Put more money into your pocket this year - Money Talk$ - Brief Article
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THE New Year's Day celebrations are over and the resolutions have been made. Now is the time to act on at least one of those resolutions: Put more money into your pocket and make sure you end 2002 richer than you are today.

How you achieve that goal, experts say, depends on how you approach it.

"Putting more money into your pocket for 2002 is really going to be an individual responsibility," says Kevin Hampton, a financial consultant at A.G. Edwards & Sons in Milwaukee. "Watching what you buy, properly budgeting your money and properly investing your money--all of this is your complete, personal responsibility. No one can do it for you."

The following are some money-saving tips to help you put more money into your pocket.

CREATE ROOM IN YOUR BUDGET

The first thing to do is to find out where you stand financially and where your money is going.

Percy Bolton, president of Percy E. Bolton Associates Inc. in Pasadena, Calif., and a certified financial planner, says getting control of your cash flow is the most important thing to do this year. "You have to know where you're spending money and you have to know where your money is coming from," he says. "You really have to get control of your cash flow because if you don't know what those numbers are, there's no way to get improvement in those numbers."