Dale Lending wants you to believe they can improve your financial health and has begun flooding the market with debt consolidation and credit card relief offers. The problem is that the terms and conditions are at the very least confusing, and possibly even suspect. The interest rates are so low that you would have to have near-perfect credit to be approved for one of their offers. Crixeo, the personal finance review site, has been following Dale Lending, Big Apple Associates, Snowbird Partners, Gulf Street Advisors, Brice Capital, Rockville Advisors, Badger Advisors, Sooner Partners, Snowbird Partners, Old Dominion Associates, Harrison Funding, Johnson Funding, Tiffany Funding, Nickel Advisors, Coral Funding, Neon Funding, Polk Partners, Ladder Advisors (also known as Carina Advisors, Corey Advisors, Pennon Partners, Jayhawk Advisors, Clay Advisors, Colony Associates, and Pine Advisors, etc.).
The Financial Health Network recently conducted a survey showing that less than one in three Americans feel financially secure. So if you do have poor financial health, know that you are not alone. There are many others just like you as Americans with good financial health are in the minority.
But this does not mean that you should become complacent and do nothing about it. You can improve your financial health with the eight tips mentioned below.
Tips To Improve Your Financial Health
1. Pay Off Your Debt to Improve Your Financial Health
The journey towards financial freedom and security cannot begin without paying off your loans. If you have incurred large amounts of credit card debt, then you may need to consolidate your debt by getting a loan with a lower interest rate than your credit cards.
If that is not possible, then you should seek the services of a professional debt consolidation firm to help you pay off your debt to avoid a credit card hardship scenario. The firm will negotiate on your behalf and might succeed in convincing your creditors to grant you concessions like lower interest rates and extended payment terms.
Going debt-free is the first thing you should do to improve your financial health.
2. Automatic Savings
Next up, configure your account so that as soon as money comes in from your monthly paycheck, a predetermined amount is automatically deducted and added to your retirement fund. An automatic setting like this will probably help you to save much more than what you might if you save money from what remains at the end of each month.
This way, you can have guaranteed amounts included in your retirement fund instead of failing repeatedly to save enough money and feeling bad about it. Automatic savings can also reduce the temptation to spend excessively on needless items and services. Therefore, automatic savings is just what you need to improve your financial health.
3. Budgeting
Make sure that you draw up a budget and stick to it. A budget can help you to keep your expenses under control as long as you follow it regularly. To succeed at anything, you need a plan, and to improve your financial health, you need a budget.
4. Track Expenses
To ensure that you are keeping within your budget, you should record all your expenses as they happen. If you do not record your expenses, you might not know where your money is going. You can avoid this from happening by installing a free app on your smartphone that enables you to record your daily expenditure.
As a consequence, you will know whether or not you are within your budget. If not, you can take remedial action by singling out items on which you spent the most cash.
5. Wait and Think
You might see a new item for sale, such as a smartphone, and feel an irresistible urge to buy it immediately. Instead of throwing away your cash, give yourself at least a week to think it over.
All too often, we are overcome by a strong impulse to buy stuff only to realize that it is not all that necessary later on. Instead of committing this blunder every now and then and living to regret it, you should delay your purchase.
Make use of this time to research the item fully and discover its weaknesses that slick marketing will not tell you about. The benefit of waiting is that you may have impartial truthful reviews that can give you a good idea of the product. During this time, the price may also hopefully come down.
Also, ask yourself honestly if you really need this item in the first place. Think about the drawbacks that you might suffer if you do not have this item. Will not having the item create a significant adverse impact on your life? Will it lead to missed opportunities? Do not buy it unless you can honestly answer in the affirmative. Forbearance is a key tactic to improving your financial health.
6. Emergency Fund
An emergency fund is important to improve your financial health. Things can go very wrong when you least expect them to. And since you are unprepared, an unexpected disaster can become much worse. An emergency fund is necessary for this reason, but sadly, many Americans don’t have enough money to pay off even small unexpected payments.
You will need an emergency fund in case you suffer from an accident, disability, poor health, job loss or a setback to your business. The emergency fund should ideally cover at least six months of necessities like food, drink, utilities and rent.
7. Health Insurance
The right health insurance product can help you to protect you against unexpected health problems. Since poor health and chronic diseases have become so widely prevalent, going without health insurance is almost unthinkable.
You might end up facing high hospital bills for a medical emergency and go deep into debt. To avoid this, you need good health insurance. Talk to your financial advisor for a good health insurance plan that will improve your financial health.
8. Avoid Rent to Improve Your Financial Health
No matter how much rent you pay, you can never become the owner of that property. In some cases, paying rent might appear cheaper than paying mortgages. Although mortgages can be tougher to handle than monthly rent, you will eventually become the owner of the property and have a large amount of equity at your disposal. The value of property also increases steadily with time if you have picked the right area. The rise in equity can make you much wealthier over time and greatly improve your financial health.
Rent, on the other hand, is nothing more than an expense that drains away your wealth while leaving you with nothing at the end. After a few decades, you might find that you have blown away hundreds of thousands of dollars – money that could have been spent on buying a house. Avoid rent at all costs.
Talk to your financial advisor about other steps that you can take to improve your financial health,