Category: General

  • Top Budget Hacks for Planning and Accounting

    Top Budget Hacks for Planning and Accounting

    Something most rags-to riches stories have in common is that a good budget is always needed to help anyone achieve financial security. If you want to significantly improve your credit, you have to learn how to pace your spending and increase your savings.

    Top notch advice

    There is no better medicine for bad spending than to see what you have to pay for in the future to live the life you want. In this article we’ll offer you some top notch advice on budgeting and accounting:


    # 1 – Keep Detailed Records

    Most people don’t keep track of every little expense they make.

    People usually rely on the online banking records to calculate their expenses. This is quite effective when it comes to having an overview, but it doesn’t help you keep an eye on bad expenses and avoidable spending.

    Make a folder on your computer, as not to waste paper and to be able to edit easily, and write down everything you spend in an ‘expenses’ file, while also keeping track of all incoming money on an ‘income file’.

    At the end of each month and each year you should check how much of your money went to avoidable, ‘bad’ expenses. Cut down on frivolous spending and watch your savings grow.


    #2 – Predict Large Expenses

    The number you’ll get will probably shock you, which is a good thing. There is no better medicine for bad spending than to see what you have to pay for in the future to live the life you want.

    It might sound like an obvious tip, but you’d be surprised how few people actually plan ahead for the major expenses during their lifetime.

    Buying a house or paying rent for life is one of those predictable, large expenses. Having a child (or many) is a predictable expense. If you include a few cars, a couple of large trips, furniture, college debts and similar big expenses, you can have a good look at what kind of money you’ll need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams.

    The number you’ll get will probably shock you, which is a good thing. There is no better medicine for bad spending than to see what you have to pay for in the future to live the life you want.


    #3 – Make a ‘Get-Rich’ Plan

    Expert financial planners, like Dominique Brown, would advise anyone who wants to become rich to make a solid plan to achieve that goal.

    Riches rarely come to those that simply wait for them. This does not mean that it is takes extreme effort to become financially secure either.

    What you really need is diligence. Make a plan on your own, or get the help of a professional, and learn to stick to it as if it were a religion.

    Learning to live with a strict (if not tight) budget, will help you learn to keep frivolous spending in check.

    Remember that no matter how much money you make, you can easily spend it all on some luxurious stuff you don’t need and end up being poor again. Being truly rich for life means that you have to work for it and keep ahead of the financial game at all times!

  • Why Staying Ahead Of Tech is More Vital than Ever

    Why Staying Ahead Of Tech is More Vital than Ever

    A growing number of them are prioritizing technology investments, which means advisors who aren’t risking falling behind the curve in productivity and quality of service. According to a recent survey by Financial Planning, zero advisors plan to cut their technology budgets and half plan to increase their spending this year.

    Advisors that are less productive and those that offer fewer features than the competition tend to lose out on business. Here’s why keeping up with technology is imperative for financial advisors.

    What Tech Will Do

    Robo-advisors have raised the bar for financial advisors. In addition to cannibalizing potential clients, the technology is rapidly changing client expectations. A recent survey found that 80% of high net worth individuals under 40 years old would leave a firm that did not integrate new technology like the automated wealth management services provided by robos. Online portals and mobile access to financial accounts and services are quickly moving from a novelty to a necessity for clients, which means advisors ignoring them could be on the chopping block.

    Many financial advisors feel that they have a lot of time to implement these solutions, but in reality, technology accelerates at exponential levels. In just three years, robo-advisor pioneer Wealthfront grew from $7.6 million to more than $2 billion in assets under management (AUM). Riskalyze, a risk alignment platform, has seen a very similar growth trajectory as an increasing number of advisors embrace tech designed to automate and improve upon tasks like assessing a client’s risk tolerance.

    Technology may be costly to implement and time consuming to learn—and that discourages many financial advisors from deploying much-needed solutions. But headline costs aren’t a complete picture when factoring in things like cost savings and opportunity costs.

    Most financial advisors charge around 1% of a client’s invested assets as a fee, which means that someone with $1 million in assets would pay $10,000 per year. With the vast majority of clients willing to leave a firm that’s lagging in technology, advisors risk losing tens of thousands of dollars per year in revenue by avoiding these investments. The technologies themselves often cost much less than opportunity costs and potential lost business without it.

    Cost savings is another key area where technology shines. With the average financial advisor earning more than $80,000 per year according to U.S. News & World Report, is his or her time really best spent doing things that could be automated with a $10,000 software application? It’s time that could instead be spent on more impactful tasks that truly set an advisor apart from the competition.

    Researching Tech in Advance

    Planning in advance is the best way to mitigate the costs and learning curves uncertainties associated with technology. By comparing various technologies well ahead of implementation, advisors can ensure that they’re selecting the right tools for their needs at a reasonable price. Another benefit is being able to take the time to implement these solutions and properly train staff on how to use them rather than haphazardly throwing the systems into a live environment.

    Some major areas to consider investing in include:

    • Portfolio management and rebalancing
    • Customer relationship management (CRM)
    • Document management and compliance
    • Online portals and mobile access
    • Client risk assessments and onboarding

    The Bottom Line

    The financial advisor industry is becoming much more competitive thanks to the rise in technology. Enabling the ability to streamline operations and improve client services, these technologies have raised the bar for advisors in a number of ways. Advisors who aren’t investing in tech risk falling behind the curve and losing out on business.