Best personal finance strategy to control my balance
The key to understanding where your money is going is to budget.  Rather than tracking your spending after the fact, budgeting lets you decide up front what you want to spend your money on.  This can be done with cash envelopes, on paper, or on Excel spreadsheets; however, in my opinion, the best, most flexible, and easiest way to do this is with budgeting software designed for this purpose. As I explained in another answer, when it comes to personal budgeting software, there are two different approaches: those in which you decide what to spend your money on before it is spent, and those that simply show you how your money was spent after it is gone.  I recommend the first approach.  Software designed to do this include YNAB, Mvelopes, and EveryDollar. My personal favorite is YNAB.  You'll find lots of help, video tutorials, and even online classes with a live teacher on YNAB's website.   Using one of these packages will help you manage spending, whether it is done electronically or with cash.  When you pay for something with a credit card, you enter your purchase into the software, and the software adjusts your budget as if the money is already spent, even if you haven't technically paid for the purchase yet. As far as strategy goes, here is what I recommend:  Get started on one of these, and set up your budget right away.  Assign a category to every dollar in your account.  Don't worry if it is not perfect.  If you find later on that you don't have enough money in one of your categories, you can move money from another category if you need to.  As you work with it, you'll get better at knowing how much money you need in each category. My other recommendation is this: Don't wait until the end of the month to download your transactions from the bank and fit everything into categories.  Instead, enter your spending transactions into the software manually, every day, as you spend.  This will do two things: first, you'll have the latest, up-to-date picture of where your accounts are in your software without having to guess.  Second, it will help you stay on top of your spending.  You'll be able to see early on if you are overspending in a particular category.  YNAB has a mobile app that I use quite a bit, but if I don't get a chance to enter a purchase right when I spend it, I make sure to keep a receipt, and enter the transaction in that evening.  It only takes a couple of minutes a day, and I always know how I stand financially. My bank will let me download credit card transactions directly into a personal finance program, and by assigning categories to stores I can get at least a rough overview of that sidd of things, and then adjust categories/splits when needed. Ditto checks. Most of my spending is covered by those. Doesn't help with cash transactions, though; if I want to capture those accurately I need to save receipts. There are ocr products which claim to help capture those; haven't tried them. Currently, since my spending is fairly stable, I'm mostly leaving those as unknown; that wouldn't work for you. "I started storing and summing all my receipts, bills, etc. It has the advantage of letting me separate expenses by category, but it's messy and it takes a long time.  It sounds from this like you are making your summaries far too detailed. Don't. Instead, start by painting with broad strokes. For example, if you spent $65.17 at the grocery store, don't bother splitting that amount into categories like toiletries, hygiene products, food, and snacks: just categorize it as ""grocery spending"" and move on to the next line on your account statement. Similarly, unless your finances are heavily reliant on cash, don't worry about categorizing each cash expense; rather, just categorize the withdrawal of cash as miscellaneous and don't spend time trying to figure out exactly where the money went after that. Because honestly, you probably spent it on something other than savings. Because really, when you are just starting out getting a handle on your spending, you don't need all the nitty-gritty details. What you need, rather, is an idea of where your money is going. Figure out half a dozen or so categories which make sense for you to categorize your spending into (you probably have some idea of where your money is going). These could be loans, cost of living (mortgage/rent, utilities, housing, home insurance, ...), groceries, transportation (car payments, fuel, vehicle taxes, ...), savings, and so on -- whatever fits your situation. Add a miscellaneous category for anything that doesn't neatly fit into one of the categories you thought of. Go back something like 3-4 months among your account statements, do a quick categorization for each line on your account statements into one of these categories, and then sum them up per category and per month. Calculate the monthly average for each category. That's your starting point: the budget you've been living by (intentionally or not). After that, you can decide how you want to allocate the money, and perhaps dig a bit more deeply into some specific category. Turns out you are spending a lot of money on transportation which you didn't expect? Look more closely at those line items and see if there's something you can cut. Are you spending more money at the grocery store than you thought? Then look more closely at that. And so on. Once you know where you are and where you want to be (such as for example bumping the savings category by $200 per month), you can adjust your budget to take you closer to your goals. Chances are you won't realistically be able to do an about-face turn on the spot, but you can try to reduce some discretionary category by, say, 10% each month, and transfer that into savings instead. That way, in 6-7 months, you have cut that category in half."
"What I've found works best when working on my personal budget is to track my income and spending two different ways: bank accounts and budget categories. Here is what I mean: When I deposit my paycheck, I do two things with it: It goes into my checking account, so the balance of my checking account goes up by the amount of my paycheck. I also ""deposit"" the money from my checking account into my various budget category balances.  This is separate from my bank account balances.  Some of my paycheck money goes into my groceries category, some goes into clothing, some into car fuel, entertainment, mortgage, phone, etc.  Some goes into longer range bills that only happen once or twice a year, such as car insurance, life insurance, property tax, etc.  Some goes into savings goals of ours, such as car replacement, vacation, furniture, etc. Every dollar that we have in a bank account or in cash in our wallets is also accounted for in a budget category.  If you add up the balances of our bank accounts and cash, and you add up the balances of our budget categories, they add up to the same number. When we make a purchase, this also gets accounted for twice: The appropriate bank account (or cash wallet) balance gets reduced by the purchase amount. The appropriate budget category gets reduced by the purchase amount. In this way, we don't really need to worry about having separate bank accounts for different purposes.  We don't need to put our savings goal money in a separate bank account from our grocery money, if we don't want to.  The budget category accounting keeps track of how much money is allocated to each purpose.   Now, the budget category amounts are not spent yet; the money in them is still in our bank account, and we can move money around in the categories, if we change our mind on how to allocate them.  For example, if we don't spend all of our gas money for the month, we can either keep that money in the gas category, or we can move it to a different category, such as the car replacement category or the vacation category.  If the phone bill is more than we expect, we can move money around from a different category to cover it. Now, back to your question: We allocate some money from each paycheck into our furniture category.  But the money is not really spent until we actually buy some furniture.  When we do, the furniture category balance and bank account balance both go down by the amount of the purchase. All of this can be kept track of on the computer in a spreadsheet.  However, it's not easy to keep track of so many categories and bank balances.  An easier solution is custom budgeting software designed for this purpose.  I use and recommend YNAB." I mean, at a personal level, I do this all the time. I will absolutely take advantage of low interest financing offers if I know I can make more money with the outstanding balance than will be drawn in interest.  It can also make sense from a risk management perspective: I need liquidity even if I can cover the cost, I anticipate needing a large sum of cash over a short interval during the finance period. If I were to pay all upfront the cumulative expenditures would Darwin me too close to my safety threshold for my comfort level, but by financing I can distribute the risk and keep a higher margin for error over the course of the loan. "Before you are married, I recommend keeping your finances separate.  However, once you are married, I recommend combining your finances completely. In my opinion, marriage works best when you work together as a team, a single unit.  You no longer have ""his money"" and ""her money,"" or ""his income"" and ""her income.""  Nor is there ""his debt"" and ""her debt.""  There is only ""our money,"" ""our income,"" ""our debt,"" and ""our budget.""   Indeed, if you are the one with less debt, isn't it in your household's best interest to help eliminate your spouse's debt as fast as possible?  If you are the one with more income/employment, how do you quantify the monetary value of the spouse who stays at home more and manages the household?  You can't, and it is best not to try.  Instead, pool together all income and expenses, and work together to meet common goals. To do this, open up a joint bank account and close your individual accounts. Meet on a regular basis to decide your household budget.  If you do that, it doesn't matter who is responsible for the mechanics of paying the bills or balancing the budget.  These tasks just get assigned to someone, just like any other household chore. Usually, one of you will be more financially minded than the other, and that person will take the lead in setting the budget, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, etc.  However, it is important that both people are aware of what is going on and have access to the financial information.   In our house, I am the one who takes the lead on financial matters.  I pay the bills (out of our joint accounts) and set the monthly budget using YNAB software.  However, my wife has the ability to look at YNAB at any time to see the budget, and she can log into the bank website to see the transactions there as well.  No secrets. To be clear, we each have a small amount of cash/fun money that we can spend without worrying about checking in with the spouse on every little thing.  But this is a small percentage of our budget, and we talk to each other before spending any significant amount of money." Very common question. There is no any rule of thumb. This solely depends on your trading strategy. I will share my own experience. My day starts with the daily chart, if I have a signal, either I open my position or I check 30 minute chart to make sure that it won't go too much against my trade. and I open my position. If I am waiting for the signal the minimum timeframe is 4 hours for me. I use 30 minutes to find the best time to enter the market. So, this is totally something special for my trading strategy, that is why those things can change based on the different strategies. I also check weekly and monthly charts to confirm trend. I have been busy with forex since 2007 and I am a verified investor on etoro At the end, I never use 1,5,15,60 minute charts as they are against my strategy. First, accept the fact that you are not going to be able to predict the ups and downs of the market well enough for that to be a viable strategy. In the long run these schemes tend to be losers because it forces you to guess correctly twice (When to get out, when to get back in) and missing either date can cost you. A better strategy to benefit from market volatility: "Your plan already answers your own question in the best possible way: If you want to be able to make the most possible profit from a large downward move in a stock (in this case, a stock that tracks gold), with a limited, defined risk if there is an upward move, the optimal strategy is to buy a put option.  There are a few Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that track the price of gold.  think of them as stocks that behave like gold, essentially.  Two good examples that have options are GLD and IAU. (When you talk about gold, you'll hear a lot about futures.  Forget them, for now.  They do the same essential thing for your purposes, but introduce more complexity than you need.) The way to profit from a downward move without protection against an upward move is by shorting the stock.   Shorting stock is like the opposite of buying it.    You make the amount of money the stock goes down by, or lose the amount it goes up by.   But, since stocks can go up by an infinite amount, your possible loss is unlimited. If you want to profit on a large downward move without an unlimited loss if you're wrong and it goes up, you need something that makes money as the stock drops, but can only lose so much if it goes up.   (If you want to be guaranteed to lose nothing, your best investment option is buying US Treasuries, and you're technically still exposed to the risk that US defaults on its debt, although if you're a US resident, you'll likely have bigger problems than your portfolio in that situation.) Buying a put option has the exact asymmetrical exposure you want.   You pay a limited premium to buy it, and at expiration you essentially make the full amount that the stock has declined below the strike price, less what you paid for the option.   That last part is important - because you pay a premium for the option, if it's down just a little, you might still lose some or all of what you paid for it, which is what you give up in exchange for it limiting your maximum loss. But wait, you might say.  When I buy an option, I can lose all of my money, cant I?  Yes, you can.    Here's the key to understanding the way options limit risk as compared to the corresponding way to get ""normal"" exposure through getting long, or in your case, short, the stock: If you use the number of options that represent the number of shares you would have bought, you will have much, much less total money at risk. If you spend the same ""bag 'o cash"" on options as you would have spent on stock, you will have exposure to way more shares, and have the same amount of money at risk as if you bought the stock, but will be much more likely to lose it. The first way limits the total money at risk for a similar level of exposure; the second way gets you exposure to a much larger amount of the stock for the same money, increasing your risk. So the best answer to your described need is already in the question:   Buy a put.  I'd probably look at GLD to buy it on, simply because it's generally a little more liquid than IAU. And if you're new to options, consider the following: ""Paper trade"" first.  Either just keep track of fake buys and sells on a spreadsheet, or use one of the many online services where you can track investments - they don't know or care if they're real or not. Check out www.888options.com.  They are an excellent learning resource that isn't trying to sell you anything - their only reason to exist is to promote options education.   If you do put on a trade, don't forget that the most frustrating pitfall with buying options is this:  You can be basically right, and still lose some or all of what you invest.  This happens two ways, so think about them both before you trade: If the stock goes in the direction you think, but not enough to make back your premium, you can still lose.  So you need to make sure you know how far down the stock has to be to make back your premium.  At expiration, it's simple: You need it to be below the strike price by more than what you paid for the option. With options, timing is everything.  If the stock goes down a ton, or even to zero - free gold! - but only after your option expires, you were essentially right, but lose all your money.  So, while you don't want to buy an option that's longer than you need, since the premium is higher, if you're not sure if an expiration is long enough out, it isn't - you need the next one. EDIT to address update: (I'm not sure ""not long enough"" was the problem here, but...) If the question is just how to ensure there is a limited, defined amount you can lose (even if you want the possible loss to be much less than you can potentially make, the put strategy described already does that - if the stock you use is at $100, and you buy a put with a 100 strike for $5, you can make up to $95.   (This occurs if the stock goes to zero, meaning you could buy it for nothing, and sell it for $100, netting $95 after the $5 you paid).   But you can only lose $5. So the put strategy covers you. If the goal is to have no real risk of loss, there's no way to have any real gain above what's sometimes called the ""risk-free-rate"".  For simplicity's sake, think of that as what you'd get from US treasuries, as mentioned above. If the goal is to make money whether the stock (or gold) goes either up or down, that's possible, but note that you still have (a fairly high) risk of loss, which occurs if it fails to move either up or down by enough.  That strategy, in its most common form, is called a straddle, which basically means you buy a call and a put with the same strike price.  Using the same $100 example, you could buy the 100-strike calls for $5, and the 100-strike puts for $5.  Now you've spent $10 total, and you make money if the stock is up or down by more than $10 at expiration (over 110, or under 90).   But if it's between 90 and 100, you lose money, as one of your options will be worthless, and the other is worth less than the $10 total you paid for them both." I agree with the other answers here.  You need to pay off your debts first, so that you can take the money you would have been spending on debt payments and make retirement contributions instead.  The longer they hang around, the more you pay in interest and the more they are a risk to you.  Imagine if you or your spouse were laid off, which is better scenario: having to pay for your necessities plus debts or your necessities alone?  Just focus on one goal at a time, and you will do well. And the best way for you and your new spouse is to have the same financial goals and a huge part of that agreeing on a budget each month and being flexible.  Don't use it to control your spouse, you each have a vote.  I have not used Vangaurd, but have heard good things about them.  I would do some research before investing with them or anyone else for that matter. What you want to find when it comes to investing is someone with the heart of a teacher, not a product peddler.  If you have someone who is pushing financial products, without explaining (A) how they work, and (B) how they fit your situation, then RUN AWAY and find someone else who will do those two things. I have a similar plan and a similar number of accounts.   I think seeking a target asset allocation mix across all investment accounts is an excellent idea. I use excel to track where I am and then use it to adjust to get closer (but not exactly) to my target percentages. Until you have some larger balances, it may be prudent to use less categories or realize that you can't come exactly to your percentages, but can get close.   I also simplify by primarily investing in various index funds.  That means that in my portfolio, each category has 1 or 2 funds, not 10 or 20.