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People hate to look at their credit card statements. It tells them things about them that they would rather not know. Things like how easy it is for them to spend thousands without even blinking. How do you know when to stop? Everyone does know how to do it – you just keep accounting expenses as you make them. All you need to do is find a way to stomach how it feels to rein yourself in tracking your expenses all the time. You feel less like a millionaire that way. The good thing about accounting expenses is that even as it keeps you from feeling like a millionaire, the habit probably will turn you into one.

The inconvenience of life today is that it’s so easy to give in to temptation; and the good thing is, that there are ever better ways of keeping track of every cent you spend. You can exercise your choice in picking a spreadsheet to keep track of everything, or you could buy software to help keep tabs. More often than not, people simply use free cloud software like Mint or Quicken that can draw information from their credit card and debit card accounts. Most people find that it can be too much trouble to keep track of how well certain new whizbang software works while they were trying to balance their checkbooks. They prefer the simple pen and paper method where they just jot everything down in a little book as and when they spend it.

If there is one thing people don’t realize, it’s how quickly small expenses can add up. They feel that to account for every last cent spent is to act like Scrooge McDuck. While you don’t want to chase down every last cent, you do want to keep an eye on every last quarter. Those can add up. Lots of people get all self-congratulatory, telling themselves they are really doing a good job keeping track of everything, when all they do is make sure that all their credit card and ATM expenses are accounted for. Accounting expenses isn’t just about setting your sights on one or another kind of spending method. Some people go to elaborate lengths to fool themselves to thinking that they are keeping great control over everything. For instance, they can go and tell their banks to impose a spending limit on their debit cards. They’ll then go and spend with their credit cards.

People need to be honest with themselves when they try to go over their credit card statements. Some kinds of expenses that really break the bank a month, they’ll try to ignore as “special” cases for some reason. It could be an important friend’s birthday party or a special sale they had to splurge on. Being strict with limited resources in life is all about never making exceptions. That’s a rule people need stamped on their foreheads – no exceptions.

If you need to send or receive money, you can do it quickly by doing it online. There are so many ways that you can send someone cash or that you can get what you need, but doing it online is one of the fastest ways. You do have to make sure you have a way to do this set up in the event of an emergency, and you also have to know when you should never try to transfer money online. Believe it or not, this is one of the most common ways people are scammed out of their hard earned money, and it happens because people have a big heart, but are not careful enough about trusting others.

One of the best ways to transfer money online is to use a service like PayPal. This is where you can take money that you have in an account, such as a bank account or in the PayPal account and send it to someone else. It takes just seconds to send this money. PayPal can take the money out of your bank account for you, or it can take if from a credit card that you may have on file. The person getting the money will have it instantly, and can then take it out of their account in a variety of easy ways. If they have a PayPal credit card, the money is instantly there. They can also transfer it to a bank account in two or three days.

You have to have a PayPal account do to this and the person receiving or sending the money to you must also have an account. The biggest reason why people have this type of online account is so that they can transfer money online quickly. They can pay for auction items this way, send money to friends, buy things from online vendors that accept PayPal, and they can also get paid this way if they work online in any way. It really does make life so much easier. Setting up an account is free, and though you are entering your personal information, most don’t worry about the security of PayPal.

Stop and think about what you are about to do before you transfer money online. Make sure you are sending money to someone you know, or paying for something from a web site that you feel you can trust. There should never be any reason why you are sending money to someone that you do not know for reasons that seem a bit off. You are not the winner of an online lottery, and you did not inherit money from someone you do not know. You have not been chosen to help someone move money around either, as these are all common scams that will only leave you broke and heartbroken.

There are even times when people transfer money online to someone they know, only to find out that they have also been scammed. If someone you know sends you and email or leaves you a message on a social networking site claiming they are stranded somewhere or in need of cash for any reason, never send them money without talking to that person on the phone. This scam is relatively new, but is working like a charm. Always verify some other way before you transfer money on the Internet, even to someone that you know.

As the real estate market began to slide three years ago, my wife and I began to sense that we were losing our options. As people lose the value they always believed they had in their homes, their options in their ability to qualify for loans begin to freeze up too. The worst part for us was, that we were in the real estate business, and we saw our incomes begin to seriously drop. We never imagined we’d have collection agencies calling, but call, they did. In the end, we had to pick one of two options – we could file for bankruptcy, or we had to find a way to ditch all the retirement income planning we have ever done, and tap our retirement funds in some planned way. As you might guess, the latter is what we picked.

As it turned out, we were hardly alone. Thousands in our district went through the same thing. They were temporarily throwing their retirement income planning out the window and reallocating resources to stay afloat, to save their homes. When I looked at the statistics on this, I found that 1% of all 401(k) plans were raided to keep homes afloat in this quarter alone. People just don’t know what else they can do when they have a foreclosure or an eviction staring them in the face. Or when they see that it could either be sending their child to college or keeping their retirement income planning intact.

When you tap into your 401(k), 403(b) or any other retirement plan before you reach 59 ½, the IRS will fine you 10% of the taxable income for being irresponsible. So what should you do to be more responsible with your retirement income planning when you do absolutely need to make a withdrawal? To begin with, the 401(k) loan is infinitely preferable to making an actual withdrawal. The terms change from plan to plan, but most will allow you to pay back the loan in five years. You’ll get great interest terms, and the interest is tax sheltered, too.

Taking advantage of a regular IRA distribution, called 72(t) disributions, is a great plan too. Investors are allowed to make regular withdrawals with no 10% penalty if they keep to a prepared schedule. This is a great plan in that, it allows you to stay away from the penalties that other kinds of withdrawals can impose on your life. You just have to make sure that you stick with their repayment plans. If you don’t, a 10% penalty comes right back to haunt you.

And finally, tapping a Roth IRA is one of the best ways you can go about changing your retirement income planning midstream for an emergency. It’s cheaper to do this; since Roth IRA funds are after-tax funds, you don’t pay any penalties or taxes. If you don’t pay your loan  back quickly though, it can really end up costing you.