Most employees do not know what their Social Security benefits will be.  They don’t know what their 401(k) will provide for them at retirement, nor when they will be out of debt.  Few employers provide disability insurance if you get hurt or sick, so what will happen if you become sick or hurt?  And health insurance is a “can of worms.”  If you are self-employed, and/or running a small company, many more questions exist than there are answers.  What will you do when you die or your spouse does?

Everyone should know what benefits they are going to enjoy, and communicate with a spouse about them at least annually.  Things change so fast that if you think you have benefits and don’t, you can go broke in a single week!  It is not hard to gather all your financial information together and review it.  When you have a question, make the effort to call and get answers. 

To see how this works in the real world, I want to share one of my client’s stories:

The husband passed away suddenly at age 64 and his wife had never worked outside the home.  He had $20,000 of group term life insurance and they had $52,000 savings in a 401(k) account.  Their home was worth $230,000, but they still had $189,000 mortgage.  The wife is in good health and expected to live beyond the average life expectancy for women of 87.  The husband’s funeral cost $15,000.  The wife has the option of accessing Social Security benefits of $1,245 a month, or to wait another three years and get $1,570 a month.

What would you do in this situation?  Their monthly living expenses before the husband passed away had been $4,000 per month. Now there’s no money to live like that. Will the wife have to sell the house since the Social Security income she could take now will basically pay the monthly mortgage and that’s it?  If she does sell, where will she live and what will she live on?

This couple had not talked about early death or how one or the other would live once one of them passed away — there was never this kind of detail discussed, ever. They just went along thinking nothing would change.  But it did change and the woman in this situation is in a really bad place financially.  And it will change for you too.  It is only a matter of time before big changes come to your world.  Get prepared.  Review all your benefits and make decisions today as if one of you has passed away.  Play this game over and over until you feel comfortable that you have your financial situation right.

In my experience, most people die with nothing more than a simple will. Their assets have to be probated in court until they are cleared for distribution.  This can take two years.  The expense of having a judge decide how to divide up assets can drain another $30,000 off your assets.  And in many cases, the surviving spouse still needs an income to live on.  What if health problems arise?  

The best way to start preparing for coming changes is to stop spending any more money until you have a Spending Plan in place and have learned how to track that plan so you can see where you are wasting money. Once you do so you will find a surplus that you can begin saving. Fund your future with this real money, that comes from getting your spending and debt under control. Then make sure you create a living trust. Transfer your assets into the trust and make sure nothing goes to the court to decide. Go to www.easylegalplanning.com and see how simple it is to get organized and match assets with a real plan document.  Don’t delay and become part of the majority that leaves your family out in the cold, unable to help themselves.  The memory of you that will be left will not be good.  To learn more go to www.moneymastery.com or contact me: peter@moneymastery.com.

Did you know that for every 75 cents the U.S. government is taking in, it spends $1?  Further, if this continues, within ten years the 75 cents will be used to pay just the interest on the debt.  Shame on the government — but wait, shame on all of us as this is exactly what we are doing with our personal finances. That’s why the average person reaching age 65 still has a mortgage, still has credit card debt, and is still worried about retirement.

The solution to all this nonsense is to spend less than we make.  I challenge you to do this for one month and see how great you feel at the end of it! Then try to see if you can do it for two months and so on until you are saving 10 percent of your income each month.  To accomplish this you must build a plan to spend your money differently.  Go to www.moneymastery.com and sign up for the select program.  Use the online software to build three plans:  Spending, Debt and Retirement.  Then look at how all three can be worked on at the same time. For more information and help, please contact me: peter@moneymastery.com. 

Following are some numbers showing how the U.S. government spends money. These are big numbers, so it’s pretty hard to get any kind of perspective on what they really mean to you personally:  

U.S. Government Spending

• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent [April] budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

The Gainesville Tea Party has taken these very large numbers and given all of us a very simple way to wrap our heads around these complex figures by simply lopping off 8 zeros (i.e. divide by 100 million) to produce a “pretend” U.S. household budget correlated to the U.S. government’s budget:

Sample U.S. Household Spending (Correlated to Actual U.S. Government Figures):

• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
• Budget cuts: $385 (You can see once you take off all those zeroes, that in comparison to the U.S. budget cut, this doesn’t amount to much of a cut.)

If you or I tried to pull off the kind of financial insanity you can see the U.S. government is attempting, we would be forced into bankruptcy!  My experience shows 90 percent of all Americans over-spend their income.  This is why so very few people have enough money saved for retirement.  Keeping  our nation’s spending in mind, as shown above, check how you are doing.  Place your numbers alongside the sample U.S. household numbers above and see if you’re acting just as irresponsibly as the federal government. Make changes as needed.

For help in making those change go to www.moneymastery.com or send me an email:  peter@moneymastery.com.

We all want more money, but how can you make that happen?

First make a list of why you want more money.  Be comprehensive and make sure you don’t leave anything out.  Dream big and write down as much detail as you can so when you refer back to your list, you will be reminded of all these wonderful things.  Do this now.

Second, write down all the income sources, assets and other resources you have available to spend on this list.  Remember one of your assets is time, time to work extra hours, and time to get a better education and improve your ability to make more money.

Third, subtract the money you have from the list of wants and see if you come up short. This is the amount of money you need to find, learn how to earn, or acquire by selling an asset.

Let’s solve this money shortage problem right now.  In the illustration above let the circle represent all the money you will ever have in your lifetime.  Now you don’t know how long you will live, but just let this circle be the total amount of money you will have.  Don’t be critical of yourself for past mistakes in investments, don’t deride yourself for not getting more education, and don’t get depressed, just stay focused on this activity to the end.  I promise you will soon have more money.

Since this circle represents ALL the money you will ever have, why not spend it?  Use your list of wants and spend your money.  Take a slice of the circle and spend it on food and housing.  Then do the same for medical and dental expenses.  Spend some for vacations and fun activities.  Don’t use a monetary figure, just a percetage, like 1.5% for example.  Slice up your total money supply pie until it is all spent.  Don’t forget transportation costs and travel.  Now sit back and examine the money picture you have just drawn.  Remember you can have anything you want, you just can’t have everything you want.  So if you are a physician and will make $9,000,000 over your working life, you will not be able to spend more than that much money.

Your action item now, something for you to do immediately, is to take your “pie of money,” totaling all the money you will ever have, and spend it is such a way as to have a surplus and accomplish the essential goals of your life.  Don’t just spend it all, spend it so as to have a surplus. Doing this little exercise will help you see where you are spending money foolishly or help you see what you may need scale back on so that you can have a small surplus each month.

 Here are three case histories to put your “pie of money” into perspective in terms of creating a surplus:  The first case study is about a schoolteacher who lives in the mountains of Missouri making $23,000 annually.  She has debt and saves $300 each month.  The second study comes from Florida where he is a plastic surgeon making $100,000 a month, but has over-committed on leasing his building, equipment, plane and automobiles, so when he was called out of military reserves to serve a one year commitment in Afghanistan (making $29,000 a year), this forced him to have to file bankruptcy.  The third case history is a retired 87-year-old woman who lives in Stockton, California successfully living on $1,022 a month. We can see from each of these stories that it matters not how much you make but what you do with your money that counts. The school teacher isn’t making much and has debt but she still manages to create a surplus every month so she can save $300. The doctor is living large and has now lost that massive income on foolish living. He could have amassed a huge surplus by now but has spent it all. The elderly woman on a fixed income is managing her money by being smart about the way she spends so she has money to live on. Donald Horban taught this essential concept:

“We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants.  Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.” 

Our financial peace of mind is to learn that a rich person is not one who has the most, but one who needs the least.

Don’t be discouraged, even though in my experience spending all your money on paper so you can see where you lack a cash surplus will be the hardest thing you will ever do.   Don’t procrastinate, create a circle representing your entire income of money and spend it.  Money is not the most important thing, but if you don’t have a surplus of it when you need it, it becomes really important.  I wish you all the very best! peter@moneymastery.com.

The Money Mastery system of personal financial management teaches that savings is actually just “delayed spending.” What this means is that all money is to be spent — some will be spent now, and the so-called “savings” we create will be spent later for future events.

So what kind of “delayed spending” accounts should we create? There are three:

1. Long-term
2. Emergency
3. Emotional

The Long-term account is obvious — we need the most money here for the end of our life, when we stop working and hope to retire so we can do so comfortably.  I have written extensively about how to create this delayed spending account and I urge you to check out some of those posts here.

The Four C’s of Retirement Planning

How to Determine Retirement Needs Accurately

How You Define Retirement May Mean You Actually Get to Retire

The Emergency account is also obvious — problems crop up all the time and as I have tracked the emergencies my family has encountered it adds up to an average of $383 every month.  Because I have a historical picture of what life  has been like for our family through tracking, I just go ahead and set the $383 aside each month so I have this money to spend later when these emergencies arise BECAUSE THEY WILL HAPPEN JUST LIKE CLOCK WORK.  What about your family? Do you know what you need to set aside each month to plan for the inevitable?

The last account, Emotional, gets overlooked or in most cases has not even been considered as a needed delayed spending account.  But just like emergencies, the need for impulse spending for the sheer fun of it is bound to happen TO ALL OF US and if you’re not prepared for these events, you will spend money you do not have simply to fulfill an emotional need. And let’s face it, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with spending money impulsively, for no other reason than because you want to have fun and enjoy life — that is unless you have not prepared for it. Then spending money this way is what gets people into debt and keeps them that way for a long time.

My advice? If you don’t think you have much to set aside for emotional spending, start with a small amount like $25 for example. Put this away every month and then work your way up a little. That way, in a few months you have money that has been set aside only to be used when you want to do something fun on the spur of the moment. You can still pay your monthly bills while not depriving yourself or family members of the fun and enjoyment in life. Or let’s say you get a tax refund (which is something I suggest you not be getting every year but that’s a post for another time), but if you’ve gotten a recent tax return, I suggest you take a portion of that return, at least $500 of it and put it aside into a savings account to only be used when you want to do something fun on the spur of the moment. 

Now let’s spend this $500.  Let’s suppose that your spouse comes to you and tells of friends who went to a resort with natural hot water swimming pools.  He or she is sad and wishes your family could do something like this.  You spring into action and say, “Honey, let’s check our emotional account and see how much money we have.”  WOW, you have $500 and it would only cost $235 to do this same trip to the hot water pools.  All of a sudden your family gets to put some excitement back in life and together you have a wonderful family-bonding experience that provides happy memories for your children.

Not having money saved for emotional spending needs is like going on a diet and expecting to never eat another cookie or indulge in another ice cream cone again. Those kinds of diets do not work because they are too strict to give you the motivation you need to stay on them. Eating right is fine so long as you can splurge occasionally. The same goes for proper financial management. Fun times are needed every once in a while if you expect to stay on track. But, those fun times need to be properly funded, in advance.  Plan for emergencies, plan for retirement, but don’t forget to plan for emotional activities either.  Learn how by going to www.moneymastery.com.