Monthly Archives: February 2017

Touching The Bases Needed In Your Family Budget Building For Retirement

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Many people begin too late to prepare for retirement. I like to think of the considerations needed to be ready for retirement as a baseball diamond consisting of four bases.

First Base is allocating money in your budget for adequate life insurance for the husband, the wife, and possibly small policies on the children.

Second Base is systematic saving with plans designed to reach the funded money needed at different points in your life preparing for retirement.

Third base is acquisition of adequate family medical insurance, with an assisted living benefit, and covered burial and death expenses. This needs to be a budget item. Too many people wait until health problems arise and members pass on to fund those expenses.

Home Plate is where do you want to retire. Take trips and plan where you want to live after you are retired and determine the anticipated living expenses in that area now. Then project them with inflation built in for the date when you want to retire.

I have included the link to a article that appeared on Yahoo recently with a professional estimate of the amount of savings needed at different ages.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-much-money-saved-every-141702355.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma

Regardless of your age now and the ages of the other family members, it is not too late to set up a plan to begin savings and planning for a retirement. The family needs to set a budget that is realistic and goal oriented so the retiring couple can realize their dream of retirement in a place they selected and planned for comfortably.

This Month’s Income Opportunity
Most people are probably not aware that magazines want full articles, short stores, jokes, and stories about actual personal or family experiences. If you sign up with Real Writing Jobs it provides the names of the magazines which includes the Saturday Evening Post and many other publications that want articles. It explains how to submit the articles and gives the addresses for submission. The articles can be submitted on line.
There are numerous job opportunities for editing , SEO optimization of existing dialog, data entry, proofreading, blog writing, and personal assistants all listed in the Real Writing Jobs lists.
Click on this link Real Writing Jobs The cost for this service is a one time fee of less than $40 after a 50% discount coupon on the site.

Getting off to a good start! First Months Family Budget Ready to Review

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The header photo is one I took of the pier at La Jolla California. There are a large number of seals near there which attracts many people, I love this scenic spot.

If you started your family budget January 1,2017, now is the time to see how your actual family finances fit the budget. If you did not start January 1st, then now is the time to start your February 2017 family budget using the pattern explained in the previous blog post.

Hopefully you have a worksheet set up on an Excel spreadsheet with the following column headings: (1) Line item description (for example: monthly income with employer or business name) (2) Budgeted Amount (3) Actual Amount (This is the column where you will post the actual January amounts) (4) Difference (This is the amount you are over budget if it is a minus and under budget if it is a plus amount)Total the columns for income and the expenses in all columns with a Total Income and a Total Expenses and show Over or (Under) Budget Total

With this information the family can see if the budget is realistic, spending is realistic , and what items in the budget may need to be adjusted. Also determine where the budget can be cut in order to cover overages.

Form W-2 and 1099 Time. January 31st is the deadline for employers, banks, and investment companies to sent out the W-2 and 1099 forms to the those people that are required to receive them. if you have not received all the of W-2’s or 1099 forms call or send a message to that entity so you can get those forms so you can proceed on your tax returns.

Time to accumulate the back up for your deductions for your tax return, like donation totals, taxes paid and type, medical expenses, casualty loses, tax preparation costs from last years return, interest received but not included on a 1099 form, etc.

Don’t wait until April 1st to get all of your tax back up information ready to prepare your return. Turbo Tax is very easy to use and follow. Start now and install Turbo Tax. Then enter your personal information. You will see if you have used Turbo Tax in previous years that they will auto fill the next years return with this information so you do not have to enter it. Then begin posting the items that you already have for your 2016 return, and as you receive items keep adding them to the return until you have all the known income and expense items entered. Then e-file the returns after it had been checked and shows no errors. The Federal Tax return is free with Turbo Tax and the return for one State is $19.95 that can be deducted from a refund or the person may pay with a credit card. Usually with in a few hours the taxpayer will receive a text message stating the IRS has accepted your Federal Tax Return, and a separate text message comes from the State usually a day so after you receive the text message from the IRS. If you send your return in early like now or in February the refund usually comes within three weeks.

DO NOT GET A LOAN FROM A TAX PREPARING SERVICE SO YOU CAN GET AN IMMEDIATE OR ACCELERATED TAX REFUND. THE EFFECTIVE INTEREST RATE FOR THE LOAN IS ASTRONOMIC AND NOT WORTH IT.

Good luck with your budget and preparing your 2016 Tax Return.

This Month’s Income Opportunity
Most people are probably not aware that magazines want full articles, short stores, jokes, and stories about actual personal or family experiences. If you sign up with Real Writing Jobs it provides the names of the magazines which includes the Saturday Evening Post and many other publications that want articles. It explains how to submit the articles and gives the addresses for submission. The articles can be submitted on line.
There are numerous job opportunities for editing , SEO optimization of existing dialog, data entry, proofreading, blog writing, and personal assistants all listed in the Real Writing Jobs lists.
Click on this link Real Writing Jobs The cost for this service is a one time fee of less than $40 after a 50% discount coupon on the site.