How to Reevaluate Your Monthly Expenses

How to Reevaluate Your Monthly Expenses Better Rhiannon Ally: Hello shifting gears now its time to talk about our money whether you’ve lost your job, your dealing with surprise medical cost or you’re ready for retirement you may need to downsize your cost of living to fit your new circumstances. Well we all know this is much easier said than done. Maribel Aber Better’s Financing Career Expert is here with tips on how to adjust your finances to fit your lifestyle in the best way possible. Welcome! Maribel Aber: Thank you. Rhiannon: It’s so great to see you. Maribel: It’s great to see you too. Rhiannon: Okay today we’re talking about living within our means. Maribel: I know it’s a hard one right. I mean we’ve all heard about keeping up with the Joneses but in today’s economy sort of a wake up call that hey these are our bills that we have to pay for and we really need to adjust for difference that happen in our lives so like you said whether your getting married you know you’re planning for retirement whatever it is you want to check what’s happening in your life regularly so it could be you doing it, t could be your financial adviser but the point is to kind of stay ahead of it. Rhiannon: So how can we go about downsizing? Maribel: I know first up. Okay first up is really how much money is coming in, that’s what we really want to look at and then what are you paying for what are your expenses and I mean big ticket items. So if you’re renting maybe you can negotiate your rent down or a lot of deals now. The other thing is your insurance that’s a big ticket item are you actually paying for insurance that you really need, you know look at different policies and then here’s the kicker, what are those recurring costs. Gym membership are you really using the gym. You know how about you know a friend of mine told me that he was getting rid of his premium cable so now we have like every Friday or ones a month every Friday we do like entourage night or we do tutors night or whatever we just watch them altogether right. Rhiannon: To save some money on your cable bill. Maribel: Exactly. Rhiannon: How easy. Let’s talk savings now. Maribel: Yes. Rhiannon: Should your savings strategies defer depending on what stage you are in your life? Maribel: Yes it should defer a little bit and depending on people’s goals its going to change but the premises always the same but you always want to have some kind of retirement fund and you always want some kind of savings for emergencies and you and I have talked about you know at least having 6 months you know in expenses saved up and then in terms of retirement always look at your 401K that’s really important and you also if your company matches try to do that as well. Rhiannon: How young should you start to get your 401K? I just got it out. Maribel: Well its never too young. When you first get your job you should definitely start your 401k there are different vesting periods for companies but you know when you’re in your 20s and 30s that’s the time that you actually have the opportunity to grow your fund. Whereas in your 40’s and 50’s that’s the time you want to maintain what you’ve you know earned throughout you know period of time. Rhiannon: Now what types of investment should we be thinking of to optimize our returns? Maribel: Great question there’s a lot of different things in your investment portfolio to be talking about stocks, bonds mutual funds, exchange twitter funds those kind of things and what experts will say are financial expectation says you want to not put all your eggs in one basket you want to be diverse. So that means changing that up a little bit and if you look at plan administrators like fidelity or vanguard there’s actually a fun little calculator where it wills show you kind of where you are in your life stage. What your appetite is for risk, how much money you are making and what you contribute what that asset should be and what the classification should be. Rhiannon: And sometimes its all about just seeing it right there isn’t it? Maribel: That’s right, absolutely. Rhiannon: To sum it all up what’s the quick advice you can give people. Maribel: Plan, plan, plan ahead especially if your going to retire look into the research ahead of time and cut as much as you can that you don’t need. Rhiannon: Okay thank you so much Maribel. Maribel: Thank you. Rhiannon: And if you have questions for Maribel you can email her at AskMaribel@BetterTV.com.