Having Financial Problems? Your Money in Tough Times by Mahlon L Hetrik Will Guide You Through It

This is definitely not a financial advise and I am not a licensed financial advisor. I am only sharing my experiences and summarizing book from sources I read about money management. In this post, I am going to use and review a money managements book I managed to read about two weeks ago.

The book is titled "Your money in tough times by Mahlon L Hetrik" , a money management book with bible oriented approach. However, even a secular can learn a lot valuable money management advise from this book. Written by Hetrik, who is an educator on finance course at Edison community college and a biblical financial counselor, he managed to deliver quite far-reaching tips on financial management. The book provides more than technical approach to finance but also assessing the psychological aspect of money.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

The book is divided into 12 sections starting from identifying the money problems to learning a real-life couple balancing their budget. It feels like having a mentor who will take you a little by little step overcoming your financial hurdles. The book is very condensed, 144 pages that is full of practical advise and knowledge that readers can implement right away after reading the book.

As I mentioned, despite it was written from a biblical perspective, the book can be read by secular with some adjustments. For instance, in the section of "Outgoing funds category" tithe and offerings can be seen as charity and not necessarily religious motives driven.

In the book, it lays our reasonable outgoing funds category as follows :

Outgoing funds category

1. Tithe and Offerings (religious purpose, can be a charity)
2. Taxes (if you pay taxes)
3. Housing (rent or mortgage), monthly maintenace (electricity bill etc), home improvements (purchases of furnitures)
4. food (purchases made at the grocery store,ready eat foods for home) do not include eating out (Miscellaneous),eating or for entertaiment (Entertainment and recreation)
5. Transportation (if you have car count the gas and the maintenance)
   6.Insurance (health, life and disability insurance)
6. Debts (credit cars, personal loans, medical debts, installment loas)
7. Entertaiment and Recreation (dining out, tips,activities)
8. CLothing (clothes, shoes and clothing accessories)
9. Savings (amount last year divided 12)
10. Investments (IRA's, pensions, profit sharing, mutual funds, annuities, stocks, bonds and real estate)
11. Medical expenses (expenses that's not reimbursed) non prescription go to drugstore/grocery store
12. Miscellaneous (drugstore purchases, cosmetics purchases, allowances for children/spouse, subscription, gifts (birthday, holidays, wedding),education (books, fees, transportation),pocket money (snacks, drinks, mints, bridge tolls, etc), bank service charges, loan to others etc outside the main
13. Medical expenses (expenses that's not reimbursed) non prescription go to drugstore/grocery store
14. Miscellaneous (drugstore purchases, cosmetics purchases, allowances for children/spouse, subscription, gifts (birthday, holidays, wedding),education (books, fees, transportation),pocket money (snacks, drinks, mints, bridge tolls, etc), bank service charges, loan to others etc outside the main

Then after you managed to identify where you money goes out, and how much. Below is how you can budget better to minimize and avoid financial problems.

Plan to budget better

step 1 : List your past budget
step 2 : List your projected budget guide
step 3: List the differences
step 4: Identify your largest to smallest differences
step 5: Identify your problem areas

After you finished planning, find out a way your money works for you. From my personal experience, sometimes I can go overboard with food. I mean, to begin with I don't have much income and making a reasonable budget is a bit tricky. Staying healthy while on a 1$ budget daily is really quite a work. That means instead of eating three times a day, sometimes I go only once or twice. Fortunately, where I live the cost of protein and healthy carbs are not expensive. Even then, I still want to save up so I try to follow these steps from the book :

Budget that works for you

step 1 : Make a list of ways to improve
step 2 : Start your new projected monthly budget
step 3 : Time for an attidude adjusment
step 4 : Action (every person should have some amount to allocate for savings)
step 5 : Transfer your new projected monthly budget

If you look at step 4, it's not an easy one. Having some amount allocated for savings while on a shoe-string budget is tricky. It was difficult for me because I tend to think short-term. After some failures, I learned that even it's as little as 0.3$ it will add up in a year. Growing up with a bad financial examples, a good spending habit wasn't something I excel. My lesson from my parents bankruptcy was something I even learned through the difficult ways. I even had to experience my own bankruptcy. So, adopting a healthy spending habits was something I needed to learn from books, like this one.

Needs vs want : Adopting Healthy Spending Habits

keys : discipline and commitment

1. keep good records
2. Analyze income and outgo monthly
3. Adjust budget [too little income is not a problem]

Sounds simple right? it really sounded simple until recently, I realized I practiced terrible record keeping. Even last month, I had receipts piled up and I forgot to put them into where they belong. So you see, managing money is also about managing ourselves. As I noted that they keys are discipline and commitment, both are something I lack and constantly trying to improve.

So, if you really want to know more in-depth about this book, go check out Your Money in Tough Times by Mahlon L. Hetrick. It really was an eye-opening financial management advise for me. It was also because this book, I am more interested in finance and being a good record-keeper.

I have another money management review coming up especially for ladies. The book is even much more condensed than this one. It discusses and speaks some truth about money. So, see you in the next financial management review!