Being financially healthy is a critical piece of your overall wellness. Financial health means you have the ability to reach your goals, take advantage of opportunities and gives you flexibility to pursue your dreams. The only way to achieve financial health is through financial literacy. Being financial literate means that no matter your stage of life or income, you know how to live within your means, stick to a budget, and spend responsibly.

If you don’t understand how to manage your money, you are at risk of overspending, going into debt and not saving enough for your future. Debt and/or a lack of savings can cause considerable hardship on a person’s life, and not just daily stress. Financial problems can lead to divorce, poor health, depression, and bankruptcy.

To help alleviate financial burdens and stress, the best place to start is to look at four measurements: what you have, what you owe, what you make and what you spend.

The Finance Manager Tools within our online/mobile banking platform are a great resource to help you get started. All your accounts—credit and debit cards, loans, 401K, goal-based savings, and more—can be seen to help you in assessing and planning for your immediate or long-term needs. You’ll gain all the information you need to handle your finances, integrated right into your everyday banking activities. Here are some of the features available to use:

Spending
Displays all the existing categories of spending for the time period displayed. The widget allows you to interact with the transaction list to modify categorization for accuracy and personal preference.

Budget
The system-generated budget is based on your past few months of data; the more complete and accurate the categorization is when the budget is generated, the more accurate the results will be. Alternatively, you can manually create specific budget line items that you wish to track.

Trends
Provides an overview of spending trends over a period. This is especially useful if you are tracking a category of spending, such as eating out.

Cash Flow
Displays the movement of funds in and out of your various accounts helping you project your financial standing.

Net Worth
Displays your accounts available, either accounts with Ascent CU or those you have aggregated into your view from other institutions. This provides you another view into your finances and financial health.

Debts
Presents you with a list of liabilities available in the system in one central view. Within the widget, the system uses the information available to calculate the payoff date of all liability accounts. It also allows you to modify your payment plan between popular debt management strategies such as highest interest rate, lowest balance, etc. and to indicate an additional monthly payment amount to see the effect it will have on the timeline of being debt free.

Using these tools, you can create your goals and a roadmap to reach them, leading to a financially healthy life. If you have any questions about these tools, please click here or give us a call at 801-399-9728.

Article adopted from forbes.com