Money doesn’t have to be boring! Spice up your personal finance management and make managing your money fun
For most people, managing their personal finances tends to be somewhat of a nightmare. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It’s overwhelming. But, there are some ways you can make it a little more fun. With a mindset adjustment and a bit of creativity, you may actually even enjoy managing your personal finances a little bit.
5 Tips to Help You Have Fun When Managing Your Family’s Finances
Sometimes, you have to get a little creative when you’re dealing with something that’s not actually that fun. There are plenty of ways you and your family can get excited about money and reaching your financial goals. Here are a few ways you can make money a little bit more fun.
1. Turn money meetings into a date night
Money tends to be a stressor in many relationships. You and your partner should be sitting down at least once a month to discuss your family finances. While money isn’t the most fun topic to discuss, that doesn’t mean your money talks can’t be fun. Why not turn it into a date night?
Schedule a time every month for you and your partner to have a financial date night at home. Try to make a little agenda of what you’d like to discuss so that you and your partner can both come prepared and stay on topic so you can get to the fun stuff much quicker.
Your financial date night doesn’t have to be expensive either—think of it as any other date night in! Here are some fun ideas for your financial date nights at home:
- Have a themed dinner-and-a-movie night,
- Do a board game night,
- Bring the paint-and-sip to you,
- Have a self-care night,
- Or whatever else you may enjoy!
Pairing the dreaded money talk with something fun will help both of you look forward to it and bring a positive attitude to the conversation.
2. Make it a challenge
Who doesn’t love some good, friendly competition? Come up with some fun financial challenges that you and your spouse can do. Or, challenge a friend to do it with you! Set a goal and a timeline, and give a little reward to whoever wins or does the best out of the bunch.
Here are some ideas for your challenges:
- No-spend challenge – See who can go a week without spending money on non-essential items.
- Savings challenge – Set a specific savings goal and see who can make to that goal first.
There are plenty of ways to make finances competitive, and there are tons of ideas that you can find online to switch it up every once in a while.
3. Create a vision board
The goals you and your partner are working towards are likely number-based. What you’re actually working towards, though, is a bit different.
Let’s say you’re saving up to buy a house. You and your partner know how much you need to save to put a deposit down, but the goal that will actually motivate you is the feeling of opening the door to your dream home for the first time. It’s the dream of having more space for your children to play that will help you make the financial choices you need to make your goals a reality.
Vision boards are a manifestation technique that portray the visual representation of your goals after you achieve them. So, if you have a goal to save up for a new car, you might find pictures of your future car and compile that with pictures of where you plan to go with your new car together on a canvas.
Have fun with your vision board and get as creative as you want. Hang it somewhere that you and your family will see it often so you will have that goal in mind.
4. Reward yourself with milestones
Big, lofty financial goals are intimidating and challenging! Just like with any large goals, you need to stay motivated. One of the best ways to do that is to set reward milestones for yourself.
Let’s say you and your spouse want to save $10,000 in 5 years. During that 5-year timeline, set smaller, much more attainable goals for yourself as milestones—say every $1,000 saved.
Once you reach that milestone, celebrate! Decide how you want to reward yourself and how much money you want to spend. Don’t go overboard and set yourself back, but do be sure to celebrate your accomplishments with something fun.
5. Let your creative side shine
Let’s face it, spreadsheets are pretty boring. If you’re a little more right-brain, you may need to spice up the creative side of personal finance. Here are some ideas to help you unleash a little bit of creativity when managing your finances:
- DIY or buy a bullet journal to track your finance habits and goals.
- Download visually interesting spreadsheet templates or create your own!
- Design a fun calendar to keep track of important dates and goals.
- Get creative with a whiteboard to visually show your goal progression.
No matter how you choose to get creative, remember to pair the things you enjoy doing with the things that you have to do.
4 Tips To Set Yourself Up For Success When Managing Finances
As you start thinking about how you plan to make money more fun for you and your family, you’ll want to make sure you are set up for success. Lay the groundwork first, and then you can start focusing on all the fun stuff. Here’s what you need to do before getting to the fun part.
1. Get organized
Do the extra legwork to get your financial information organized so that when you do anything with your finances, you have everything you need. Organize everything—including login information, accounts, regular monthly bills, etc.—in a file. Keep it updated as you make any changes.
2. Make sure you have your basics in order
While you want to make sure you’re having fun with your personal finances, you don’t want to forget about any of the important stuff. Make sure you keep these things at the top of your mind when you handle your finances.
Budget
Your budget is at the heart of your personal finance management. Your budget should thoughtfully reflect your needs, your goals, and your wants from a financial perspective. Make sure you update your budget frequently and revisit it regularly to ensure that you’re practicing what you preach.
Debt
You need to not only know how much debt you have but also have a plan of action in place of how you want to repay that. Whether you choose to take an avalanche or snowball approach to debt repayment, take a look at your options and make sure you choose the best route for you.
Emergency Planning
Emergency financial planning should be at the forefront of your personal finance efforts.
First and foremost, you should always have some money reserved for emergencies in an emergency savings account. Ideally, you would have at least 3 months of living expenses saved up. This money should only be used in the event of a true emergency, like a medical emergency or a missed paycheck.
It’s best to keep this emergency fund in a savings account with a high interest rate. This way, you can boost your savings without even really thinking about it.
Another financial precaution would be a life insurance policy. A lot of people overlook this when managing their personal finances, but they shouldn’t! Even if you don’t have much set aside for your family if you were to pass away, a life insurance policy would help your family financially recover.
The death benefit could be used to pay off any of your outstanding debts or help your family continue to afford the mortgage payment. You may even consider it as a way to leave some type of inheritance for your children.
Term life insurance policies, in particular, are extremely affordable and give most families the coverage they need. You can get a policy fairly quickly, too. Many companies have started offering life insurance policies with no medical exam required. The application will ask you to detail your medical history and a bit more about your lifestyle to get a better understanding of your risk factors. You can get a quote in a matter of minutes and get covered relatively quickly.
3. Automate what you can
Automating your financial responsibilities makes managing your personal finances just a little bit easier. Here are some things you may want to consider automating so you can almost set it and forget it:
- Set up automatic 401(k) contributions.
- Set up automatic payments for your bills and loans.
- Set up automatic deposits to your savings accounts.
Make sure you still check into your automated accounts from time to time to make sure your payments successfully go through and you aren’t being overcharged for anything.
4. Stay consistent
Consistency is key for most things in life—and it’s true for your finances, too. Making it more fun to manage your finances is a great way to motivate yourself to continue working towards any financial goals you may have. Your hard work will pay off!
It’s no question that personal finance is pretty boring. With a little bit of creativity, you can surely find a way to make it something fun. As you start associating this “chore” of sorts with something fun, you may even start to look forward to it!
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