Start A Budget Today

Debt is a terrible thing. It's a vicious cycle that never seems to end. Not unless you take control of your financial future. I should know, I've been in debt several times in my life. I've had to dig myself out one small step at a time. For me, it all started with my very first charge card. I thought this little shinny card was amazing. Boy, was I wrong! It took several years but I was eventually debt free. Then came the day I got pregnant. It was such a happy time in our life's, but we had to make decisions that would effect our financial future. After my daughter was born my husband and I decided that it would be a good idea for me to become a stay at home mom. I didn't want to miss a moment of my little babies life. At that time our economy here in the states was still stable. My husband was working steady and we knew we could make it on his income only. Then came the crash with the housing industry, mortgage industry and the never ending lay offs from the auto industry. All these events effected my husbands job which is in the construction industry. His hours at work were cut dramatically. We depleted our savings account and our finances started spiraling out of control. We were in debt again. I decided to take control of this serious financial problem and created a budget for our monthly expenses. We needed some solution to heal these financial wounds we had caused. Our budget plan has been working and we have most of our debt paid off. I can almost see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's been a long hard road. We've had to do with out a lot of things but it was so worth it. I've even been able to put a little money into our savings each month. I feel that it's so important to save for the future. Even if it's only $5.00 a month. That's better than nothing. You just never know what tomorrow brings. One rule I stand by is to never use our charge cards again. Yes, we still have open accounts with these companies. We just cut the cards up so we don't have access to them. If we don't have the cash then we just don't buy things. We did have to consolidated most of our charge card debt into a low interest rate loan. This helped immensely. This was the best decision we ever made. One site that helped us out of our financial failure was bills.com. This site offers some great information on the different types of options to get your self out of debt. Such as ways to consolidate debt, debt consolidation loans, credit card debt, bankruptcy and so much more. Bills.com has really helped educated me about debt relief and how not to get into financial trouble again. They also have this handy little widget called the bills IQ test. It educates you in how financially fit your are in your finances. My husband and I are going to continue with our budget and will not be using our charge cards in the near future. All these solutions have really helped us get out of financial trouble. If you are having financial problems then check out bills.com. You won't be sorry.

What Does My Financial Future Hold?

Do you ever wonder about your financial future? Well, I do all the time. Do I need to put more into savings? Do I have to much credit card debt? Do I need to seek Debt help? Maybe I should take a loan out and do some Debt consolidation? How much should I be putting into our IRA for retirement? The list could go on and on. Currently my biggest concern is our retirement account. I would really like to start putting more cash into that account. I also want to start a college savings account for our daughter. I found a website that actually answered all these nagging questions that I keep asking myself. They have this great bill IQ quiz you can take. It goes through such topics as credit card debt and what you need to do to get some Debt relief. There's information on how often you need to check on your credit score and what factors your credit score is based on. I took the quiz tonight and I learned a lot about my financial situation from this handy little tool. It's a really bad thing to totally max your credit cards out. This has a negative effect on your credit score. If you carry a balance that is over 33% of your credit limit this can really put a dent in your credit score. Some of the recommendations I received from my quiz were to start putting more into my saving account and to pay off my high interest credit cards. They also suggested I put myself on a budget plan. My over all score was 83% which is a B. I was impressed! I thought for sure it would of been a C or below. Maybe I'm not doing as bad as I thought I was financially. I just need to be a little smarter with my spending habits. Take the Bills IQ quiz and see how well you score.