Money Basics

Winning with money means following simple concepts.  It takes time,  It takes discipline.  However the results are beyond worth it.  Let's start with basic money principles 

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This podcast is specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over midlife.

Maybe you went through a divorce, maybe it was a big breakup, maybe you even lost your spouse.

I don't know the exact story, but if you feel like the rug got pulled out from under your feet, and you're starting over, but it's the middle of your life, you're in the right place. Welcome. I'm really glad you're here.

Today's episode, we're going to talk about finances. Finances can be such a struggle for a lot of people, right? And winning with finances and doing well with finances is going to make your life so much better, I promise, promise, promise.

Money affects you every day of your life. I've already said it, every day. There's not a day you're not making money, spending money.

Money affects you somehow day in and day out. And it's too big of a deal for us to not take a closer look at how we can manage our money better, okay? So today, we're going to be really basic.

We're going to start super simple, and we're going to talk about some really basics on how to win with money, okay? I'm going to tell you the most simplistic thing about how to win with money. You want to spend less than you make.

More comes in, less goes out. That's really simple, right? We kind of know that.

We know that that's, I think, the goal. But how do you do that, right? How do you do it?

And sometimes we see other people and we're like, oh my gosh, they're doing so good. They make a million dollars. Okay, but if you make a million dollars and you're spending 1.2 million dollars, you are not winning with money, are you?

No. And then there could be somebody else, and maybe they're driving a beat up old car. They make $50,000 a year, but they only spend $45,000 a year.

Who is winning with money? It's not what people look like.

Winning with money, sometimes, I think in our head, we think, if you're winning with money, you're carrying a designer handbag, you're doing this, you're doing that, you dress a certain way, you have a certain car. No.

Winning with money is spending less than what comes in. And it doesn't matter what those amounts are. Even if they're big amounts, sometimes, I think the bigger the amount, the easier it is to overspend.

Learning to live within your means is the way you win with money. I mean, it's just that simple. So let's talk about really tactile things.

How do we do this? So I'm going to give you three simple steps. Simplicity does not equal difficulty.

Just because they're simple doesn't mean it's easy to do. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do. So step one, if you want to spend less than what you make, step one, you got to know what you make, right?

So this is the easiest of the three steps. Write down what you make in a month, okay? So let's do it month by month.

That makes it a little bit easier, smaller. What do you bring in each month? And you might need to average it.

Most people, if you're, if you're salary, this is really easy for you. Do you have other additional income? Maybe you have child support coming in or some other income in addition to what you make at work.

Some people, it's not as easy for. Some people work on commission or their hours fluctuate. They maybe work for tips.

Get a good estimate. You know, on average, you make this much. You have to have this much in order to pay your bills.

So put a good average down. But step one is how much do you have coming in? And this is the simplest step.

It should be easy. Like I said, if you have a fluctuating income, I do understand it's a little bit more difficult. But step one, how much do you have coming in on a monthly basis?

Step two, a little more challenging. No. I want you to get your bank statement.

Pull it up online. Go line by line for the last month. Go 30, 31 days.

In every single line, put it towards a category. Put that amount. So groceries.

How many times did you get groceries in the last month? Add those up. This is how much I spent on groceries.

Look at exactly what you spent on your utilities. How much are you spending on gas in your car? How much you spend in on eat now are meals that you don't prepare at home.

Start putting a category to every single thing that you actually spent. So step one, money comes in. Step two, how does the money go out?

Because if we're struggling with money, if we have financial anxiety, if money is causing us any type of problem, the best way to fix it is to get a clear picture. Knowledge is half the battle. So where is this money going?

What streaming services are you using? And go every line. Don't let there be surprises.

Oh, I didn't realize I was still paying for Paramount Plus. I don't even watch that. Write that down and cancel it.

But whatever it is, look at every single thing. Where is your money going? So once you get a good snapshot of that, step three is now we're going to tweak where our money goes to better fit our overall plan in golfs.

So subset of step number three, as we tweak it, the very first thing we do as we tweak it, if we are not already, is you're going to start paying yourself first. You're going to start saving. And I am telling you, make it automatic.

So you can set up with your bank. The day your paycheck hits, automatically from checking, you can move money over to savings. And you can set up reoccurring automatic transaction.

I could do it from the app on my phone, my banking app. You may have to make a phone call or stop by a branch and talk to somebody, but it's worth it. Netflix is automatic payment, right?

You don't have to say, oh yeah, I got to pay Netflix this month. No, Netflix gets their money. You are more important than Netflix.

Pay yourself automatically. If you have to start with $20 a paycheck, that's fine, do $20 a paycheck. I hope that we'll get to where you can save more, but don't be ashamed of where you're starting.

Start where you can, but pay yourself first. That's step one of the tweak. If you have not already started to do that, if you have, high five, good job.

If you haven't, you have to start paying yourself first. You have to start saving, okay? And then, as we're in this tweaking part, like we've looked at where we spent our money, are there any, like, really obvious things that you can cut?

When I did this, I realized I was spending more money on lunches when I was at work than I realized. And I was kind of surprised because I thought I was being really conscientious.

If I got lunch while I was at work, I tried so hard to make it, like, really reasonable. I never, like, went over the top or spent, like, bougie lunches or anything. I always made really reasonable economical choices.

But when I looked at it as a whole, and I looked at how many times I ate lunch out when I was at work over the course of an entire month, I realized, whoa, I didn't want to put a few hundred dollars on that.

I don't have a few hundred extra dollars in my budget. And then I realized I needed to start taking my lunch, right? So sometimes there are categories where we're spending more money, and we don't even realize it.

Because we're spending little bits at a time, $10, $15. It could be coffee for you. It could be whatever.

But sometimes when you look at that, that's why step two is so important, to go through your bank statement.

Sometimes something jumps out and you realize, oh, my word, I didn't realize I was spending that much money on makeup or clothes or whatever it is.

And you already know right away, like, hey, I really don't want to spend that much money in that category. So that's a good place to start, right? And that's a place where you can find money to put into savings or whatever, you know, pay down debt.

So start tweaking it. Start looking where you can say, maybe you're spending more money on groceries. I think everybody is spending more money on groceries than they want.

How do you reduce your grocery bill? I coupon. I don't do the extreme couponing that I used to do a few years back.

I used to really go crazy with the coupons. But you can spend time on the grocery app and download a few digital coupons. And you can shop the sales.

I mean, that's the simplest, easiest, no-brainer thing to do. Just shop the sale. If meat is on sale, like they'll have a certain cut, maybe it's chicken breast or whatever, shop the sale.

That is a big thing. And the other thing when it comes to groceries, another way to save money is just to choose to make cheaper meals. Spaghetti, that's pretty cheap to make, and you got leftovers for crying out loud.

Steak, much more expensive, and you generally don't have any leftovers. And that's what I started to do when I realized I was spending way more money on lunches than I intended to, than I realized, like I was surprised.

I started making meals for dinner that would have good leftovers. It would be easier for me to take to lunch. I started making my meal plan with that in mind.

So it saved me. It felt like double, because I was making a meal at home for dinner, and then I wouldn't get lunch from it, too.

So when you adjust your thinking, whether it's with your groceries, what type of meals I'm going to make, you can save money. Now, it doesn't change the fact that inflation has gone up, and groceries are expensive.

But a little bit of time and a little bit of forethought, you really can save. I feel like I consistently save 20% on my grocery bill. And that's with a few digital coupons and shopping sales.

Like, just taking a little bit of planning on the front end saves me about 20%. That's the goal. I don't always hit 20%.

Sometimes I'm more than that. Sometimes I'm less. But just a little bit of planning can help with groceries.

Not everything is that way. Other bills you're trying to tweak. I called our internet provider.

I mean, this has been a couple years ago, but our internet bill was about $100 a month. I called, and they reduced it to $50 a month. I don't think that would work every time, you know, by any means, but it's worth trying.

It's worth calling some of these places and saying, hey, what can I do? This is a lot. So some bills, even though they seem set, you may be able to fluctuate.

There's a lot of things. If you take the time to call, they'll reduce it. Who knows?

But it's worth a shot. Like I said, it reduced my internet bill by 50%, which was, I was like, yes, thank you, I'll take that. When you look at where your money's going, you got to look at where to tweak it, where you can save.

How can I cut my grocery bill down a little bit? How can I, oh, I love coffee, but you know what? I'm going to cut back.

I'm not going to get coffee every day out. I'm going to get coffee one day a week out. Whatever it is.

And I know there's some categories that are going to stand. I'm not telling you to deprive yourself of everything. I don't believe in that, and I don't think that's healthy.

I think you should have some areas where you give yourself, like, this is important to me, money aside. I'm going to make this a priority.

When I became a single mom and me and my kids moved out and into our own house, and it was just the three of us, I started, you know, putting a plan together.

And one of the things that was important to me was that I didn't have to always tell them no. They had left their childhood home, their family dynamic and structure totally changed.

Everything had just changed in their lives, and I wanted to be able to say yes. They were teenagers, and because of my particular kids and knowing their personalities, they're both in their own way kind of foodies.

Very different, but food matters to both of them. I'll say that. So I specifically put in my budget money to eat out.

If it were just me, I might have done something different, but because it was these kids and it mattered, like I said, I didn't want to always say no. I put in the extra money that I was going to set aside to eat out.

I was still putting money aside in the savings, but it was really important for me to be able to let us eat out some, because I knew that that mattered to them. And because of that, it also made saying no easier. And I'll explain that.

Like I had the money to eat out, and I'd set it aside, right? But let's say on the way to school in the morning, the kids wanted to stop by and get breakfast, right?

And there was a Chick-fil-A by their school, and they liked the chicken minis, and they wanted to get breakfast. And I could say, no, we only do that on Friday. Or I could say, if we do that today, we won't be able to do it on Friday.

So it wasn't a hard no. It was like a deferred yes. So when you set up a category like that, like, no, I'm going to allow myself to spend in this area, but it's a limited amount.

It's this much, and when I hit this much, no more. And so the kids sometimes chose to have a nice sit-down meal somewhere, right? But then that money was used up, and that meant no breakfast the next week or whatever.

But we got to choose and make those choices together. I had a certain amount that they could spend, and when it was gone, it was gone. But as a single mom, I loved that I didn't have to always say no.

Like, I had couched into my budget where I could say yes. And I needed that, if that makes sense. And so I encourage you, as you're making a plan and as you're tweaking where you spend your money, it's okay.

I don't know where you are and what your areas are. Maybe you really like makeup. That's okay.

Make yourself a budget for it. It's not wrong to spend money. Don't get that idea.

Don't get the idea that you have to put yourself on some kind of starvation diet financially. I mean, if you're in bad, bad debt, maybe a starvation diet is what needs to happen for a little while.

But you need to be able to give yourself some things, and it's okay. The biggest thing is you've got to choose where your money goes, and you've got to make smart choices, and you only have so much, right?

And so if this much comes in, and you really want to spend less than what you make, you have a certain amount to go out. And if you choose ahead of time, this is where I want my money to go. That's the plan, right?

I want my money to go. I'm deciding ahead of time, I want part of my money to go to makeup, because I like that. High five.

That's okay, as long as you have the money to cover, you know, that. I support that. I think that's good to pick the category that you're like, you know what?

I want to spend extra here. For me, it was eating out, specifically for my kids. It's okay to have that.

It's okay to do that. And I think it's kind of healthy. It's just you've got to look at what you have.

You've got to pay yourself first and spend less than you make. And so that sounds so simple, right? And it's even simple to come up with a plan, I think.

I don't think coming up with like, once you see where your money goes, that can be tedious. Just sit down and figure that out. Coming up with a plan to tweak it, say, okay, I want to spend less here, I want to do whatever.

That's pretty easy. The hard part is the self-discipline to stick to the plan, right? And that's why we've just got to be real with ourselves.

I mean, don't make an unrealistic plan. And know yourself and be real with yourself.

Have you ever had a day where you just had it, work was just taxing, and the kids or whatever, and you're just like, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to cook dinner tonight, I'm going to get takeout, right? I think everybody's been there.

But you have this budget now. You've got this spending plan, you've looked at how your money comes in, how it goes out, you're tweaking it, and you're saying, I can only spend this much on this. And what if you don't have the money to go out?

And when I say know yourself and be aware of yourself, what I mean, too, is prepare for when you have a bad day. Maybe meal prep, maybe put something in the crockpot.

Like if you know that Wednesdays are going to be a hard day for you and you're more likely to get takeout on Wednesday than any other day of the week because of the way your work week is set up or whatever, you got a client that day or a meeting that

day or something that always just kind of sets you on edge or puts you in a different kind of mood like, I'm done. Then plan to make a different kind of meal that day. Plan it so that when you get home, you don't have to cook.

It's already, you put something in the crockpot that morning. Are you meal prepped everything so you really don't have anything to do but sit down and eat? Knowing yourself and being real with yourself is important.

Everybody's different. If you know you're more likely to spend money when you go to the mall, like I would walk around the stores and shop. I love to do that.

And me and my daughter would do that. I think I did that with my mom. Maybe it's just like a generational thing, like we'd walk around the store and talk and chat, and it was girl time.

But I always spent money. And then when I need it, realized I've got to stop spending money. I need to save money.

I've got these other goals. So I found out something different to do. So we weren't walking around the store shopping, but we were still spending time together.

So like, hey, let's go hang out in this park and walk this trail. Or, hey, let's go do this. Be real with yourself.

Where are you spending money? Where are you more likely to be like, ooh? Be honest with yourself.

I know that the days that I'm aggravated coming home from work, I'm going to get takeout. Then make it so that you don't have to get takeout by prepping.

If you know you spend money at the store, make it so you're doing something and go into the store. And walking around as a hobby or as a pastime, right? Like, be real with yourself and how you spend your money.

And not only just tweak the way you say you're going to spend it, but the behavior behind it. Does that make sense? Is what I'm saying making sense?

Like, when you change your behavior, like, I'm not going to just walk around the store as a way to hang out with my kid and spend time with them because I'm going to spend money if I do that.

So I'm going to find a way for us to hang out and spend time together that isn't in a shopping environment. Little things tweaking not just the plan, but the behavior helps. And it's not like major behavior changes.

It's like, I'm going to meal prep. That's not that hard. And if you know that there are some days you just don't want to cook, I think everybody's there.

I mean, that's a pretty common thing. So have a crock pot meal or something that's so prepped and ready to go in the fridge that you don't have to cook. Now, the meat's already been prepped.

Everything's been done. And all you have to do is maybe assemble a salad or something really simple. Being real with the areas that you know you're likely, that are pitfalls for you.

Like, be smart. Like, I know this about myself. Like, don't try to sugarcoat it.

Don't try to lie to yourself and be like, okay, I've made this plan and I'm going to spend this much. But you're ignoring the fact that, will you order takeout on these days because you're tired or you're more likely to spend money here.

Be real with yourself. It's okay. You're not hiding anything from anybody.

You have nothing to be ashamed of. Just be really real. These are my pitfalls.

These are the areas where if I'm going to not stick to the plan, it's here, here, and here. And these are why. And then what can you do to maybe modify it?

There are all kinds of things we can do. There are ways we can save money. But the most simplistic thing I can tell you is you want to spend less than you make.

So in future episodes, we're going to talk about how to pay down debt. They call that a dead snowball. Some people do.

We're going to talk about creative ways to save money, maybe a whole bunch of different tips, maybe things you haven't heard of before with how to save money. Maybe we'll talk about side hustles if that sounds interesting to y'all.

And y'all want to do that and how we can bring in extra money. Like everything that I'm spending is fixed. I have no wiggle room in my budget.

Okay, well, let's talk about side hustles and way to bring more money in. So we can talk about all kinds of stuff like that in future episodes.

And then once you get into investing in 401Ks and all that kind of stuff, but to win with any of it, you've got to know what comes in and how it goes out. And you've got to make the choice on how it goes out, and you have to stick to those choices.

And that's just foundational. Like, that's the first building block. And so as we're rebuilding in Amazing Life, the basic block, the foundational element, is you've just got to know, right?

You got to know what comes in and how it goes out, and you got to tweak how it goes out. And it's that simple. Doing it is a little bit more challenging.

I do understand that. But if I could do it, you could do it. And let me tell you, when I got divorced, I had zero money in my savings account.

I had very little in my checking, I think, like $70. And I had debt. And I was able to pay off all my debt, completely debt free, including my house and my car.

And I had a fully funded emergency fund. So if I can do it, you can do it. If I could save up, you can save up.

If I could pay down debt, you can pay down debt. It's no special secret thing. I did not win the lottery.

I did not, nothing major. I followed very basic, simple principles. And if I can do it, you can do it.

It takes time. But winning was money. And not living paycheck to paycheck, learning to do this will give you more confidence.

I tell you, I mean, we're going to talk about physical stuff, and looking good gives you confidence. But knowing that you don't need somebody else to help you financially is such a great confidence boost.

Knowing that you have the money that you can provide for yourself and your family, knowing that you're going to be okay, that is confidence, unlike any other, and you can do it, I know you can. Hit me up with questions.

You can put them in the comments. You can find me on Facebook, Working on Amazing. I would love to hear your feedback.

I'm so glad that you're with me on this journey. We are going to build an amazing life. It's going to be beautiful.

It's going to be worth it. I'll see you next time. Bye.