subject: Develop Your Money Management Skills [print this page] Develop Your Money Management Skills Develop Your Money Management Skills
How to Develop Money Management Skills?This article is to teach you how to develop your financial skills.http://www.ixgw.com/ Best Financial Advice - Financial Planning | www.IXGW.com
Step 1
Start teaching children at a young age. Since schools often neglect to teach financial management skills, it falls to parents to ingrain their children with a good sense of money management. Talking to your children about money, credit cards, saving and investing is important, even if they don't understand everything yet and don't have much money of their own. Playing games involving fake money, like Monopoly, can be a fun way for children to learn basic principles of having money. Giving a child a reasonable allowance can also help him learn to deal with real money. Some parents prefer to have children work for money or create their own entrepreneurial ventures, like selling lemonade and bagging leaves for neighbors, as it teaches kids that they must work for money. Another benefit of teaching a child is that it will force you to assess your own financial skills.
Step 2
Make a personal budget. The first step in properly managing money is making a budget that tracks how much money you earn and spend each month. This will help you keep track of where all your money goes and allow you to make decisions to lessen spending in certain areas in order to have extra money in more important areas.
Step 3
Create financial goals and make your budget work with your goals. Almost everyone knows it is a good idea to save money, but far fewer are able to save when they have money sitting in their pocket ready to be spent. Creating some more long-term financial goals, such as saving for an emergency cash fund that can cover six month's expenses, is a great way to practice money-managing discipline while working toward something positive. By setting aside part of your budget toward your goal, you can make a habit of saving or investing first, and spending second. Forming good habits is one of the most important aspects of good money management.
Step 4
Always know what you're getting yourself into. One of the biggest problems people face in managing money is that they don't fully understand things like credit cards, car loans, stocks, and investments before committing money to them. If you are thinking of getting your first credit card, read some articles or a book about proper credit card use. (Generally, it is best never to spend more than you can pay off at the end of the month.) If you want to invest in stocks, don't just act off a tip of a friend at the officeread about how stocks work and about the companies that interest you as investments.
Step 5
Read news about finance regularly. An important part of money managing is to educate yourself on different aspects of finance. New laws and economic activity constantly change the financial landscapeknowing how such changes stand to affect you is an important part of money management.http://www.ixgw.com/2010/06/develop-your-money-management-skills/
