Setting Your Lifestyle Ceiling

As we approach the holidays each year, it becomes a wonderful time to spend with family and friends. It also becomes a time to step back, count our blessings, and reflect on how fortunate we are. You might also find that your budget is tighter this time of year, and a little concerned about how that will impact 2016. Let’s take a moment to quiet those concerns, and talk about lifestyle ceilings.

Imagine yourself as a high school senior (which may be painful, depending on how you styled your hair back then), and consider your options for after graduation. College could’ve been an option, but it wouldn’t necessarily have been a guarantee. Chances are, the likelihood of entering the workforce was much higher. Today, it’s pretty much expected that anyone who wants to attend college can. They might end up with student loans, they might have to work their way through it, they might even live at home to save costs, but it’s very much a given.

8 Ways to Build a Budget

The idea of budgeting is not difficult – decide where you want your money to go, then make sure it goes there. However, it’s much easier said than done. Budgeting is made up of lots of little decisions, all used to uphold the one greater decision of creating a budget to get your financials under control. With all of this in mind, we’ve compiled eight steps to help jump start you into budgetary bliss!

Our Top 3 Tools for Smarter Saving

No one wants to work their entire life, only to run into financial troubles in retirement. However, this is exactly what’s happening to the majority of Americans. Statistics say the average household will not have enough money to sustain the lifestyle they lead before retiring. Breaking the cycle comes when you choose to be financially responsible in the years leading up to retirement. It will take some discipline, deferred gratification, and a well-established budget, but you are more than capable of setting yourself up for financial independence in retirement.

To get you started, we’ve pulled together three of our favorite budgeting programs. Hopefully, these will help you spend less time worrying about your money, and more time enjoying every other part of life!