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Set Goals
    Where do you want to go?
  • Set short-term and long-term goals
  • Make goals specific
  • Put goals in writing
Cash Management Goals
  • Contribute monthly to your children's education fund with an automatic bank draft
  • Eliminate bank service charges
  • Eliminate installment debt
  • Reduce discretionary spending for entertainment by 20% per month
  • Refinance home mortgage to get lower interest rate
  • Restructure debt to eliminate finance charges
  • Start or increase contributions to tax-qualified or tax-deferred plan
  • Reduce income taxes
Cash Management Tip
    Your latest pay increase:
  • Did all of that additional money go into your checking account every month?
  • Did at least some of it get directed immediately into a tax-qualified investment for retirement?
  • Did you increase the automatic monthly draft into your child's education fund?
  • Did you apply some of the money every month to reduce your consumer debt?
The less you make, or the less you THINK you make, the less you spend.
Set Goals

Now that you have assessed your current financial situation, reviewed your spending habits and personal debt, and looked at ways to reduce your income taxes, you can create a plan to help better manage your cash flow and reach your financial goals.

See the Education Quick Report to see what strategies are available to help fund your education goals and how much you need to save.

If you have not completed your budgeting worksheet, now is time for you to create your budget. Retrieve the Budgeting Worksheet that you completed earlier and apply all of the savings and spending tools and techniques that you just finished learning.

Identify Areas Where You Can Cut Expenses

In the Budgeting Worksheet, go to the column next to your current spending and create a monthly spending budget for each item.

Do not forget to add in a payment to yourself: your savings and all of the cash management goals you identified earlier.

Budgeting: The Trade-Off

Buying a fancy car or a bigger home today would probably mean you have less money going into your retirement account or being invested for your child's college education. That is a trade-off. Maintaining this balance is one of the secrets to successful cash flow management.