Shocking Number About Debt

I just read a survey, and felt like I had to share this.  The average consumer owes $15k on auto loans, $173k on a mortgage, $26k for student loans, $48k in home equity loans, and $6k on credit cards.  This is a total of almost $270k!  The survey did not account for any savings that people might have on average, but this number is very high!  I understand we all have different circumstances, but I am here to tell you that if you put your mind to it, you CAN and WILL eliminate your debt!  You just have to want to do it, day after day! 

To my fellow readers, I encourage you to pass along this website to any one you think might enjoy reading about finance.  I am hoping to reach more people out there, in hopes that something they read might in fact help them change their financial future as well.  Thank you everyone for your continued support!

Yearly Expenses: Be Prepared!

The last few days have been very busy trying to look over my 2011 budget, and analyzing how things went.  It's also been spent trying to forecast what our bills are giong to be in 2012.  I know that health insurance and health insurance are going up for this year, so we've created our 2012 budget to take that into consideration.  I'm hoping that items such as food and gas stay down a little this year, but that is unfortunately not a cost I can control, so we'll do our best to handle them as the fluctuations occur.  We're going to take the first three months of the year to see how everything pans out with our budget, then we'll revisit it and determine if any adjustments need to be made at that point.  I encourage you to stay up with your budget, as many things change during the course of the year.  Your goal is to be prepared for these costs when they arrive.  As we discussed before, you should take what you expect your expenses to be, and divide them by 12.  Put that amount into your budget on a monthly basis, and you should for the most part be prepared when the bill arrives. 

I hope you  have found this information useful, as it is a practice I have found to really work for our family.  It helps us to forecast our yearly bills, and not be surprised when they come in!