Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

2 Best Places to Start Fixing Your Finances

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When I first started trying to get my finances under control, I had no idea where to start. I tried to follow a patchwork of ideas like pay yourself first and only spend X percent of your income on rent, but at the end of the month there would always be more month than money. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong until someone asked where my money was going every month. Aside from food, rent, cell phone and credit card payments, I had absolutely no idea. It was such a simple question and the answer ended up keying my turn-around financially but it took me a while to realize that mattered.

So if you’re trying to turn your finances around and save a bit of money every month instead of wondering where it all went, here are the 2 best places to start fixing your finances.

Fixing your financesTrack What You Spend

As I found out, the most important thing is tracking your finances. When I started turning my ship around, there wasnt a lot of good financial tracking software like their is now. I started with a blank sheet of paper and a stack of bills, working those and my online logins to figure out how much I was spending every month. It’s much easier now, with the online trackers for your finances such as mint and apps that are more investment focused, like personal capital. Once you start tracking your income and expenses, you’ll know where you need to cut and how much you can use to save or pay off debt each month.

Cut the Excessive Expenses

Once you get your expenses written down, I’ve found it’s most valuable to lower your structural expenses as much as possible at first. This includes things like rent, car payments, car insurance, electricity, water, cell phones and cable tv. I’ve found that many people way overpay for cable TV (Calling up and getting a discount usually works wonders) and if they switch to an MNVO like ting or republic wireless they can usually lower their phone bill by 66% or more per month. For a family of 2 if they switched phones and totally ditched cable, that’s an immediate savings of 200+ per month. Once that’s done, add all that money to your savings or debt repayment. Then it’s time to move on to your car expenses. Consider selling your car and trading in for a cheaper one that you own outright, and can carry less insurance on. This will get rid of your car payment completely and hopefully lower your insurance by a significant amount as well. Better yet, try getting a bike and getting rid of your car completely.

In my opinion, those are the low hanging fruit – things you can easily change and your day to day existence wont be changed much one way or the other. The best part about this is you can spend a day or 2 over the course of a week and you should be able to easily pocket 500+ per month in savings – that’s 6,000 per year! Like you, I could use the extra 6k per year.

Once you get your structural issues fixed in your finances, it’s time to move on to your habitual purchases. Is there anything that you spend too much money on and dont get a lot of value from? Do you spend too much on fast food, or alcohol? Or maybe you buy too many books you’ll never be able to read, or too many movies on blue-ray you cant watch?

Now is the time to deal with those, and the easiest way that i’ve found is to get a budget set up and spend that in cash every month. Say you want to limit your blu-ray purchases to 25 bucks per month – get that amount in cash at the beginning of the month, then when the cash is no, no more blu-ray until your cash re-ups at the beginning of the month.

What’s Your Financial Weakness?

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We all have a financial weakness.  That one area where we struggle to do the right thing.  We might even struggle with deciding what the right thing is.  If we remain unaware of our financial weakness, it can wreak havoc throughout our financial life, as my weakness did mine.

However, knowing your financial weakness, your financial Achilles’ Heel, so to speak, can help you become a better manager of your finances.

My Financial Achilles’ Heel

Me?  I like to squirrel things away for the proverbial rainy day, but when the rainy day comes, I don’t like to dip into my stash.

My husband and I have an emergency fund.  True, it’s smaller than we’d like, but we do have one in place.  Considering 28% of Americans don’t have any emergency fund (CNN Money), we’re glad to have our small one.

Financial WeaknessThere are other ways I squirrel away things.  We buy produce in season at lower cost by doing creative things like renting an apple tree.   Then we store it away for the cold winter months.  (It makes me feel a bit like a pioneer.  A pampered pioneer, but a pioneer, nonetheless.)  Right now we have a deep freezer in our basement that is filled with plums, grapes, blueberries, strawberries, and applesauce.  If we didn’t have money for groceries, we have enough fruit to easily last us for two to three months.

Having an emergency fund as well as a stocked pantry doesn’t sound like a problem, right?

Right.  I’m being financially responsible and preparing for a time when money will be tight.

Here’s the problem.

I don’t like to dig into my stash.

If I have a financially lean month and I’m faced with a large expense like a car repair, I don’t do what would be logical–dip into my emergency fund.  Instead, my first inclination is to put the repair on my credit card and leave the emergency fund intact.

If I have a month where I don’t have as much grocery money, I’m more likely to put groceries on my credit card than make a significant dent in our food stash.

My behavior makes.no.sense.  No sense.

And yet it took me years to figure out that I do this and to realize that I have to fight the natural inclination to go in debt rather than dip into my reserves.  Part of why my family struggled with credit card debt is because of this irrational behavior.  Now the credit card debt is paid off, and I have a chance to start anew, well aware of my weakness.

What’s Your Financial Weakness

So, what’s your financial weakness?  What completely irrational behavior do you exhibit?  Are you even aware of what it may be?

Honestly, finding the chink in your armor, so to speak, may take years.  I think it took me nearly 15 years to figure out mine, and I made a lot of financial mistakes during that time.  I’m not sure why I exhibit this behavior except that perhaps growing up, I always saw my parents struggle with money.  They never had money to create an emergency fund.  Credit cards were their emergency fund, and they had to use them frequently.

I’m guessing for most of us, the experience is the same.  Financial behaviors we saw in childhood and learned as normal become the basis for some of our adult decision making.

What is your financial Achilles’ Heel?

Do You Compare Your Finances to Others?

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I belong to several Facebook groups, and recently, a woman in one group asked the seemingly innocent question, “What do you pay for cell phones and car insurance?”  She added, “We pay $180 a month for our cell phones and $345 a month for our car insurance.”

Say what?

When you read that number, you automatically think one of two things–“Wow, she’s paying a fortune for cell phones and car insurance!” (that was my initial thought), or, you think, “Sounds about right.”

Comparing FinancesA few of you may even think she’s getting a good deal.

My husband and I each carry a cheap cell phone from Tracfone that is for emergencies or occasionally checking in with one another.  We don’t spend any more than $10 to $20 a month on them.  Our car insurance is about $55 per month.  (We only have one vehicle.)

After reading how much this woman spent, I was feeling pretty good about myself.  But why?  I really don’t know her situation.  Her cell phone plan might include cell phones for the whole family.  Her car insurance is likely for multiple cars.  Maybe she has teenage drivers, or maybe she or her spouse has gotten a ticket recently.

Besides, I have no idea how much money she makes.  These bills might not be that extravagant in relationship to her income.

There’s really no point comparing my situation to hers.  To do so would invite complacency toward my own budget at best, and a loosening of the purse strings at worst because, hey, other people are spending a lot more than me.

The Only Time You Should Compare Your Spending to Others

Generally, I try not to compare my spending or budget to others.  Circumstances vary widely, and knowing another person’s exact financial situation is difficult.  Too often, especially online, we get a snapshot of someone’s finances and think we see the whole picture when we don’t.

We make assumptions of our own financial situations based on others.

Ultimately, we need to strive to do the best we can do with our own budgets.  To beat ourselves by spending less and/or saving more than we did the month before or the year before.

The only time it makes sense to look at someone else’s finances and spending is when they are doing considerably better than you, and you want to learn from and emulate them.  For instance, I knew my husband and I were spending too much for groceries.  One blogger I read has grown a large garden and planted fruit trees so that she can feed her family of 9 for less than $300 per month.  (Yes, you read that right.)

I know I won’t  ever have a grocery budget of $300 per month, but reading her techniques and strategies has encouraged me to cut my grocery budget and try to spend less.  It’s even inspired me to try out once a month shopping to reduce costs.

Ultimately, we shouldn’t compare our finances to others, but if we’re going to, we should only compare to those we wish to emulate.

Do you look at other people’s spending to make you feel better about your own or to motivate you to improve your finances?