LEARNING THAT YOUR SAVINGS ARE FROZEN MAY CAUSE FINANCIAL STRESS When dealing with the loss of your spouse life can be turned upside down especially when you are trying to use money that you have no right to get access to without following a process. No one expects a financial officer to tell them that their late spouse will have a frozen bank account which includes all the family savings. It’s certainly a stress not needed after death but very important to understand why and the implications. This exact scenario happened to my mother-in-law recently and I hope today that we shed some light on her situation in hopes of inspiring other couples to educate themselves about their finances before death. Even if you are named the executor in a WILL you still need to jump through legal hoops to unfreeze the bank account. Sadly, a frozen bank account happens quite often according to the banking representative we met with especially for couples who choose to bank separately. This sort of lit a fire under our butts since all of our bank accounts are not joint bank accounts. The costs of a funeral can run into the thousands of […]
A Frozen Bank Account After Death Leaves Widow Broke : March 2018 Budget Update
How to handle negative people who criticize your budget : October 2015 Budget Update
BUTT OUT COMES TO MIND… In most ways we have a combination of positive and negative character traits although not everyone recognizes when the negatives outweighs the positive. When we let negative traits suffocate us we find it difficult to see the reasoning that others have for doing what they do whether you believe in it or not. There will always be people who criticize and it’s up to the individual how they handle these situations. Just recently I was helping a fan get started with our free budget download because she wanted to test our budget. In conversation I learned that over the past year she has saved $5000 and paid off over $8000 worth of consumer debt. She was a mall rat and every opportunity she could get shopping was where you would find her. These days she’s sitting behind her computer figuring out how to budget and how much money she can spend every month. Kudos to her and others that do the same because it takes a determined person to push themselves to get of debt and fight through outside turmoil. In her case… Her boyfriend is not happy about the budgeting because he is […]
How I saved $336 by being my own mechanic : March 2015 Budget Update
FIXING YOUR OWN STUFF We all know that car maintenance costs can rip a chunk from the budget but what’s worse is waiting until something falls apart. There is a reason that vehicles especially a new vehicle will come with a car maintenance schedule. Not everything on a vehicle has to be replaced but it should certainly be serviced and inspected for any wear and tear and potential problems. Vehicle Maintenance costs are what most people dread but if you are handy you might even get away with some mechanical DIY. If you are not handy please don’t attempt any work on your vehicle. You will only cost yourself more money in car repairs over the long-term. You may even repair something incorrectly if you just “guess” and it could cause an accident. Plenty of people play the mechanic role and do repairs or even their own oil change so they don’t have to fork out big bucks to a shop charging $100 an hour for their mechanic. Keep in mind there is a reason why they are in a trade and it takes many years to become Red Seal Certified. You can’t do everything a mechanic does unless […]
Why you should think about your 2015 budget plan now: November 2014 Budget Update
DON’T JUST PARK YOUR VEHICLE… The end of 2014 is staring us in the face and now is the time to start thinking about putting together your 2015 budget plan. The worst thing you can do is leave budgeting until the last-minute if your plan is to track your expenses over the entire year. Sure the ideal time to put a budget plan into action is the beginning of the year but starting a budget any time is better than no budget at all. Why is planning important? The first thing you need to ask yourself is why you are planning? Do you have a mission in mind? If yes then you need a plan. If using a budget is your mission then you need a plan. Planning is part of a strategic planning cycle that starts with a mission then goals, desired outcome, strategies, measures/target and finally results. That’s how we measure success and in our home the budget is critical to managing our financial success even more so now that we have a son. As we were going over the November budget we talked about how not having a mortgage has affected our budget. It really does […]
Keeping busy helped us spend less: August 2014 Budget Update
NO TIME FOR SHOPPING It’s true that if you keep busy you may spend less in your budget because you have no time for shopping. Of course that is only true as long as keeping busy doesn’t entail going to the shopping mall. I know some of you were thinking that. Spend less and save money It’s not that we spend lots of money in the first place but when we are just browsing it does open the mind to ideas of spending money. We’ve been caught on many occasions buying things that we didn’t need at the time which is still waiting to get installed. This is what our budget is trying to avoid doing but it takes more than having a budget to spend less money. To spend less it takes persistence and a desire to want to stick to that budget. I can’t tell you how many times my wife has wanted me to run out in the middle of the night to buy her food to kill her baby cravings. I’ve said no and many of you might think that’s mean but she has thanked me the next day for not listening to […]
