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"Some habits are good for you\u2014flossing, exercise, getting eight hours of sleep. (Oh, if only.) And doing the same thing over and over again can feel comfortable, and even safe. But when habits sabotage your financial health, it&amp;#039;s time to turn off the autopilot and start making active, careful decisions about your money and your life. Below, experts point out 10 patterns that will wreak havoc with your bottom line\u2014and offer tips for turning over a new financial leaf. Contributing too little to your 401(k). If you&amp;#039;re putting only 3 or 4% into your company 401(k), you&amp;#039;re behind. &amp;quot;Ten percent is the minimum for anyone in any situation,&amp;quot; says Claire Emory, a financial planner in Arlington, VA. &amp;quot;But funding retirement is even more critical for women because they spend fewer years in the workforce, have longer life spans and earn less than men,&amp;quot; says Emory. If you can&amp;#039;t swing 10%, at least set aside enough to get the full employer match, if there is one\u2014that&amp;#039;s free money! Can&amp;#039;t make the leap all at once? Consider bumping up your contribution by 1% a month until you get there. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s better to take small steps you can handle than to feel overwhelmed,&amp;quot; adds Emory.  Keeping quiet at raise time. Men are four times as likely as women to ask for a raise, according to a study from Carnegie Mellon University. If you don&amp;#039;t ask, you don&amp;#039;t get, and the vast majority of people who do ask get something, whether it&amp;#039;s a salary bump or another type of incentive. The more often you ask for raises (within reason), the more money you stand to make in the long run, which translates to more retirement savings, more college savings for your kids and a higher Social Security check, among other things. &amp;quot;Even negotiating your salary just once can reap you more than $500,000 over the course of a lifetime,&amp;quot; says Linda Babcock, an economist at Carnegie Mellon. Carrying a balance on credit cards. The average credit card balance in 2011 was $6,576, according to data from CreditKarma.com. With an average interest rate of nearly 17%, you&amp;#039;d rack up more than $1,100 in interest every year. So it&amp;#039;s wise to live within your means and pay down your credit card debt, says Annapolis, MD, financial planner Ted Toal. Try the &amp;quot;snowball&amp;quot; plan: Pay the minimum balance on all of your credit cards except the one with the smallest balance\u2014and put as much money as possible toward that one until it&amp;#039;s paid off. Once that happens, take the money you were throwing at that card and put it toward the next-highest balance, and so on until everything&amp;#039;s paid off. Using too many credit cards. When you spread your purchases out over multiple cards, it&amp;#039;s tough to rein in spending. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s harder to be aware of where your money is going,&amp;quot; says Emory. Instead, you spend a few hundred dollars here, a few hundred dollars there, and at the end of the month you owe more than you expected. Using a bunch of cards also may hurt your credit score. &amp;quot;A consumer may receive less than optimal points if they have a higher number of credit cards with a balance,&amp;quot; says Tom Quinn, Credit.com&amp;#039;s credit score expert. So stick to one or two cards with no annual fee and a good cash-back program.  Spending money without tracking it. More than a third of women spend more each month than they make, according to a survey by Financial Finesse. &amp;quot;I often hear people say, &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t live an extravagant lifestyle,&amp;#039; but they spend a large percentage of their disposable income on going out to dinner,&amp;quot; says Baltimore financial planner Wendy Weaver. If you don&amp;#039;t know where your money&amp;#039;s going, you can&amp;#039;t accurately plan to meet saving and spending goals. Paying attention to cash flow will make you more mindful of your purchases\u2014and less apt to fork out dollars for yet another pair of shoes. Create an account on Mint.com and use it to track your day-to-day expenditures by category. Skimping on emergency savings. If you lost your job tomorrow, how long would you be able to last on your savings? A month? A week? &amp;quot;An emergency fund is a must,&amp;quot; says Toal. You should have enough socked away (in a money market account, perhaps) to cover three to six months of living expenses\u2014which should be less than three to six months of income, since income includes retirement contributions, taxes and money for unnecessary spending. Skipping disability insurance. &amp;quot;Your chance of becoming disabled is far greater than your chance of dying before retirement,&amp;quot; says Emory, but you have life insurance, right? Start with disability coverage offered through your employer, if you can\u2014it&amp;#039;ll be much cheaper than the individual market, or it may be free. &amp;quot;Most companies with more than 25 employees offer some type of long-term disability insurance coverage, often at no cost to the employee,&amp;quot; says Bob Gertie, CEO of Advisor Insurance Resource in Parker, CO. That will usually cover 60% of your base salary, not including bonuses or commissions, and you may be able to purchase more coverage, though no policy will replace 100% of your salary. If you can&amp;#039;t get a policy that way, check with professional associations you belong to, or consider getting a policy that replaces less of your earnings should you become unable to work. &amp;quot;Some income would be better than no income,&amp;quot; says Weaver. Saving for college over retirement. Yes, it&amp;#039;s great that you&amp;#039;re putting money aside for your child&amp;#039;s higher education. But if you&amp;#039;re doing this instead of growing your retirement savings, you&amp;#039;ll need to work for a long time to make up for it. &amp;quot;A lot of families sacrifice everything to put their children into school,&amp;quot; says Weaver. But remember: While there are a variety of ways for your child to pay for a degree\u2014scholarships, grants, financial aid, part-time jobs\u2014no one offers loans for your golden years. You should put at least 10% of your household income into retirement savings before you send the first cent toward college. Buying high and selling low. When the market tanks, it&amp;#039;s easy to panic. &amp;quot;People will cash in all their 401(k) stock holdings and go to a money market account,&amp;quot; says Toal. But if you take all your funds out of stocks, you miss any rebound that happens. Over the long run, investing an equal amount periodically is the smarter option. &amp;quot;Volatility works in your favor,&amp;quot; says Toal. You end up buying more stock when the price dips and less stock when the price is high. Letting your significant other handle all the money decisions. Even today, many women aren&amp;#039;t involved in every family money move. Day-to-day budgeting? Sure. But some financial planners, including Zaneilia Harris, of Upper Marlboro, MD, say that women are less likely to deal with big-picture items such as taxes, debt payments and investments. The problem with that: What if your significant other is more aggressive with your money than you&amp;#039;d like to be? What if he&amp;#039;s doing things that you don&amp;#039;t agree with? Consider that one in three adults who&amp;#039;ve ever combined finances with someone say a partner has financially deceived them, according to a study by the National Endowment for Financial Education and Forbes.com. If you&amp;#039;re not checking in regularly, you&amp;#039;re vulnerable if your spouse mismanages the family finances\u2014or in a real mess if you get divorced or your spouse dies, since you won&amp;#039;t know how to take over. Protect yourself by swapping roles periodically and having frequent money chats. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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