Planning for Your Future With Some Help and Guidance

Disclosure:  While I am no financial expert, I do know that finances are important. I have partnered with MassMutual on this sponsored post to share some tips and ideas.

Handling my everyday budget and finances are something I am great at. I’ve never had a problem managing and paying bills before, but honestly saving for retirement is not my strong suit. Being in my early 30’s I see retirement and old age for that matter far far away. I didn’t have a good example set from my parents, they have always been more of week by week. Luckily my husband is all about our future planning. It’s funny, my husband is great about future planning but not everyday bills while I am the opposite. With the help of technology today, there is so much out there to explore and resources available to check out.

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, also known as MassMutual, is a website that has so many great resources available and products to take advantage of. They want everyday people to be able to understnad their finances so they can secure a financial future for themselves and protect those they love. With three kids of our own, I definitely don’t want to leave behind any trouble for my kids financially and I want to be able to provdie as much as I can for their futures as well.

Increasing financial smarts is something that starts with small steps such as setting short and long-term goals, making a budget or talking to a financial professional.  MassMutual has the resources to help with those steps.

Here are six tips from MassMutual to help increase financial smarts:

1.  Identify your financial goals. Setting goals is always the first step and with finances its no different. You need to know what you are saving for and when you expect to achieve it.

2.  Get organized. Finances can be overwhelming so its important to start with a simple budget tracker to see where your at.

3.  Use tools to help you project your savings needs. Wether you are saving for your child’s college tuition or your retirement, MassMutual has online calculators to help.

4.  Consider your most valuable asset and how it affects your future. Knowing what your assets are is important so you know what to take care of in case something happens to you. MassMutual can help with disability insurance as well as they have an income gap calculator to see how disability might affect your family.

5.  Teach your kids early. Like I said my parents are not and have never been good with finances. They are good day to day but they have nothing set for the future. I want my own kids to have a good sense of money and how important finances are. Right now since my kids are young still we are working on spending money and saving.  Just the other day I sent my son with money for his school’s book fair and he had to decide which books he could afford and if he wanted to bring back change which he did. It is important especially in today’s world to teach kids about money since it is something so rarely used. My kids think my credit cards are gift cards and that they have endless money on them. I had to explain that mommy and daddy work to put money in the bank to then use those cards.

6.  Find the right people to help you. For me this was a struggle because I was not about to trust anyone with our finances. My husband has taken this on and has done research as well as talked to different companies to see who is right for us. Its something that we have to constantly stay on top of. Working with a financial professional is important because they are more knowledgeable about saving and making money, that is their job! It is important though to make sure you trust the person and that may mean kissing a few frogs so to speak!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of MassMutual.