LA HOUSEHOLD BUDGET EXAMPLE PROFESSIONAL

It'll help her determine exactly how much she needs to save in order to reach those goals. That's why Parkinson can benefit from thinking about when she wants to retire and how much she'd like to spend in retirement. 'But at the end of the day, it really comes down to everybody's own personal situation.' When it comes to saving for the future, there are equations you can follow, such as, 'you should save 15% of your income for retirement,' says Westlin. If you let a $10,000 deposit sit in a standard savings account with a major bank for a year, you'd earn about a dollar in interest, but if you put it in an online-only bank, your $10,000 deposit could yield up to $225 after one year. Marcus, for example, offer 2.25% APY, while big banks that have to spend money building thousands of branches and hiring people to fill them typically offer rates closer to 0.01%.

Internet banks, like Synchrony, Ally or Marcus by Goldman Sachs, tend to offer higher interest rates than the major brick-and-mortar banks. By doing so, 'She's making her money, even though it's conservative, work as hard as possible for her.' She's also smart to keep her emergency fund in a high-yield savings account, he says. While the amount you need to be setting aside is highly personal and depends on your goals and lifestyle, 'she's gotten a really great start as far as how much she's saving.' 'This is the place to be.' She feels 'privileged' to live debt-freeīetween her 401(k) contributions and the $400 she puts in a high-yield savings account every month, 'she's saving about 16% of her gross income,' he points out. 'Even though it's so expensive and a lot of money I think that I would rather be here than anywhere else right now, just because I want to be an editor and I want to be at a big studio,' she says. It was an expense she'd been preparing for: 'I was just constantly like, 'Well, I shouldn't buy this because who knows what my lawyer fees are going to be,' and I was just saving for it.' By the time she needed to make the payments, she had the money in savings. 'You can't put it on a credit card, so if you don't have that money, you're in a very tough position.'

'You have to wire the money to them,' Parkinson says. Her particular lawyer requested the fee in two halves. She also spent $2,000 on flights back to Australia to go to the consulate.

LA HOUSEHOLD BUDGET EXAMPLE PROFESSIONAL

'When you apply for a visa you could technically do all the paperwork yourself, but I think hiring professional help, an immigration attorney, is the way to go the first time,' she says.

La household budget example