Every spousal financial relationship is unique. Through the years, couples develop their own systems for handling financial matters. Sometimes it is one partner’s responsibility to manage all finances, sometimes the other’s and sometimes a combination. Whatever the situation, certain information should be shared.
Couples should consider mutual responsibility for and knowledge of:
Retirement plans: Take time to fully acquaint each other with employer retirement benefits. Both partners should have current knowledge of pension plans, 401(k) accounts and IRAs. For a complete picture of expected retirement benefits, become familiar with each other’s Social Security benefits, as well. Understanding retirement benefit information will bring clarify and facilitate retirement planning.
Credit card documents: This one can be scary. Some may prefer to not know how much credit card debt their spouse has accumulated. But it’s wise to know where to find account numbers in case one loses his or her wallet and needs the other to help cancel the card. Also, mutual awareness of credit card debt amounts will help with developing a family’s overall financial plan.
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It’s all too easy to lose sight of financial planning for the future, especially when finances in the here and now are tight. Too many people have whatever life insurance policy and basic 401k that their employer provides (if any at all) as their only preparation for the years ahead. A good financial planner, however, can help you take a look beyond the basics and the present to create a manageable plan to help ensure financial stability for yourself and your family.
The first financial planning step most advisors will take you through is creating a budget — one that includes savings for retirement. The amount you’ve chosen can be automatically deposited into a savings or investment account. This makes it much easier to make savings a habit, and also helps combat the temptation to spend all of your paycheck. For most people, setting aside at least ten percent of your income will help to build a comfortable cushion for retirement.
Of course, regular saving is just one aspect of planning your financial future. Careful investment in stocks, bonds and other instruments can supplement your income both before and after retirement. Since Social Security is designed to cover only the basic necessities, you will need to have other resources in order to live out your “golden years” in comfort and without impacting your preferred lifestyle.
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These days, credit problems can affect anyone. With economic issues becoming a problem for more and more consumers, effectively managing your debt can be a challenge. If you are having difficulties in handling your monthly payments, you may consider a debt consolidation arrangement one good way to help you get back on track. Through a debt consolidation arrangement, you can lower your total monthly payment and, in some cases, reduce the total amount that you owe. If you’re looking for a debt consolidation, there are quite a wide variety of options available to you, and among those are both for-profit companies and non profit debt consolidation agencies.
It is important that you understand that this type of debt consolidation is completely different from a debt consolidation loan. Whether it be a for-profit or a non profit debt consolidation agency, you should not expect these sorts of consolidators to provide you with a loan to pay off existing balances. In some cases, a debt consolidation loan can actually put you in a worse financial situation, because rather than reduce your obligation and lower your interest rates, some of these loans actually have a higher rate but can reduce your payments by extending the payment period for many months or years. Instead of a loan, these sorts of companies will represent you to the creditors and work out an arrangement through which they will agree to lower your interest rate and your payments, while possibly reducing the total amount that you owe and, if all goes well, keeping your credit score from being negatively affected.
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High credit card interest rates and big fees can put you in financial distress very quickly. That’s why you may be searching for a credit card debt elimination program. The opportunity to completely eliminate credit card debt may be difficult to find, because the only way to eliminate debt completely is to pay your credit cards off entirely.
Unfortunately, most people who carry a number of credit card balances from month to month don’t have easy access to a source of funds that would allow them to pay off their credit cards in full. If you’re facing this situation and are still hopeful of locating a method for total credit card debt elimination, you may have to turn to assets that you currently own in order to provide sufficient collateral to secure a loan in order to wipe out your card debt completely.
For most people, the equity in their home may be the best source of collateral to secure a credit card debt elimination loan. In many cases, the interest rate and payback terms are much more favorable to the consumer than those provided by the credit cards they hold. There may also be additional tax benefits available for home loan payments that would not be in place for credit card payments.
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Debt consolidation programs are designed to help consumers who are in trouble overcome their financial difficulties by lowering their monthly payments to an amount they can afford. These sorts of programs are a win-win for the consumer and the lender since they allow the borrower to avoid destroying their credit score and at the same time protecting the lenders from possibly losing their entire loan balance to a potential bankruptcy filing.
There are several types of debt consolidation programs available to most consumers. One is a debt consolidation agency that works directly with the creditors to modify the existing loans in a way that allows the borrower to pay off their debts in a reasonable time frame. And debt consolidation loans which allow the borrower to pay off their high interest rate debts by securing a lower-rate loan that covers all of the outstanding balances.
So how do debt consolidation programs that are provided through a credit counseling agency or debt consolidation company work? In these sorts of debt consolidation programs, the agency or company the consumer chooses will use a worksheet to get a handle on the individual’s income and expenses.
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You walk out to your mailbox and open it up, hoping to receive some good news, but instead you pull out bill after bill after bill. But among those bills is an envelope with an offer of loans for debt consolidation. Facing a problem in paying your monthly payments, you might consider debt consolidation one way to help get your finances into a situation that’s more manageable. But should you really consider loans for debt consolidation or should you think about other alternatives to help restore your secure financial footing? A debt consolidation loan can be a lifesaver, but before you sign off on those loan papers, make sure you carefully consider the terms of your lending agreement.
Certainly, if you have decent credit, loans for debt consolidation should be available to you. But be very careful, there may be a number of lenders out there who will offer you loans that look good on the surface, but in the long run turn out to be even more costly to you than paying off the existing debts you already have.
Let’s take a look at an example:
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