Author: Paradigm Wealth Partners

Your college years may be long behind you but your student loans may still be staring you in the face. In fact, when measured on a dollar basis, the biggest increase in student loan debt is among those age 30 to 39. That group has $461 billion in student loan debt. On a percentage basis, the amount of student loan debt in that age group has increased by 30.2% in the past five years.

Most people tend to think that front-loading their 401k is ideal, because you take advantage of tax-deferred contributions early in the year then have a bigger paycheck towards end of the year. For example, by November 1, you’ve met your yearly-max, so for the rest of the calendar year, your biweekly paycheck is slightly larger because you’re no longer contributing to your 401k.

We are more than half way through 2019 so we’re going to take a blog to check-in with your 401k plan to make sure you are doing the most you can do with your investments and helping ensure that the rest of the information is correct on your plan.

This takes a monthly snapshot of your budget and spends down to zero every month. Once you have spent all the money for the month then you are at 0 and have to wait until you get paid again.

Budgeting isn’t meant to be frightening; it’s meant to make your financial future more secure. Traditional budgets usually don’t work. Life gets in the way and unless you are super strict and financially nerdy, it’s not interesting. The two styles of budgeting I recommend are the envelope system and the zero-based budget. This blog will focus on the envelope system.