My name is Rich Hunt and I am the Director of Retirement Services for MLB. July 2013 will mark my 16-year anniversary with the Commissioner’s Office. I currently maintain oversight of several of the pension plans that are offered throughout Baseball, as well as oversight of the 401(k) plans that are offered to MLB’s central office employees and the Major League Umpires. In addition, I oversee MLB’s College Scholarship Plan. The one other area that I am responsible for is MLB’s employee financial education program. The program, called S.A.F.E. (Savings and Financial Education), was launched in August 2011 and has been successful in helping to educate MLB’s central office employees on a wide variety of topics related to their financial well being. The B.A.T. team feels that parts of this program may also benefit the members of the B.A.T. family.

B.A.T. is truly an amazing organization and has been such a tremendous source of help to those involved in the “Baseball family” for so many years that I am honored they have asked me to guest blog from time-to-time. I hope I can live up to their expectations.

How many times have we heard coaches say that you must master the fundamentals before you can move to the next level? This simple yet powerful piece of advice carries over to most areas of our lives, including one’s financial situation.

The fundamental financial concept that everyone must learn before any other steps can be taken is how to budget (simply keeping track of the money that one receives each month vs. how much money is spent). Without being able to budget properly, it is extremely difficult to move to the next level – building savings. Therefore, if you haven’t already done so, I would strongly encourage you to keep track of your monthly income vs. your monthly expenses. There are many tools on the Internet that can help you do this, but a simple spreadsheet like the one attached or even simple pen and paper each month will work just as well. Budget Worksheet Example

The whole point of the exercise is to force yourself to evaluate your expenses to see if there are any areas that you can cut back on if needed.  Too many people underestimate their monthly expenses when they don’t take the time to actually list them out. Your goal is to then work towards a situation in which your income exceeds your expenses. Once you have your budget in place, it is then extremely important to impose the discipline to stick to it.

Don’t beat yourself up if on occasion you go over budget. However, if you want to build up any type of savings, you want to try to make sure that going over budget is the exception and not the rule.

One last piece of advice when building your budget is to leave room for unexpected expenses. It is often these unexpected expenses, not the recurring expenses that will cause one to be over budget. While it is obviously tough to estimate the unexpected, a good budget will always account for this. The result of including this type of buffer will often force one to seriously look at all the other expenses, as adjustments may need to be made to fit the buffer into your budget.

Your budget will be an evolving tool and may even take a couple of months before you feel comfortable that you have accounted for everything. Be patient and you will hopefully soon find that you have begun to take control of your finances and can then start moving beyond the fundamentals.

Rich Hunt is the Director of Retirement Services for Major League Baseball.  

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