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Have You Kept Your Financial New Year's Resolutions?
Freedom Financial Network's 5 Ways To Get Back on Track
January 2005 This New Year, 31 percent of Americans who planned to make a New Year's resolution said they would focus on firming up their financial footing, according to a survey by Bankrate.com but if citizens' track record on resolutions is any indication, many of us have fallen off the bandwagon already, just a few weeks into the New Year.
Last year, just 57 percent of people who made a resolution kept it, according to a survey by the Marist College Institute of Public Opinion, based in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. And, as we all know, financial resolutions can be among the toughest to keep, especially for people who already face financial hardship. Here, five tips from Freedom Financial Network will help you get back on the fiscal bandwagon.
• Get back on the horse. If your first weeks of financial responsibility haven't gone as well as you planned or if a sky-high Christmas credit card bill just arrived don't despair. Most important is working to change long-term habits. Try building a monthly budget divided into weekly increments, and if one week doesn't go well, make a fresh start the next week.
• Set goals. Set out specific goals for yourself, and then plan to meet those goals. Do you want to eliminate your credit card debt, save 10 percent of your income for retirement, cut back discretionary spending by 40 percent? Without a target, you can't know where to go, so name your intention.
• Make a plan. As the saying goes, a resolution without a plan is only a wish. How will you reach your goal? Eating out less or sticking with a cash budget can trim excess spending. Keeping a spending journal, writing down every penny you spend daily, will show you where the bucks go. Then you can identify which areas can be trimmed or if you'll need to find a second job to finance your dreams.
• Work your way up. To eliminate credit card debt, first make sure you can make minimum payments on all your debts. (If you can't do that, consider seeking help from a consumer debt resolution organization such as Freedom Financial Network.) Then, pay as much as you can on the card with the highest interest rate, making minimum payments on all other obligations. After you pay off the first card, pay the same amount, plus the previous minimum payment, on the next highest-rate card, and so on, until your debt is eliminated. It can take a while to pay everything down, so don't get discouraged, said Brad Stroh, founder and co-CEO of Freedom Financial Network. But if you are persistent, eventually, you will eliminate that debt.
• Stay inspired. Why do you want to keep your resolution? Give yourself rewards for small milestones attained, Stroh suggests say, if you've slashed your entertainment budget to pay off one credit card, tell yourself when it's done, you'll treat yourself and your spouse to a movie out. If you want to get out of debt so you can save to buy a home, cut out or sketch a picture of your dream home and post it somewhere you can see it regularly. Or, keep a copy of the image in your wallet to remind you not to spend frivolously.
Freedom Financial Network, LLC (www.freedomdebtrelief.com) provides consumer debt resolution services through its Freedom Debt Relief, Freedom Foreclosure Relief, and Freedom Tax Relief divisions. The company represents the consumer exclusively, serving in a position of mediation and negotiating with unsecured creditors to offer an alternative to bankruptcy, credit counseling, and debt consolidation. B ased in San Mateo, Calif., Freedom Financial Network serves more than 2,000 clients nationwide and manages more than $70 million in consumer debt.
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CONTACTS:
Brad Stroh, co-CEO
Freedom Financial Network, LLC
650-571-0961, x210
bradford@freedomdebtrelief.com
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