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The Lazy Person’s Guide to a Wealth Creation Plan That Works

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The Lazy Person’s Guide to a Wealth Creation Plan
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Planning your financial future doesn’t have to be overwhelming. What if you could create a wealth creation plan quickly and easily? With these practical hacks, you’ll have a clear financial roadmap in no time. Here’s everything you need to know to build a plan that works.

What is a Wealth Creation Plan?

A wealth creation plan is a strategic plan detailing how you intend to grow and manage your financial resources over time. It outlines how to earn, save, invest, and protect your wealth to achieve financial security and long-term goals. While this may seem like a lot to include, there are several shortcuts you can take when creating your plan.

What Are The Steps to Making a Wealth Creation Plan?

Using these steps you can easily create a wealth plan that works:

  1. Analyze Your Current Situation: In this section of your wealth plan, you should calculate your net worth, income, and expenses.
  2. Define Your Goals: You should include your goals in your wealth creation plan including short-term, medium, and long-term goals. This should include milestones like homeownership and retirement, for example.
  3. Determine Your Income Growth Strategy: Your income strategy should include all the ways you intend to bring in and generate money such as investments, salary, or business ventures.
  4. Define How You Will Save and Budget: Come up with a budget and saving strategy that will work for your current situation.
  5. Detail Your Investment Plan: Here you should outline what kind of investments you will pursue.
  6. Outline Risk Management: Risk management includes your emergency fund, insurance, and diversified investments.
  7. Create a Monitoring and Adjustment Strategy: Different phases of life may call for your wealth plan to be adjusted. Your plan should outline how often you will review your progress, rebalance investments, and include new goals.
  8. Include a Legacy Plan: As far as legacy planning, this includes your will and estate plan.

How to Make Creating a Wealth Plan Easier

Use Templates

When creating your actual plan, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s perfectly acceptable to use ChatGPT to create a template. Some AI is geared toward helping you create a financial plan. If you’re short on time, this easy hack can make creating a wealth plan very easy.

Get The Help of a Financial Advisor

If your money is a little more complex, enlisting the help of a financial advisor can be beneficial. They can help you understand your finances, create your wealth plan, and work toward goals. Plus, hiring a financial advisor can save you significant time and energy.

Do you have a wealth creation plan? What does it include?

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Swipe, Regret, Repeat: 6 Sneaky Ways to Outsmart Your Impulse Purchases

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Swipe, Regret, Repeat: 6 Sneaky Ways to Outsmart Your Impulse Purchases

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How to stop impulse buying
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If you find yourself frequently making unplanned purchases, you may be wondering how to stop impulse shopping. While it may seem harmless in the moment, impulse spending can quickly add up, stretching your budget and putting your long-term financial health at risk. Understanding the reasons behind these spontaneous purchases and learning strategies to control them can help you make better financial decisions. Here are six ways to stop impulse buying.

1. Evaluate Why You Make Impulse Purchases

If you don’t dig deeper into why you are prone to impulse spending, you’ll probably never break the habit. For some people, impulse spending happens when there are emotional triggers. If you’re particularly stressed, the dopamine hit that comes with making a purchase could feel like the release that you need. The instant gratification might make you feel joy in the short term, but it is often a fleeting feeling.

Studies have found that women are likely to make impulse purchases due to social pressure and are influenced by their children and close friends. Men are more likely to be influenced by their parents and colleagues. Being aware of outside pressures can help you curb impulse purchases.

2. Wait 24 Hours

Wait 24 hours before making a purchase
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In an era of social media influencers, it’s easy to make impulse purchases on TikTok Shop. Don’t get caught up in the moment, but instead take a pause. If you’re about to make a purchase, a good strategy is to wait 24 hours and reevaluate if you still want the item. Some experts even suggest a longer waiting period for larger purchases, such as anything that is 1% or more of your income.

3. Delete Saved Credit Card Information

Online, it’s far too easy to make impulse purchases. On sites like Amazon, purchases only take one click. If you want to stop impulse buying, try deleting your credit card information from websites you frequently buy from, your Apple wallet, and so on. If you make buying items online more difficult, you’ll probably be less inclined to buy things impulsively.

4. Unsubscribe from Marketing Emails and Texts

How many promotional emails and texts do you receive in a day? While many companies offer discounts for signing up for emails and text messages, being inundated with marketing messages won’t help you make good purchasing decisions. All of these temptations add up to impulsive spending.

5. Make a List

If you’re tempted to buy something, some people find it useful to keep a running list of things that they want. Then, at the end of the month, they evaluate the list and see what they want to purchase. Just like waiting 24 hours, making a purchase list gives you time to think about whether you really need or want an item before buying it.

6. Find Replacement Activities

While many people love engaging in retail therapy, if you want to stop impulsively spending you may have to find other outlets. Replacing shopping with healthier habits that offer the release of dopamine, like exercise, will be beneficial for your financial health. Plus, you won’t have to deal with the regret or stress of overspending.

How do you stop impulse buying? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Shortchanged In School: These Are The 7 Worst School Districts in South Carolina and Why You Should Care

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Equity in education in South Carolina
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There’s no denying that South Carolina’s school system is struggling. World Population Review’s 2024 report ranked South Carolina 45th among U.S. states in public education quality. The South Carolina Department of Education released school report cards for the 2023-2024 academic year. Of 1,261 schools in South Carolina, 477 schools were rated average, 187 schools were rated below average, and 49 schools were rated unsatisfactory. Although there have been some efforts to make improvements, there are still gaps in equity in education in the state. Here we’ll discuss 7 of the worst-performing school districts in South Carolina and why it matters.

Why Equity in Education Matters

South Carolina’s Department of Education has struggled with an antiquated funding model for years. It has since gotten a major overhaul in 2022, but the state still has catching up to do. The old system allowed for minimal funding flexibility and failed to address unique student needs. According to the Reason Foundation, lack of accountability and transparency led to inequities in education in the state. For example, the highest-needs schools were not always getting their fair share of resources. The new funding system allows for dollars to flow where they are needed, such as raising teacher pay to attract quality teachers.

The state also has implemented school choice legislation to help parents pay for private school tuition, textbooks, tutoring, computers, or transportation for their children to attend other schools, depending on their needs.  This program, however, is still very small. To truly have equity in education in South Carolina, programs like this must be expanded. Until then, some students in the state will still have unfair disadvantages in their level and quality of education.

The Worst School Districts in South Carolina

  1. Georgetown County School District: Georgetown County Schools had seven out of nineteen, or 37%, of its total schools falling into the two lowest-performing categories.
  2. Charleston County School District: The largest school district in the state, Charleston County has several schools that don’t meet the State Board of Education’s standards. 17 out of 72 schools listed in the report fall into that “Below Average” or “Unsatisfactory” category, with that being almost 24%. It is important to note that this number was 27 in 2019.
  3. Berkley County School District: In the Berkeley County School District, nine out of 48 fell into the category, which is nearly 19% of the total schools.
  4. Dorchester County District 2: In this district, two schools out of 25 were included in the category, which is 8%.
  5. Dorchester County District 4: This district has one out of eight schools in the below-average category, which is 12.5% of the district.
  6. Colleton County School District: While no schools in this district are “Unsatisfactory”, all of the district’s schools are “Average” or “Below Average”.
  7. Beaufort County School District: Beaufort County Schools had three out of 34 schools fall into the “Below Average” category. There were no “Unsatisfactory” schools. The low-performing percentage is at about 9%.

Are you surprised by these results? Let us know your thoughts about equity in education in South Carolina schools.

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