Money Matters: Essence Fiscally Fit Week 3

Good morning DIVAs!

Welcome to some good weather for a change.  After the past couple weeks, a little bit of rain is ok with me.  Last night I tuned in to my Sunday night lineup, which includes Celebrity Apprentice.  It was a great episode.  The task was all about fundraising and the cast actually raised the most money in the shows history.  I’m mentioning this because one of the teams, the men’s team, fundraised for the St. Jude’s Children’s’ Research Hospital and was visited by a special guest at their fundraising event.  The special guest was a six year old boy who has been battling cancer all of his life.  Seeing this little boy with the various apparatus he is forced to wear, put it in perspective for the entire team and probably for all of the viewers.  It’s important that you find purpose in what you do and that you use some of your earnings to support initiatives that are doing great things for people.  Ok that’s my two cents for the day, here is the Essence Fiscally Fit Exercise of the week.

Week 3:

Record Bills in One Place: It’s one thing to know how much you have, but it’s another thing to be cognizant of how much and when you spend.  Avoid overdraft fees or bounced checks by tracking and recording all of your bills.  Create a schedule so that you know when each bill will come out and so that you can plan the use of your money in order to stay within your monthly budget.  In order to help with this task, create a budget with your monthly income that accounts for all of your bills and expenses.  Then create schedule of payments you can map out when money will be coming out.  Additionally, be sure to keep all receipts and insert transactions into your recorder and budget tool.  Not only will you be able to see where all of your money is going, but it will help you to eliminate any miscellaneous and unnecessary purchases.  This is also a great time to enroll in online banking as many online systems have pre-made tools that you can use for budgeting including up to the minute statement/account history. 

<3 Jade