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Health & Fitness

Budget Mondays

Monday – 1/20/2014

It's Monday - a painful day for most people, yours truly included. Sometimes it is made even more painful as we remember just how much money we ended up spending over the weekend.

Budget

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It’s one word that can make people cringe, angry and sad all at the same time, a rare occurrence indeed. There are plenty of reasons for this - people are told at work that their budgets are being cut, their ideas cannot be funded because they are not in the budget, and in our personal life, our budgets don’t usually quite match up to our desires.

Every week, we discuss tips and strategies that can help all of us, as individuals, build a better budget, and improve our personal financial plan. While there are a lot of things that can be done on an individual basis to help improve personal finances, there are also a multitude of organizations that are available to help people improve their personal finances. This week, let's take a look at a one such tool -- Individual Development Accounts. Often organized by groups such as the United Way, these savings accounts receive matching contributions from the sponsoring organizations. IDA accounts are often partnered with educational programs, geared towards saving for a specific goal. Together, the combination of educational classes and matching contributions might prove to be an excellent 1-2 foundation for a savings plan!

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