 Financial Literacy Key to the Good Life for Arkansans
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Audio/Video Script:
Laura Connerly
Instructor-Family Resource Management
Money issues are one of the biggest causes of stress for
today’s families and for individuals. Some of the figures we’ve heard are that
average credit card debt for an individual is between seven and nine thousand
dollars. What financial experts tell families, and individuals, is that there
number one financial goal should be to live within their income. Obviously, if
we’re carrying seven to nine thousand dollars or more of credit card debt we’re
not living within our income. Some of the things going on in the credit industry
have made it easy to do that and we ended up living within the limits of our
credit cards instead of living within the limits of our actual take home pay.
One way to deal with that stress is to look at where you
are to get a picture of where you are financially, and you can do that by first,
by looking at what your actual take home pay is. And, that is called an income
statement. After we’ve found your income statement we look at all the expenses,
those are all the out going costs, and that is called an expense statement.
Extension has a wonderful publication that is a great tool for doing that, it’s
called the “Household Account Record”. When you look at all your income and
expenses together you have a picture of exactly what’s going on financially, and
you can begin to look at places where you can cut expenses.
Once you decide to start keeping financial records there
are a few things you need to know about the who, when and where of financial
record keeping. First of all, there should be one person in the family that is
designated as “the” financial record keeper”. And then the when, there should a
specific time every month when you sit down to do your record keeping, pay all
your bills, record all your expenses. And finally where, there should be a
specific place where you keep all of your supplies. It can be a file cabinet or
a desk drawer, or even a big basket where you can have everything that you might
need to do your financial record keeping and your expense plan record book can
be there, as well.
You can sit down every month and fill in all those
details.
That does take some time, but it is well worth it in the
long run.
Announcer:
To learn more contact your county Extension agent, and
follow the links in this section.
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