Hope for your financial life and beyond

The Best Option for the Extra Budget Money at the End of the Month

Perhaps you’ve had this experience with your monthly budget money: budget money

At the beginning of the month you allocated “X” amount for a particular budget category. Due to clipping coupons, noticing that sale item or exercising some intense discipline, you didn’t end up spending as much for that category as you had planned. You had extra money for that budget category that went unspent for the month.

Putting it into an example – you budgeted $600 for groceries but only spent $525. You thought that dress would be $100 but you lucked into a half-off sale. There was no car maintenance for the month and the $75 you earmarked for the car maintenance budget wasn’t used.

So there is extra money available to be used in that expense category. What do you do with the extra money? Where does it (or should it) go or should you spend it at all?

You may have never thought to ask those questions, but there are actually some issues here that need to be addressed. I can think of three different options for your extra budget money at the end of the month, with one of them being the clear cut winner in my book.

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SMART Goal Examples For Your Money This Coming Year

smart goal examplesThis year is rapidly drawing to a close so what better time than to think about some financial goals for 2016. I’ve set and achieved many goals over the years. The best tool I’ve used to help me set goals is the acronym SMART. Today I’m going to outline what that means and give you some SMART goal examples for your money so you can see how it works.

There really is no debate that setting clearly defined goals will help you reach a target. Without something to shoot for how will you know if you’ve achieved anything? And what goals could you possibly set for your money? This is where the SMART acronym is useful.

What Are SMART Goals?

We often make mistakes when creating goals. This leads to frustration when we can’t complete them. Ever say you are going to save money but then never save any money? There are many factors that contribute to why that happened. One reason is that it’s not a very good goal to start with.

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