Does Your Spending Reflect What You Value in Life?

What do you really want from life? What kind of lifestyle do you seek? What are your life goals? What do you want to do, have or be? Does your spending reflect those things? When most of your money goes toward providing what’s important to you, you tend to live a more fulfilled life and feel satisfied with the way you spend your money. It’s also easier to stick to your personal finance plan … Read More

Work or Stay Home With the Children? Making a Financial Decision

Deciding if a parent should work outside the home is never easy. There are many potential cost savings that can be gained by a parent staying home to care for the children. On the other hand, there is also a loss of income. Typically, couples have more options when one spouse has a significantly higher paying job or more work flexibility than the other. Some people believe a couple can afford to live on … Read More

Talk Money Before Marriage

Q: I just got engaged and while I’m really excited about it, my fiancé and I haven’t really discussed money issues. For the most part, we’ve kept our finances to ourselves. At first, I thought we would talk about it when the time was right, but now that we’re engaged, I’m not sure how to approach it. Shouldn’t I know something about how he handles his money before we say, “I do?” What exactly … Read More

30 Days to Better Money Habits

Welcome to 2018! If the new year has you thinking that you need to improve your money skills, I have some suggestions for you. First, I recommend that you take a look at my post on how to set meaningful goals. Second, I suggest you start with some simple ways to create better money habits, which is what this post is all about. Here’s the thing — as much goal planning and resolution setting … Read More

[Podcast] Episode 004: Allowances for Kids…What Works?

It’s back to school season and a time for fresh starts and new habits. It can be a perfect time, too, for setting expectations with your children and establishing rules for receiving allowances. In this podcast episode, I’m sharing shares ideas on a few different ways you can approach allowances to come up with a system that works best for your family.   [tweetthis]Back to school season is a great time to talk money … Read More

Money Management for Teens

Sometimes, it’s hard as parents to watch your teens squander their allowance or money they’ve earned from a job. You want them to do better, but how do you teach them? Or maybe you are just beginning with the basics of money management, and you want to make sure they get off to a good start.   Money management for teens comes with practice and consistency. Wherever you are in the financial planning process, it’s … Read More

7 Ways to Make Financial Goals Stick

Sometimes we can make our financial goals overly complicated by trying to address too many issues at one time.  It does not need to be that way. Below are my 7 simple tips for creating a foundation to help your financial goals fall into place. 1. Create Challenging but Sensible Financial Goals in the First Place You are almost guaranteed to sabotage your efforts if your goals and actions are ridiculously lofty. Yes, you want to push yourself, but don’t set yourself … Read More

8 Tips for Avoiding Money Arguments

Financial issues in a relationship can be complex and challenging. It’s likely you’ll encounter some point in time where you want one thing and your partner wants another. In such situations, wouldn’t you prefer to avoid a money argument? But how do you keep the peace without giving up what’s important to you? Use these strategies to avoid an argument and negotiate your position effectively: 1. Refrain from taking offense. When you see your partner is getting “hot … Read More

Find Teachable Money Moments for Kids

The best way to teach your child good money skills is through examples and daily life experiences. A good age to start teaching your child about the value of money is when they are around seven years old. At this age, real-life examples can help children to understand why certain things have greater monetary value than other things. A trip to the supermarket is a great opportunity to open this discussion. For example, start by … Read More

Setting Meaningful Goals: Simple Questions to Help You Focus

I hope your 2014 is off to a good start! Based on my goal setting post from last year, some of you may know I have a great resistance to being another source of “New Year’s Resolution Noise.”  Quite a few of you, though, contacted me to ask for coaching support as you work through the outline of my goal planning process that I shared last year. So I’ve waited to dust off that … Read More

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