How wonderful could it be if there was a magical formula or trick that allowed you to never worry about your money or managing your finances ever again?

Unfortunately, that is not realistic, but you can do several simple things right now to improve your financial situation. Here are the top seven steps to try for managing your personal finances successfully.

Surprisingly if you stick to these seven major keys, your financial problems will automatically go down and begin reaping the rewards of lower debt, a good solid credit score, and saving for the future.

Understand Your Financial Situation

Before you start managing your money, you need to know how much you have. To do this, you will need to sit down and look at your current financial situation and all your regular monthly income expenses. Financial advisors recommend saving receipts for a month to determine where you have spent money beyond your primary bills like rent, utilities, and debts. You will be surprised to know how much you spend on dinner dates or groceries.

Determine Your Financial Goals

Take some time to write the specific short-term and long-term goals. Perhaps you may want to take a month’s vacation to Miami, Florida, buy a real estate property, make an investment in shares and bonds or retire early.

Unfortunately, all these goals will affect how you plan your finances. For example, if your primary objective is to retire early, this will depend on how well you save your money now.   Other goals that may affect how you manage your finances include homeownership, starting a family, moving, or changing careers. 

Once you have written down all your financial goals, the next step is to prioritize them. Doing this will help you to pay more attention to the things that are most important to you. You can also make a list of how you want to achieve them. Here are some tips to clear your financial goals

• Set your long-term goals, for instance, clearing your debt, purchasing a home, and retiring early.
• Set your short-term goals like creating a budget, decreasing your expenditure, among others.
• Create your financial plan and prioritize your goals.

Create A Budget

Creating a budget designated on how your income will be spent is not arduous for most people, but following it to the letter can be daunting. However, the reward for sticking to the budget is having funds available to spend on critical things to you.

It would be easier to follow a written budget with your priorities and goals in mind if you don’t have enough money to pay for everything. Your budget will help you discover those lower bills that you do not need, like duplicative streaming services and coffee dates.

Payoff All Your Debts

Having debt can be a huge obstacle when it comes to achieving your financial goals. That’s why paying off your debts should be a priority. To do this easily, you need to create a debt elimination plan using these tips

•  Find a way to earn an extra income such as selling your old staff
•  Look for several areas you can decrease your expenses
•  Find a second job

Once you have fully paid your debt, you should commit yourself to stay out of debt. Begin making personal savings and emergency funds to cover unexpected expenses so that you don’t have to use your credit to cover them.

Build An Emergency Fund

Establishing an emergency fund and HUD financing is another way of managing your funds better. It is advisable to have at least six to twelve months’ worth of living expenses saved in an emergency account; this will help you prepare for unexpected events such as broken car, lost jobs, illness.

The best way to create this fund is to include it in your budget. Note that how much you save depends on how much extra money you have.

 Save For Retirement

It doesn’t matter if you have a decade to go until retirement; the time to start saving for retirement should be early as today. Today most companies do not offer pension funds, and if you are looking up to your social security to cover your retirement, you will be disappointed. It will only replace around 40%of your income at most.

For this reason, it would be best if you enroll in workspace 401k or any other retirement savings plan. Note that there is a tax benefit, and your employer may match a portion of your contribution.

If you do not have access to such a plan, try and save 15% to 20% of your income and invest them in bonds and shares or real estate property.

Monitoring Your Credit Reports

A few years ago, people were entitled to a free credit report every 12 months and loan places reports every six months. However, today this is considered a thing of the past, and only three credit report bureaus offer free access once a week.

Luckily, today you can use tools like creditry to monitor your credit score regularly. Additionally, loan places like loanry.com help you shop for loans with the lowest interest and have an almost zero impact on your credit score.