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- My husband and I have scheduled an appointment with a financial planner for the first week of January - we want to talk about how to continue paying off our debts while also building our family's wealth.
- We've paid off $26,000 of credit card debt this year, but we still have student loans and haven't started a college savings account for our kids.
- We plan to ask the financial planner about how to adjust our budget to save more, get out of debt, and plan for retirement.
- A financial planner can help you get your finances on track in 2020. Use SmartAsset's free tool to find a qualified professional near you »
My first appointment with a new certified financial planner is scheduled for the first week of January - right after all that holiday spending! - and I'm excited to come up with some resolutions for building my family's wealth.
And, just as importantly, I'm eager to find ways to stretch our budget so we can continue to pay off the money we owe.
For my husband and me, 2019 (and, really, every year since we got married in 2011) was all about reducing liabilities. On top of our combined $70,000 in student loan debt, we had accumulated around $30,000 in credit card debt over the years, which quickly grew due to interest.
Every month, due to our money mistakes in the past, we paid hundreds of dollars in interest. And it was frustrating that we could barely scratch the surface of the principal, since we didn't have much extra money after paying all of our bills.
Only this year did our paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle come to an end. My freelance writing career took off, and I started making more money than we were used to (it helped that our son went to kindergarten).
This change allowed us to be more aggressive with our debt. In the course of a few months, we were able to pay off $26,000 that had been sitting on credit cards for years.
Now that our credit scores are higher and our monthly payments are lower, we're hoping to find ways to build our wealth. That's the primary reason we decided to work with a CFP: Since we've been so focused on paying down money we owed, we need some expert wisdom on how to handle the money we make going forward.
I have a list of questions I'm planning to ask the new financial planner - who came highly recommended by a colleague - when we meet. I'm guessing we will break up these topics over the course of several meetings:
How much should I be contributing to retirement as a freelancer?
Now that my freelance writing work is more lucrative, I want to focus on saving for the future. I'm hoping the CFP can give us some suggestions on how to make this happen.
Should we be more aggressive with my husband's 401(k)?
Given our debt situation, my husband has only been contributing around 3% of his paycheck to his 401(k) (thankfully, his employer matches it 3% as well).
I want to ask the CFP for suggestions on how risky we should get with these types of investments, and if we should contribute more, even though we still have a lot of student loan debt left.
How much should we put toward our sons' college savings?
We haven't saved anything in a college account for our kids yet because we received advice from a CFP that it's better to save more for retirement first (after all, kids can take out student loans, but adults can't take out loans for retirement).
That said, our kids are getting older, and I'm wondering if the CFP will have a suggestion for how much we should be contributing now (and how much we should increase the contribution once we have more saved for ourselves).
How should we streamline our budget?
When you're making more money than you're used to, it's far too easy to spend it. Help with configuring an ideal budget for our lifestyle and goals is one reason I'm excited to have a financial planner on our team.
Is there anything else we can do to save money?
A financial planner is like another set of eyes on our money situation. It will be helpful to know if there's anything obvious (or not so obvious) that we're missing.
I'm excited to learn about more resources we can use to continue paying off the money we owe on student loans (and our mortgage!) and tighten up our budget so we can save more for our future.
It's hard in our everyday routine to think about our future selves and the money we'll need, and I think a relationship with a future-focused financial planner will help keep us on track - and hold us accountable when we're struggling.
SmartAsset's free tool can help you find the right financial planner »
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