5 Tips to Getting Your Finances Together
“Honey, I have $25,000 worth of debt. Credit card debt,” I said to my husband. You see, we had done the debt pay off thing before paying off $40,000 years before, and he was completely debt free. Well. So he thought.
In my own depression and such, I put our family back into a financial hole, and I hid it from my husband. I would hide shopping bags, and clothes, and shoes, or whatever I had purchased to “make myself feel better.” It was a learned habit that I needed to break. And painfully, very painfully, and with the strictest accountability partner ever, my husband. And so slowly, we began our debt payoff again.
Perhaps you don’t have any debt, but you just need to get your finances in order. I get that too. We have been on our financial journey for 15 plus years, and paid off $65,000 worth of debt over those years. But where do you start?
So first you’re going to evaluate why you want to get your finances together!
Decide your why. Why do you want to get your finances together! For us, it was our kids and really creating a financial legacy for them! We wanted more for them, more for us! We wanted to break the stench of financial poverty and despair over our family tree. We wanted to really set them up for financial success, and it started with us!
Be honest with yourself and spouse about where you are. Take an honest look at your finances. Where are you? How much debt do you have? How much savings do you have? How much wiggle room in your budget do you have? Do you have a budget? Take an honest look at your finances and be honest with yourself. What got you to where you are now? What changes need to be made in order for you to be successful this time?
Now after you’ve looked at your finances and gotten real honest, now let’s write out some goals! Do you want to pay off debt? Do you want to save $1000. Do you need an emergency fund? Yes you do by the way. Emergencies happen so 3-6 months emergency fund would be ideal but to start $1000 emergency fund is what’s recommended. Now we have a ton of kids (4 to be exact), so $1000 is not enough for us! If one of our kids went to the ER for whatever reason, like a busted lip at a trampoline park that split his lip into two? Yes, our insurance will take care of some of it! But it definitely cost more than $1000 to fix his lip, check out his teeth, and all the doctors bills. So for us $1000 is not enough! I would say as a rule of thumb, $1000 per kid for an emergency fund or $1000 per person in your family! I digress! Write down your finance goals!
Next if you don’t have a budget, now write out every expense and bill and debt you have! Create a budget that works for you! Now you may have to tweak this budget over the next few months, but give it time! Give your budget at least 3 months of consistently budgeting, tracking your spending, and seeing what categories you need to improve on!
Find ways to cut back! I know for us back then (and even in sports seasons), we were eating out a ton! So see what you’re spending tons of money on, and scale back! Eating out, grocery bill, subscriptions! So for 2 years, we ate at home tons, we spend $600 on groceries for our family of 6, we cut subscriptions and anything that was not a need for a season! Now 2 years was a very long season, but after that 2 years, we had the $25,000 worth of debt paid off and much more wiggle room in our budget! So find ways to cut back! Another way I started cutting back was doing my hair and nails myself. I started doing my nails during Covid, but now it’s continued even post Covid! I do my press-on nails myself! And have for almost 3! Now years later, I get my hair done again, but for years I colored and “permed it” myself!
Bonus: be consistent and don’t give up when it gets tough. Getting your finances together can be scary and hard and painful, but you got this friend! Here, we share a lot of resources for teaching kids about money, but I started getting a lot of questions about families and adults and money! So it’s important that the whole family is financially well! Because as you’re getting your finances in order, guess what? You have people watching who are learning right with you! So set the example, and go be great with your finances friend!
Until next time,
Shelly
