions for the coming year.  It might seem a bit early (you haven’t even fallen asleep after gorging yourself on Thanksgiving turkey, after all), but it’s never too early to consider just how you want to save.  Good luck in meeting your savings goal, regardless of when you begin it!)

The year, 2012 is fast approaching and you may have some financial goals to set for those New Year’s resolutions. If you are already researching ways to save, congratulations! You are on the right track.

Recognize what your savings plan is for. This step requires a lot of realistic dreaming. You may plan on saving for a mortgage down payment, for a new car, or for retirement, but keep your expectations realistic.

Instead of setting impossible goals, dream up something achievable like a house on the lower end of your budget, a more affordable mid-sized vehicle or a modest living amount during retirement.

Create a plan to get you to that end goal. Ask yourself where you can cut spending now. Do you really need 200 TV channels or can you get by with basic cable? Are you really using that unlimited texting plan on your cell phone or can you downgrade to a more affordable plan?

Simple changes can add up to hundreds of dollars, so figure out where you are being the most wasteful and make cuts.

If your goal in 2012 is to save an X amount of dollars, divide that amount by 12 to see how much you need to save per month.

Since there’s a time constraint, don’t wait until New Year’s to begin; use the remaining weeks in 2011 to add toward your savings goal for next year.

Create visual reminders of your goals. If you are saving for a new car, keep a picture of it in your wallet with your credit card. This may help you fight the urge to spend excessively.

Start paying for groceries and gas in cash. When using plastic to make purchases you may tend to lose your grasp on how much money you’re spending. Paying in cash is the perfect visual cue of how quickly money can dwindle.

Do what works best to motivate you. Your family may find that a bulletin board with lists of goals and noted accomplishments may be beneficial. Others may keep a folder or journal of deadlines and completed goals.

More and more people are finding that financial software or computer spreadsheets are ideal in keeping track of spending and savings.

Compare savings accounts before making that first deposit. Some savings accounts have higher rates of return than others and you want an account with a decent interest rate. It may not add up to much, but that’s money in your account that you didn’t have to work for.

Avoid savings accounts that come with monthly maintenance fees. There’s no reason you should be paying even a nickel to keep your money in savings. Don’t assume that just because a major bank charges these fees that it’s simply a fact of life. It isn’t.

Stay mindful of your goal by monitoring your progress. If it looks like you haven’t met a monthly goal, recalculate your 2012 goal and update your monthly savings plan.

Whether you decide to deposit a certain percentage of your income each month or a set amount of dollars into your savings account, stick with it.

The sooner you begin saving, the more likely you are to reach your goal by the end of the year.

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Well, that’s it, the year is nearly half over.  The summer is here (I hope it’s a cool one, as I don’t care much for the heat), and with it, it’s time to look back over my goals for the year and see how I’m doing on completing them.  I reviewed them back at the end of March, and was falling behind on quite a few of them.  I’ve been trying to do my best in the months since then to do better, but as with most things worth doing, it’s been quite an exercise.

So, to help gauge my progress and motivate myself to keep at these goals, here, again, is how I’m doing on my goals:

Roger’s Resolution Rundown

Resolution #1: Write At Least One Post Per Day
Comments: I’m about two months behind in my one-post-per-day goals.  Still, that comes out to about four to five posts a week, which seems pretty reasonable for most blogging goals.  If I can do two posts a day for the rest of the summer, I’ll be caught up (and if I can keep it up through September, I’ll be well ahead of the game).
Grade: C+: It’s a pretty lofty goal, but I’m not doing that badly at reaching it, and I’m going to try to be even better in the coming months.

Resolution #2: Write At Least One Guest Post Per Week
Comments: This is easily one of my worst resolutions.  As of my last update, I had written two guest posts this year, and as of this update, I’ve written…two guest posts this year.  If there’s any area to which I should devote more of those posts I mentioned in Resolution #1, it’s guest posts.
Grade: F: Yup, I’m definitely failing on this resolution.  I need a lot more effort in this area, including more posts on the Yakezie website.

It's always good to have goals, whether you are a soccer player or a blogger.

Resolution #3: Promote My Blog In More Places
Comments: Well, I’ve been doing better in this area; I hosted the Yakezie Carnival just last week, I’ve been consistently submitting my blogs to other carnivals, and I’ve been trying to interact more with my fellow bloggers.  I still need to do more work, but if I have more months like this June, I won’t be doing bad at all.
Grade: B- : Definitely a good start at this resolution, but more effort is needed to truly ace this goal.

Resolutions #4 & #5: Read At Least 50 Blog Posts Per Day & Comment On 10 of Them
Comments: Well, not too much good news to report here.  I’m still quite a bit behind my commenting goals.  I’ll need to work harder to comment on all the great bloggers there are out there.
Grade: F : There’s really no way to sugarcoat this: I have fallen way behind on my commenting goals.  I’ll need to do better to boost my ‘grade’.

Resolution #6: Pay Down My Credit Card Balances
Comments: A heaping helping of bad news here.  My credit card debt is still quite substantial, in spite of repeated attempts to pay it down as I’ve taken out more money in student loans.  So, not only is my credit debt hovering near the highest it’s ever been, but I’m adding a sizable amount of student loan debt on top.  Not a good progression.
Grade: D- : I definitely need to rethink how I use my credit, and make more of an effort to cut down on my credit card debt.  (Granted, it doesn’t help that my pay is about a third lower during the summer, meaning I barely have enough income to pay my rent and other necessities, but still, there’s definitely still fat to trim in my credit card spending.)

Resolution #7: Create at Least Three More Sources of Income
Comments: Good news: My blog is as profitable and successful as it’s ever been, and only likely to keep improving.  Bad news: I haven’t had much time to work on other alternate income sources.  Still, as we’ll see with my next resolution, perhaps focusing on my blog is not a bad idea…
Grade: C- : I’m doing somewhat alright, but I’m at least two income sources short of a full alternate income portfolio.  Luckily, the summer gives me some time to put some of my new ideas into action…

Resolution #8: Generate At Least $1000 Per Month in Alternate Income
Comments: I’m actually doing pretty well here; this quarter, I’ve gotten at least $100 in blogging income each month, and in April, I actually cleared $800. A few more months like that, and I’d be making more blogging than I do as a graduate student.
Grade: B+ : I’m actually doing nearly as well with this as I was hoping to do at the beginning of the year.  If I do better on creating a few other sources of income (my big summer project), I should hopefully be clearing $1000 a month, every month, by the end of the year.

Resolution #9: Go to the Gym At Least Twice a Week
Comments: Mostly good news here.  I missed a few trips while I was finishing the semester or feeling sick, but I’ve gone (at least) twice a week for the past few months.  If I can keep it up, I’ll be as fit as Charles Atlas by the end of the year.
Grade: A- : Not too shabby, not too shabby.  If I can be a bit more consistent and continue to build up my strength and stamina, I’ll be an inhumanly strong machine by the end of the year.

Resolution #10: Reconnect with My Old High School and College Friends
Comments: Well, I’m still staying in touch with people (Facebook is a great tool for reconnecting), although the class reunion I mentioned in the last update seems to have fallen through.  (Trying to organize people you haven’t seen for a decade via the computer is a bit like herding cats.)  I’ll have to keep trying, and perhaps set up some individual meetings with some of my old friends.
Grade: B : Well, it’s a mixed bag.  I’m still connecting with old friends online, but getting together in real life is proving to be troublesome.  Still, it’s nice to know that so many of them are doing alright, starting families and doing well at work.

Overall: C- A little bit better than I was doing at the end of last quarter, but still plenty of room for improvement.  With luck (and lots of effort), the next update I’ll have a head of the class grade to report.

How are you doing on your resolutions?  Any tips on keeping up with your resolutions now that the year is half over?  Anyone else feel they tried to bite off a bit more than they can chew with their resolutions?

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Well, with the year nearly one quarter over already, I thought it was as good a time as any to go back over all the resolutions I made at the start of the year and see how good a job I’ve done meeting my goals.  (It’s hard to believe that 2011 is nearly one quarter over already, isn’t it?  Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m getting older, and that each year represents a smaller portion of my total life (or that when I spend 10 to 12 hours each weekday in classrooms or the lab, it consumes a great deal of my time and focus), but I’ll be hanged if it doesn’t seem like each year has less time available than the preceding years.)  If I don’t hold myself responsible for getting things done, after all,  who will?

With that in mind, here are the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year, how I’m doing on getting each one done, and the grade I’d give myself based on my progress so far.  The goal is to help motivate myself to get my rump in gear, improve in the areas where I need to improve, and keep up the good work where I’m doing well.  So, here we go:

Roger’s Resolution Rundown

Resolution #1: Write At Least One Post Per Day
Comments: Well, I’m doing at least half that.  I’ve been keeping a running To-Do list for my blogging, and my post writing needs to catch up from late February.  Still, I’ve gotten about three or four posts written each week, which is not a bad start.  With some work, I should be able to get that up to five, six, or more posts on a weekly basis, which would definitely let me meet most of my other blogging goals.  (Such as having a backlog so I’m not too stressed on weeks like this when I have tests and other tasks on top of blogging.)
Grade: C: Definitely room for improvement, but pretty solid progress thus far.

Resolution #2: Write At Least One Guest Post Per Week
Comments: Well, here I definitely need some work; I’ve written about two guest posts, over the course of the twelve or so weeks since the year began.  If I were grading a student’s paper in one of my labs that had that sort of answer ratio, it’d be an F, for certain.
Grade: F: Well, I can hardly hold myself to a lower standard than I would apply to others, after all.  I’ll have to do much, much better in this particular aspect of my blogging, starting with more posts on the Yakezie website.

A pretty good view of how my 2011 has felt so far.

Resolution #3: Promote My Blog In More Places
Comments: I haven’t done too much in this area, in no small part due to lack of time (in turn due to poor time management, on my part).  But, besides those guest posts mentioned above, I have been participating in some surveys and other personal finance events.  I just need to do more of that, to say nothing of commenting more on other blogs.
Grade: D+ : I am slowly increasing my efforts in this area, but there’s still a long way to go, and I have quite a climb to get there

Resolutions #4 & #5: Read At Least 50 Blog Posts Per Day & Comment On 10 of Them
Comments: More than anything else in the blogging sphere, here is something I’ve been falling behind on, and want to improve.  I should have left over 900 comments thus far to stay up with my resolution, and I’ve left less than 100.  I most definitely need to catch up on all the great blogs out there, and leave plenty of comments to encourage my fellow bloggers.
Grade: F : Once again, there’s plenty of work that needs to be done, and hopefully the fear of getting an F (even a self-inflicted F) will help to spur this A and B student to get on the ball and comment a great deal more.

Resolution #6: Pay Down My Credit Card Balances
Comments: A mixed bag here.  On one hand, my credit card balance has gone up since I first made this resolution, in spite of my best efforts to pay it down.  On the other hand, much of that added expense was one time expenses (mostly car related) that should decrease through the rest of the year, and I’ve recently made an effort to stop credit card spending entirely.  Hopefully, when I do a 2nd Quarter look back at my resolutions, I’ll have a lower card balance to report.
Grade: D+ : There’s quite a lot of progress that still needs to be made, but I’m pretty proud of where I stand and where I intend to go from here.  With any luck, I’ll have my card paid off (or at least, greatly paid down) by the end of the year.

Resolution #7: Create at Least Three More Sources of Income
Comments: Well, I’ve been focusing much more on getting my blog to be even more productive and turning it into a more important source of income for me.  That said, I have been trying to spread my wings and add more sources of income, although how productive they are remains to be seen.
Grade: C : I’ll call this a C; I definitely need to put more effort into alternate income sources, but I think I’m doing pretty well thus far.

Resolution #8: Generate At Least $1000 Per Month in Alternate Income
Comments: While we’re on the subject of alternate income, I did set a goal of making $1000 per month from sources other than my grad student paycheck.  I’m far from that point, as you can see from the alternative income I’ve been listing in my monthly net worth updates.  But then, it’s only the first quarter of the year; this is the sort of resolution that can take a whole year to achieve.
Grade: B- : Well, I do have a long way to go, but I am making progress, if slow progress, towards this goal, so let’s go with a moderately high grade for this goal.

Resolution #9: Go to the Gym At Least Twice a Week
Comments: Ah, finally something I’m actually doing halfway well on.  I have been going to the gym and getting some exercise.  I do think I’ve missed a few of my twice weekly sessions (particularly back during the winter, when the last thing I wanted to do was go out into the cold and snow), but all in all, I’ve done pretty well with this.
Grade: B : As mentioned, there is room for improvement, but I’m not doing half bad here.  Definitely glad that some things are going according to plan.

Resolution #10: Reconnect with My Old High School and College Friends
Comments: Here’s where I’m really shining.  I’ve reconnected with more than a few people from my college, and have been talking with high school class mates.  In fact, I’ve been helping to plan an impromptu class reunion for my high school class (we graduated in 2001, but there hasn’t been a formal reunion planned or anything).  All in all, I’m almost more social now than I was back in high school.
Grade: A : I think I can give myself an A here without being disingenuous.  If I can keep up the connections, I should have a pretty solid group of old friends I can keep up with in the future.

Overall: D+ There’s definitely quite a lot of room for improvement (particularly when it comes to my blogging), but I’m making some progress, and will just have to keep up the hard work.

How are you doing on your resolutions?

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Happy fourth day of 2011, everyone!  Here’s hoping that 2011 hasn’t disappointed anyone yet (come on, people, it’s been four days, you have to give it some time), and that everyone is well on their way to meeting all of their resolutions.  I mean, we made our resolutions for a reason, because there was some aspect of our lives or personalities that we thought could use a little improving, and with the new year arriving and all of our friends striving to improve themselves, it was easy to come up with a whole list of things we wanted to improve about ourselves and then commit to carrying them out.

But here we are, less than a week later, and you might already be getting frustrated with the progress (or lack thereof) that you are making.  It’s understandable; trying to make a major change in your life is hard; if all we needed to do was wish to be smarter, healthier, richer, or reach any other goal we chose, nobody would ever suffer again.  (Well, with the possible exception of the self-help industry, but they could just wish themselves higher profit margins, and then we’re back to everyone being happy.)   But back to the real world, where we often struggle to accomplish what we’ve set out to do.  That’s one reason why it’s important to think through your goals, and figure out how best to get there.

Not quite the 'goal' we're talking about, but I admire your enthusiasm.

You also need to stay motivated and focused in order to meet your goals.  And apparently, the best way for you to keep yourself motivated depends on whether you are a male or a female.  According to a study cited by the quirky website Quirkology, men and women find themselves motivated by different tactics, which probably shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Let’s see how we can put these tactics into practice:

Most Motivating for Men:

-Goal Setting: We bearers of the Y chromosome tend to work best toward a large goal by breaking it down into smaller pieces.  For example, in my resolutions, I set the goal of going to the gym twice a week, rather than the more nebulous goal of ‘get in shape’.  It’s much easier for me to attach a number to a small frame of time and use that as my goal to match (or beat, if I’m feeling optimistic).  Similarly, breaking down a large goal into more manageable pieces and setting measurable goals to monitor your progress can help you to reach your goal, particularly if you happen to be a man.

-Focusing on the Rewards: Another thing that fits well with the male thought process (at least, my thought process; I can’t speak for all men) is focusing on the end result.  You’ll see this a lot when you watch interviews with athletes; focusing on winning the big game (or getting into the big leagues) can drive them to do amounts of training and practice that the average person would find insane.  By keeping an eye on the end result you’re shooting for, you can find it easier to tolerate the short term pain or discomfort associated with doing things like cutting down your eating, cutting back your spending, or getting to the gym more.

So, that’s all well and good for the guys, you say, but what about for the ladies?  Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you.  Quirkology notes a few particularly successful motivational methods for you gals, as well:

Most Motivating for Women:

-Sharing Your Goal with Your Friends and Family: Women are known for their strong social ties, so why not use those ties to your advantage?  Sharing your goals with those close to you will help them to help you help yourself.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist using the word ‘help’ so much.)  Besides moral support (which can be a huge help to achieving your resolutions in and of itself), you might find that your acquaintances can give you advice on achieving your goal or suggest methods you never considered.  Why go it alone when you can recruit some help?

-Being Encouraged to Be Resilient: This one that seems to stem from having a support network; women in particular are motivated to resume their progress if they are encouraged after a setback.  If you revert back to bad habits, it’s helpful to have someone to encourage you to get back on the horse rather than giving up on riding.  Having a support network around to help you after stumbling on your resolution can make all the difference in the world in succeeding in your resolutions.

Quirkology (I do love being able to type that name, as you might be able to tell) also provides some general tips on keeping your resolutions, from planning ahead (yup, I did do that with mine) to being specific about your goals (I’m a bit worse with this one; some goals are specific, others are pretty vague) to making only one resolution (yeah, I did really, really bad with this part).  Follow these tips (and the ones specific to your gender, or the ones for opposite gender if you think they’ll work for you) and hopefully this time next year, you’ll be able to regale your friends and coworkers with how successful you were with your resolution(s) last year, and how you know you’ll keep it this year.

Good Luck, and Happy New Year!  (And Happy Tenth Day of Christmas, while we’re at it; did you get YOUR ten lords-a-leapin’?)

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Welcome to the end of our personal finance resolution week.  I’ve decided to save a very special resolution for the end, one that’s quite close to me.  Yes, we’re going to end with the resolution to give more money to charity.  It’s a resolution I’m taking quite seriously, one that I’m doing myself.

Hopefully, you’re already donating something, anything to those less fortunate than you.  If so, good for you!  I know from personal experience that donating to the less fortunate feels great, and certainly, if you have access to a computer (or any of the many personal devices that now can do as much as a computer, if not more) and the internet, you’re doing better than many people in this little world of ours.  With that said, let’s go through our standard set of qualifications, to ensure that your plan is actionable, specific, and reasonable:

Even if you start small, you can still give

Actionable: There are plenty of deserving charities out there (see my post on choosing a charity to find a deserving one that meets your needs and philanthropic desires).  Once you have one (or more) charity that you want to support, the question then becomes what you want to give.  Money is an obvious choice, and certainly, with the financial trouble we’ve been having lately, most charities can use all the money you can afford to give and then some.

But don’t forget that charities also need people.  Many charities, perhaps most, would rather have five hours of your time each month than $100 of your money.  If you’re short on cash but still want to exercise your philanthropic muscles, try to find a nearby charity that could benefit from your skills, from your handy(wo)man skills to your expertise in fund raising to simply providing an understanding ear.  There’s plenty of ways to give without emptying out your bank account.

Specific: Once you know what you’re giving, and to where, it’s time to add some specifics to your plan.  If you’re giving your time and effort, you should try to come up with a schedule that is achievable and will be something you can stick to for the foreseeable future.  If you have some spare time on the weekend, make your resolution something like ‘Spend three hours each Saturday helping at the food bank’.  If you can give up one Saturday a month, maybe consider something like ‘Spend one Saturday each month helping Habitat for Humanity build homes’.  The important thing is commit to regularly giving your time to help the less fortunate.

If you are giving treasure rather than time, the same rules apply: make it specific, achievable, and something you can maintain for the foreseeable future.  Perhaps resolving to donate five percent of any money you receive to the charity of your choice would be good.  Alternatively, if you are collecting a regular paycheck, you could resolve to give a set (ten is a nice round number) percentage to the local food bank on a weekly (or biweekly, or monthly, whenever you get paid).  If your income is much more erratic, you might prefer to give a set amount instead of a percentage; a few hundred dollars a month, or whatever you can afford.  Which brings us to the last point…

Reasonable: As with retirement investing, giving to charity is a situation where you are (hopefully) torn between the urge to give as much as you can, and to give very little, in order to have more money for yourself, either for spending or investing purposes.  It’s hard to provide the best level of contribution for everyone (although, if you happen to be religious, your faith might provide a good guideline; Christianity, for example, suggests tithing ten percent of your income to the church and the less fortunate).  You don’t want to give so much that you end up needing  charity yourself, but every cent you can give to a decent charity will help to improve another life, perhaps even more than one.  If you find yourself not able to give as much money to charity as you want, the best option is probably to give more time, instead.  You can get the same sense of helping others and giving of yourself, without having to deplete your coffers in order to do so.

Probably the most important advice I can provide about charities and giving is to just do it; it’s a wonderful way to help others (and perhaps accumulate some good karma for yourself, as well).  If you made this type of resolution, my hat is off to you; keep up the good work, and be sure to let me know how your donations work out for you!

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Wow, we’re really having fun, going through all our resolutions and seeing what we can do to help keep them (for a change).  So far, we’ve covered how to pay off debt and follow a budget; now, it’s time to get into one of the big ones, preparing for retirement.

Getting your financial ship in order so that you are ready when retirement rolls around is not always an easy task.  Unlike paying down debt, where there’s really only one way to go (namely, paying more than the minimum each month, so you bring down your balance), there are many possible ways to help ensure your golden years are filled with plenty of gold.  Numerous options are on the table, from upping your 401(k) contributions to starting an IRA, and any (or all) of them MIGHT be what you need to do to make your retirement bright.

No matter what plan you decide on to shore up your retirement funds, though, you’ll still need to do what we’ve been doing all week: make your resolution actionable, specific, and reasonable:

Actionable: Ensuring a well-financed retirement is a good goal, but it tells you nothing about how to get there.  Luckily, there are any number of avenues open to you to help improve your future retirement.  Some possible resolutions could include:

-Opening a 401(k) (or similar pretax retirement plan) at work and contributing to it
-Starting a Roth IRA at a mutual fund company
-Pay down your mortgage faster, so there are fewer expenses in retirement

As that last point probably illustrates, there are ways to improve your retirement prospects that don’t involve directly investing in a retirement account.  There are numerous other possibilities, from ensuring that you have adequate insurance to making out a will (and possibly a trust), but let’s stick with these three for the time being.

Specific: As always, we need to ensure that our resolutions are exact if we hope to use them as a guide to our (financial) lives, so let’s see how to make these resolutions more specific.  Luckily, when we’re talking about resolutions like this that involve saving and investing, it’s not that hard to make them more precise simply by attaching exact numbers to them:

-Opening a 401(k) and setting up an automatic contribution of 10% of your gross salary.
-Starting a Roth IRA and maxing it out every year (for this year, that comes out to be $416.66 dollars each month)
-Adding an additional 10% to your mortgage payments each month, with the goal of paying down your mortgage several years earlier than scheduled

Now, these are just some possible numbers to use with these resolutions; depending on your circumstances, you might be able to put more money aside for retirement, or you might have to put in less.  Which brings us to the final consideration about these resolutions:

Reasonable: More than any of the resolutions we’ve covered so far, saving for retirement brings on questions of how much is too much.  If you endeavor to put as much money as humanly possible into your retirement accounts, you’ll make your future more secure and have more money available when you do retire; but it will be at the cost of spending much less money now.  On the other hand, you can opt to spend more and invest less, which means more fun now but more problems later.

Optimizing your investment/spending balance isn’t easy, and if you are in a low-income job, it gets even trickier.  Ten percent of your salary (even before taxes) might be too much if you are below the poverty line and barely making ends meet as it is.  Similarly, four hundred dollars a month might be too much to put aside in a Roth if you are only making $1000 per month after taxes.  And of course, if you can barely afford your mortgage already, then tacking an extra 10% on is probably out of the question.

The point being, you have to adapt personal finance advice to fit your own situation; setting reasonable goals means knowing what resources you have available, and adapting your plans accordingly.  Don’t try to stretch your budget beyond its breaking point, even if means having to put aside less money for retirement (and potentially having to delay your retirement a bit in order to meet your goals).

As with any thing worth doing, preparing for retirement will take some time, but if it allows you to have a more secure and rewarding retirement, it’s more than worth it.  As with any resolution, it will take time and effort to get it right; good luck to you!

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Welcome back to the Amateur Financier, as we focus on helping you to keep your resolutions this new year of 2010.  This time, we’re going to go over how to make (and more importantly, stick to ) a budget in this new year.  This task seems rather daunting to many people, but it’s essential to good money management and keeping your financial house in order.

First, to create a budget.  There aren’t any real tricks to it; you simply need to know your income (from your job, investments, and any other sources), your regular bills (utilities, mortgage/rent, investments, etc.), and average spending (for everything from your morning coffee to Christmas shopping).  You can make a chart showing your income and comparing it to your expenses, as I did back in my financial lessons, and as long as you spend less than you earn, you’ll be golden.

A Simple Budget in Action

One note: it’s easy to ignore abnormal expenses that don’t recur every month, such as Christmas spending or insurance bills that only come a few times a year.  Rather that not including them and being caught off guard when they roll around, divide them up into regular monthly installments, and set aside that amount in a special, separate account.  (It’s easy enough to create separate accounts using an online bank like ING Direct.)  When it comes time to pay these bills (or do your Christmas shopping), you’ll have more than enough money set aside in your dedicated account (with the contributions and the interest that you earned) to cover your abnormal expenses.

Once you have a budget created, the easy part is over, and it’s time to get ready for the hard bit: sticking to a budget for the rest of the year.  As with our last resolution to pay down debt,  we’re going to make this one easier to follow up on by making it actionable, specific, and reasonable:

Actionable: ‘Stick to my budget’ seems pretty actionable, doesn’t it?  But we can do a bit better; let’s add a regular review of our budget (and our attempts to stick to said budget) to our resolution.  ‘Create a budget and review it regularly to see whether I’m following it’ makes us much more accountable to follow up on the budget, meaning we’ll be more likely to keep thinking about it and hopefully, following it.

Specific: Now that we’re decided to review our budget regularly, we need to decide how often to do so, and create a schedule about when we’re going to do so.  Reviewing your budget on a monthly basis makes sense for most people; we tend to get most of our bills on a monthly basis (including rent, utilities, and credit card bills), so a monthly review while we’re paying the bills will enable us to multitask while staying on budget.

You don’t have to use a monthly schedule; a weekly or biweekly schedule could work as well, since most people collect their paychecks on a weekly or biweekly schedule, anyway, making it easier to determine where your paycheck should go.  (If you do use this sort of schedule, you should consider applying my earlier comments about abnormal expenses to your monthly bills; putting aside one-fourth the cost of your monthly bills each week will ensure that you have enough to cover the bills at the end of the month.)  I would advise against reviewing your budget less than monthly; it’s hard enough to knowing your income and expenses a month ahead of time, let alone trying to predict the next three months or one year when you sit down to create your budget.  So our resolution now is, ‘Create a budget, and review it monthly to ensure that we are still meeting it,’ a much more specific resolution to follow.

Reasonable: How reasonable it is to stick to your budget will depend on how realistic you made your budget.  If you like going out to the movies every week but only budgeted $50 a month to your entertainment expenses, you’re almost certainly going to go over budget every month.  This is why regular reviews are so important; if you see you are going over your allocated amount in a particular area, you will have to deal with it.  Perhaps you can shift your budget a bit to compensate; if you love movies, but don’t like to dine out that much, you could add more to the ‘Entertainment’ category and take some away from ‘Restaurants’, and simply try to eat out less.

In many cases, though, it might not be possible to shift your budget like this; you only have so much income (at least, in the short term; in the long term, you can start a part time business, take a second job, or do any number of things to boost your cash flow), and have to make choices about what to spend it on.  If you can really only afford $50 towards your Entertainment budget, going out to the movies every week is probably not a good option.  There are several tactics you could use to cut your entertainment spending; only go every other week, don’t get popcorn or a drink when you, or consider renting movies instead of seeing them in the theater.  The point being, there are usually ways to cut your spending, if you’re willing to be flexible.

There you have it; the keys to sticking to your 2010 budget.  Follow this advice, and you should have no problem sticking to a (reasonably designed) budget.  Good luck budgeting for a whole new year!

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During this first full week of the brand new year, I thought I would turn my attention to helping my readers keep their New Year’s Resolutions.  We all make them, and all too many of us abandon them before we make much progress.  I’ve put up several of my resolutions last week, as well as how I intend to accomplish them.  I thought I would provide some advice and encouragement to my readers when it comes to their personal finance goals.  (Sorry to anyone who resolved to lose weight, exercise more, or find love; those sorts of resolutions are outside the purview of The Amateur Financier.  Good luck, though.)

In order for your resolutions to be good and helpful to you as goals for the new year, they need to be actionable, specific and reasonable.  In order to be actionable, you need to make your resolution dependent on things that are in your power to control.  Saving more of your money is in your control, winning the lottery is not; thus, saving more is a decent resolution (although, we’ll improve on it in just a minute), while resolving to win the lottery to pay off your debts is not.  A specific resolution will provide you with a particular goal, one you can judge your progress towards through out the year and determine whether you are making adequate progress.  So, resolving to save $100 per month is a much better goal than simply resolving to save more; you can monitor how much you save and see if you are meeting your $100 a month goal, falling short, or (hopefully) exceeding it.  Finally, your goal has to be reasonable; we all have limited resources of time, energy, and money, and we need to prioritize how we expend them in order to achieve everything we hope to achieve.  What’s reasonable will depend on your circumstances; if you net $1000 per month after taxes, saving $100 each month is perfectly reasonable; if you are only making $200 in net income, saving $100 is too much of a stretch, and a more reasonable goal might be $20 or $25 each month.

So, now you see how we can apply these techniques to a goal of building up your net worth; how do we apply them to paying down debt?  (Be it credit card debt, student loan debt, or some other type of debt we find ourselves facing.)  Let’s see how we can apply these three principles to paying down your debt:

Actionable: ‘Becoming Debt-Free’ has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?  Unfortunately, it’s not really that actionable; it tells us nothing about how you’re going to become debt-free, or what actions you’ll take along the way.  Something more along the lines of ‘Pay down the amount of debt I owe each month’ is a much more workable resolution.  But we still need to make it specific…

Specific: Now that we have a particular plan of action in mind, it is time to make it specific.  Paying down the amount of debt you owe each month is good, but you should set a goal for how much you’re going to spend on debt reduction.  You can either specify this in terms of how much you want to reduce the total amount that you owe (‘I’m going to pay down my debt by $50 each month’) or the total amount you intend to spend on debt service (‘I’m going to spend a total of $200 each month on debt service’).  The former method has the advantage of telling you how much your outstanding debt will decrease each month, but you’ll need to budget for interest and other fees separately to meet your goal (so you’ll end up spending more, possibly much more, than $50 each month).  The latter method gives the total you intend to pay each month, making budgeting easier, but doesn’t indicate how much your outstanding debt will decrease (and it will be a different amount each month, as you pay down your debt and more of the money goes to the principal, rather than fees and interest).  Either method works, so choose whichever seems easier and more motivational to you.

Reasonable: It’s a bit tough to define just what constitutes a reasonable debt repayment plan, as so many factors will influence your personal financial situation and ability to pay down your debt.  A good rule of thumb would be to commit at least 10-20% of your net income (after taxes and matched retirement contributions) to debt servicing, including interest, fees, and paying down the balance.  If you use the second method I discussed above, it’s fairly easy to look at your net income, calculate ten percent, and pay that much toward your debt each month (assuming it is enough to cover the interest with some money still going to the principal; otherwise you’ll have to increase the amount you pay).  Make sure that this amount is both sufficient to cut down your debt while not stressing your budget too much (cutting back to repay debt isn’t bad, trying to live on Ramen to pay down all your debt this year isn’t).  For the first method, you’ll have to have a feel for what you pay in interest and other fees, and be sure to add your desired principal repayment amount on top of that.  Again, be reasonable about what is possible for your family and your budget; better a slower, less stressful debt repayment schedule than one that drives you completely insane.

That’s all there is to it; create your plan, keep to it each month, and monitor your progress, and soon you’ll be debt free!  Good luck!

P.S. Feel free to check out my Ten Commandments of Credit Cards for more advice on using credit properly and getting yourself debt free if you wind up in credit card debt.

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