Financial Planning is Savvy, Not Scary

Halloween is a good time to think about what really scares you and the ways you mask or hide behind old habits to avoid facing your financial fears. Maybe you just ignore bills as they arrive. Perhaps you avoid checking your bank balance, credit score, or investment portfolio because you aren’t sure you can handle what you might see. You might be someone that keeps using a credit card to the very limit, thinking that you will manage to pay it off somehow in the future.

Saving is savvy. People who manage to save money do so because they take the time to initiate a savings plan. They set up automatic deductions or they manually make sure to save at regular intervals. It isn’t easy to save money but what is even more frightening is having a life event occur, needing to be able to rely on savings, and not having any there.

In “4 ways to make managing your finances less scary,” MarketWatch observes: “While your grandparents may have felt the need to hide their money under their bed and not put it in an interest-bearing account, it’s important to remember to be intentional and not be fearful of saving.”

Credit score aren’t scary. MarketWatch also recommends that people not fear their credit scores since “A big piece of creating a stable financial future is by proactively managing your debt and paying bills and loans on time each and every month.”

Once you have seen your credit score and know how it ranks in terms of creditworthiness, you can motivate yourself as needed to either improve to maintain your score. Not knowing doesn’t change the fact that your credit score can affect interest rates that are offered when you apply for a loan. And checking also means that you can be aware in case of another big fear people have: credit fraud. You cannot dispute fraud connect to your credit if you aren’t even aware that there is an issue.

Remember that a Fee-Only financial advisor can bring clarity to your finances and help take the fear out of financial planning with sound advice and money management practices tailored to your situation.

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©Bring Clarity to Your Finances. Financial Planning is Savvy, Not Scary is a post from Bring Clarity to Your Finances

About the author

Claire Emory, MBA, CFA, CFP®

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