Читать книгу Financial Security For Dummies - Eric Tyson - Страница 10

What’s your current personal financial health? There are numerous ways to measure that. When I’ve worked with clients as a financial counselor and as an educator, I’ve found the following exercises to be valuable:

 Net worth analysis: Your ability to accomplish important financial goals, such as buying a home and someday retiring from full-time work, depends upon your net worth. To derive your net worth, you total up your financial assets and subtract your financial liabilities. I typically exclude a person’s home in this analysis unless they plan to tap some portion of their home’s equity, by trading down to a lower-priced property.

 Spending analysis: You should know where your money goes in a typical month or year, especially if you’d like to save a greater portion of your employment income. Analyzing your historic spending can tell you just that.

 Saving analysis: Over the past year, what portion of your work income were you able to save? Many people don’t know the answer to that important question, and if you don’t, you can’t really know whether you’re on track to accomplish your financial and personal goals.

 Your investment portfolio: Can your investment portfolio be improved? Do you understand your current investments? How do your current holdings stack up in terms of costs/fees and performance within their respective peer groups? Do your current investment holdings match your risk and return preferences?

 Your home: If you currently rent or own a home but are looking to sell and buy another, that takes some advance planning and analysis. Since housing costs can consume a significant portion of your income and budget, you should ensure that a change in your housing situation fits with your financial and personal goals and planning.

 Insurance review: You should have insurance to protect you against losses that could be financially catastrophic to you and your loved ones. I know from my counseling work that many folks have gaps in their insurance coverage and are wasting money on overpriced or unnecessary policy features.

 Employee benefits review: Plenty of employees don’t bother to read and review their employee benefits, which typically include various insurance coverages and possibly a retirement savings plan. Employee benefits can actually be quite valuable and should be coordinated with your overall financial plan.

These elements form a personal financial plan. You can hire a competent and ethical financial planner to assemble such a plan for you, but you should beware that many folks sell products on commission or charge hefty ongoing money management fees. Others aren’t interested or experienced enough to help you with nuts-and-bolts issues like analyzing your spending. See Part 4 for more details on getting your personal finance house in order.