Bible Money Matters

Christian personal finance

Menu
    • About
    • Archives
    • Contact
    • Close
  • Making Money
      • Popular Articles

        • 50 Ways To Make Money: Maximizing, Creating And Increasing Your Income
        • 10 Weird And Unconventional Ways To Make Money
        • Making Money With A Blog (e-Book)
        • 10 Places To Sell Or Trade Your Unused (Or Broken) Electronics
        • Ways To Make Extra Money Series: 20 More Income Generating Ideas From Our Readers
        • Making Side Income Can Help Blunt The Impact Of Becoming A One Income Family
        • Earn Cash Back With Discover it® Credit Card
      • Recent Articles – Making Money

        • Best Sites Like Fiverr To Make Money As A Freelancer
        • 13 Of The Best Independent Contractor Jobs
        • 25 Of The Best Gig Economy Jobs
        • How To Make Money Blogging: Turn A Blog Into A Business
      • Categories

        • Making Money
        • Investing
        • Retirement
        • Jobs & Work LIfe
        • Money
        • Income
    • Close
  • Saving Money
      • Popular Articles

        • 50 Easy Ways To Save Money Every Month
        • 10 Weird And Unconventional Ways To Save Money
        • 10 Practical Ways To Save Money And Increase Your Net Worth
        • How To Save Money On Just About All Of Your Regular Monthly Bills
        • Ways To Watch TV Without Paying An Arm And A Leg For Cable TV
        • Save Money On Your Hospital Bill - Just By Asking
      • Recent Articles – Saving Money

        • How To Save $100k In 7 Practical Steps
        • Stairs App Review: Save And Invest To Earn 4-6% Interest
        • Honey Review: Save Money Automatically When You Shop Online
        • 9 Convincing Reasons Why You Need An Emergency Fund
      • Categories

        • Saving Money
        • Frugality
        • Planning
        • Finance
        • Saving For Retirement
        • Savings Accounts
    • Close
  • Banking
      • Best Rates For 2019

        • Best Credit Cards
        • Best Savings Accounts
        • Best Mortgage Rates
        • Best CD Rates
        • Best Brokerages
        • Free Credit Scores
      • Recent Reviews

        • TradeStation Review: Commission Free Stock And ETF Trades
        • Firstrade Review: Commission Free Trades on Stocks, Crypto, And Options
        • Cadre Real Estate Investing Review: Commercial Real Estate Investing
        • Axos Self Directed Trading Review: Invest, Trade Stocks For Free
      • Categories

        • Bank & Software Reviews
        • Investing
        • Credit
        • Banking
        • Mortgage
        • Insurance
        • Family Budget
    • Close
  • Recommended
  • Video
    • Close

How To Step Back And Start Fresh With Your Financial Plan

By Peter Anderson 8 Comments - The content of this website often contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you buy through those links (at no cost to you!). Learn more about how we make money. Last edited October 18, 2012.

Share13
Pin2
Tweet25
Share7
47 Shares

I‘ve been writing about money on this site for going on 5 years now, and in that time we’ve made a lot of strides at our house as far as getting rid of debt, increasing our income, doing a family budget and starting to invest for our future. I think one misconception that a lot of people have, however, is that personal finance bloggers always have their act together. I’m probably the poster boy to show that’s not always the case.

Life can get busy and stressful, and in the process far too often your finances can start to take a back seat to other issues that seem more pressing. I know at our house the last few years have been extremely stressful because of health issues that my wife and son have been going through, and I know all too well just how much financial things can fall through the cracks when times get tough.

Quick Navigation

  • Creating A Plan That Can Weather Bumps In The Road
  • Emergency Funds And Other Contingencies
  • Making Things Automatic
  • Realizing That  You Need A Fresh Start
  • Refreshing, Retooling And Restarting

Creating A Plan That Can Weather Bumps In The Road

restart financial planSo what’s a family to do in order to make sure that even when things get tough, the finances stay in relatively good shape?

First, your family needs to have a plan in place that is flexible enough and automated enough to function even when you’re not paying as close of attention.  At our house we’ve got things to a point where we don’t have a ton of bills beyond the regular utilities and our mortgage, so those things are relatively automated.

Things like investing and saving happen automatically with direct debits from our accounts monthly, so those things continue to happen from month to month.

We have a budget in place, and we’ve been doing it for a while now, so we’re pretty good about staying on top of it, although this is one area where we don’t revisit it and review our spending as often as we should. We need to do family budget meetings more often.

Emergency Funds And Other Contingencies

In order to make sure that you’re ready in case the worst case scenario happens, it’s a good idea to plan ahead for life’s contingencies. You can do that by having the following:

  • Emergency fund: We have a 6 month emergency fund where we save up to cover us in case of any number of scenarios, from a car breaking down to a job loss.  It gives a lot of peace of mind knowing that we have that money there in case we need it.
  • Insurance:We have many different kinds of insurance to keep us from having catastrophic costs due to unforseeable events. We have health insurance, life insurance, disability, homeowners insurance and more.

Having that emergency fund and insurance will keep you from having to worry too much about unforeseen negative events, which a majority of us will have in any given 10 year period –  as you’ll be covered in most instances.

Making Things Automatic

As mentioned above, one important piece to making sure your financial plan stays on track is making parts of your finances automatic. We setup certain bills and payments to be automatically deducted from our accounts, so that we don’t forget them every month.  Things like utility bills, satellite TV and savings and investments are all deducted without need for our intervention.  Some larger bills like our mortgage we still prefer to pay by sending in a check.

To a certain degree I think it’s a good thing to make things automatic in your financial plan, because it take out the human element, and makes sure you don’t forget a payment or neglect to send it in one month because you thought your spouse sent it.

On the other hand don’t let the automation of your finances be an excuse to let things slide, and avoid having regular family budget meetings.

Realizing That  You Need A Fresh Start

At our house I think for the most part we’re in a pretty good place with our finances. We’re debt free except the house, we’re able to save and invest every month, and we’re able to do it on one income while my wife stays at home with our son.

On the other hand, we have a tendency to get into ruts, especially when other things in our lives are going haywire.  Case in point is probably right around the time that my wife was in the hospital for a month for a blood clot.  For the following few months we really didn’t pay as close attention to our finances. Because of that our budget was out the window, we started overspending on eating out and other categories, and we really weren’t saving much of anything those months.   We didn’t get into an awful place because we had planned ahead with an emergency fund and insurance, but we also were spinning our wheels to a degree.  We had to re-start our financial plan after those months.

We’re getting to that point right now I think as well.  We’ve had some stressful situations this year – from having my wife and son being sick most of the first few months of the year, to other family issues.  We’ve been letting our budget meetings slide, and our spending has been getting a bit out of whack as well.  We need to re-tool our budget, make sure our spending gets back into line and start getting back on track with monthly budget meetings.

Refreshing, Retooling And Restarting

So what can you do to get back in the game with your financial plan? Here’s what we plan on doing:

  • Getting our budget back in order:  Our budget was set quite a while ago, and it hasn’t really been re-tooled based on our spending realities in the past year.  It’s time to take a look at where we’ve been spending, where we’ve been overspending, and what can be done to improve our budget.
  • Having a family budget meeting: We’ve been letting our budget meetings slide for several months now, and in looking at our spending, our bottom line has suffered. We need to hit the financial reset button and  get back on the same page about how much we’ll be spending, saving and investing.
  • Re-setting our goals: We need to re-set our financial goals and priorities, and make sure we know what things we’re aiming for in the short term and long term.
  • Taking a personal finance day: Once we go over our budget and talk about our finances I may do a “personal finance day“. That will entail taking a personal day from work to go over and review a lot of our expenses and coverages to see if we can find better deals on insurance, mortgage rates, etc.

That’s where we’ll be starting, and I think that will be a good start to get us back on track.

How about you, what do you do when your finances start to get a little bit out of whack? Tell us in the comments.

Related Posts

  • How To Build Your Own Financial Plan

    If you want to build a strong financial plan - a robust financial framework - you're going to have to follow a few steps.

  • Why Life Insurance Is An Integral Piece Of Your Financial Plan

    Buying life insurance is an important piece of your financial plan because it protects your family's financial future in an extremely trying time.

  • Having A Budget Meeting Is Like Having A Financial Reset Button

    Life has a way of becoming hectic, and your finances can quickly get out of whack. When that happens, sometimes you need to hit the…

Share13
Pin2
Tweet25
Share7
47 Shares
Last Edited: 18th October 2012 The content of biblemoneymatters.com is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Visitors to biblemoneymatters.com should not act upon the content or information without first seeking appropriate professional advice. In accordance with the latest FTC guidelines, we declare that we have a financial relationship with every company mentioned on this site.

This article is about: finance, Planning

About Peter Anderson

Peter Anderson is a Christian, husband to his beautiful wife Maria, and father to his 2 children. He loves reading and writing about personal finance, and also enjoys a good board game every now and again. You can find out more about him on the about page. Don't forget to say hi on Pinterest, Twitter or Facebook!

Comments

    Share Your Thoughts: Cancel reply

  1. Sean @ One Smart Dollar says

    Great post Peter. I think it is important to take a step back and reevaluate your situation every so often to see if changed need to be made. Income and expenses can fluctuate. Too many people set up a plan and then just let it run on its own.

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      Exactly, things can change and if your budget doesn’t change along with it, you could end up with problems.

      Reply
  2. Shane @ Beating Broke says

    We just started this process. Things had gotten way out of control, but we’ve got a new, refreshed handle on it. It still needs some modification and adjustment, but it’s at least staying on the road.

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      It’s easy to just let things slide from month to month, and once you’ve started doing that it’s amazing how fast things can start going in an unintended direction. Refresh, or end up going off the road.

      Reply
  3. DC @ Young Adult Money says

    I think the main issue with finances is that it takes time to get everything in order. I like your idea of a “personal finance day” but I just can’t bear using up one of my PTO days to do it! It would probably be worth it, though, to take a day off and just go through everything. Maybe the first day of my staycation in December.

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      Yeah, it stinks to take a day off sometimes, but the last time I did take a whole day, I ended up saving $1100 or so on reduced insurance rates, among other things. Definitely worth it – plus I have a ton of vacation time, so I may as well use it. :)

      Reply
  4. Derek - Freeat33 says

    Great idea to take a day to reassess the mortgage and insurance. I find our insurance rates keep staying the same but every year our coverage shrinks just a tiny bit. I am usually too lazy to complain, but then after a few years, I just drop them and get a new insurance company.

    Reply
  5. JM @ NJFCU says

    It certainly takes discipline and practice to accomplish what you have, Peter, thanks for sharing these tips with us. I’d like to emphasize your point on making things automatic that again, it’s not an excuse to just let things handle themselves. You need to set a time to review your spending/budget and re-evaluate your financial plans as necessary.

    Reply
Previous Post: 2013 Federal Income Tax Brackets: IRS Marginal Tax Rates
Next Post: 2013 Roth IRA Changes
Discover Investment Platforms

Popular Posts

  • 21 Easy Ways To Earn Free Amazon Gift Cards
  • 10 Best Free Tax Filing Services And Software Online
  • 21 Apps That Pay You Real Money Fast
  • 17 TV Apps And Live TV Streaming Services To Watch TV Free
  • 30 Legit Online Jobs That Pay Well
  • 37 Easy Ways To Get Free Gift Cards
  • How To Get Free Stock
  • 40 Easy Ways To Get Free Money Fast
  • 21 Places To Read Free Books Online
  • 24 Legit Online Jobs
  • 17 Best Work From Home Jobs: A List Of Legit Online Jobs That Pay Well

Recent Posts

  • How To Save $100k In 7 Practical Steps
  • How to Save Money When Remodeling A Home
  • How To Hire A Contractor For Your Remodeling Project
  • Remembering 9/11 Years Later: Where Were You On That Fateful Day?
  • TradeStation Review: Commission Free Stock And ETF Trades
  • Firstrade Review: Commission Free Trades on Stocks, Crypto, And Options
  • Cadre Real Estate Investing Review: Commercial Real Estate Investing
  • Best Sites Like Fiverr To Make Money As A Freelancer
  • Axos Self Directed Trading Review: Invest, Trade Stocks For Free
  • 30 Quotes About Easter And Resurrection: He Is Risen!

Disclaimer

The information contained in BibleMoneyMatters.com is for general information or entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional financial advice. Please contact an independent financial professional for advice regarding your specific situation.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, we state that we have a financial relationship with some of the companies mentioned in this website. This may include receiving access to free products and services for product and service reviews and giveaways.

Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. We do our best to maintain current information, but due to the rapidly changing environment, some information may have changed since it was published. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.

Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

We respect your privacy: Privacy Policy.

Thanks for visiting!

Bible Money Matters - Seen On These Sites and more..
Bible Money Matters is a personal finance, entrepreneurship and investing community. Give more, save more and live more.

Copyright © 2023 · Bible Money Matters | Sitemap | Advertise | Privacy Policy