Help with Budgeting Using Online Management Tools
Using an online budgeting tool is the easiest way to manage your budget. It helps take control of your personal finances or small business budget so that you meet your obligations on time, are prepared for emergencies, and pursue your financial goals of becoming wealthy and saving for retirement.
Track Your Spending. Know Where Your Money Goes. All in One Place. Meet Budgetry.
The Three-Step Budgeting Process
Here is a three-step process to use an online tool for help with budgeting.
STEP ONE - COLLECT THE INFORMATION
The first step is to determine your present financial condition, including your income from all sources and your obligations. You want to know all the bills that you have to pay and your debts. You will use an online budget tracker to control your average monthly spending to achieve your financial goals.
Figure out your monthly income from your pay stubs (if you are employed) and all other income sources you may have.
Assemble all your monthly bills by getting the paper invoices for the last month’s payments and/or reviewing the payment amount that you made from your bank account.
STEP TWO - CALCULATE YOUR FINANCIAL HEALTH INDEX
By reviewing your present financial condition, you will determine your financial health index (FHI).
Your FHI is a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being perfect and 60 or less representing a poor financial condition.
Most people have an FHI between 60 and 90. If your FHI is under 50 and you are on the verge of bankruptcy.
Set Money for Emergencies Aside
Your long-term financial goal is to live within your means in such a way that allows you also to put aside 10% of your income to build up an emergency fund. After your emergency fund is in place, you use this 10% of your monthly income to make long-term investments to build wealth. Use all the tools at Goalry to have outstanding control over your finances.
Why Give Money to Charity?
You also want to be able to give away 10% of your income to charitable causes. This is a vital element of achieving financial independence because if you can give 10% of your income away each month, you can consider yourself already wealthy. The longer you can pursue this strategy, the greater your wealth will become.
There is something amazing about including charitable giving in your financial plan. It creates the mindset of abundance and improves your karma, which results in better life experiences and better luck.
You will not feel a sense of lack if you can always help others that are less fortunate than you are. Money is like air. Manifest what you need to live well land share the rest of it with others. People who develop this mindset when young have a life that is incredible and satisfying. I do not tell you this to convince you. I tell you this because that is how I live, and I am very content. If you try this lifestyle, then you will get to experience this feeling yourself.
Here is how to calculate your FHI:
Subtract 20% from your monthly income to get 80% of your monthly income used as your disposable income that you can use for your budgeting. If this amount is high enough to pay all your monthly bills, give yourself 70 points. If you can pay your monthly bills with 90% of your income, give yourself 60 points. If you can pay your bills with 100% of your monthly income, give yourself 50 points.
If you do not have enough money to pay your monthly bills, or you must borrow to pay them, give yourself 40 points, as you are in an emergency financial condition that leads to bankruptcy. Skip to the section below and find out How to Get Out of Financial Hell.If you have three months of income put away in an emergency account for safekeeping, give yourself 10 points. If you have six months of income put away, then give yourself 20 points.
If you have an investment account that you regularly contribute 10% of your income to each month, give yourself 10 points. First, set aside enough to fund your IRA account up to the maximum, then contribute as much as possible to any 401 k or retirement plan you have. Then, use any excess to make more investments.
If your total debts are less than the total value of all your assets (your cash, savings, and things you own), then this means you have a positive net worth. If this is so, give yourself 10 points.
Add up your points.
Here is what your FHI score means:
A perfect score of 100 means that you spend only 80% of your monthly income. You have six months of income in an emergency account. You contribute 10% of your monthly income to charity. You have 10% of your income automatically invested each month. You have a positive net worth.
A score of 90 is excellent. You only need to make slight improvements to be perfect.
A score of 80 is financially stable, but you may not give to charity, have too much debt, or may not have anything put away. Try to fix this.
A score of 70 shows you are under financial pressure. You cannot pay your monthly bills and probably have too much debt paying a high-interest rate. Use an online debt tool to figure out the problems, improve your credit with an online credit management tool, and get a recommendation for a consolidation program to contact to reduce your interest expenses.
A score of 60 means you are teetering on the brink of disaster, especially if you are at risk of losing your job. Before the pandemic hit, Forbes reported that Most Americans were in this condition of living from paycheck-to-paycheck and could not handle an emergency expense of $400. After the pandemic hit, tens of millions more found themselves in financial trouble. If this is your condition, skip to the section below and find out How to Get Out of Financial Hell.
A score of 50 or less is bankruptcy time unless you win the lotto. Consult with a bankruptcy attorney to get some advice if you cannot make corrections by following my tips in the section below How to Get Out of Financial Hell.
STEP THREE - CREATE YOUR BUDGET
Congratulations if your FHI is 70 or above. This is a great place to start to use an online budgeting tool to improve your FHI score.
The tool you want to use for online budgeting help is Budgetry®.
To create your budget, you have to enter all your income and expense information into the computer using the online tool to get help with budgeting.
If you are a lazy type, pay somebody else to do this for you. Once you get all the data loaded into the system, then you can look at it and see where you can make adjustments to improve your financial condition.
Ask yourself these challenging questions to get some insights about where your problems may arise:
Are you wasting money on frivolous things and buying things that you do not need?
Do you buy things on impulse, or do you think about what you are doing?
Do you regularly run out of money before the end of each month?
Do you frequently overdraft your bank account?
Do you buy things using a credit card?
Are you in a relationship where one person is not good at managing funds?
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, here are the actions to take:
Stop buying frivolous things, such as gourmet coffee at the coffee shop for $5 a cup.
Make a shopping list and only buy the things on your list. Never go shopping for “fun.”
Make a weekly budget and put the cash in envelopes that you are allowed to spend each week.
Put an extra $100 in the bank account that you never spend. That must always be your imagine zero amount. Get overdraft protection to cover your mistakes and not pay high overdraft fees.
Carry a single card that has available balance to help only in the case of an unexpected emergency. Use a debit card to pay for things instead of a credit card.
If your partner is out of control over spending, take the time to have a genuine calm discussion about this before you fight about it. Some relationships are improved by allowing one of the people to control all the finances and the other one to be restricted from excessive spending. For example, a spendthrift only gets a certain amount each month to spend by cash or debit card and cannot exceed this amount.
If there are no further fundamental issues to overcome, see what can be improved to support other things in the budget that are more important.
If you cannot save 10% of your income, perhaps you can improve your income by taking a part-time job or doing freelance work in your spare time. Turn television-watching time into money-making time instead.
Even if you cannot give away 10% of your income, give away a few dollars every month to get the energy flowing in the correct direction. I have a lot of fun giving money away. I go to my bank and ask for brand new $20 bills or $100 bills if I had a recent windfall. Then, I go walking around (wearing my mask now), and I give the money to strangers. It does not matter if they look homeless or poor. I tell them that I am not only giving them money, but I can also give them a piece of my incredibly fantastic good luck.
Two positive things happen from this method. The first is that I brighten up someone else’s day. The second one is, since I regularly do this, I am 100% personally convinced that I do indeed have incredibly fantastic good luck. You can use brand new $1 bills or even once I found a source of new $2 bills that I gave away. I gave two of the bills to each person. I told the people to keep one and then give the other one to someone else when they had some good luck happen to pass the good luck to another person as well—double the fun.
How To Get Out Of Financial Hell
At various times in my life, I have had no financial resources, and other times I was rich. Nevertheless, I have always felt wealthy.
Storytime:
I went bankrupt twice. The first time was when my stockbroker stole over $11 million from my account and ran away. He went to jail for 27 years after the police found him three years later. He spent all my money before he was caught.
The second time I went bankrupt was during the real estate market collapse in 2008. When the crisis hit, I was in the middle of building a housing development of 25 custom homes on a piece of land I owned in Las Vegas. I already had a construction loan approved from Washington Mutual Bank. I spent many millions getting the land and preparing it for the housing development.
The funny part of this story is that the bank went bankrupt before I did! The bank ran out of money, and the credit situation got so tight that they defaulted on making my construction loan. Development and construction in Las Vegas came to a screeching halt. This caused me to lose everything since all my money was tied up in that project.
building wealth
I laugh about this. After all, my skills did not disappear because my money was stolen or the economy collapsed.
Within a few years after each of these setbacks, I was once again wealthy. My system of building wealth starts with having self-confidence. That is something that no one can take away no matter what happens. I made an absolute fortune with short sales caused by the real estate market collapse.
A short sale is when the banks agree to a property sale for a fraction of what it is worth instead of doing a foreclosure. The solution to my financial troubles was created by the same thing that made my problem — the real estate market collapse. I shifted my focus to the financial clean-up efforts needed by the bank and made my money back ten-fold.
Don’t Panic in the Pandemic!
So many people freak out in a financial crisis. The panic makes them get stuck and so fearful that they cannot do anything. I have Buddhist training. This means I can let go of everything, including my own life, at any moment without attachment, and therefore I have no fear of anything. This is where my self-confidence comes from. I can have a lot of money or no money, and I feel about the same.
I like dogs and operate a dog rescue center. Not a single dog that I care for worries about paying a bill or the rent. They need food and water and a spot to lie down to sleep. Once they get a full belly, the world is perfectly fine for them. That is all you really need also plus maybe shelter if the weather is bad where you live. All the rest of what you think you need is extra. This includes what you need to take care of others, and most importantly, what you think you need because of your attachments.
Switch from Credit Cards to Debit Cards
Getting rid of credit cards is very helpful. Keep only one credit card and use a debit card to pay for everything instead. Maintain a credit card account to use regularly only if you can pay off the balance at the end of each month. Get the ones that offer reward points or cashback, so you make a nice reward using this strategy.
You can also have credit card accounts with unused balances that will help your credit rating. If you have those cards, keep the accounts open and cut the credit cards in half. If you are forced to request a replacement card before making any credit card expenditure, this will keep you from using a credit card without thinking deeply about the reasons for using it.
Lower Your Cost-of-Living
If your budget shows you are living beyond your means, you must adjust how you live to lower your cost-of-living. If you are paying too much rent, then you need to share your space with another person. If you are living in an expensive area, you need to move to a less costly location.
If you are wasting money commuting to a job, you need to find remote work. Perhaps you need to get out of the big city and move to the country where living is easier and then commute electronically by using your computer. Just doing this will save you up to 30% on your monthly expenses.
Sell Stuff
It is always a good time to stop buying frivolous things and sell the things you no longer need. Follow the advice of my friends, Josh and Ryan, The Minimalists, to learn how to do this and the benefits of living more modestly.
Conclusion
Try to think of budgeting as playing a fun financial game with yourself. Using an online budget system to get help with budgeting is easy. There is no reason to let your finances get out of control. If you are in financial hell because of the pandemic, try not to despair because this will get better, even if you lose everything as I did. Before you do anything else that may be foolish, sign up at the Goalry Mall to get the tools you need.
Goalry.com has all the online financial tools that you will need. The tool you want to use for online budgeting help is Budgetry®.
There are other helpful tools that are found in the Goalry Mall, which include:
Accury® — Get estimates of home values.
Billry® — Manage bill paying.
Cashry® — Need to solve a short-term cash crunch problem?
Creditry® — Improve your credit history and credit score.
Debtry® — Manage debts.
Insurry® — Get the right kind of insurance you need.
Loanry® — Find resources to consolidate high-interest credit cards.
Taxry® — Handle all your taxes.
Wealthry® — The steps to take to build your financial wealth.
Call the Non-Emergency Help
If you have problems and do not know what you can do, call 2-1-1. Most people do not know that this number is for non-emergency help for people who need to learn about resources available to top help them.
This is a non-profit service that has nice people who answer the phone, and you tell them your problem, and they will explain the help you can access. Many new programs are coming as a result of the American Rescue Plan.