Reply to Family of 5, appx $300K HHI - would you do anything different?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Family of 5, appx $300K HHI - would you do anything different? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Your financial life seems chaotic, I think what you're doing which is sitting down and focusing on your situation is great.  You have the income to make your life feel so much more orderly and productive--it's going to feel really satisfying I think once you've got this figured out.  Most people whose finances feel a mess don't have the kind of income you do to clean them up fairly easily.

I would:

1) Organize your debts with principal, minimum payment due and interest rate lined up. Put the debt with the highest interest rate as first priority to pay down.  If none of your debts have an interest rate over 4%, consider how much you want to make this a priority over other investing goals.  See #3.

2) Track your income and spending in big categories--no need to drive yourself crazy getting very fine-grained.  Usually a six month period is enough to capture the unusual expenses--so go 6 months back on your credit cards and bank accounts. Remember to include as part of your savings how much you're contributing to retirement accounts (and your employer contributions).

3) If you're okay with how you are spending, look at what's left and make a reasoned decision how much to a) contribute to retirement accounts, b) contribute to kids' college savings, c) pay down debt by highest interest rate first, d) save for any other large planned expenses/emergency funds.

4) If you are not okay with how you are spending, review that more carefully and make some decisions.  Even if you are okay with spending, I would look at some of your kids' activities and see how to pare down--not just for financial reasons, but also for sanity.  That's a lot of scheduling in your lives when you have 3 kids!  A rule like one paid activity at a time and no travel teams is perfectly viable for kids who are not going to be athletes. You want to leave room in their lives for school-based afterschool activities too.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics