What One Area Of Your Personal Finance Management Would You Like To Improve?

Feb 15 2008

Posted by NCN as Money Management |

Calling all readers and personal finance bloggers -

If you could improve one area of your personal finance management, what would it be?

Would you do a better job of budgeting?

Would you save more in a specific budget category?

Would you spend less for certain items?

Would you keep better records?

What ONE area needs the most improvement?

12 Responses

Moneymonk

February 15th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
1

I tend to splurge sometimes for no apparent reason, simply because after paying bills and investments I have a positive cash flow. Not sure why I feel guilty about doing this
SingleGuyMoney

February 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
2

I need to do a better job of investing money for retirement outside of my 401k. I keep meaning to open a Roth IRA but I haven’t quite got around to it yet.
Joe

February 15th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
3

Get my wife to stop thinking “But I need to buy gifts!”
Nicole

February 15th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
4

I have worked hard to cut down my expenses in all areas and am doing a good job with saving, but the one category of expenses that I still need to cut more is food (groceries, dining out and lunch cost me a lot more than they should as a single person). The problem is planning. One month, recently, I planned in advance and bought all my food at a reasonably priced supermarket (rather than at the last minute at the over-priced deli around the corner). I brought lunch to work every day and made homemade dinners every night for the whole month. I saved hundreds of dollars. But after that month, I started to go back to my old habits. This is the main thing I want to work on right now, because I feel as though the rest of my spending, saving, etc. is going well.
R.J.

February 15th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
5

I agree with Moneymonk, my wife and I tend to have the same problem… Usually around the middle of the month we’ll have paid off all our bills and instead of taking what’s left over and saving it, we think “Hey, we have money and don’t have to pay bills for a while…”

And that’s how we ended up with our last car.
Louise

February 15th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
6

For me, it’s two things - one is doing a better job anticipating irregular expenses, and the other is reducing the amount we spend on our annual vacation.

The irregular expenses are a bit better this year now that we have last year’s budget-to-actuals to look at, but there are still unexpected surprises that take us off track.

The vacations are because we all enjoy traveling and find it hard to do it on a budget. Or rather, on a low budget - we stay within our limits but our limits are pretty high!
Becky

February 15th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
7

I could also do a better job with the food costs, both eating out and groceries. I’m good with coupons, but I’m a picky eater and usually prefer the brand-name stuff over the generics. Not good
Vectorpedia (Rick)

February 16th, 2008 at 11:01 am
8

I think montoring expenses is the greatest challenge of most people in reference to their finances
Jilse

February 16th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
9

Hands down we eat out too much. I budget a certain amount for Dining Out and every month without fail we exceed that amount by a lot. I made it a mini-goal of ours this month to stick to our Dining Out budget. We just need to focus and not eat out everytime we get stressed or when our kitchen is dirty.
Mercedes

February 17th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
10

I think at could do a better job at saying no to a sale. Lately we’ve spent extra money buying shoes for my husband because they were on super sale and they were a good brand. While we pay cash for them, these purchases usually leave us tight in our budget for a few days.
I would also love to have a Roth IRA for my husband. Right now we only have one for me and his 401K.
Carol M

February 17th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
11

DH and I need to create a budget. And stick to it. We do pretty well, at least I think we do, but it will interesting to see it all in black and white.
Patrick

February 17th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
12

Hi NCN,

I’ve been spending time this weekend getting my accounts in order. It’s never fun to do that kind of maintenance, but it is worth it to know that my wife and I will be on the same page when it comes to all our account information. Thanks for including a link to my article!