DREAMING TREE WEEKLY

WELCOME TO DREAMING TREE PERSONAL FINANCE

BY: DONALD HUTSON, PERSONAL FINANCE COACH

QUICK INTRODUCTION

My name is Donald Hutson and I am a Charleston SC native, husband, and father of 3 beautiful children. Over the course of the last 20 years, I have worked in the fundraising and financial software industry helping Nonprofit, Higher Education, and K-12 schools utilize technology to raise more money for their mission, and streamline their business office and administrative processes, but my true passion has always been finance. Growing wealth and security for my family while experiencing the world and all it has to offer has become something that I truly enjoy.  Growing up, I was always taught to work hard and save money, but outside of that I had no real direction in school or from my parents on how to make money work for me.  As a family of 5, the amount of expenses and unexpected costs that come up from day to day and month to month are infinite. Our family has had to implement a solid financial strategy to allow for peace of mind, asset growth, basic needs, and life fulfillment. I hope to help my clients build a strong financial foundation and improve on basic financial literacy through coaching/consultations and Educational resources while helping to grow a stable financial picture for them and their family.

TOPIC OF THE WEEK – BUDGETING

Budgeting is probably the single most important tool in building a strong financial footing. Recent statistics show that 67% of Americans don’t know what they spent last month. Calculating your income is pretty straight forward, but expenses can get out of hand quickly without a budget.  The fact is that it is so easy to swipe, scan, tap, or text to pay for things now, it is very easy to lose track of the money that is flowing out of our accounts or being put on a high interest credit card.  Having a budget will help us hold ourselves accountable for these expenses.  The good news is that there are a few. free very easy to use apps that will make tracking our expenses super easy.  Mint and Rocket Money are two budgeting apps that I would suggest looking into.  These tools will help us understand which expenses are predictable and which ones vary from month to month.  They can also help you categorize expense so we can easily see where we may need to cut back on certain expenditures.  

TIP OF THE WEEK

Insurance rates of every type are going up at an increasingly fast rate.  Climate change, increase in life expectancy are a couple of the reasons for this.  Every year you should be shopping around for different insurance coverage.  Insurance companies like any company, want your business and often times a new customer will get a better deal than a loyal one.  Sofi and Experian both provide tools that compare multiple carriers side by side to make sure you are getting the lowest possible rate at that time. 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Life isn’t any fun without a sense of enough.” – The Psychology of Money

Explanation – We’ve got to set goals for ourselves and strive to achieve them.  However, we need to have in our heads what our meaning of “enough” is so we aren’t running an endless race.

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DREAMING TREE PERSONAL FINANCE

The mission of Dreaming Tree Personal Finance is to help individuals with financial literacy through coaching and educational resources, ultimately allowing our clients to achieve the end goal of true financial freedom.

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