Does This Make My Assets Look Fat?

The author of Does This Make My Assets Look Fat shares her tips on how to manage your finances and invest like a pro!

Financial expert Susan Hirshman, author of the brand new book Does This Make My Assets Look Fat?: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Financial Empowerment and Success ; answers our readers’ burning money questions and breaks down the concept of investing and budgeting and puts it into terms any woman can understand.

As Susan sees it, the rules of successful dieting are the same rules that apply to successful money management. In her new book, Susan offers women a 3-phase personalized plan that follows common dieting programs to help them understand their finances.

Susan’s program completely removes the intimidation factor that often accompanies the words ‘personal finance’ and ‘investing’ and provides women with all the information they need to take control of their financial situations once and for all.

Question: How do you ‘get on a budget’? What are the first steps?  ((We have a decent income-but we don’t have much to show for it!!  We don’t waste $$ on material things-but we barely have anything saved.)

Susan:  Believe it or not this question can be answered by discussing dieting and hidden calories.  You know what I am talking about – those extra calories you ingest without really counting and paying attention to.  The handful of M&M’s from your colleagues candy bowl, the second glass of wine, eating out of the refrigerator, and on and on.  Dieting experts state that the first thing you have to do to is to find all these "hidden calories" that are sabotaging your success by writing down everything you eat.

Have you ever done this?  If you have, then you are familiar with the first step in developing a budget – writing everything down and finding our "hidden expenses."  Hidden expenses just like hidden calories are things that are not memorable but when you add them together they become significant and tend to impair your financial success.  ‘

Budgeting (I prefer using the term spending plan – doesn’t it sound much more palatable?) is all about awareness and measurement of your cash inflows (net salary, dividends etc) less your fixed expenses (those that are must have’s, i.e. mortgage, utilities etc) and your variable expenses (those that are discretionary, i.e. entertainment, clothes etc.)

Bottom line – if you don’t measure you can’t manage.

There are many tools available on the web to help you keep track of your spending plan.  In addition your bank and/or credit card companies may offer tools as well.  Get on it…☺

Susan L. Hirshman is a former managing director at JP Morgan. She holds an M.B.A. from Baruch College and is a Certified Public Accountant, a Certified Financial Planner, a Chartered Life Underwriter, and a Chartered Financial Analyst. She currently lives in Manhattan.

This post is sponsored by the Role Mommy Writer’s Network.