Healthy Financial Habits: Reviewing Expenses

Hey everybody, it's 10am on Thursdays. So you know what that means – it's Coffee Chats with Candice! 

Alright, so like I said, it's 10am, it's Thursday, it's Coffee Chats! So grab a cup of coffee, or your beverage of your choice, no judgment here, and that includes your finances, and let's chat your expenses!

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Candice Montgomery, and I'm the founder of “Monetize Your Dream,” a course for new and aspiring women, business entrepreneurs, and the “Beginner's Guide to Budgeting.” I help everyday people like you, learn how to budget so they can pay-off debt, save money, and experience financial confidence. I own three businesses with my husband. The first one we started in 1996, and it's in its 27th year, and we paid off over $450,000 in 7 years time. And since 2022, we have lived; we've been completely debt-free in our personal and in our business lives. I'm passionate talking about business and budgeting and sharing that with you and encouraging you to budget and save and become debt free as well, and reduce the stress and everything else that goes on in our lives.

So some reviewing expenses. What do I mean when I say that? So the first thing we want to do is, we want to start with a budget. And I know I've mentioned that I have a beginner's budgeting course, so if you need help with that, I can help you I do one-on-one coaching, I do that course. So you can set up a free discovery call and see if it's something that we can work on together if we're a good fit for each other. And to you know, kind of get a plan and see what what works for you. 

Next, I would say, really important is to live within your means. So you don't want to be out there trying to keep up with the Joneses, because you know, the Joneses are broke – that's a pretty common phrase. So live within your means and don't overspend. 

Next thing would be to have an emergency fund – emergencies are going to happen. You need to make sure that you have something that you can fall back on when an emergency happens. And you put it aside, you leave it alone, and you let it build. And if you saw my video from last week, you saw that I was talking about money market accounts or performance savings, where you can earn money from the interest every month, so that it will increase in value and it can help you save without having to do anything extra. So while inflation is not good for the economy, and it causes so many other issues, it's good about the interest rate on your money market or your savings account because it will help you to save. So it'll give you free money.

Make a plan for large purchases, and do they match with your financial goals? What are you planning to do? Are you planning to buy a house? Are you planning to buy a car? A lot of times, we don't plan things, and we make spur the moment purchases. That's where we get ourselves into trouble. If you start making a plan, then you can figure out what's going to work with your financial goals and not have to be in a pinch when something happens.

You want to price shop. That's another thing that's important is price shopping. You price shop everything that you possibly can. So if you pay for it, you can shop it and use a list everywhere that you shop. So whether it's Sam's or whether it's Walmart, whether its Target, whether it's grocery, whether it's clothes, shopping, anything! Anything you shop for always have a list so that you don't make impulse purchases, because that will get you every time as well.

Are there any subscriptions that you can cancel or that can be renegotiated? A lot of people don't realize that you can renegotiate a lot of things. So for example, like Sirius Radio, you can renegotiate that rate, and they'll bring it down, you don't have to pay what they say they have these deals all the time, and they can make them work, or you can cancel and then come back in another few months and get it anyway. So there are ways to do that. And I'm not trying to say be a cheapskate, that's not what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is use it effectively and you make sure to get the best price that you can for your subscriptions.

Shop your insurance policies. So for your house, for your car, for your umbrella insurance, or rental insurance. All of those, you can shop and you can stay within this, like if you use an agent, you can stay with the same agent. Or you can shop other agents and see what they have, but most of the time, your agent can shop you different policies for different things, and you can bundle to get a discount. Like Flo says with progressive. Which I love her.` I don't know if y'all love her, but I love her. She's so funny. Anyway, so yeah, just shop those. Alright, and then what about any fees that your bank or your credit card? Did you know that you can negotiate your interest rate to be lower. You can to get on a plan, don't give them access to your bank account where they're going to be automatically deducting that out, you don't want to do that. But you want to be able to look at your interest rate and see how you can get them to lower it or, you know, I don't recommend balance transfers unless you have something that you can pay off in a short amount of time because of balance transfer will usually give you a short term to be able to pay that off where you don't have to pay any interest. And I mean, you have to just buckle down and pay for it. Otherwise you will have to pay interest from the very beginning of when you transfer the balance so don't do that. Let's see what else, bank fees, most banks don't have fees. Now. The larger banks do that the smaller community banks they don't. So you might look for that. I know large banks give you a lot of convenience but now the smaller banks are getting are being more convenient. In, and they're more likely to work with you, when you have an issue. You know, having a relationship with your banker is important, whether it's personal or business. So you can always look for free checking, the smaller banks have free checking, they have free business checking, you have to check your savings accounts balances to see if there's like a minimum balance you have to have. But you want to try to avoid the fees at all costs. So what is it in your account that's causing the bank fees. And if you can eliminate that, then you should, even by changing banks that you needed to, and I know that that is a pain, but at this point, we shouldn't be paying bank fees. So the banks are big enough and have enough of our money. But alright, so like to avoid things to avoid. So we want to avoid shopping emotionally. For status, like you know, for popularity or not popularity, that's not what I'm looking for. But for status, you know, is that, oh, I have this and, and, you know, you don't have this or, you know, that was when we were in school, we don't need to be doing that anymore. For entertainment. So like, if we're bored, we get on Amazon and scroll, or whatever. I mean, I'm sure y'all have seen that meme that says that my Amazon, save for later, or CART is like a million dollars or something like that. So we see so many things. And Amazon has made it so easy for us to shop and get things the same day, which is absolutely crazy. But pay attention to that when you're shopping, you know, if it's something that you don't truly need, leave it in there and think about it, you want to think about it at least 24 hours for a purchase. If it's something that's not a necessity, if it's something that's a big purchase, you want to wait 30 days, you know, if it's something that you can't wait 30 days, then it needs to be something that you discussed with your accountability partner, your spouse, your partner, if you're single someone that can help you that doesn't have any stake in the game there. 

I hope, very much, that you have learned somethin, have gotten some value out of this Coffee Chat with me! And that if you have any questions, please comment them! And remember, if you can please share, like, heart my videos so that it gets me more visibility – get some live video out there for more people to see! And I will see you guys next week next, Thursday at 10am for Coffee Chats with Candice. I'm being real good and doing this every week – so I'm super proud if you're proud of me, too! But anyway, all right. Well, I look forward to seeing you guys next week, and I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week and a fabulous weekend! Hopefully, we're gonna get some reprieve from this heat soon. But anyway, so finish your coffee or your beverage of choice and I will see you guys next week.