MassMutual and Planning for the Future.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of MassMutual.

Ever since our whole house thing fell through we've been reevaluating our finances. I've been working on a strict budget and trying to stick to the envelopes I realized I was underestimated how much we spend on "entertainment" and weirdly overestimated how much "gas" we use a month. Anyways... finances are important, right?

So Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company has some great tips to increase financial literacy. To celebrate Financial Literacy Month this month, MassMutual is helping you take small steps to better understand your finances so you can secure your financial future and protect those who matter most to you. One of those steps is identifying your short and long term goals. So that's what Bryan and I did.

Buettemeyer Short Term Goals:
1. Save money to pay cash for a bigger family car in the next year.
2. Pay off Student loans. After that we will be debt-free other than our house.
3. Have a comfortable savings account.

Buettemeyer Long Term Goals:
1. Retirement savings.
2. Pay off house.
3. Save for boys' college (and hope they get scholarships and we can take a big vacation instead).

After identifying our goals and WRITING them down it started to seem more manageable. Once you identify your goals you have a better understanding of how to tackle them. Then we sat down and made a spreadsheet budget and got (somewhat) organized. I've been tweaking it and I think I finally have it at a place that is manageable for us. I look over it every two weeks when Bryan gets paid. We live off of his income and all of my income is extra (bonus money-- aka money we pay off student loans with). 

This TERRIFIES me

 There are also several great tools to help you with your financial knowledge. MassMutual has TONS of these resources. They have tools to help you save for your child's college tuition and plan for your retirement. My grandparents contribute to an account on holidays and birthdays for the boys' college so I've started putting extra money in that account when the kids are given money for things so it's growing slowly but surely.

Another important tip is to teach your kids EARLY. I am so glad my parent's taught me to be financially responsible from a young age. They had me make "car payments" and budget for things when I was a teenager-- my "car payments" went into an account that I got access to when I went to college so I wouldn't have to work. They didn't buy me everything I wanted, and while as a 16 year old, I was mad about that sometimes, as a 28 year old I am so glad! I handle the finances in our house 90% of the time, because I am organized and good at it. So now we've started working with Hudson on doing chores to get an allowance to buy the things he wants... but instead of him blowing it every time he gets $5 we've talked with him about some bigger ticket items he wants and made a sticker chart so he knows when he gets a certain amount of stickers he gets some of those bigger things-- but he is completely earning them!

Hope you've learned some important financial tips and can use the resources over at MassMutual to help you be financially savvy about your future!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of MassMutual.