Living beyond your means is a reality for many people today.

Living Beyond Your Means

At one point in my life I was

living beyond my means.

To keep myself from staying

in this trap I made some

changes to my life style.

By making sure that my living

expenses each month stayed

60% or below of my income.

I have come in contact with many clients who make excuses to continue to robbing

Peter to pay Paul as a way of life.

They have turned a blind eye to the fact that they are living beyond their means.

Living beyond your means is so stressful to your health and relationships.

When you are financially stable you live within your means of your income.

I came across this article talking about the signs you're living beyond your means.

In the past I have been guilty of these examples of living beyond your means.

Source Yahoo Finance – Signs You're Living Beyond Your Means

1. Living beyond your means: you couldn't survive financially without your job's

income for at least six months.

The article states that 6 months in reserve is ideal.

However 3 months of reserve is possible depending on your ability to regain

employment.

“Bottom line, based on your skills (presuming the individual is not already retired) how long would it take in this market to find another position with similar income,” Garrett says.

It's time to make saving money in a life savings account a priority.

Many times this is how you can become involved with check cashing places to pay

bills.

Borrowing money from your retirement that you cannot pay back.

2. Living beyond your means: you're saving less than 10% of your pay.

I have been guilty of this in the past.

When you are not able to save money you are setting yourself up for trouble.

This may seem like a lot depending on your pay schedule.

If you are not saving start with your next pay period.

3. Living beyond your means: your mortgage payment is more than one weeks salary.

Renters are included in the option.

You probably need to be in the range of  30-35% of your income not to be over

spending.

However, when you are unable to save a little emergency can through you off in

being able to pay your rent or mortgage on time.

Ex. your pay schedule is weekly.  Save half of the rent/mortgage the pay check before

the due date.  The next check you should be able to pay your rent.

You can do the same with any other pay schedule.  You may have to sacrifice to get

on track with your payments.

4. Living beyond your means when your credit card balance has remained the

same for the past year.

This was so true for me.

I would never pay the balance down.

I just paid enough money to keep being able to use my card to shop.

This is dangerous game to play on a slippery slope.

Once you are unable to pay even the minimum payment

5. Living beyond your means : you buy big-ticket items through interest-free,

deferred-payment offers because you think you’ll be able to afford it next year.

I see this happen every tax season.

Clients decide that they will buy big ticket items to host super bowl parties or move to a new place.

If you cannot pay for something right now it doesn't make since to create a new bill.

There are places that have come back with layaway plans.

Or  you can create your own layaway plan until you have saved enough money for the purchase.

6. Living beyond your means: You use one credit card to pay another credit card’s balance.

When you do this you can never get ahead.  The balances don't just go away.  You

still need to pay more than the minimum payment.

7. Living beyond your means: you pay an overdraft fee on your checking account

every three to four months or more.

For some people this is away of life.

I had a client tell me that overdraft fees were their  line of credit.  This is silly

reasoning.  You can be prosecuted for writing bad checks.

8. Living beyond your means: Before buying something, you often think, “I

know I shouldn’t, but…”  This can get you in a world of trouble.  Knowing that going

on a vacation or a shopping spree when you have bills that are due or past due is

an eye opener that you are living beyond your means.

You have to be sure that you aren't living beyond your means by looking at your

whole financial situation.

Moving past living beyond your means will take time, hard work, and sacrifice to get things back on track.

You can start today to end the cycle of living beyond your means.

Are you living beyond your means???

Your Financial Coach,

Renee Lawson

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