Planning

​Emergency Fund Boot Camp

​Having an emergency fund means having one less thing to worry about when the unexpected happens. If you find yourself in a situation like a medical emergency, an out-of-the-blue home repair or losing a job, you don’t want to be worrying about how you’re going to manage expenses or about going into debt to cover costs. An emergency fund will let you focus on getting your life back to normal.

Working From Home

Setting clear boundaries between your work time and your personal time promotes a healthy work-life balance.

Budgeting Basics: The Workbook

Setting up and using a budget involves six basic steps:

1. Establish your financial goals: immediate, intermediate and long-term.
2. Examine your current financial position. What is your household income and how much do you spend?
3. Build a monthly budget for each of 12 consecutive months, itemizing expenses in various categories and estimating how much you can reasonably expect to spend in each category.
4. Relate your budget to your overall financial planning. How much money do you expect to have left over after expenses? How will this money be allocated? How long will it take you to reach each goal?
5. Throughout each month, make regular entries of your actual expenditures in each expense category. At month- end, total the amounts and match these figures against your original estimates.
6. Review and revise the budget to keep it useful and up-to-date.