Episode 193 - My Bills Are More Than My Income... What Do I Do?
Welcome to episode #193 of the Debt Free Dad Podcast. So what do you do when your bills are more than your income? How can you build an emergency fund and get out of debt when you can't get caught up? We are going to offer some motivation and tips on today's show.
What You'll Learn
- We understand the stress of bills exceeding income, but we're here to provide you with practical tips and motivation to break free from this cycle.
- Join us for empowering insights and actionable strategies that can turn your financial situation around.
- Be inspired by real stories of individuals who have faced similar financial struggles and successfully emerged debt-free. Our show is not just about motivation; it's a practical guide to transforming your financial reality.
Resources Mentioned
- Brad's Totally Awesome Debt Freedom Planner
- For more help, and a step-by-step process to get started, enroll in Brad's FREE online course, LIFE WITHOUT PAYMENTS.
Free Tools and Downloads at www.therealdebtfreedad.com
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Episode Transcript:
Brad:
Hey everybody, welcome to episode number 193 of the Debt Free Dad podcast. So what do you do when your bills are more than your income? I mean, how can you start doing some of the stuff that we talk about on this show, Things like building an emergency fund, getting out of debt when you can barely get caught back up? We're going to be offering some motivation and some great tips on today's episode. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2:
You're listening to the Debt Free Dad podcast with Brad Nelson. Brad and his co-hosts experienced the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck before learning the fundamentals of financial security. They are now on a mission to empower regular people to pay off their debt for good and enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Keep listening for inspirational interviews, tips, tricks and practical advice to gain financial freedom.
Brad:
Hey, how's everyone doing today? You can find us on Facebook, tiktok, youtube and Instagram. Just search Brad Nelson or Debt Free Dad and, as always, welcome to today's show. Remember to get all the resources, show notes and links for today's show. You can head over to thedebtfreedadpodcast. com and check out episode 193. Again, that's thedebtfreedadpodcast. com, episode 193. And you can also find all of our other episodes there as well, and you can check out the YouTube videos there. So today we wanted to talk about this topic. We had a question come in and, quite honestly, guys, I mean, we get this question quite a bit here. In fact, if you go to our website, debtfreedad. com, there is a actual freebie that we give away to people about what do you do if you're behind on bills and how do you get that turned around. And it's been on our website for years and I got to tell you it's probably one of the top outside of our free workshop Life Without Payments. It's one of the top areas that a lot of people are signing up for, because we know a lot of people struggle with this. It's like you know, they want to get out of debt, they want to get back to square one, they want to build an emergency fund. But how do you do that when you're just behind all the time? You're constantly playing catch up and where do you even begin? And we actually got a question and I want to share this. This just actually came over, I believe, on yeah, it was our life without payments. Facebook group page it's free group, by the way. If you're not a part of that group, just search life without payments and Facebook and get you into that community. It's free. We got thousands of people that are in there and they're having these conversations every day. This is a question that came over from Jess. She says okay, everyone, I need help. Our bills are more than our income and right now they are all late, because I was out of a job for a month and right now I'm only working part time. I have called all the credit cards to see if they have any kind of financial hardship programs and they don't and couldn't work with me either. We currently have no car insurance either. I'm at a loss, haven't even really bought stuff we don't need as well. I'm stressing out about all of this and I can't get caught back up. I can't even have an emergency fund because of not making enough money and how, and now we have more bills than our income. I have no idea how to get caught back up. Please help. And we had quite a few comments that were on this. But I thought you know there's a lot of people out there that are probably dealing with this right now and I thought it would just be a really great episode just kind of not only answer this question and hopefully offer some tips and some motivation to get through something like this, but also to offer our perspective and what we've dealt with. And Kati, you have mentioned you know you dealt with some of this when you first got started and you started joining Roots, so can you share a little bit about how that worked for you?
Kati:
Yep, this was me like five or six years ago, when I was just about to start Roots, and the first couple of months probably as well. It was just I was taking on a new car payment. Oh, deja vu, because I just had to start doing that again this week as well with my new car. But I'm in a much better place. So five, six years ago, when I first joined Roots, I was I wrote down everything that I was spending and it was $500 more per month than I was bringing in for income. And I'm like, how does this even happen? But guess what, I was just charging it to all of my credit cards because, oh, I'll just pay it off, you know. But all my credit cards were like maxed out and I couldn't charge anymore because I'm like okay, now I'm like really out of money. Not that credit card is actual money, because you owe it. But it was a matter of do I pay my credit card bill or my electric bill? And one of Brad's rules is protect this house. And he's like um duh, you need a place to live, you need your lights on, you have to pay your electric bill, and like but if I don't pay my credit card, my credit score will be like awful. And he's like, don't worry about that. And I you didn't, actually I wouldn't know. I, I, you said something that was like, oh duh, like I had tried to call the credit card companies and I I would always be late because it was due on the 13th and I got paid on the 15th. So I was always floating that payment for those two days and just praying my direct deposit came in before that one cleared, or else I was going to have another overdraft fee and a bank fee from the credit card company. And I called them. I'm like, can you just move my due date to the 15th? So two days. They wouldn't. They wouldn't work with me on the interest rate, they wouldn't work with me like on a payment plan and nothing. So I'm like, well, screw you. Like I'm not going to give you my money If you're not going to work with me. Like I need to prioritize what's important. I have to do my utilities my house, my rent, my car like do the important things. And yeah, my score went down a little bit. I was only late for a month or two on it. But then I got caught up because finally I had my priorities in order and writing down that budget and seeing how much I was spending versus bringing in, it's like, okay, we got to put the brakes on because what am I doing? And that was a big eye opener. So that was me at that time and I didn't go out to eat, I don't go to Starbucks, I don't drink coffee. I'm like what could I possibly be spending all this extra money on? But it was clothes and my weekly trips through Target wandering the aisles. It's like I don't need three bags of cookies, I don't need the brand name of everything, right, buy generic, shop at Aldi, it's. There's little things that make a huge difference.
Brad:
So can you talk a little bit just about that mentality of you were already, you knew you were already behind, but yet you were still doing some of those things. Was that just to make yourself feel better? Pause.
Kati:
Yeah, it was a. It was a temporary bandaid to make the. Oh, this sucks as my part of part of my life, but I didn't understand. When you emotionally shop, you're spending more money. Yeah, and that just doesn't help either right but going out to eat and all that kind of stuff, it's like, oh, that's where all my money is going. I cut cable out.
Brad:
I did a lot of trimming of my spending yeah, I know so when I was married to Sarah and when she started getting out of debt this before we got married, so this is and 12 years ago probably, she's in a very similar situation as you and she paid off 33,000 dollars in 11 months. It's crazy, but same situation. You know behind, and in every single bill that she had, she was behind in it. And I remember you know some of the stuff that she was still doing. She was doing a lot of that still shopping. She's still getting her nails done and I would ask her, I would be like, why? So can I just ask, without me feeling like making you feel Bad, which didn't work out real well, by the way. But you know, why are you spending money when we're so behind on things? And she would say, well, it makes me feel better. I'm working as hard as I can. I can't get caught back up, and this is what I do for myself and this is the one thing that makes me feel better and I'm gonna do it. And I said, okay, that's fine, well, we can keep some of those things in there for now, but I want to just, let's just Rearrange this. Let's get you on a new plan. Let's let's figure this out, and, month by month, we'll take a month by month, but it was, it was. It was interesting how she decided to cut a lot of that stuff out. Once she had the plan and it started to work, she was much more willing to be like I don't need this stuff and I'm gonna I'm gonna work through this now. Again, that's not everybody's situation, by the way. The reason I'm glad that Kati brought that up, though, is because there's a lot of people, though, that still are doing that. There are spending money even when they're behind on things. They say they want to get caught back up, and I see it as a financial coach all the time. It's like, when I go, have you, have you go through, look your past spending, they're finding things they're like oh I forgot about that, oh I forgot about this, right, and they may not be huge amounts of money, but there's still maybe some spending that's going on that that you can take a look at. So I would say that's kind of the first thing that I would share if, if you're in a situation like this, we're like this individual like Jess, who's behind, the first thing I'm gonna have you do right away is just go back and look through your spending. Where are you spending your money when? Where are you spending? Look at your bank account. Look at your credit cards. Look at Venmo, look at cash app. Look at all these buy now, pay later programs. Look at where you're if you're using cash. Save your receipts, like just get a feel for where your money is going. And I would say most people who are living paycheck to paycheck or behind-our-bills have had most again, not everybody, but most don't really have a True sense of where all of their money is going, because they're so unorganized and things are all over the place and that, unfortunately, is what causes a lot of the stress, guys. For a lot of people, it's just they don't, they just have nothing to really rely on and they're just constantly playing defense and One crisis to the next, and that just creates a lot of stress.
Kati:
And it's not like oh, go ahead, ryan.
Ryan:
I was just gonna say I think that and that's what leads, I think, a lot of people to that spending. Right, it's like you don't feel in control, you don't feel like you can make any progress, like it's all hopeless. So I'm gonna just go buy this thing, cuz it's gonna make me feel better and what I mean. I'll just be in the same boat I am next month, but at least I'll have this thing that I want. And I think, like you do have a plan in place. Once you start seeing things on paper, it starts it's almost. I know that was for us like when we laid everything out and you see what you're spending, it was easier to say I Spend that on that, I don't need to spend that on that. But when you don't do that, you just don't, you're not thinking about it, so you you'll go spend the money right and look at everything.
Brad:
Look at everything. What are you? What are you spending on insurance? What do you spend it on your cell phone bills? What do you spend it like? Question everything and as you're going through there and just ask yourself the questions like, do we need to spend it? Are we getting the best price? You know making sure that every single dollar counts when you're in this situation and Ideally you guys, one if you're in this situation, this isn't gonna be forever like we, just like Kati's not living this way anymore after five years of doing this, like it's way different.
Kati:
Way, way, way better, way less. Right, you have to think of it kind of like someone who's like I need to lose weight and they aren't willing to do portion control. Like I'm not gonna name names, my mom is not listening oh, she probably is actually, but she was like oh. I need to lose some weight and I said, well, if you follow this, you just have to cut down on portions. She's like but then I'll still be hungry. And I'm like, yeah, I guess. But if you eat less food, then Like, why does that not make sense that if you do less food, you won't? Yes, you might be hungry at first, but eventually your body will get used to a little bit less food on your plate.
Ryan:
What your mom's saying makes perfect sense to me.
Chris:
So and what was your mom's name? Again, no.
Kati:
Mom, her name is mom, but your but your mom. I love you so much.
Brad:
But the reality is though, you're not, you're not wrong, you know, and I think you know, we and again, this isn't everybody I want to just confirm, because we'll get people outside as messages and be like you guys are way off basis, like I have no money, I have no spending, but there, this happens. I see it all the time, and that's why I think it's important that we bring it up, because there's still spending that's going on.
Kati:
I was going to target for groceries, but it was the five other things that I happened to pick up from the dollar bins every time.
Brad:
Right.
Kati:
Four times a week that Right Adds up. Now I'm pulling up my gas buddy app and saying, ok, which gas is two ninety nine? I filled up for two eighty nine the other day I was so excited versus everything else is like three twenty nine. I'm like I'm going to drive an extra two miles to get you know 30 cents a gallon savings, especially when I'm getting really low. And all of those little things add up using coupon apps and all of that.
Brad:
So can you? You know you mentioned the word budget. I think all of us obviously can speak to this in our own way of how important a budget's been, not only just getting caught back up but just really manage our finances in general. But you had mentioned a budget was a big part and just reprioritizing. So can you share it? Because that's like the next tip. You know you have to make sure you're on a budget and if you look at statistics I mean right now I think it's almost seven out of ten households, according to Gallup, who did a recent poll on this, don't have a household budget. That's almost 70 percent of people, and then you got about 61 percent that reported that they're living paycheck to paycheck, and I think those two statistics are too alike. Right, it's like if we had more people who are just budgeting, I think we'd have a lot less people who are living paycheck to paycheck because they be paying attention. So, as far as getting caught up, for you like, how much did a budget play a role in that?
Kati:
It's huge. First you have to create one and then you have to follow it. That's the harder part. The first couple of budgets are going to be. We always call it our crappy first budget. Like it's not going to look pretty, it's not going to work the first month, most likely, and it's going to be hard to stick to it. Like you can write it all down but then you actually have to go. Ok, I'm only putting this much towards whatever this month. You have to stick to that plan too. And, yes, emergency emergencies come up. But always stick with your house, whatever your roof is over your head, your car, if you need to, you know, get to your job, your utilities, your lights and everything to stay on in your house and your heat. It's now fall in Wisconsin it's, I'm already freezing. But yeah, just like the important things, you don't need to go out and buy new clothes every single week. I'm going to guess you might need something for work or for school at the beginning of the school year, but how often do you have to really go out and buy new clothes and shoes and things like that? Sometimes you just have to stop for a while, right?
Brad:
Well, I think, when it comes to the budget, I think the most important part is just prioritizing the necessities and so, so.
Chris:
So that's what I was going to say is we're talking about Jess's question here and there's the financial coach part of me that's saying be careful of answering just Jess's specific situation, because we don't know all the details. But what we do know is there's a lot of Jesses out there in the world, right, there are a lot of them out there who their bills are more than their income. And, yeah, you've got to analyze where am I spending my money? You've got a started budget, but at some point Brad you're right, and Kati touched on this earlier there's got to be priorities. There has to be what is the most important thing. I think a roof over your head. Do you think you're stressed now? Imagine being out on the streets, homeless or living in your car. How much more stressful would that be? So let's put a roof over our head. That's got to be number one priority. I don't care who's calling me, I don't care who's bugging me, but I'm going to make that rent payment or I'm going to make that mortgage payment. I'm going to make it on time before I do anything else, and then I'm going to put food in my stomach and I might have to portion control. All right, that might be part of it to keep the food budget down, but at least I'm going to eat, because if you think you're stressed now, imagine how it feels to not have food in your stomach and to go days without eating so that you can pay your credit card bill. No, you've got to eat, you've got to keep. Like you mentioned, it's cold there. Well, it's been cold here in North Carolina and Georgia the last couple of days and it's only going to get colder. You got to make sure you keep the heat on, keep the lights on. The cable may be questionable, right. Internet may be questionable. Cell phone may be questionable. So there's certain utilities that have got to be water. You've got to have electricity. You've got to have heat, okay, and then transportation, you're right. So Jess mentioned not having car insurance. Well, if you can't get to and from work of course there's sometimes other options depending on where you live You're not going to keep having that income and it's only going to get worse. So there's some people you've got to say no to and there's certain things that you have to say yes to. So what were you going to say, brad?
Brad:
I was going to say but Chris, what about my mom saying that I should pay my credit card bill because my credit score is really important, like, that's why, how important is your?
Chris:
credit card. How important is your credit score when you're living out on the streets, Homeless? How am I going to buy stuff? How am I going to buy stuff, though?
Brad:
Chris.
Chris:
You don't? I mean, I get that point Right. Right, this is for the Jesses out there who analyzed their spending and, brad, you know there are some of them that they do right now have more bills and income Right, even if they cut bare bones to everything. What does that person do? Or what does that family do? You're right, they're going to be getting credit card calls. They're going to be getting calls or people telling them to take care of your credit score. As far as important thing no, the most important thing is to keep a roof over your head, to have somewhere to lay down at night, to go to sleep Right, to not starve, to have food in your stomach. The credit card companies can kiss off. While I'm concerned and I've had the tell clients that and, brad, you've had the tell clients that- before many times. Yep, that's right. And the ones that listen and the ones that do it come out of the back end better off, and that's when they realize you know what. That credit score wasn't as important, because I can live to fight another day when I've got a roof over my head, when I've got food in my stomach, when I'm warm and I feel taken care of. And we went into do a whole episode on. Was it as those hierarchy of needs, right, it's on point and figure out what's the most important things and if that's all you have the money for, those are the things that you do, right? Nothing else.
Kati:
And like it doesn't mean you don't eat. You could swap out cereal or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of you know going out to Culver's or whatever your fast food of choice is every couple of days and like, just make. Yes, your kids can be picky and you know what they're not going to know if it's not the name brand cereal, if you just hide it from them, you know. Feed them what is cheaper, those kinds of things. And yes, definitely prioritize, because being homeless in Wisconsin is way worse than being homeless in Florida right now.
Brad:
So if you're. If you are looking for some extra tips on starting a budget, though, and wondering, like, how do I even go on that? Make sure you check out episode number 126 that we did. It's all about budgeting for beginners. That'll give you a lot of great tips to get started with, but, yes, prioritizing your necessities first. I think, over and above figuring out how you're going to get caught up on past due, credit cards and things like that, is the most important thing.
Kati:
And, just as a note, five years ago at this point, when I was buying a new car, my credit card, my credit score, sucked to begin with after I paid off $130 plus thousand dollars in debt. And now I have a great credit score and, yes, it helped a lot more this time when I had to get a new car and had to finance part of it. But I have pretty much ignored my credit score for the last five years because there's if I don't have money to buy it in the first place, I probably shouldn't be buying most of the things that I was using credit cards on.
Chris:
So you mean to tell me that by not focusing on your credit score, It got better? I just focused on getting a good set.
Brad:
Do you know how many times we see that, though In Roots, all the time people will be like I can't believe my credit score went up, I haven't even been paying attention to it. We see it all the time.
Chris:
Good good. Keep not paying attention to it.
Brad:
Yeah, right, right, don't make it the main focus, right.
Kati:
It's just the number that tells you how good at debt you are Right.
Brad:
Right. So the next area you want to focus on once you get your budget together, is kind of like what Kati was mentioning to earlier, that's, figuring out who do you owe and drawing a line right. So not everyone's going to work with you, as we pointed out. In just a situation those credit card companies aren't really willing to work with you. One suggestion that would give you is don't give up. Call back, because sometimes the person that you're talking to may not be able to work with you. But if you keep calling back and I'm not saying you got to call back every single day, all day, right, but call back and make another attempt and be like hey, I called you guys. I know you guys said that you guys weren't able to work with me, but here's my situation, here's where I'm at. I've got a plan. I just need to get you know, I need a little bit of time and just work with them, right, and some of them may not work with you, which I think is garbage. You know, when these companies get you all wrapped up in these products and then a lot of them just are, like you know, have a nice day when things go wrong, right, and for a lot of people like Jess, like you. Just you know you lost out on work. I mean, how many people have that happen to them? It's not like Jess just woke up one day it was like I'm not paying you guys, right. This is just life stuff, right? So you know, some of these companies won't work with you, so but like that's their mentality, brad?
Chris:
is that their mentality? Is they think that people are just calling to scam them? I mean, I can only assume right, but you know and I know you because you've worked with many clients as well who you gave them the very advice that we just talked about If you don't have the money to pay them, don't pay them. Two or three months down the road, how many of those credit card companies and I'll calling you asking you what they can, what can you do?
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Chris:
How the tables turn right Now. Granted, yeah, I might hurt your credit score a little bit, but they'll. They'll work with you when you don't pay them. It's amazing.
Brad:
Right. So when we, when we talk about drawing a line, though, that's where you know you want to. You want to work with the people that are willing to work with you and and focus on helping. You know, and getting those ones paid and the other ones, like, like Chris and Kati have said, you just you don't pay them and get yourself back on your feet. Focus on the necessities. You want to make sure obviously you're focusing on making more income. That's a big one too, guys, and this is another area where I see a lot of people because you're tired, you know you're worn out, you know you're you're you're broke, you know you're you're behind in bills and you know you might have kids at home and and it's just exhausting to have to worry about this stuff day in and day out, and the last thing you want to do is work more. Right, it's like just this constant hamster wheel that we get ourselves on, but you got to understand, with a good plan, it's temporary and and you can get yourself out of it, like when Sarah was getting out of debt before we even started this business, and she was doing this like she was working three jobs one full-time job, a part-time, waitressing job and she also started direct sales business, which did very well, and she ended up doing that full-time for many years and but I didn't see her for 11 months. It was like it wasn't what. Am I actually dating somebody? You know, because she was working so hard at getting out of debt, you know. So it's possible, but you got to put in an immense amount of effort to get caught back up. But once you do remember, it's temporary because with ongoing consistency, budgeting, doing the stuff that we talk about on this podcast, you'll hopefully get yourself to a point where you don't have to worry about some of this stuff anymore, where when things happen, when life happens, you've got a plan, You've got an emergency fund, you have less debt, you have less payments and you know you can weather a lot of these storms without having to be, you know, so stressful.
Kati:
Yeah, I sold stuff. I did grocery pick up and delivery for a couple of local grocery stores. I did a direct sales business. Like I found different ways to make more money, to Get caught up and then continue to pay off debt as well.
Brad:
Yeah, the one caution I do want to throw out there, when we talk about getting talking and reaching out to your creditors, is we're talking about most current people you're behind, and with right. I wouldn't recommend like, if you're in a situation where you're behind on current debts Say a couple credit cards, maybe a car payment, maybe you know Insurance bill, whatever right but if you have older debts, things that have been out there for a while and they're not collecting or calling you, I would not recommend that you call them and let's, let's wake these people up to right. Let's just leave those people alone because if they're not calling you, we'll deal with them guys later. All right, we want to deal with the people that were most recently behind on, people that are gonna start calling us if, if payments don't get made, all right. So I just want to make sure we we distinguish between the two of those and we don't get you guys calling a bunch of people that you owe money to, that that aren't really even collecting on you anymore. There's different ways to go about that, but we're not gonna get into all that on this episode, but leave those people alone.
Kati:
And I was gonna say from medical debt. Never, ever put it on a credit card. If you can work out a financing plan with them, even if it's $10 a month, as long as you are paying that, they can't Send you to collections or charge you interest, right.
Brad:
Yeah, yeah, they don't charge you interest, right, yeah, we're making work.
Chris:
Well and this is Chris talking, may not necessarily be Brad or Ryan. Kati, if Amber were here If somebody's willing to work with you, you may not be able to pay them, you may have to put them off, but if they do continue to work with you, I think you owe it to eventually, once you get yourself on solid footing, to pay them what you owe them. Don't go into this with the mentality that what if I don't pay them, they'll settle and I can get out of it for a lot less. I I've always preached as a financial coach Get yourself in the solid footing and then eventually pay it off, as you agreed, because very few people are bankrupt. Now, if you've got it, a Creditor who's not willing to work with you and they're they're being awful and terrible and Eventually they want to settle, that's a different story. But don't go into it, I guess, with the mentality of if I don't pay these credit cards, eventually they'll settle, settle, I can get them paid off for a lot less. I don't think that's the mentality you go into this with, but you certainly go into it with Well, I just don't have the money to pay you right now. We'll get to you later, like you said right.
Brad:
Yeah, I think being open, that and transparent, being nice is also a good thing too, you know, and working with them, I think, is only gonna serve you well and and for a lot of the people that we work with, as long as they go with that attitude, can very much, like Chris said, a lot of them have a lot of luck getting caught back up and getting those back Completely caught up or completely paid off eventually, right, especially and we're not gonna talk about settlements or anything like that today, but I like those right where they come back, like you, mentioned, Chris, will. They'll come back to you and be like what are you willing to pay? What are you willing to pay? Like what can we settle this? Can we get out some? Then we get into some fun stuff, or you could start paying off a lot of debt. Now, there there's different things that get involved with that. We're not gonna get all that episode, but it's it's not always necessarily a bad thing that you're behind, because you can use it to your advantage in some ways too. But again, that's another show. We'll talk about that other time. I think the biggest thing I want to talk about, I think the biggest mistake most people make who are in this situation is this last one. The crisis comes, they figure out a temporary solution. It's like a band-aid that they put on it and that pain of that situation goes away and they don't actually keep going and they don't fix it. So I see this all the time. People will reach out to us to be like Brad, I've heard your show, I've heard a class from you. I Got this situation going on. What do I do? Tell them what to do? They, you know, do a thing like they put the band-aid on it, but then they don't continue Like working on their finances. They just say, okay, that crisis is over, I'm gonna go back to my old ways, and then the next crisis comes and then have to do it all over again, right? So I think the key is is make sure you have accountability, make sure you're sticking with it. Don't just get caught back up and say, okay, we're good. No, like how can we make sure and ensure that this never happens again? And we actually can do much better with our finances? We can build an emergency fund, we can have less debt, so when a job loss happens or a medical issue happens and we're out of work for a while, like we're gonna be okay, we're not gonna have to deal with this again. And I think this is where most people mess up. They just, they just quit. Once the pain of the crisis is over, they just stop and they go back to their old ways of living. That's why we have an emergency fund and it's one of the first things we do, because guess what Emergency has happened all the time, all the time so the totally awesome debt freedom planner is helping so many people make consistent progress with their finances, whether that be building emergency funds, paying down bills, budgeting, tracking paydays, saving up for larger purchases, goal planning and Planning for those irregular yearly expenses that always seem to catch you by surprise. Now the debt freedom planner will help you take the stress Out of managing your money. And if the thought is running through your mind, hey, I just need to have a simple tool to get my finances together. This planner is perfect for you. Head over to the real debt free dad. com. Click on the debt freedom planner in the menu at the top of the page and order your debt freedom planner today. All right, that's all means. It's time for the celebrations of the show, and today we're kicking off with Aaron Hood. Aaron says I was under the budget allotment. I set aside to pay off my credit card for my trip, so it's paid off already, which is a huge win. She says my emergency fund now is just under $7,000 and her goal is a 10 grand. Aaron, good for you, congratulations. That's a great place to be.
Chris:
And Kati mentioned a few minutes ago why you need an emergency fund because emergencies happen all the time. What I found was that Eventually yes, emergencies happen, but you don't use your emergency fund you just sort of figure out how to move money around your budget. Well, why do I mention that Hillary Morse, into the month, had lots of unexpected medical expenses but was able to pay everything without touching savings?
Brad:
Yeah, that's incredible.
Kati:
And then Rhonda Garner Bateman was asked to go to a concert and had to tell their friend, I can't go. Usually they would say, of course, and put it on a credit card. And then her husband said there are some things that he wanted to buy. And she told him well, then we need to make a list, prioritize it, what it's gonna cost and save up for those items. So way to go, rhonda. That's exactly what we just kind of talked about.
Brad:
Rhonda's dropping the hammer.
Kati:
Proud of you, Rhonda.
Ryan:
And Becky Spahn house. I'm excited that I made enough in tips this week to pay my car payment, so I'm going to use the other money I have been saving towards to pay off another credit card. Getting her done one credit card in a time.
Brad:
Yeah, that is awesome, becky. Congratulations and congratulations to all you guys. Hey, if you're just getting started with our podcast or maybe you've been listening for some time and you're interested in how you can get started on the road to financial freedom, go visit our website at debtfreedad. com and sign up for our free a life without payments workshop, where I'm going to show you the first steps that have helped tens of thousands of people just like you and I kick Financial stress and worry for good. We'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening to the debt free dad podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, tiktok, youtube and Instagram at Brad Nelson debt free dad. If you found value in today's episode, please leave a rating and review. We so appreciate it for resources, show notes and links mentioned in today's show. Visit balancedcents. com, that's . Catch you next week.
