First Things First

Hey all,

Susan and old Buck here, what are some ways to handle your money? In a previous post, Buck mentioned a couple of books to pick up and read. If you haven't done this yet, we would encourage you to at least check them out from your nearest library.

One of the first lessons that we are taught from "The Richest Man in Babylon," is no matter how little you think you earn always give the first 10% (tithing) as a donation. Then the rest is for purchasing your necessities. We will talk more about tithing in our next post.

The necessity or main account handles the majority of all your expenses. You will pay for food, utilities, rent, fuel, car payment, what ever expenses that you have will come out of this account.

We first need to learn how to handle our basic finances before we can expand what we do with them. What we have done is make a list of our basic expenses and try to average the costs for those ideas over a month time frame. This has helped us create a budget. We know. For most people that is like a four letter word. But if you are in financial trouble, you need to first learn where it is the money is going before you can redirect it to where it should be going. A budget will help you in doing this, it doesn't have to become the only way to handle your money but mostly to help you know what you are doing with it.

Once you have created a budget, you can then look at the different items that you purchase on a frequent basis. The author David Bach in his book, "The Automatic Millionaire," talks about, "The Latte Factor." If you have a latte each morning at your local coffee shop, they cost about $3-$5 depending on the brand. That adds up to about $15-$25 over a 5 day work week or $60-$100 a month just for one latte each morning on the way to work. If you were able to cut out that latte, see how much money you could save each month. What could you do with that savings? This is just an idea that he gives to help you get your mind working on different ways that you can cut costs in your everyday life. What different ways can you find to save money? We would love to hear about them and with permission share these ideas.

This is the first step to get your finances in order. We hope that these little ideas can help you find the money you need with the income that you currently have. Good night!

- Susan and Buck