Debt or Save: How to make the Smartest Money Move

Hey, good morning, everybody. So it's Thursday. And that means it's coffee chats with Candace. So I want to sorry, trying to move things around for me, I want to talk to you today about paying off debt versus savings.  
  
But first, let me introduce myself. If you're new to me, my name is Candice Montgomery, and I own three businesses. The first one, my Husband, and I started in 1996. So this is our 27th year, and we paid off over $450,000 in seven years time, and as of 2022, we are debt-free in our personal and our business lives, and I want to share my tips on how to do that for you. 
  
I also want to help you on your journey. So many people have struggled with this, including us. A lot of times, it's embarrassing to ask for help. I want to make sure that you feel comfortable asking for help. 

And if you aren't familiar with my website, I'm gonna go ahead and post that too, while I’m doing this. So I'll post that one. And so there's my website, and I talk about all things starting business and all things be debt-free. And of course, I love minimalism, too, so that's kind of, that's kind of in there, but I don't teach on that. But I do love minimalism, I like decluttering money, and I don't like clutter in life.

I want that freedom for you. I want to help you, I want to guide you, and I want to tell you more about these things that I do. So make sure to check out my my page and if you're interested in me helping you just let me know.

Here are my thoughts on paying off debt versus savings. 

The first thing you need to do, paying debt vs. savings, is you need to save a minimum of $500 (but preferably $1,000) as quickly as possible to have as your Emergency Fund. And that needs to be put aside so that you do not touch it that is just for emergencies, that's the very first thing that you need to do. This is going to help you get out of this cycle of continuing to add debt and dig a hole for yourself. That's your first line of defense for when and if something is going to happen. You know, Murphy's Law, it's not “if it's gonna happen”, it's “when it's gonna happen”, and it's happened to us. I've had to use it a couple of times, and then we build it back up. So that's the first thing so that you can stop using credit cards to pay paying debt or paying the emergency. 
 
Also, it will help you relax whenever you are in this situation, because when you owe this debt, and you're trying to make ends meet, and you don't know how to do it, and you don't know how to budget and you're like “What do I do? I just can't get anywhere,” then besides asking for help, that's the first step. Then you have this (emergency fund) to help you relax a little bit, so that you can start concentrating on attacking your debt. 

Once you pay off your debt, you will not have anybody else that you have to pay except for yourself. When you can pay yourself, then you can start saving and put money away and then you don't have to have that worry and it's such a freedom.

And then when talking about business, this second quarter is really focusing on “Budgeting and Debt,” “Getting out of debt,” “Savings” and that kind of stuff.  Then when we move into the third quarter, I will start talking about “Business” and so forth. But they go hand-in-hand. You want to have a debt-free business (if you can), and you want to start debt-free.  
  
We did in the beginning, that way, then we ended up getting debt because we ended up growing and doing stuff, but it wasn't the smart way. I want to be able to share all those things that I learned the hard way, and share that with you, so that it will fast track you to get to where you need to go, and it will make you feel so much better about your day-to-day things and in your life, and you'll be freed up and you'll be able to do so many other things.

But when you have debt, you're paying the bank – you're paying the bank for borrowing their money, it's not your money and you don't own any of those things. The bank owes owns it. You're borrowing their money, and then you owe them. You don't want to have to always pay somebody else – you want to pay yourself. So once you get done with debt, like I said, you can save, and then you can pay your savings.

If you can work your way about your minimum payments, once we do that, then we can make those payments to ourselves.

So for example, if you are paying $400 in minimum payments for your credit cards, then what you can do, once you get that all paid off, is that you can pay $400 to yourself. So then you can start building up savings accounts for different things.

I think it's important that first you have a savings account and emergency fund, because emergencies are going to happen. And then I think it's more important to save first and then pay your debt. As long as you can get that, that’s the best way to go about it. We want to reduce the amount of debt as much as possible.

I'm just so excited to be able to talk to you all this morning! Just remember that every Thursday at 10am I go live for Coffee Chats with Candice. So, I have my Coffee, and I haven't drink anything, but hey, if you have any comments, suggestions, things you want to hear about, hear me talk about, then certainly comment on this or send me a message. Let us know what you want to talk about! Thank you so much for listening to me, thank you so much for supporting me, and I look forward to supporting you. Have a great week!