With everything that happens in May, your pocketbook can take a hit but here are some tips to survive the month financially.<\/p>\n
ALBUQUERQUE,N.M. \u2014 Dubbed the \u201cDecember of spring,\u201d May can quietly become one of the busiest and most expensive times of the year for many families.<\/p>\n
Why is that? Think of everything that happens in May, from school ending to graduations to Mother\u2019s Day and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cSummer travel begins. This year in particular, gasoline is at a 4-year high, so it\u2019s going to hurt us a little bit more. End of school activities, all the end of the year activities that happen has a cost with it. Graduations, graduation gifts, presents, parties\u2026 and also summer camps coming up. It feels like May has so many birthdays that it just eats into our pocketbook a little bit,\u201d Oakmont Advisory Group\u2019s David Hicks said.<\/p>\n
What do we do? How do we plan for this?<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the best things you can do is plan for it in advance. Obviously, just like December, treat it like a holiday month, because it is one of those things. We don\u2019t want to go into summer in debt before all of these expenses start piling up,\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n
Hicks added tax refunds are helping people this year. Because of no tax on tips or overtime, families getting bigger credits and people not paying as high of taxes on their Social Security, refunds are up 11% from last year, he said. That is helping people save some money on expenses this May.<\/p>\n
However, it\u2019s important to remember the rule of thirds. Use one-third of your money for past debt, one-third for future savings and one-third for future enjoyment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpend some of that money on something fun. We all want to go do something. Enjoy that money when you get that back. Save some of it and then invest in something financially. Whether that be paying off credit cards or saving for the future,\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n
Another recommendation is to put money into emergency savings, like a high-yield savings account that can earn up to 3.5% in interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet it sit there, earn a little bit of interest, reduce some of those credit cards, that debt, if you\u2019re paying 20 to 28%. Put some money toward that and then fund an IRA or a Roth. There\u2019s still time to do so, that money will invest and compound over time and help you in the future to save some of your money for the future,\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n
IRA limits are up to $7,500 if you\u2019re under 50 years old. The money put in compounds into money you can use for retirement but the principle can be used throughout your life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With everything that happens in May, your pocketbook can take a hit but here are some tips to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-653608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}