Every year or so, we all have to wipe out several appointment slots to go into the doctor’s office for a regular physical. A bunch of numbers and letters are thrown around, like the values for BMI, BP, HR, LDL, HDL — and the list goes on. The end result is a comprehensive picture of our health.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could get the same thing for our finances? Let’s look at this analogy more closely!
- Income is the heart. The infusion of money into your spending plan is vital to pay for the other “organs.”
- Insurance is like the skin. Homeowner’s insurance, title insurance, and car insurance are all barriers — protecting your assets against total losses.
- Credit score is like the face. People will constantly be looking at your credit score and making decisions based on it. Unfortunately, five-minute makeovers are not possible with your credit score — improving it takes work and time.
- Retirement is like the brain. Retirement is an intellectual problem to solve. Those who do it successfully display advantageous reasoning skills, like acknowledging the need for patience, delaying gratification, and old-fashioned number crunching.
- Bills are like the blood. Too much pressure, and you’ll have a heart attack. Too little pressure, and you’re probably missing something you need.
Since we’ve started doing Financial Checkups here at JH&A, we’ve come across a variety of “patients” with their systems slightly out of balance. The most common thing we’ve seen is unnecessary bills. Last week we helped a client, who was receiving three different cable bills, narrow it down to one.
Even when there aren’t “clerical errors” sending multiple bills, it’s possible to negotiate with vendors for lower prices. A different client only got one cable bill, but they knew they were paying too much. “I just can’t deal with haggling,” they told us.
“No problem!” I replied, “we will negotiate on your behalf.” We ended up lowering our client’s bill by about 30%.
Judith Heft & Associates can assist you in taking your financial vital signs as well as interpreting the results. We can help you with your financial checkup! If you need to take action, we can help you come up with a spending plan with an eye towards the future, help you establish your credit, and pore over your bills for redundancies.
You don’t have to be in the dark about your financial health!
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