Episode 201 - How to Reduce Stress and Crush Your Finances in 2024
Maybe you've tried everything to improve your finances and nothing seems to work. Or maybe your finances stress you out so much you're just not sure how to get started, or maybe you're struggling with what you should focus on first. We've all been there. Today we are sharing a variety of tips that will give you a clear direction to help you reduce stress and crush your finances over the next year, so you can start to save more and pay off more debt.
What You'll Learn
- Discover tips to help you reduce financial stress and improve your finances in 2024.
- We did it! And so can you. All five of the cohosts on the podcast have navigated their way out of debt. Hear our take and what helped us most.
- If you're overwhelmed on how to get started, get a step by step plan so you know exactly what to do to make better progress in 2024.
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
Connect With Brad
- Website - https://www.therealdebtfreedad.com
- Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/therealdebtfreedad/
- Private Facebook Group - http://www.facebook.com/lifewithoutpayments
- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brad_nelson_debt_free_dad/
- TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@debt_free_dad
- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtbAadBrWLL81CZbA6sI5pg
Thanks For Listening
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Episode Transcript:
Brad:
Maybe you've tried everything to improve your finances and nothing seems to work. Or maybe your finances stress you out so much you're just not sure how to get started. Or maybe you're struggling with what you should focus on first. Hey, we've all been there. Today, we're going to be sharing a variety of tips that will give you a clear direction to help you reduce stress and crush your finances over the next year, so that you can start to save more money and pay off more debt. 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 success. 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, guys, welcome to the show today. As I mentioned in the intro, we are going to be sharing some great suggestions today to help you reduce stress and end paycheck to paycheck living, but we also have got a free workshop to take this a step further. So, for those of you who are going to be listening to this episode and you're like, hey, I really want to get started with this, we're going to be sharing some details about that here later in the show. So, guys, it is a brand new year. So, hey, first time back in fifth season of the Debt Free Dad podcast. You guys excited about that. That was like so weak. We got Ryan the reporter with us tonight who seems to have lost his boom stand for his microphone and he's muted.
Ryan:
Hey, we're off to a great start for the new year.
Brad:
Awesome start for the new year. But hey, we're going to make it work here today. But hey, check this out, guys when it comes to New Year's resolutions, according to a new survey from Forbes Health one poll of 1,000 US adults this was done here just late in 2023. Improving finance is the second most popular resolution of the new year, which doesn't really surprise me. Sometimes it's number one, but number two and I'm sure you guys can probably relate to that. Did you guys ever like approach the new year when you guys were broke and saying like I need to make this resolution number one? Are you guys resolution people? I think we've had this conversation in some of the New Year's resolution once we've done in the past. I know for me I just didn't really care too much. I didn't really set too many of those, but what did you guys? Did you guys focus on any of this stuff when you were broke?
Kati:
I was always going to do it. I just didn't have any kind of plan or any idea how to do it.
Amber:
Yeah, I like the thought was there, but when I woke up in the morning it's like whatever.
Chris:
Yeah right, we talked about this about a year ago, setting goals and resolutions and of course, I set resolutions every year, and probably number one or number two every year was improved by finances and getting shape or lose weight.
Kati:
Yeah.
Chris:
So I'm guessing that was number one I feel like.
Amber:
Those are the top two.
Chris:
Easily.
Brad:
Yeah, I would have to agree I would say health. Health and finances, probably easily mental health and all that stuff. I would say usually the top couple, two or three.
Ryan:
And then, usually January 2nd, I was like looking at something I couldn't afford and probably buying it, yeah.
Brad:
So, anyways, we want to share some tips to help you guys get organized and and really to reduce a lot of stress here in the new year and throughout the year. And today we just want to share some simple tips, just some simple things that you can do on a regular basis. And I think that's where a lot of people kind of get stuck is. You know, what do I focus on? Because when they think of personal finance, you think of all of these different aspects of personal finance and you know interest rates and debt and savings and methods to pay down debt and you know, do I invest? And there's always these questions, and sometimes all these questions just are overwhelming and you don't really have any sort of step by step plan to really implement anything kind of like what you said, Kati. You wanted to do something about it, but you don't really have any like method to really go about it. And the point of today's show is really to kind of give you guys a little bit of that step by step process. So number one I kind of already let it out is really just to get organized. You guys hear us talk about this on the show all the time. And number one thing that we want you to do when you start just about anything with what we talk about is it's time to become just really aware of where your money is going. So go back and print out the last three to six months of your bank statements and one of the reasons why this is important. We actually mentioned this on an episode probably like six months or so ago, but studyfightsorg found that 45% millennials have no idea what's in their bank account, and the study also found that they spend 150 plus more hours scrolling social media. So it's not really a time thing. It's not that they're saying like I don't have enough time to do it, it's just a priority thing. You know they're not paying attention to their money. They're spending time doing other things. So step number one if you want to reduce financial stress and really crush your finances here is you got to understand like where is everything going. So get everything into one place, and can you guys share a little bit in your experience of when you actually truly got a good picture over your money was going and what that feeling was like for you guys?
Amber:
I was embarrassed almost like because of how much money we were spending on like eating out and different things, when we printed our three to six months expenses and, oh my gosh, I was embarrassed. I was like, well, there's our pay raise because we're not eating out as much anymore.
Kati:
Yeah, I was definitely overspending. Like when I wrote it down it was over $800 a month going out versus what was coming in from paychecks, and I'm just like that's a real punch in the gut, because it just was like ugh, this is terrible. No wonder I feel stressed all the time.
Chris:
Well.
Kati:
I think for me it was just shock.
Chris:
It was just shock Like holy smokes. And then you sort of do a double take and then you assume that you've rounded something or you hit something in the calculator wrong and you go back through and you add it again and you get the same answer and you're like no, that's not right. And you do it again and then all said that moment that that's right. Wow, and then after you pick yourself up off the ground, if you passed out, then the question is next you know, what do you do about it? So that's sort of was my reaction and I've always taught people that students, people that I've coached is the first time that you do this, it is not gonna be pretty, you're not gonna like what you see.
Brad:
Yeah, I remember feeling pretty angry about it, you know. And you know because I think it's easy to play the victim or, you know, point the finger at everybody else. I think a lot of us probably have done that, you know and we say like well it's, it's my job's fault or I don't make enough money, or whatever. It might be right, but the reality comes when you actually look at what's really going on. For many of us and not everybody, but for many of us it really is a it is really a hard problem. It's a me problem and I remember being really angry about it and it took a couple of days to kind of get over that. But the reality is is like that's that's step one. It's a hard step for a lot of us to face and in all the years that I've been doing this and I've asked people to go back and do this, that I haven't won one person ever come back to us and say like I was totally not surprised by anything I found. I knew exactly where everything was going. And you know, every single time we hear what we've all said, it's like we were shocked as to where a lot of our money was going. So number two, once you get organized, is really about making yourself more aware than it's. It's about finding those areas of wasteful spending and can you improve or cut things out. So, for instance, look at things like a big one. We see often convenience store stops from a lot of people, a lot of us, you know, are aren't say we're very busy people. Let's say we're not, you know, controlling a lot of our time or doing great time management skills in the morning, maybe we're not packing enough food, or you know. And a lot of us will just fall victim to convenience store stops. And I have a lot of our members that do this and you know it's a soda here or a sandwich there and it's like, but it's like every day, added up over and over and over again. One of the I rarely stop at convenience stores for this reason. But I had to recently, excuse me, and I stopped to got a gallon of milk. It was twice the price of going to the grocery store, which meanwhile was just like a block away, just like. Why didn't I stop at the grocery store? But you know a lot of us are finding that you know, if you're stopping at convenience stores or maybe it's going out to eat too much. Or maybe it's subscriptions I mean, it could be multiple things and also it could be just services that you need. But maybe we need to shop those things around. Maybe it's time to just reconsider like, hey, are we getting the best price for the value in the end, the thing that we're buying right?
Kati:
Brad, I just have to ask did you stop at Kwik trip or a different gas station?
Brad:
It was a Casey's.
Kati:
Alright, that's why Not a Kwik trip.
Brad:
A lot of people probably can't even understand a Kwik trip here, If you're from Wisconsin, you get Kwik trip. But yeah, it was a Casey's. But yeah, that's one of the reasons why I cut that out. But many years ago, when I was broke, convenience store shopping for me was was just a normal thing. You know, you, when you needed something, you just stopped and got it. But you know it's just. You tell yourself like, oh, it's just a few dollars here, it's just a few dollars there, but all those few dollars over time really add up to big amounts. So the other thing too is, when it comes to shopping, your services is asking yourself the question of you know, when you're looking at line by line, where your money is going, ask yourself like what are we gonna keep, what can we look to reduce, what can we look to get rid of and what can we look to shop around? Alright, those are the things that you want to ask yourself. Go through every single line item and ask yourself, based on what we want to achieve this year and how we want to feel about our finances at the end of 2024, how do we want to go through about, go through our expenses and and see what of those things that we get rid of, keep, shop around or reduce?
Chris:
And the key thing there is sometimes you just get rid of a few things temporarily. I know we've talked about this a lot on this podcast, but we're not asking you, or you shouldn't be asking yourself. It's probably a better way to do it, but don't ask yourself to give up everything forever. Sometimes you got to give up a few things temporarily and you can always come back to them later on when you're in a better financial shape.
Kati:
Yeah, absolutely. And I found like when I cut out cable and all of that, I did not go back like not having cable TV, not watching the news. I'm actually way less stressed, just not having the news on like I used to. And your internet bill like you should always shop that every year, at least once a year, because there's always a deal out there for someone else.
Brad:
Isn't that amazing? I haven't. This is the first year, so I cut satellite TV out. Man, that must have been 2012, ish, and I haven't had any sort of subscription TV since then, until this year, because my son is really into Milwaukee Bucks basketball and I could not get the games anywhere. Obviously, I'm in a much different place, so we went into another subscription. But again, I can cancel it anytime. So once the season is over, I'll cancel it and I'll just re up the next season, because I don't really watch a lot of the TV. But yeah, I would agree, it's amazing to me how much we've saved on TV over the years because we've cut it out.
Chris:
Well, I didn't do cable other than during football season just because I like watching college football, but now that's been ruined for me, so I may never do cable again. Thanks to ESPN. I shouldn't say that.
Brad:
See, I watched so little TV. Chris, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Chris:
Well, all the college football fans out there probably have an opinion about the playoffs. I'll just leave it at that.
Brad:
Okay, all right. So the next area is once you become more aware is really now creating a new what we would call as a budget or an income and expense plan. All right, now, if you're wondering how you get started, great news we actually have an episode coming up very soon. That's all about creating a monthly budget. All right, we're going to be sharing some great tips there. So look for that episode coming up here in the near future. But essentially, your budget is just your income minus your expenses, and that's it. And really the goal with your budget first and foremost is to make sure you prioritize all of your necessities. So the reason why we want you to make sure you understand where what all your expenses are is because now you know, going through that list, what are the absolute things that we need to have every single month in our budget in order to survive. So make sure you're prioritizing everything like your rent, your mortgage, your basic food expenses, things like prescriptions, transportation needs. You want to make sure you're protecting your house? All right, that's priority number one when you budget. Once those things are paid, then you can go through with the rest of your money and kind of reprioritize based on most important, the least important how we're going to spend the rest of that money. All right, now the goal obviously is to make sure that every single dollar that you have coming into that budget has a purpose to it, because if you don't, we tend to find that extra money gets spent. So don't have like a line item in your budget that's called extra money. Now, I know we all like that. I still like it sometimes like, oh, we have extra money, but never fails. That money is spent almost every single time because it's just well, it's just there. There's really no purpose for it. So we use it and we spend it, right. So? But when you're getting out of debt, when you're stressed, when you want to save more money, when you want to improve your finances, like every single dollar you have coming in from that income is important and it needs a purpose or a goal.
Chris:
So this episode is about reducing stress, not eliminating stress. Correct, correct, because you can't eliminate stress, but you can reduce it, and I see this question on your Facebook groups quite often. I don't have enough money to pay out my bills. What order should I do them? And that's the gist of the question. I think it's important for everybody to hear what you just said. The most important thing is keeping a roof over your head. Nothing should jeopardize that. It's a lot easier to keep your stress level down when you know that you've got a roof over your head. Right Utilities, keep the heat on right, keep the water on. Now the other ones that we just talked about cable, some of those questionable right, but make sure that you can live comfortably. You've got water, you've got electricity, heat, so forth, air conditioning in the summer if you need it. That you keep food. How many times, Brad, have you heard of people say I'm just not going to eat, or they stop eating in order to pay their credit card bills? Yep, you talk about reducing stress. What's more stressful than when you're hungry? So make sure that you eat, make sure that you keep transportation, some form of fashion to and from work, and then, obviously, clothing to some minimal degree that you need to function. If you've got those things without going into too many you know mazlows hierarchy of needs concepts here when you've got those you can live to fight another day and everything else. Just try to. It is what it is. Yeah, you may have credit card bills and other bills that you need to pay, but if you don't have enough money to pay them this is where you're talking about We've got to sort of develop a pecking order. Okay, but knowing that you've got a roof over your head, under no circumstances put that at risk. When you've got food in your stomach and you can stay warm at night, that, to me, is one of the biggest things that you can do to begin to reduce your stress, so that you can then learn when to find extra income, how to budget and do all the things that we talk about yep, absolutely.
Brad:
Yeah, I can't tell you how many, how many times I've heard and and Kati, I just want to say this real quick, just to bounce off what Chris said is how many people have skipped their light bill and paid a credit card and gotten so behind on their electric bills? And you're either their insurance or you know they skipped a car payment, or you know. There, I see it all the time, I hear about all the time. So that's why we have that rule in place. So go ahead. Sorry, Kati.
Kati:
No, that's okay, because I was literally gonna say that's one of the reasons I actually started. Roots was because I was at a Point where I'm like I don't know how to pay my car payment when I have all these credit card bills and Brad said, no, it's, you have to pay for your car, you have to pay for your rent, like you have to. Because I had moved to Florida thinking, you know, it's okay to be homeless in Florida, I can live out of my car because it's just you know, the beach, so I could do that, and I had I had come to that like I'm okay with this, and it was because I was choosing between Paying credit card bills, because I didn't want to ruin my credit score and I'm like that was just like an aha moment. That Should have been a duh like of course kind of moment.
Brad:
So the next area, once you have your budget created we get this question a lot, Brad should we? Should we prioritize saving or should we prioritize getting out of debt? And At this point I would say, if you're looking to reduce stress or if you're looking to create some security in your life, you want to focus on making the minimum payments. First and number one I would suggest is focus on saving is building yourself A somewhat of a cushion, or what we like to call is just like your your starter emergency fund. Right? The overall majority of people in fact, the last article I read about this back in September of 2023, said that the average person can't handle a $500 emergency expense. It's about 62% of the population, which is crazy. Over six out of ten people can't handle a $500 emergency expense. So we want to get you out of that statistic. So focus on, you know, saving. Like we said, every dollar that you bring into that budget Should have a goal or a purpose. So if you do have, say, extra money after all of your things are paid Well, it's no longer called extra money, that's called we're gonna put this into our savings Until we get this money to a certain point where we feel comfortable. Now for our suggestion. A lot of people say well, brad, what should I start with? Well, our recommendation is typically a thousand to three thousand dollars. You know Three thousand that's I mean shoot a car repair right now is easily a thousand dollars. Sometimes, you know, it's so easy to spend a thousand dollars. It feels like everything's a hundred dollars right now, right. So I mean, when you have an emergency come up, it's usually hundreds of dollars. So that's why you know a thousand, three thousand dollars is a really good goal to shoot for. If you want to build a little bit more, that's fine. But I would say right in that area is a pretty good sweet spot.
Amber:
I mean you say when it is, when it's not like if Happens, like it's coming. Like when we started Getting out of debt, it was the first month maybe my dog got sick. I had to be. You know, we had our emergency fund built really quick and we had to use it right away. Because my dog got sick. And now I'm sitting here with my dog on the floor behind me. He literally just hurt his leg an hour before I came on this podcast, so I'm like just keeping an eye on him. He's been limping. Now I'm like, ah, but I have an emergency fund, so that's the same dog.
Brad:
Is that Clyde?
Amber:
It's Clyde.
Brad:
Okay, and let's be see, let's be real. That dog didn't get sick. That dog ate like what rat poison or mouse poison.
Kati:
I mean it made him sick.
Brad:
Oh, clyde.
Amber:
That's my Clyde, but I have the emergency fund. We have it. It's there for when we need it, and we've needed it multiple times, and then we just keep rebuilding it. I think that's really important, because we would have gone back into debt right now.
Chris:
To the audience out there. I'm sorry, real quick read to the audience out there listening what did? What she just said is the key thing. It's not when, I Mean, it is when, not if. Okay, let me clarify that. Okay, emergencies are going to happen now. Maybe at some point we should do a whole episode on what an emergency is and how you define one. Okay, the difference between that and say, normal card maintenance. But things are going to happen in your life and when you are stressed, having a little bit of money in the bank, goes a long way to just being allowed, allowing you to sort of relax, take a deep breath and live to fight another day, all right. But when you don't have that in place, everything seems like an emergency. But here's the cool thing and I know we've talked about this several times on this show when the audience out there, when you get to the point when your debts pay it off and you've got all this extra money left over per month Even really before then, emergency still happened but you don't feel them. It's sort of like a small road, a bump in the road. It's like running over a rock and going what's that, as opposed to hitting a big speed bump at 40 miles an hour when you notice it, yeah. So the emergencies always happen. But the better you get imagine your money the less you notice them or, I guess, the less Painful, and eventually you get to the point where you don't even need the emergency fund. You just sort of absorb it into your regular budget and you go forward. But you're right, it's, you've got to have that emergency fund in place, because emergency are going to hurt, emergencies are gonna happen.
Brad:
Yeah, well, and the other reason why you want to have it is because you got to break the habit of using debt to save you. That's the other part about it. That's why savings needs to come first, because using habits or using habits, using habits, using debt. It becomes a habit Like anytime, everything, and we're sold this Like how many banks have you gone into or how many financial places have sold you? Well, you're always gonna need a credit card for emergencies, or you get a home equity line of credit for emergencies, or well, no, you build an emergency fund so you don't have to rely on debt to save you for things that we know are eventually going to happen to us. So when you have that emergency fund in place, you use the emergency fund, you stop swiping credit cards, you stop borrowing money, and that stops the habit of using debt all the time. Now, it's not gonna prevent everything. So, guys, I wanna talk about that just real quick, cause I know I don't wanna get too stuck on emergency funds today. But now I know, Kati, you're still working your way out of debt, but the other group of us, you know we've been out of debt for quite a while and we've built larger emergency funds. So can you guys talk like we're beyond the thousand to 3000, we're talking we've built large three to six months. You know savings right. So can you guys talk a little bit about how good that feels now that you have that behind you, being that you're out of debt. Now, like from a financial stress standpoint, how good does that feel to have?
Ryan:
Yeah. So for I'll just say from my perspective, I lost my job earlier this year and I'm not gonna say it didn't suck, but we just we didn't have any of those, we just weren't scared about it. I guess you know it. Kind of like what Chris just said it was a little bit of a bump in the road but because we had the emergency fund, we had things kind of set up and planned for, we just didn't like it wasn't. Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? Like you know, before we got out of debt, if this would have happened, I mean it would have been, you know, within a month we would have been missing bills because, like, what are we gonna do? I need a job and I need it quick. So that's just, that's for me. That's just a very personal story that happened recently to me. That's just. You know, when you have that set up, it's just. I don't have to focus on I gotta get a job tomorrow because otherwise we can't make our rent or our mortgage or pay the car payment or whatever other bills you might have. I mean you just you know you have a very large safety net.
Chris:
So for me, we've been out of debt now for 15 years, one, five, 15 years and we have continued to. I mean, obviously, when you've got money left over every month. We have prioritized savings both for retirement and just saving for the general purpose of saving. So you know, we've kind of gotten beyond the emergency fund we've you know it's the sinking fund, emergency fund, vacation fund, all kinds of funds just all sort of wrapped into one right, because that's what works for us now that we've 20 years almost into doing this whole thing. But I think the big thing in addition to, you know, not feeling the bumps in the road, so to speak, one big result of our savings in general is that when we decided to move, I had the opportunity to do something completely different. That's cool and I don't feel, like with this business, that I have to make money immediately. So many people who start businesses, they needed to generate income from them immediately and a lot of times, unfortunately, that's why the business goes under. So for me, probably a more personal story more recently, is the ability to start a business without the feeling of the need that it has to pay me in order to pay the bills Because we've built so much of a cushion, both being able to open the shop without any debt and then be able to run it now and function so that it has time to build itself and stay sustainable over the long run.
Brad:
Yeah, that's awesome. And I think, yeah, I mean, and I think what people need to understand is that you know, how do I build a large emergency fund? Well, you don't right away. You know, and I think that's the thing that people need to keep in mind is that you don't let this overwhelm you of, okay, how am I gonna build this big emergency fund? Right now, I mean, we're just talking about $1,000 to $3,000. That's what we want you to focus on first. You can't really build a large emergency fund until you start paying down a lot more of your debt, and that comes later, right? So just understand that. You know we don't want you just to stick at $1,000 to $3,000 for the rest of your life. The goal is to get something bigger, but right now, when you're getting started, that's the goal is just to start out small. So the last step I wanna share with you guys here today is just looking ahead at future expenses, and I think this is an area that so many people miss, and why so many people really go into debt is that they're not looking ahead at future expenses that are coming down the pipeline, and I think this is why a lot of debt is created, because we're just not taking the time to prepare and really look towards the future. So, now that you went back through the last three to six months, or maybe even went back and did the last 12 months, start to kind of look at okay, what were some things that came up throughout the year that really kind of caught us off guard? You know, maybe it was back to school expenses, maybe it was the holidays, maybe it was a vacation that you planned for but didn't really plan properly and you had to go into debt for it in order to afford it. You know, it could be multiple things. Maybe it was insurance premiums, could have been taxes that were owed lots of different things, right? So we need to start becoming better prepared for those future expenses. So, rather than just constantly playing defense and looking at like, okay, what's coming up tomorrow and later this week, we need to look at what's coming up the rest of this month with your monthly budget, but what's also coming up the next 90 days? What's coming up the next, like six months? What's coming up the next year? So that way we can use our budget on a monthly basis and start planning and putting that money away so we're not constantly swiping credit cards and using debt in order to afford those things that we know are going to come up. Like, chris, you mentioned, you know maybe we'll have a podcast episode about what is considered an emergency let's let's pick on one specifically. Like your car, like your car is eventually going to need new tires. So this is an opportunity to say hey look, you know, we've been driving this car for three or four years. It's about time to get some new tires. Rather than take advantage of the great financing at the tire shop, we should be saying, okay, we're going to need tires in the next six to 12 months. Here's how much we're going to start putting away now in our monthly budget so that way, we can pay cash for those things when it's time to replace them.
Chris:
Yeah, that's the number one example I used to use with students is tires don't last forever, breaks do not last forever.
Amber:
Tell my husband that.
Chris:
Tell your husband that. Where is he at? I'll tell him right now.
Amber:
They are crunching like crazy right now and I'm like I'm driving the truck from now on until you fix this car. He's a mechanic. It's all my problem, not the money.
Chris:
Those things don't last forever. And you're right, you got a plan for it. Yeah, you know when, when you're driving down the road and I'll say and you get out and you go, oh, what's this still looking thing sticking out of my tire? All right, that's probably going to seem like an emergency at that moment. No, it's poor planning. That's exactly what it is. All right, now I'm not beating those of you, those of you out there who may be in that situation right now. Not beating you up, it's just food for thought down the road. Let's plan for those things so that, when they happen, we've got the money to pay for them and we don't stress over it 100% Well, and.
Ryan:
I think car repairs are one of the number one things that gets people into more debt. By buying another car I know it was for me, I mean, mike the car would start needing repairs. If we need tires, then you would wait, you wouldn't repair anything. So when it was time for repair, it needed tires, it needed brakes, it needed this, it needed that. It's $2,500. I'm just buying a new car and take the $500 payment a month at the time. You know, and that's just kind of what, like what you said. I mean, it's just, it creates a lot of debt because you're unprepared. And then, if you, you know, my daughter had this she spent $1,400 to fix her car and all of her friends were like, why don't you just buy another car? That was the thought. It wasn't like she had the money to fix it, but the thought was, why don't you just buy another car? Because most people again going back and I was there too I didn't have $1,400 to fix my car, but I had enough to trade the car in and make the payment. You know what I mean? It's just, it just the unpreparedness just end. You end up in so much, just so many bad situations doing that. Yeah.
Amber:
Yeah.
Ryan:
Yeah.
Brad:
Absolutely so. To run down this list one more time before we get to celebrations Number one get organized. Number two make yourself more aware of where your money's going. This is going to be recognizing bad habits, making sure you're evaluating your wants versus your needs. Number number three is to create that expense plan, that budget. Number four is to create a savings plan, prioritizing, obviously, emergency fund. And then, last but not least, is start looking ahead at future expenses. So if you want to reduce financial stress and crush your finances here in 2024, then start using these tips now so that you can take control of your money and by doing so, you'll start to feel so much better in just a few months. And all you have to do is just get started. So focus on consistency and, guys, that's going to be the key for all of this. Knowing these tips is just the start. It's actually putting them into action on a consistent basis every single day, going throughout the year and promise, if you do, you're going to feel so much better at the end of this year and you'll start to make much better progress. 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. 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 therealdebtfreedad. com. Click on the Debt Freedom Planner in the menu at the top of the page and order your Debt Freedom Planner today.
Amber:
That sound means it is time for the celebrations of the show. First, we have Marla Alberti, switched my bank accounts and preparing myself to not use credit cards there you go.
Brad:
All about the preparation. We talked about that. Right, normandy Bryant, have another credit card paid off, normandy, congratulations to you.
Chris:
That's awesome and Sonya Coons. I was off budget by $350 last month. Well, why? Because it was the first month that she wasn't regularly tracking, so it made her feel a little bit defeated, but she decided to do her where are you at sheet, and now she's reset and ready to go again.
Brad:
Yeah, there you go, Sonya. It happens, Happens right. All fall off the wagon at some point. Good for you.
Kati:
Definitely. And, anne Ruzitis, I think I'm going to say that right.
Brad:
That is correct, you nailed it.
Kati:
Okay, yes, I was practicing while we were reading, we sold a bunch of extra items from the house and it feels so good to purge. I need to do the same thing, anne.
Ryan:
And Hope Weber. I haven't used a credit card in four months.
Brad:
Yeah, that's incredible hope. So congratulations to you guys and again, congratulations to all of you who are ready to kick off the new year and crush financial stress. And, as I mentioned about this workshop, 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. Sign up for our free 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.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening to the debt free dad podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, tiktok, youtube and Instagram. Just search debt free dad. If you found value in today's episode, please leave us a rating and review. We so appreciate it For resources, show notes and links mentioned in today's show. Visit debtfreedad.com. Catch you next week.
