下载

This morning on Today’s Money, the smart way to manage finances. If you aren’t careful with extra cash, you can find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Here’s CNBC, Sharon Epperson.

Christine Jospehovitz knows how to mind the business. ( the scull will look really pretty) She’s owned this home furnishing’s retailer for 17 years, but when faced with investing on her own, she had no idea in store.

My financial background is really not existent. I was never interested in it, my husband was interested in it. So that was his job, not mine.

When her husband died in 2003 after 30 years of marriage, Christine had to figure out what to do with this six-figure sum, a sudden windfall from the sale of his pride wine collection.

I felt pressed. I felt like I was just I sold my husband. Ah, but then I got over that, and when I had the proceeds of the sale, that’s when I was really at a loss.

So she hired a financial adviser.

It’s very very common to find that in every family, there is one person who understands the finance and takes care of it. And unfortunately most of the time, it’s the husband.

80 to 90 percent of women, often widowed or divorced, will be solely responsible for their finances at some point in their lives. Many are turning to finance advisers. (well, hello, ladies), and seminars for help. This one is sponsored by Savvy Ladies. A New York-based group that’s gone from 7 women to 2000 in four years. Their goal? Financial empowerment.

So that women know they are not in this alone. That this feeling of anxiety about money is OK, and that something that we can talk about, and that something that we can work through.

Thanks to some sage advice, many of these savvy ladies now agree with what Christine’s suffered with.

I really felt that I had the weight of the world, lifted off my shoulders.

Sharon Epperson joins us now, she’s the correspondent for CNBC, and author of the new book, The Big Payoff, eight steps couple can take to make the most of their money, and live richly ever after. Sharon, good morning.

Good morning.

Congratulations on the book as well.

Thank you.

We are gonna talk about things that couples and individuals can do to better their finances. One of the first things I know you would like to talk about is a financial checkup.

Absolutely, the first step is that you have to get organized, and that’s what I start off within the eight steps of my book. You need to get organized and you need to figure out what money is coming in, and what money is going out. And a really easy way to get that started is if you do online banking, it’s all laid out there for you.

Yeah, I mean a lot of folks is stuffed in a shoes box. But online banking, you can look not only at your check and your account, but your credit card just as well. You can look and check your account if you have online access to your credit card. That’s a great idea too if you really want to keep track of the money that’s coming in and going out. If you have a shoe box for what you see, that’s the way you do it, that’s fine. But the key is to make sure that you know what you have.

Does it make it easier to track finances if you use debit cards and even credit cards to a small purchase, I mean a lot of what we spend just come right out of our pocket. And you don’t track it.

That’s a good will. If you can track it with a debit card or a credit card, that’s terrific, that’s a good way to keep yourself disciplined, so you know what you are spending.

I also want to talk about the accounts that couples keep. And this can be a source of problems in marriage sometimes. Do you have a joint account, do you have separate accounts, do your have our account, you say all for it.

You are smart and out. It’s very important because you won’t have a joint account for household expenses of course. But there may be a major purchase that you wanna make that your spouse doesn’t. if you wanna have a monthly spot day, and your spouse wants to buy a boat, and neither of you wants the other one’s money for that. That’s maybe a reason why you need to have separate accounts, so I think it’s a good idea to pull your money for household finances, but also have some savings of your own.

Then there’s also the reality check of your credit scores, as you know, in all those advertisements. So I guess we now get a free one every year. (you could absolutely yeah.) it’s a little scary to find out, but you need to know.

You can get a free one every year. From each of the credit reporting agencies, it’s so critical to know your credit score, and not only to know your credit score, and have a copy of your report, but to share it with your partner. So that you both know what your credit is, and where you stand in terms of what outstanding debt you may have.

Alright, we were talking about the segment on the cable, this is a very unromantic notion, I tend to agree with you. You say couple should have a money date, talk finances.

It does not, it does not need to be an unromantic experience. It need to be a relaxing experience, it’s something where you need to sit down and talk about your goals, and talk about what your short-term goals are and your long-term goals which you wanna do it in relaxing environment, have fun with it.

So without the pressure of talking about an immediate bill, kind of like, here’s what we are.

Exactly, don’t do the surge to open the credit card statement that you are already feeling. Take some time away, and sit and relax and talk about it calmly. And you may be surprised by what you are able to compromise and come together with when you are doing it that way.

And lastly, in that story, you talk about getting a financial adviser. A lot of folks out there, who say they are financial advisers. What should you be looking for though? What, what really works.

Well, what really works is someone who’s been referred to probably, someone that you know has a good check record, and that you always check out with a couple of friends. There are also a couple of websites that you can go to to look for financial advisers in your area. Ah, but the key is that you wanna find someone that you really melt with, this is someone that you are going to devote a lot of personal information and you wanna make sure that both of you are on the same page with that adviser.

Alright, well, Sharon Epperson, it’s good to have you stand by, thank you so much.

Good to be here.