Money talk -improve finances – money making strategies anyone can do
Letter to everyone:
Money talk -improve finances – money making strategies anyone can do
Dear beautiful people,
We only ever hear what we are ready to hear and there is no way of knowing when or why a certain life lesson lands for us at a given time. It is my hope that what I am about to say lands for you right now and you take immediate action. No, it does not involve a sales pitch to buy something from me. It is honest, compassionate advice on how to remove a tremendous amount of stress from your life. Here’s the golden advice that WILL improve your life path:
Do not live with credit card debt. Stop using all credit cards. Pay cash. You can do this. Wake up from the illusion that you can buy whatever you want whenever you want it. You can not do this. When you live this way you pay for stuff with time and obligation. If you have a large balance on a credit card- it is most important that you stop using that card to buy things and only make payments until the balance is zero. If you really must use credit cards, pay off the balance every month without exception.
Why is this important? If you have debt, your time is not your own. You are not free to make open, creative choices about what you want to do in life and how you want to spend your time. You feel required to work for money. This is no way to live. Even if you love your work, being required to do it causes great distress to that passion. Debt is totally in your power to avoid. The way to avoid it is: Stop using credit cards, pay cash.
Don’t spend all the money you make. Put a small amount somewhere on a weekly basis and let it build. Build up a buffer of savings that will allow you to live without work for at least two months. Calculate what you spend every month, then double that sum and set aside that amount in a place you never touch. It may take you time to build up this safety net, but if you put aside $20 a week, you WILL start to accumulate a buffer. $20 is dinner once a week. It may feel like too small a sum to even bother with, but it adds up!
No matter what your age or income, every single month, you need to put some amount of money away. The sooner you do this the sooner you will feel releif.
People do not talk about money in this country. You have likely been trained to tune out and gloss over words like “Roth IRA” or “401k” or even “retirement.” which means that the concept of retirement is not a reality for you. The thing is, you can not work forever. And if you spend all the money you earn from working, when you stop working you will not have any money. You know how when it is warm out, we don’t think to bring a sweater for when it will get cold later? Please. Take care of yourself in your later years by investing in savings now. Seed money grows over time. Put away small amounts starting today.
It is just a matter of setting it up.
Get online and set up a reoccurring transfer of $20 a day (or a month) from your checking account into a high interest paying savings account. You will likely not feel this. $20 is dinner. You probably have over a dozen $20 charges every month to your checking account. Let one of those charges just be a transfer from checking to savings. Think of it as a bill you owe to yourself. You need to pay this bill!
Make this transfer automatic so that you don’t think about it and the money leaves your checking account and is put out of sight.
You may be afraid to do this because you may be living close to negative funds at this time and struggling to keep your account in the positive. But you can do this. If not $20, then $10. And if not $10, transfer $5 a day into a savings situation. $5 is what you paid for a cup of coffee. You have $5. And you have time. So use time, starting now. Make it automatic. It sounds scary and expensive to set up auto withdrawals daily, I know. But you can do it.
News about savings accounts…
Banks are no longer a smart place to have a savings account. They pay pennies of interest annually. It is baffling but very real. Credit Card companies have amassed enough power now to behave like banks, but without brick and mortar buildings and fewer expenses than banks. Credit card companies like Discover Bank or Barclay or Capital One offer the highest interest rates for online savings accounts.
Here is what you literally need to do to build a buffer safety net: Open an online savings account and set up an automatic transfer of a weekly or monthly amount comfortable to you and watch your savings grow.
Opening a savings account with an institution paying good interest and connecting to your checking account is easy. Setting up an automatic drip fund (of $10 or more) into a high paying savings account is easy.
This is not math. It is just a law of nature. If you put one pebble in a pool every day, the pool will fill up with pebbles. Not math. Physics.
The reason you may be wary or distrustful of what I am suggesting you do is because no one ever talked about it. Everyone is working really hard to get us to part with our money. And we part with it in a thousand ways every day. Don’t part with 10% of your income every month. Keep it. This is what David Bach calls- Paying yourself first. Before you buy stuff with the paycheck you earned, pay yourself 10% of that paycheck amount and put that 10% into a savings situation. That way you will always have money to explore life and learn in your own way.
You should pay yourself first even if you have credit card debt. Definitely pay down that debt monthly, but don’t wait until it is gone to start the safety net. Do both at the same time. And see Frog Medicine’s advice about getting out of debt.
No one in my life ever taught me about how to save money. They themselves did not know. I learned this information from books and I feel passionate about reaching others who like me was wandering around in a frustrated fog about why life wasn’t affordable. If this conversation has spoken to you but you need more information- check out these books:
Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach.
The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught me by Richard Paul Evans
David Bach, along with many many other financial advisors will articulate this advise in great detail as well as give lots of other first rate suggestions about gathering wealth. If you are over 50 you will find his book: Start Late Finish Rich more helpful than the first. But both are very useful. The key here if you are no longer in your 20’s or 30’s is to KNOW that it doesn’t matter. You can still accumulate substantial wealth that will enable you to live comfortably in your older years. Don’t let frustration and regret keep you from doing what you can do now to improve the situation.
If you start today, wealth will grow faster than you think it will. And what you grow will ALWAYS be better than nothing!
Paul Richard Evans also has very usable advice about how to “win in the margins” and earn more money in easy ways you may not have thought of. His book has excellent advice on how to increase income and decrease spending in ways that don’t feel constrictive. By identifying what is important to you you can eliminate wasteful spending that doesn’t actually contribute to your happiness.
Be well, live well!
Otter
