personal finance budgeting

Here’s a timeline of this presentation:

• The question


• The expenses side: What would you cut first in order to survive?


• The income side: How could you double your income next month?

In order to derive any benefit, you’ll need to really adopt the mindset implied in the question. Don’t focus on whether it’s possible, but instead on what would realistically be the first expenses to go and the first steps to replacing the income.

Once you’ve made a list for both sides of the question, you’ll want to review it for any areas that seem realistic, even at your current full income. For example, your first steps may include selling an extra car, canceling an expensive cable package, and slashing your grocery budget in half. In this situation, you’ve likely brainstormed areas of your budget where you aren’t spending as optimally as you may like. You may choose to go ahead and try some of those options out, or at least take steps to narrow the gap between your life at 100% income and your life at 50% income levels.

The same process is important when attempting to make the income back as quickly as possible. Realistic options could include enrolling in a course (applying for aid if needed), launching a side business, and/or picking up new clients or leads. Nearly every time I brainstorm options for doubling my business income, I unearth something I hadn’t thought of before. Acting on these new ideas has helped me tremendously in generating new income (even if it doesn’t immediately double it)!

The next time you’re feeling a bit complacent in your finances, try exploring this simple question. What would be the first expenses you’d cut in order to survive on only half your income? What would be the first steps you’d take if you had to earn it back? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results of this experiment!

In 2006, recent Harvard grad Alexa von Tobel was headed for a job at Morgan Stanley. But though she would soon be managing the bank’s investments, she realized she didn’t know the first thing about her own finances. Most financial guides seemed to be written for middle-aged readers with millions in assets, rather than recent college grads. "I was reading every book I could find, but none of them spoke to me," she says. So she came up with the idea for LearnVest, an online personal-finance resource for young women like her, and ended up writing an 80-page business plan.

After two years at Morgan Stanley, von Tobel entered Harvard Business School in 2008. But upon winning a business plan competition held by Astia, a non-profit that supports women entrepreneurs, she took a five-year leave of absence and invested $75,000 of her Wall Street earnings to start LearnVest in November. She quickly enlisted advisors, including Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, and Catherine Levene, the former COO of DailyCandy, to help develop the site’s content and technology. In January 2009, she secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs.

LearnVest’s site launched a year later and has since signed up more than 100,000 members. It offers online budgeting calculators, video chats with certified financial planners on the company’s staff, and free e-mail tutorials on topics such as opening an IRA. The company earns revenue from advertising and by referring its users to companies such as TD Ameritrade. In April, after just four weeks of fundraising, von Tobel closed a $4.5 million investment round led by Accel Partners, which has also invested in Facebook and Etsy. (Incidentally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lived in the same dorm as von Tobel at Harvard.)

Von Tobel likens LearnVest to an online version of The Suze Orman Show, but with the goal of reinforcing positive finance habits early on. “Suze Orman helps 45-year-old women get out of debt,” she says. “Why not reach 20-year-olds to keep them from getting into debt?”

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