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Do Your Money Goals Reflect What You Want?
The keys to having a happier and more secure financial life sound easy, in theory. Set up a budget and stick to it. Have frequent money conversations with your partner. Know your money values and let them guide your financial choices. Spoiler alert: these tips won’t...
The Pros and Cons of Using Percentages in Your Budget
If you’re totally new to budgeting, you may have looked up beginner’s budgeting guides online and noticed something called “budget percentages.” Using budget percentages involves assigning a percentage out of one hundred to each category in your budget. Housing gets...
Aligning Your Budget with Your Values
“Every budget has a story.” We’ve mentioned that before on this blog, but it bears repeating. Why? Because we could all use the reminder that your budget is unique to your values. In working with so many couples and families over the past decade or so, one thing I’ve...
How to Make Sure Your Budgeting Sticks
While around 60% of us make New Year’s resolutions, only about 8% of us achieve them. Yikes. With that not-so-motivating statistic in mind, how are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions, if you’ve made any? With everything we all experienced in 2020, it’s...
Our Top 4 Tips for Budgeting With Uncertainty
Happy New Year! You know what the turn of the calendar means...it’s time to start a new budget for 2021. If you struggled with budgeting the past few months because of COVID-19, you’re definitely not alone. The uncertainty many of us faced — and continue to face every...
Set Your Budget (and Yourself) Up for Success in 2021
After what we’ve all experienced in 2020, many are dreading the thought of budgeting in 2021. With COVID-19 still affecting the population worldwide, how can we even begin to plan for the months ahead? While you’ll need to be a bit more flexible than usual with your...
How to Deal with Changing Holiday Plans (Thanks, COVID)
What are your holiday traditions? Or maybe the question should be: What were your holiday traditions before the coronavirus pandemic completely changed your plans? We’ve talked about it a lot on this blog (and everywhere else on the internet), but COVID-19 truly has...
Why Gratitude is Good for Your Finances
How do you think about money? Do you find yourself worrying about how to make more of it? How to best use it to tackle your bills or build up your savings? Another question for you: what if, instead of focusing on how to get more money, you focus on being thankful...
Talking to Your Parents About Finances and the Future
The coronavirus has all of us thinking about the future. When will things get back to “normal?” When can we work and shop and go to school the way we used to? You probably have financial questions on the brain, too. Will I still be able to buy a home in the next year...
What’s Your Money Personality?
We sure love labeling our personalities, don’t we? Ask someone about their Myers-Briggs type or Enneagram number, for example. Or how about the character they’re most like from The Office, or what kind of vacation they’re most likely to enjoy. We’re curious about our...
Family Needs & Finances in a Post-COVID World
Because of the pandemic, our lives have totally changed. How we work, how our children go to school, how we shop, work out, eat a meal: all of this looks wildly different now post-COVID. Your finances probably look different, too. Over 40% of Americans believe that...
How to Prep for Your First Meeting with a Financial Advisor
When you’re trying to plan for the future and make sure you’re choosing the right financial path for yourself and/or your family, you may want some expert help. And while there are a number of financial services available to you, a financial advisor may be the best...
5 Tips for Dealing with Financial Envy
Social media is a great tool for networking, discovering new ideas, and staying in touch with people we care about. But it can also be a significant source of stress, one that is damaging to your self-esteem. One of the other things that social media can cause?...
How to Support Family While Keeping Your Own Finances Secure
For some people, “supporting their family” goes beyond providing for themselves, their partner, and/or their children. Supporting family sometimes means caring for ill or aging family members. It sometimes includes helping other family members who are out of work or...
Simple Tips to Make Saving Easier (for Those Who Struggle to Save Money)
In a 2019 survey, nearly 70% of Americans said that they have less than $1,000 in a savings account. That number increased from 58% in 2018. What’s the deal? Why is it hard for some to save money? Living paycheck to paycheck can get in the way of saving money. The...
Voting with Your Dollars
Most of us think of voting as what you do once a year, or every four years. It involves a ballot, sometimes waiting in long lines to cast your vote, and your candidate either wins or they don’t. But that’s not the only way you can vote, and you don’t have to wait for...
What to Do If You’ve Lost Your Job
Losing your job sucks. There’s no other way to put it. When it’s unexpected — no warnings, no sit-down meetings with management to talk about your performance — it can feel even worse. What do you do? How do you get back on your feet? Be prepared to feel a lot of...
Are You Financially Ready to Have Kids?
“When you know, you know.”“You’ll never be completely ready.”“You’ll start seeing babies everywhere.” Do these sound familiar? If you’ve asked your friends and family how they knew they were ready to have children, they might have given you one of these answers. ...
How to Think Bigger About Your Money
“I worry about every little penny.” “I am aware of every bill I pay.” “I can’t really think long-term right now, when every day I need to really think about how to get by now.” Sound familiar? It’s common and totally understandable to get caught up in the small...
The Power of Yet on Your Personal Finances
Do you think you’re bad with money? When it comes to budgeting, investing, or saving, do you feel like you’ll “never get it right” or “never understand any of it completely”? Nobody wants to be bad with money; everyone wants to have a successful financial plan. So,...
5 Things I’ve Learned From Using the BudgetingBlocks™
The idea for the BudgetingBlocks™ system came to me when clients of my financial planning firm were struggling with their budgeting system. Spreadsheets, envelopes, tracking apps; they tried it all. Then, one day, I thought “Why not give them something they can play...