One of the questions I get regularly is this:
I’d like to start a side hustle, but I don’t have any time. How can I find the time to make more money?
This is a tough one because we all have busy lives and schedules. It’s especially true if you add kids into the mix.
However, there are some ways you can find time to start a side hustle. It all starts with being honest and seeing where you truly stand.
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One of the best things you can do for yourself as the year winds down is to perform a financial year-in-review. Understanding your good moves, as well as identifying your mistakes, can be a great way to improve the way you manage money going forward.
The first thing to do is look at your spending for the year. Where did your money go? When you look at how you spent your money, pay attention to whether or not you spent according to your values. Are you satisfied with the way you used your money? Be honest, identifying things you regret now. This will help you be more conscientious about the way you spend money in the future.
As you look at your spending, also consider how you handled unexpected expenses. When my ex-husband and I separated, I had all sorts of unexpected expenses. This included moving across the country and taking care of other costs. I ended up dipping into my emergency assets, as well as getting a personal loan, since I didn’t want to deplete my assets too far as I prepared for a fresh start.
Figure out what you could have done differently if you ended up with unexpected expenses and assess why you had to dip into your savings or turn to debt in order to make ends meet. Going forward, I continued to rebuild my long-term emergency savings and I worked on paying down my personal loan the next year. I had a plan, and it was because I took the time to do a review of my assets.
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The turkeys have been eaten and the trees are starting to go up. Christmas is right around the corner. While we’re all looking forward to one of the most magical holidays of the year, that also means that the new year is right around of the corner. Pretty soon, we’ll be making our new year’s resolutions.
As you think about your goals for the coming year, it’s also important to reflect back on the year past and wrap any any loose ends, especially when it comes to your finances. Here is a checklist of five financial things you should do before new year’s day:
The end of the year is the perfect time to review your yearly budget. Are you on-track? Did you overspend? Did you have to dip into your emergency fund? While it may be too late to make a change now, reviewing your spending will help you make your new budget in the coming year. If you’re over, you might have to cut back the first few months of the new year.
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It can be hard to say NO to our kids. I know that sometimes I feel bad when I tell my son that I won’t buy something for him, or that he can’t go to an event that costs money.
However, telling your kids NO can create situations in which you teach them valuable money lessons. Since you want your children to grow up making better financial decisions and to be better with money, it’s important to sometimes tell them NO from time to time.
Here’s how telling your kids NO can help them learn valuable money lessons.
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I had a difficult decision to make while reading my emails recently. Not showing it to my son would save him some disappointment, but making him aware of it could be an invaluable financial lesson.
My son is saving his money to buy a new monitor for his gaming computer, but he is currently getting by with an old monitor that we had sitting around. He’s shopped around and determined that $300 is about how much he’d have to spend to get a monitor with the features he’s looking for.
The email I received was from a popular online computer parts retailer. They were advertising a 27-inch 1440p monitor, which regularly sold for $299, on sale for $219. Even better, after using a promo code, the final price of the monitor would be $199.
The problem? He didn’t have enough funds to take advantage of a great sale.
He did have $140, but he could’ve had more if he’d made different choices with his money over the past two months. I specifically remember him buying an online game for $70, as well as a new music album through iTunes within the last week.
I came up with three options for what I could do next:
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I invested in a well known technology company about a year and a half ago. I’ve checked the value of my investment at the beginning of each month since, and except for one month, it has lost value every time. Maybe I’m in state of denial since it’s such a well known company that continues to make popular products. I keep thinking that it will eventually turn a corner and increase in value, but when do I say enough is enough? When should I cut my losses and reinvest my money elsewhere?
The reason many people hold on to investments too long is there’s a common belief that all stocks eventually bounce back. When a person looks at the historical graph of the stock market, there may be some bumps but it generally increases over time. The big caveat though is that the markets are an average of successful stocks. While most companies increase shareholder value, certain individual stocks lose value never to return to their previous highs.
Here are three questions that could help you decide whether it’s time to sell that consistent loser in your investment portfolio:
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