Financial expert shares his favorite golden rules.

Over the past twenty years, nationally know financial adviser Bruce Helmer has developed an approach to financial planning that has helped thousands of clients and radio listeners use their money wisely. Here are ten top tips from the pro:

1. Get out of debt as soon as possible, with the exception of student loans and your home mortgage (30-year mortgages are better than 15-year if paid off in 15 years, investing the difference in premiums). Control spending and make paying off your consumer debts a priority.
   
   
2. Make saving routine. Put aside a minimum of 10 percent of your income—make it the first check you write each time you get paid—for emergencies and investment purposes. To meet emergencies, maintain liquid savings equivalent to three to six months of living expenses.
   
   
3. Start investing now. Time is an investor’s friend. With the help of a financial adviser, develop an investment strategy that is systematic, diversified, maintained regularly, and takes into account your age, money goals, tolerance for risk, taxes, and what you want most for your life and loved ones.
   
   
4. Don’t overlook variable annuities and variable universal life insurance (VUL), two of the best-kept secrets in investing, and part of a very efficient strategy. Variable annuities and their mutual fund–like subaccounts provide access to a multitude of different money managers and a multitude of different asset classes among which you can shift money easily and without fees. VULs almost certainly pay a benefit someday (unlike term life) and have the potential to earn competitive returns.
   
   
5. Focus on your health. Good health leading to long life enhances your financial plan, which can be a tremendous asset in living life to the fullest.
   
   
6. Never invest without considering tax implications, but never invest only for tax reasons either. The ideal strategy includes taxable investments, tax-deferred investments, and tax-advantaged investments.
   
   
7. Insure your most valuable asset—your life. If you do it the right way (permanent life insurance is superior to term), life insurance provides protection for your family, attractive appreciation potential, significant tax benefits, and financial flexibility like no other financial products. You insure much less important assets—your car, for instance—without a second thought.
   
   
8. Plan your retirement based on wants, not needs. When planning for your golden years, ask yourself what you want from life during those years. Do not base your retirement strategy on some percentage of your current working income, or the minimum you think you can get by on.
   
   
9. Consider your loved ones in all financial planning. Include your spouse in discussions of: money management, planning for emergencies, planning to improve life, and planning for retirement. Raise children who are financially literate, and get them involved in their financial future. Talk to elderly parents in detail about their current finances and future estate plans.
   
   
10. Work with a financial adviser you trust. Find one who is interested in your values, your loved ones, and your well-being. In addition to being experienced and highly qualified, s/he should be gifted at listening to and understanding what you want to accomplish in your life.

If you have consumer debt, with interest rates these days in the 10% to 20% range, you are essentially paying 10 to 20% more for every purchase you make until you pay off your debt. A loaf of bread priced at $1.50 is actually costing you $1.80, if you hold a credit card balance at 20%.

The Best Gift to Give Kids
Your children will probably get along just fine without your money after you die. They won’t do nearly so well if they don’t get your time, your values, and your love while you’re alive. Your first and most important legacy to your children is the way you lived and your relationship with them.

Inheritance Facts:

• In more than 70% of inheritances of $100,000 or more, the money is spent in less than two years.
• According to a 1996 survey by U.S. Trust, half of the country’s wealthiest parents worry that material advantages will undermine their children’s initiative and independence.
• Negative side effects of inheriting money include: grief, guilt, anger, inadequacy, paralysis, and conflict with spouse.