Good Morning DINKS. We are all working towards are our individual and couples financial goals.  Our financial goals may include buying a home, helping out our parents during their retirement, or saving for our own retirement. It is very important for couples to start saving now for our retirement because we don’t want to be working forever.

Over the last few years as I have helped the baby boomer generation retire, I am noticing a trend amongst the older generation ( actually I am noticing the lack of a trend).  Many baby boomer clients who are preparing for retirement do not have a lot of personal retirement savings. Many baby boomer clients are planning for retirement at the age of 60 or 65 because they are at the “normal” retirement age.  Our parents may be emotionally prepared to retire, but they may not be financially prepared.

The retirement savings mentality during our parent’s working days was a little bit different than our mentality today.  Saving for our retirement in a 401k or a Roth IRA was not as much of a priority back then as it is now.  The main source of our parents aka the baby boomers retirement income is coming from their employer pension plan.  It was very common for our parents to find a job right after high school and remain employed with the same company until retirement.  After 30 or 35 years of working with the same employer the accumulated value of an employer pension plan can definitely add up.

Nowadays it is very uncommon for someone to start and end their career with the same employer. How many full time employers have you worked for up to this point in your career?  Since my university graduation I have personally worked for 4 employers, but I don’t count 2 of them because I was employed for less than a year.

The concept of relying on someone else (aka our employer) for the financial sustainability of our retirement is a concept that I don’t fully grasp.  Of course when we are planning for retirement we rely on a variety of income sources to make up our retirement income such as old age security, accumulated assets, our employer pension plan, as well as our own personal retirement savings.  When we save in a personal retirement savings account we are ensuring a financially stable retirement.

During retirement DINKS can once again become a dual income no kids couple, but this time the dual income is a retirement income.  Retirement is supposed to be the ultimate financial goal; after all we work our entire lives in order to retire. Sometimes our retirement income is enough to sustain our pre retirement lifestyle, sometimes our retirement income is almost enough to maintain our desired lifestyle, and sometimes our retirement savings are just not enough to maintain our lifestyle.

If our retirement income is not enough to maintain our desired lifestyle, we will be forced to make some financial decisions.  At this point we have to decide if we are going to supplement our income (by continuing to work) in order to maintain our desired lifestyle, or if we are going to sacrifice our quality of life and accept the fact that we are going to have to live on less of an income than originally planned.

Photo by stevendepolo

To say that my financial life has changed over the past few years is definitely an understatement.  Everything in my financial life from my income and my value of money to my personal spending and savings habits have changed over the last three years.

I used to use my credit cards to pay for all of my purchases and I was only making the minimum monthly payments. Due to my over spending and my bad money habits I found myself thousands of dollars in debt in my early twenties.  If that wasn’t bad enough I kept spending money and accumulating debt because I knew that I could afford to make the minimum monthly payments on my credit cards.  I used to go to work at the bank and tell my clients all about the dangers of misusing their credit cards; then I would come home and use a cash advance on my credit card to pay for my rent.

My income was able to sustain the minimum monthly payments but it was not enough to help pay down my actual credit card balances. Actually that is not 100% true, my income would have been enough to pay down my credit card balances if I managed my money better and spent a little less. I finally decided that enough was enough and I started looking for ways to supplement my income.  I figured that if I had more income I could afford to pay off my credit card balances.  This is true, but what really needed to change were my spending habits.

The danger of being financially irresponsible at a young age is that we can get in to a lot of debt very quickly, but it can take a very long time to pay off.  The advantage (if you can call it that) of being financial irresponsible at a young age is that we have time to overcome and learn from our mistakes.

I am not proud of my financial past, but I am not ashamed of it either. I have lived to learn from my mistakes and I am thankful that I made those mistakes at a young age.  If I had to think about myself making those same financial mistakes now at 31 years old I definitely panic because now the damage could be so overwhelming that I may not be able to fully overcome and recover from its effects.

I would definitely not want to be thousands of dollars in debt and trying to pay it off while I was supporting a family with children.  Learning from my past financial mistakes has made me a financially responsible and mature young adult. It has also inspired me to try and help other young people with their own personal money management and financial struggles. I know what education I was lacking when I was younger and I know what information I wish that I had. I am going to try to help other young people not make the same money mistakes that I did when I was younger.

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We can love someone unconditionally, but that may imply that we don’t care about having money as a couple.  Or we can love someone upon the condition that they have money, but does that may make us a bad person?

I don’t think that wanting to be in a financially stable relationship necessarily makes us a bad person; I honestly think that it makes us a smart person.  I am definitely against the concept of marrying only for money, but I also would also never enter into a relationship (even if I really loved him) if I was expected to be the sole financial provider.

What if money is a condition for love?

Relationships are about planning our life with someone who shares our life goals; this includes sharing our views on love as well as sharing our views on money.  The key to a successful relationship and a healthy financial life is communication. Every time that we enter into a new phase in our relationship whether it is moving in together for the first time, deciding to get married, or choosing to buy a home, we have to be open with our spouse about our feelings as well as our money management.

I am by no means a gold digger and for me personally emotions are far more important than money.  However as a Financial Professional I would be lying if I said that money was not a consideration in my relationship.  Actually it is not money as a tangible asset that is important, it is more about the stability that brings money and makes it stay such as smart money management skills and a steady employment income. I think that it would be very difficult to be in a relationship with someone who didn’t share similar views on money, because almost everything that we do in our lives involves money.

What if money is NOT a condition for love?

I would personally not be able to be in a relationship where I was the only one who planned for the future, saved for an emergency, and spent less money every month than I made.  It took me a long time to learn how to live within my means, and as a 31 year old I think that it would be difficult to live with someone while teaching them how to be financially responsible.

I would not enter into a relationship with someone who is financially unstable, but this is not to say that I would not work through financial struggles with my boyfriend Nick.  Since we grew up together we made the same money mistakes when we were younger and we have learned from our mistakes as we grew older.  If something happened and Nick lost his job or he entered into a mid life crisis and started spending money recklessly I would definitely try to help him work through the financial struggles.  The main reason that I would try to work through the financial struggles is because we already had love before the struggles began.  I don’t think that I could choose love over money if we were just starting out, but now that we have almost 13 years invested together I don’t think that I would let money ruin our love.

Photo by MoneyBlogNewz

Good Morning DINKS and Happy Friday.  This time last Friday the first big summer blockbuster movie was released in theatres.  How many DINKS have seen the movie The Avengers? I am admittedly not a huge super hero or comic book fan, but I honestly really love action movies.  I absolutely loved the movie Iron Man, although I did not see Thor or Captain America.  Mark Ruffalo plays The Incredible Hulk in the movie The Avengers, and I absolutely love Mark Ruffalo as an actor.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and I hope that you enjoy these great posts that we found around the web for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

- Clever Dude helps us shop for a new car in the post “10 Car Shopping Mistakes And How To Avoid Them”

- Budgets Are Sexy discusses what is right and what is wrong when it comes to money in the post “I Got Money That Doesn’t Belong to Me, BUT…”

- Adaptu helps couples cope with Income Inequality in the post “Financial Struggles in a Relationship”.  Find out how other couples manage their money when one spouse earns more money.

- Dough Roller wants to know how confident you are about retirement in the post “2012 Retirement Confidence Survey”

- Financial Samurai  emphasizes the need for financial responsibility in the post “Making Money Too Fast Destroys You And Everything Around You” I love this post and I personally often refer to this behaviour as “The Britney Spears Effect”.

- So Over Debt shares her wisdom with us in the post “Things I Learned on My Road Trip”

- 20 and Engaged wants to help spice up or love life in the post “Could You Have Sex for 7 Days Straight?

- Money Crashers compares our mortgage options in the post “15-Year vs. 30-Year Mortgage – Comparison, Pros & Cons”

Photo by Dave Murr

Good Morning DINKS.  As a dual income no kids couple our first love may be our spouse and our second love may be our career.  Every day we go to work in hopes of succeeding in our career and we hope that our hard work is noticed by our boss.  I don’t know about your career field but in the world of finance praise are hard to come by. Everyone wants to claim the new best business practice as their own idea.

Many people like having the stability of a regular job, but for many of us having stability is not enough. We want to succeed in our career, we want to always strive for something more, we want to take on more responsibility, and we want to get a promotion in order to earn more money.

Here are some helpful tips to help you get noticed at your workplace and get a promotion:

1. Be Social. The key to getting a promotion is to be seen both in and outside of the office. Our personal contacts can help us make valuable professional connections making professional connections outside of our office can open the door for other opportunities outside of our current employment.  Being sociable and making professional connections can also help us develop contacts to bring in new business to our current workplace.

2. Work hard. Hard work may not always be praised, but it is usually noticed. If we excel at our normal workplace duties as well as any additional responsibilities our extra efforts should be noticed. We should also always make an effort to arrive on time in the morning, be on time for meetings, and never be the first to leave at night.  Late comers are always noticed.

3. Get Educated. Experience is definitely an important aspect of our performance when we want to get a promotion, but so is our education.  If we can prove that we have the book smarts to support the fact that we should be considered for a promotion then our case just got stronger.  Displaying the fact that we are trying to better ourselves and acquire a new skill set shows that we are taking the initiative to get a promotion.

4. Speak Up. Although our personal opinions are never wanted in the workplace (or at least in my workplace) we are encouraged to share our ideas for business process improvements.  Just be careful who you tell about your ideas because we don’t want our coworkers presenting our ideas as their own.  We should always speak up when our opinions and comments are positive, negativity is never wanted.  People only want to hear about what they are doing well, not about what things are not working

5. Join a Committee. Extra activities earn extra credit in the workplace. Joining a social committee, a workplace committee, or an employee committee helps get our name outside of our immediate workplace, it helps us make valuable contacts, and it helps us get noticed. Joining a committee also shows that we are willing to make an extra commitment to our employer, outside of our normal duties.

6. Be Proactive. If we want to get a promotion we have to be proactive. No one will hand us a promotion on a silver platter, we definitely have to work for it.  In order to let our boss know that we are interested in a promotion we should proactively ask to job shadow with someone who is currently working in the position that we want. We can ask for a one on one meeting with our boss to discuss our future career plans and to let our boss know that we are working towards a promotion.

Photo by Buddawiggi

Good Morning DINKS. Let me ask you, do you ever have the urge to spend money? I know that I do, but I am not 100% sure why? Sometimes I just become overwhelmed with the urge to spend money; it is not necessarily because I need to buy something it’s usually just because I feel like spending money.  My urges to spend money are not really sparked by any particular event; my urges to spend money appear to be completely random.  Sometimes I give into the urge of wanting to spend money, but thankfully most of the time I avoid the temptation to spend money carelessly.

What was the last item that you bought but that you did not really need? 

I am not really sure what comes over me that makes me want to spend money, but sometimes I just get into a shopping mood and I get the urge to spend money.  Sometimes I get the urge to spend money when I want to celebrate something good that happened to me, sometimes I get the urge to spend money when I am really happy, sometimes I get the urge to spend money when I am sad and want to cheer myself up, and sometimes I get the urge to spend money for no particular reason at all.

When I was younger I used to get the urge to spend money a lot, mostly because I was lonely and bored.  Shopping and spending money was a way for me to go out in public and socialize with other people.  However it was also a way for me to accumulate debt that I couldn’t afford to pay off.

Do you ever get the urge to spend money?

Now whenever I get the urge to spend money I live by the rule of moderation.  Whenever I feel the need to go shopping I do go out and I spend a little bit of money in order to satisfy the craving.  However I definitely don’t over spend or go on any shopping sprees. I also don’t deprive myself of anything either. The key to not giving in to the urge to spend money is to make a budget and stick to it.  If you have the urge to spend money, then spend money…just don’t overspend.

Usually when I get the urge to do something and I don’t satisfy the craving my urge just gets bigger and bigger.  After a while my craving usually gets out of control and I end up over-indulging.  This doesn’t only apply to my personal finances; my urges can lead to over spending, over eating, or any other extreme behaviour.

I am not sure about you but when I have an idea in my head I cannot get over it until I do something about it.  If I feel strongly about something I have to share my thoughts, if I am craving a particular food I have to eat it, and if I get the urge to spend money I absolutely have to buy something.

Photo by images of money

As I learned to become financially responsible, I decided that I had to change the way that I managed my money. We can’t expect things to stay the same and expect different results. When I was younger I used to live pay check to pay check, I was not saving money in an emergency fund, and I was definitely not saving for retirement.  I used to shop a lot and I would usually charge my purchases on to my credit cards; then I would spend my entire pay check making only the minimum monthly payments on all of my credit cards.

I was spending my hard earned money on making only the minimum monthly payments and it was not cost efficient.  I decided to make some financial changes in my life; one of them included supplementing my income with a second job so that I could finally start paying off my credit card balances, and the other one included starting to save in an emergency savings fund and saving for retirement.

I never saved money in an emergency savings fund because I thought that my credit cards were my emergency savings fund. Whenever I wanted something and I didn’t have the money to pay for it, I would just charge the purchases on my credit cards.  I would also use my credit cards for basic living needs such as paying for groceries and rent; and then I would use my pay check to make the minimum monthly payments.

I finally decided that my minimum monthly payments could be better spent.  I used my secondary income to start paying off my credit card balances with fixed regular payments that were above the required minimum monthly payments. I made a personal budget that ensures all of my bills are paid on time each month.  To say that my personal spending was cut down would be a major understatement, with my new budget my income is fixed and therefore so are my expenses.

I reallocated the amount of money that I was paying towards my credit cards into an emergency savings fund.  Now I enjoy watching my savings grow.  It is comforting to know that I will not be accumulating debt if ever I have another personal financial emergency.  It is also important to note that my personal definition of a financial emergency has changed. Like many people who have struggled with debt in the past I am deathly afraid of falling into my old bad habits and once again accumulating debt.

I have a short term emergency savings fund as well as a medium term emergency savings fund.  I save some of my money saved in a high interest savings account so that I have instant access to cash at anytime.  I save the rest of my money in a bond mutual fund for longer term or larger emergencies; it acts as a backup emergency savings fund.  This way I have the flexibility of having cash on hand at all times as well as earning a higher rate of return on money that is in my emergency savings fund but that I am not using.

Photo by davidberkowitz

Good Morning DINKS.  Let me ask you a question, do you like your job? I was recently talking with one of my co-workers who told me that her husband is currently out of work.  Almost instantly I offered my condolences for him being laid off. She quickly told me that he was not laid off, but actually quit his job and he has been actively looking for a new job over the past three months.

During this same week my co-worker from another bank branch actually got fired. He was unhappy at our bank, but he still came to work every single day because he and his wife are expecting their first baby in November.  I guess that his lack of commitment and possible negative attitude started to affect his work and he was let go without any notice.

Being out of a job is definitely a scary place to be.  The current job market (especially in finance) is scarce and the competition for available positions is fierce.  I personally don’t know anyone who absolutely loves their job, but we still all wake up every morning and we go to work every day because we all have financial responsibilities and personal obligations. I am not sure that I would quit my job without any prospects if I had a spouse and a family who were relying on me.

As financial professionals we advise clients to have at least 3 months of expenses in our emergency savings fund, but what can we do if our job loss lasts longer than our emergency savings fund?

It is definitely not a good feeling to be out of work because the uncertainty of our future income can be very stressful.  However at the same time we don’t want to feel undervalued in a job that does not maximize our expertise and experience.  If you were searching for a job would you take a position that you considered to be below your level of expertise because after all, some income is better than no income at all.

MSN recently published a list of people where were fired without notice but became rich and famous by doing something else.

Who do you think is on the list?

- Walt Disney was fired from a local newspaper in Kansas before he created a cartoon empire.

- JK Rowling was fired as a secretary for daydreaming about writing a book called Harry Potter.

- Michael Bloomberg was fired from an investment banking firm before he became mayor of New York City.

- Anna Wintour is the notorious editor in chief of Vogue Magazine. She was fired from the magazine Harper’s Bazaar after only nine months of working as a junior fashion editor.

- Madonna was fired from Dunkin’ Donuts in Times Square for squirting jelly donut filling all over a client.

- Oprah Winfrey was fired as a reporter at a local news station in Baltimore before she became the Queen of daytime TV.

- Jerry Seinfeld was fired from his minor supporting role on a sitcom before he was cast as the leading role in his own sitcom.

Photo by chrismear

Good Morning DINKS and Happy Friday.

It’s the beginning of May and hopefully the warm weather is not far behind. We have found some really great posts around the web this week and we are delighted to share them with you so enjoy.  Have a great weekend everyone.

- Redeeming Riches helps us plan for retirement in the post “401k Rollover to IRA: Options to Consider”

- Budgets Are Sexy asks a question that may be on every mans mind “Cash or Credit for Engagement Ring?”

- Clever Dude helps us save money on our car in the post “Financial Failures and Money Saving Auto Repairs Not to Do Yourself”

- Passive Income Now advised us how to keep our income flowing in the post “What Do You Do When Your Tenant Wants to Leave?”

- Modest Money makes sure that we always leave a good impression in the post “Avoid Burning Your Bridges”

Photo by Borman818

Transportation costs can be a huge expense. A few years ago I purchased a brand new Honda Civic and three years later I sold it.  I absolutely loved my car, but the monthly expense was definitely not worth the convenience. My boyfriend Nick and I live downtown in a high rise building, and therefore having a car was more of a luxury rather than a necessity. We don’t need a car for our everyday living, but it was definitely nice to have whenever we needed it to take a weekend vacation or visit our friends in the suburbs.

The cost of our car payments was a major expense, but what really adds up are all of the other monthly expenses that come with owning a car.  Gas, parking, car insurance payments, and car washes can all add up to a lot of money each month.

Many people choose not to have a car or they choose to lease a car instead of buying a new vehicle because automobiles are a depreciating asset.  If we finance our car loan very often we may find our self with negative car equity.  This means that the current value of our car is worth less than the amount of money that we owe on our remaining loan.  The real value of a car comes into play with the durability and longevity of our car.  The longer our car lasts, the more money we are getting for the price that we paid.

According to MSN here are some cars that maintain their value over the long term:

1. The Honda Fit. It is small compact car that is relatively new but is quickly earning a reputation for being sustainable and reliable.

2. The Volkswagen Golf.  This is also a smaller car which people can have for many years. The original cost may be higher than other compact cars but the higher purchase price is worth the durability into the future.

3. The Subaru Outback.  This s crossover car that is not a full size sedan, but not quite an SUV. Subaru vehicles are known for their safety and durability during unfavourable weather conditions.

4. The Honda Accord.  This is a midsize car that people may have for many years. I actually test drove the Honda Accord because it came with luxury options that the Honda Civic did not.  However, it was way too big for my needs (and driving abilities).

5. The BMW 1 Series. The problem with buying luxury automobiles is that the cost can be way more expensive than most people can afford.  Many people don’t see the value in buying a luxury car because the upfront cost is so high.  However consumers have to consider the long term benefits when shopping for a new car.

6. The Lexus GS.  Lexus is a company that is known for the comfort of their cars. The choice to buy a luxury car is definitely for preference rather than functionality.  However if you can afford the price of a Lexus, the Lexus GS can definitely be a good long term investment.

How long have you had your car?

Photo by uggboy