Financial Help

In the world of men financial help isn’t always something men reach out for yet financial health is synonomous with men's health since finances and the stress of managing them, impacts more severely on men that it does women. With the economy restructuring, so must we restructure our personal finances for good stress free living.

At the very least looking at the various elements of finances from income, bill payment to investments knowing where you currently are can help you understand where you need to be to reach your financial goals. Knowing your current position is also helpful so you know what to ask for when seeking any type of financial help.

Here are simple measures you can use to streamline your time, organize your finances and reduce the stress managing money matters and give yourself some good financial help.

Financial Help Tips - Organising Your Personal Finances

1. Create a single file for all your bills.  You need a system so that when your bills arrive it goes in one place. Whether you have a file, a drawer, box, or folder the key is to be consistent. In this way you give financial help to yourself.

2. Schedule your bill payment. Create a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or some other spreadsheet for cashflow and put in the dates and amounts (approximate if you don’t know) your bills are due. Budget you cashflow around these dates so you pay your bills on time. This can save you a lot of money, time and headaches. If you're paying bills when you receive them, you're probably spending too much time in front of the computer or checkbook. You can negotiate with each utility or service company to change the payment date if it falls in between paychecks.

3. Read Your Credit Card Statements – Repeat – Read Your Credit Card Statements. Make a habit of looking at your statement carefully to see what interest rate you are paying each month, if it has changed, if you have erroneous charges you can’t account for and deal with them immediately. If the rate goes up, transfer to another lower rate company. This is actaully the best financial help you can give yourself.

4. Utilize automatic payment plans. Once you have changed all your bill payment dates in line with your income check set up automatic payments or online bill payment to pay creditors. Creditors give financial help by offering lower interest rates for automatic payer. Writing checks and posting them also costs you more money in the long run.

5. Become Gen Y with your check book. Generation Y are the technology enhanced generation where everything automated is the key to happiness. Using a software program like Zero, Quicken(r), Microsoft Money(r) or any other software make money management and bill payment easy. Most banks have direct downloads into these software packages so when money is deposited or withdrawn, the transaction is entered immediately onto your computer. No more wasting time balancing your check book. This also makes budgeting for future months automated at the push of a button. Good software programs also offer financial help.

6. Organise overdraft protection. Talk to your bank about setting up a service to cover you for bouncing a check whereby the money comes from another source to cover it. For a small fee, the bank can link your checking account to either a savings, money market, or credit card so the cost of bouncing a check will be minimized.

Financial Help Via Consolidation

7. Cancel unused accounts and consolidate. Whether it be a credit card, bank account, check account or savings if you not using it, haven’t used it in the past month, cancel it. It’s costing you money. This will also improve your credit score. Being organized and centralized with your money makes for good money management. Store cards charge more in interest. Streamline your credit cards to two and eliminate your store cards. It's too easy for credit to get out of hand.

8. Consolidate your credit cards. How many credit cards can you make monthly payments without getting into trouble? For most people the answer is one or two. Consolidate them into one two with companies offering low interest rates to transfer and. Watch for transfer interest rates and one-time fees. Also, make a list of all your open Money Markets, Savings, Mutual Funds etc to consolidate those maximizing interest and minimizing fees. Credit card companies are not business to provide financial help. They are there to make money off your lack of organize and poor spending habit.

9. Establish an automatic savings plan. You can create this directly from your employer into a saving account or an automatic payment from your current account or check book. Generally you want to aim for 10% of your net salary going into your savings account each time you get paid. In this way you will begin accumulating money faster than you think.

10. Organise your filing system. Clean up all your loose papers and keep individual files for current bills and paid bills. At the end of each year put all your files in a box labeled that financial year. Contact your local tax office to see how long records need to be kept for audits. After the time is up shred the box or burn it.

These are the basics of a good financial management foundation. If you need more financial help check out the links on this page.