Spend your money smartly – How can you stay away from debt problems?

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Do you spend money within your means? Most people don’t and this is the reason why debt problems are increasing so much these days.

When you spend money in excess, you won’t be able to keep a track of where your money is going out. There are suitable debt solutions such as consolidation and settlement that helps you get rid of debt soon. You can get information about the solutions for your debt problems from the different financial websites. Since all debt solutions will not suit you, you will have to find out which is best for your situation. By reducing some expenses, you may be able to bring finances under your control and not fall into debt.

4 Ways to keep control on your money and do not incur debt

Read on to know the 4 ways how you can keep control on your money flow so that you do not incur debt.

Spend only on your necessities for the time-being

Are you facing financial problems? If yes, then you should purchase only the necessary items for now till your personal finances improve to some extent. As such, you may have to part with your luxuries for sometime. Thus, when you’ll spend only on the necessities, you may not get entrapped into debt. However, if you’ve spend a lot of money earlier due to which you have fallen into debt, then try to repay them soon so as to become completely free from debt.

Budget is what you need to spend money efficiently

Have you drafted a suitable budget for yourself? With the help of a budget, you will be able to understand how much you can spend from your monthly income. If you do not stick to your budget, then you may incur debt problems unnecessarily. As such, see that you follow the budget you’ve made so that you can spend money accordingly and also stay away from debt worries.

Another way to budget is to get a scotlandstrustdeed.co.uk in order to pay off your debt.

Use cash when buying the essential items

Do you have the habit of swiping credit cards for buying your necessities? If yes, then you should pay off the outstanding balance on time. When you don’t repay the balance, you may fall into unnecessary debt. Thus, instead of using your credit cards every time, why don’t you purchase the necessary items with hard cash? By doing so, you may not pile up debts needlessly.

Savings is a necessity to have a secured future

How much have you saved till date? You would have hardly paid any heed to it unless you found you’ve mounted up huge debt that you need to repay. If you have some good savings, why don’t you use them now to eradicate the debts? Make sure you do not use all your savings towards eliminating the debts. You must keep some money in the savings fund so that you can have a financially secured future.

Handling your personal finance smartly is essential if you want to stay financially secured. Thus, you should consider the above-discussed ways so that you may not incur debt problems in the future.

Life After I Quit

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Life After I quitA couple of weeks ago, I talked about all of the positives of working from home. I honestly cannot wait, and I think about my self-employment switch date all the time.

Even though I think about my switch date all the time, and I’m very excited, I do know that working for yourself is hard work. It will not be wonderful every single day, but I do think it will be much better than working for someone else in a job that I do not enjoy at all.

I will have more time to enjoy life.

Since I will be able to make my own schedule, I will have more time to enjoy life. Life won’t only exist on the weekend. I can go for a bike ride in the middle of the day on a Tuesday if I wanted to.

I will have more time to spend with family. For so long I have been working a long, or working and going to school at the same time. I will have more time to see W and everyone else that I care about. I can see my friends more also instead of just every once in a while.

No more stress from my stressful job.

Most of you know exactly what I do, but to keep it short, I am a financial analyst/investment banker. Not exactly the most fun job on earth. I deal with lawyers, taxes, and most of my clients have millions upon millions in the bank, along with $50 million houses. I get to see 5 year olds who have a net worth of 500 or 1,000 times what I have. It’s all very depressing, haha!

I won’t have to worry about going to court, talking to lawyers every day, and messing with numbers that I don’t care about. I won’t have to read and analyze legal agreements and financial statements all day either.

More time to travel.

A big positive of freelancing and blogging is that I can work from wherever I want to work. I can travel to everywhere that I want to travel, without being bound by how many vacation days that I have left.

I do have to think about the dogs and our house, and would need someone reliable to help out since my sister works and goes to school, and because she is also thinking about moving to Chicago. I could never get rid of my dogs, so we would need a reliable house and dog sitter for whenever we go on a trip.

More time to grow my business.

Right now I work around 50 hours a week at my day job, with around 10 hours a week of commuting and getting ready related to it. I will get to take these 60 hours per week and devote it to improving my freelancing, expanding and enjoying life.

Yes, I will most likely just work more in my freelancing, nut it will be stuff that I enjoy instead of forcing myself out of bed every day.

Time to volunteer.

Even though I have limited time right now, I should be volunteering. I feel bad that I use my lack-of-time reasoning as an excuse to not volunteer and help others.

I would like to volunteer somewhere like being a Big Sister, or something animal related. I’ve also thought about helping children who have been in the same spot as me, such as helping kids who have found out that their parents or a close loved one has cancer. Or maybe just volunteering with the American Cancer Society directly.

What is your dream job? Do you think you have a good work-life balance?

 

The Power of Networking

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Social Media apps
Lately, I have been receiving tons of very similar e-mails. Everyone wants to know how they can be more successful with their freelancing, how they can grow their website further, what they’re doing wrong, and so on.

Some even want to know how to break into the personal finance community because they haven’t been having much luck with connecting with other blogs and bloggers. Basically, they want to know how to connect with others better and more effectively.

Well, let me tell you what works: networking!

I love the blogging and freelancing community that I am involved in. Everyone is very friendly and I have made numerous friends. I am a very talkative person to begin with, so everything in this post comes relatively easy to me. However, I completely understand how some things don’t come as naturally to others.

Some might be afraid to come off as spammy, some are just nervous people. Some are afraid of rejection.

Networking is very important. Someone e-mailed me the other day and said that no one is e-mailing them back and they feel stuck whenever they try to network. They feel that they can’t further their freelancing and website further until they improve their networking skills.

Now, why is networking important?

With networking, you can find out about future prospects, projects, ideas and so on. Maybe someone who you have networked with will need your services down the road. They will then hopefully think about you and your services. Most people would rather use someone who they know or someone who they know of instead of a stranger, and this is where you come in.

Networking is also important because you can gain friends in your niche/industry. Who wants to work alone? For myself, I’d rather not think of everyone as competition. I’d rather think of someone as a friend and a colleague. Some may say that this is not always the best idea, but for me, I prefer it this way.

Maybe you will need help one day, and your new friend can help you solve your problem. Maybe you two can team up as well. You never know, you might even partner up with a contact and start a business.

Below are several networking tips. Not everything works for every industry, but it is a good start:

Be yourself.

Of course this depends on what kind of job that you have. If you are a lawyer, you will want to stay professional at almost all times. However, if you are a blogger, then you probably want to be as real as you can be. You want people to be able to relate to you. Not many people want to talk to a robot…

Follow up.

I talk to other bloggers and freelancers multiple times a day. If you are on Google Chat, then chances are that I have chatted with you and talked about anything and everything. I might send you a random text, an email, or respond to a tweet of yours. I love communicating with readers, other bloggers and other freelancers!

Engage in social media.

Engaging in social media can pertain to many different industries. Whether you are blogging or you have an online retail store, engaging directly with your customers/clients/etc. is very important.

You can have conversations on Twitter, post pictures of what you are doing on Facebook (such as the newest clothing trend that you are selling, something new in your life, etc.). The options are endless.

Attend events in your industry.

In October, I will be attending my very first FinCon. I don’t know why I decided not to go the past 2 years, but I am super excited about October.

Attending an event such as FinCon is great for myself and others in the industry because it allows you to finally meet all of those people who you talk to. You can also meet many new people and branch out. You can put a face to a name, hang out, talk in person and everything else at events like this.

Quality is important.

If you are networking and trying to become more successful, then numbers may seem important. However, what’s really important is quality. Good networking means that you are talking to people, following up with them, listening, helping them out, and so on. Good quality networking means that people can count on you and you can count on them.

Having a few really good quality contacts is much better than having 10 really bad contacts who you never talk to.

Do you engage in a lot of networking, either online or for your day job? Why?