Marketing Season

Marketing Season Here in America we are the best in the world in this category, marketing! An American will see, hear, or be exposed somehow to 3000-4000 advertisements per day. An American child will see as many as 40,000 television ads per year. Marketers have trained us in this country to chase happiness with stuff, and it robs us of our money and peace because we are trained to get the latest and greatest product. China knows how to make money in the U.S., make a bunch of cheap junk and sell it to Americans. Now they have our money and we are borrowing it back from them to buy more of their goods. There is not a product we do not want if we hear about it enough. We need to wise up when it comes to marketing. Marketers want to do everything to get your money and your vote in the political arena. Since Christmas is just a little over 2 months away the marketers will be getting geared up for the season. They start with Halloween in August, and I have already seen Christmas stuff on the shelves. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with marketing, but we need to not spend all we have because we think we need something. We need marketers to find out what is out there, but we also need control over our money. Here are a few tips for you to get control of your finances. 1. Just learn to say no. Sometimes you may get a pushy sales person and you say yes to shut them up. Then you realize after you have bought something that you didn’t really need it after all. Say no and walk away. Develop a power over purchase. 2. Wait overnight before you purchase something, especially if it is a want. You will cool off and think more rational about the purchase when it is not staring you in the face. 3. Never buy anything you don’t really understand. Don’t just get the highlights but study the fine print, especially on insurance and financial products and services. 4. Consider the opportunity cost of your purchase. What will spending the money now cost you in the future. Could you wait a few months to get the latest greatest Apple product when the frenzy and cost may come down? And yes they make more products after they are sold out the first day. 5. Always ask someone’s advice who has purchased the product you want to buy before you purchase it. Buy wisdom as cheap as possible! 6. Men, listen to your wife! They have that woman thing going on that tells them no, don’t ignore it! We don’t have that ability. 7. Women never tell your husband you want it in front of the sales person, they know your husband has to buy it then and you lose your negotiating power. 8. Know what you want to buy when you go into the store and use cash so you don’t get something extra! Have a great week!! I will be doing a free budgeting class, Checkbook checkup on October 6th. Let me know if you are interested. Let me know if I can help! Tim West Go West Coaching

Get started

Get Started To get anything accomplished in our lives we must have a starting point. Once we get started we must continue the journey. I have noticed getting started can be extremely hard at times. When working with people and their finances everyone wants to have a monthly plan to get control of their money, but we can always find an excuse or something else to do instead of a budget. It can be the same in losing weight or even cleaning the yard. All of these tasks can look overwhelming before we start but we will never finish them if we don’t start. We know if we don’t start we will not finish, that’s obvious. But that still does not motivate us to start, so we have to be reminded. If you are doing a budget it can take about three months to get all of the kinks worked out. When we hear that we tend to want to not get started. Or we think we can’t do a budget until we get more money to work with. We must start where we are at with what we have. Doing a budget for the first time can be a little time consuming. Most of the time we don’t know how much we spend in certain areas, this is why it takes about three months to get a budget to flow. If you are married sit down with your spouse and go line by line and put in an amount for the areas that you will need to spend money on for the month. Don’t panic if you don’t have enough money to go in all of the item categories. Feel free to download a budget here for free. If you run out of steam the first time you sit down, don’t panic, just pick back up later and continue. After about three months you can do your budget in about 15 minutes. Now remember the next most important thing in this process is tracking what you actually spend. This can be a part that is hard to follow up on but it is vital to get your finances under control. If you don’t know how much you are spending you will all ways chase your expenses and guess how much you spend. I suggest you pick one day a week and enter all that you spend in your budget and that will let you know how much you have left in each category to spend each week. If you like you can save all of your receipts and go through them weekly. Remember to just get started! You will never finish if you never start. I will be doing a free budgeting 101 workshop this fall. Let me know if you are interested. Let me know if I can help! Tim West Go West Coaching

Life Insurance: What do I need and how much?

Life Insurance: What do I need and how much? Insurance is that thing you spend money on every month and see no results, until there is an accident! The only time we appreciate insurance is when they do what they are designed to do, protect us from risk. Insurance transfers the financial risk from you to the insurance company. Proper insurance is very important. If you do not have proper insurance you might have a huge bill that will cause you financial difficulty or even bankruptcy. I will discuss different types of insurance in several blogs. Today we will talk about life insurance. Life insurance is one of those things we put off until we realize we will die one day. It is not as pressing as automobile and home insurance because you are not required by law to have life insurance. We need to view life insurance as taking care of our family or loved ones, financially, after we are gone. The goal of life insurance is to replace you financially when you die. There are two types of life insurance, term-life and whole life, also called cash value or universal life. Term life is for a specified amount of time, it is cheaper and it has no savings plan built into it like whole life. Now, whole life, cash value, or universal gives you a payout when you die but it also has a savings plan built in to it as well. It costs more monthly because you are saving in the process. I never recommend whole life, universal, or cash value unless you cannot get any term life. Insurance sales people will tell you that you can convert it so you can have permanent life insurance. You don’t need permanent life insurance if you have a solid financial plan and save and invest through good mutual funds and Roth IRA’s and not cash value insurance. You should be able to self-insure if you save and invest throughout your life. The reason why so many insurance sales people push whole life is because it pays them quite well or they don’t understand what they are selling. I prefer using term life. The goal with term life is to buy it for 10, 20, or even 30 year term. You should get 8-10 times your annual income. The reason for 8-10 times is because you can invest that whole amount and get a 10% annual return and replace your income. Example- if you make 50,000.00 a year you would get 500,000.00 in term life insurance. If you were to die your loved ones would get the 500,000 and invest it at 10% annual return, which would be 50,000 a year. You would have replaced your income if you were to die and your family would be able to financially continue on. A 35-40 year old can get 500,000 for 30-40 dollars a month. Most people will tell you that you cannot get 10% returns on an investment, but the average return for the stock market is almost 12% over the last 75 years. You have to take some time and make an effort to get the results you want. You may ask why not whole life if they can make 12%? The returns are historically low on cash value insurance. They have a lot of hidden fees and costs. That’s why it’s a good deal for them when you buy it. They may make the 12% but you get only get 3- 5%. If you have cash value insurance when you die, and let’s say it is a 50000.00 policy; when you die lets say you have built up 65,000 in the account, you get 50,000.00 they get the rest. Not a bad deal for them. They use your money to make money for them. Like I said the only time to get whole life is if you cannot get term. I recommend buying only term for you and your spouse. If you have children only get enough to cover funeral costs. Let me know if you have any questions. Also be sure you buy from an agent who can fully explain the product you are buying so you fully understand it. Let me know if I can help! Tim West Go West Coaching