Financial Spring Cleaning Without The Meltdown

We stop treating money like a scary secret and start treating it like clutter we can clean up in small, high-impact steps. I walk through a simple financial reset that lowers stress by creating clarity, not perfection. 
• treating finances like a closet cleanout and focusing on quick wins 
• spotting sneaky money stress from auto-drafts and unfinished follow-ups 
• running a subscription audit using email searches and iPhone settings 
• checking credit card balances and interest rates to reduce uncertainty 
• exploring credit unions and modern banking to simplify accounts 
• using AI to help map a debt payoff plan 
• automating bills, savings, and transfers so memory is not required 
• updating beneficiaries and building a basic filing system 
• saving money on gas by condensing errands and reducing extra trips 
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go to go to Marcybacchusmedia.com, MarcyBackhusmedia.com, and you're going to find a financial reset checklist of everything we talked about here today

Transcript

Welcome And Life Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to Inside Marcy's Mind. My name is Marcy Backett, and I am your host. Today we are doing something that, let's be honest, most of us avoid until we absolutely can't anymore. We're talking about your money. Not in a scary way, not in a neat, you need to become a financial expert overnight way, but in a let's clean this up so it stops quietly stressing you out kind of way. And before we dive in, I want to talk about what I've been up to. Went to Colorado last week, spent time with my son, got to see my great nephew Chris's campus, the Colorado School of the Mines. What a great place. He's so happy there. It's really fun when you can see a young person making choices early in life that suit them so well. And that place suits my nephew. Ate a lot of really great food, did a lot in a couple of days, came home and dove right back into life. And next week I'll dive out again. I'll dip out one more time to California to spend some time with Kyle, my oldest child. So, and I'll do a quick trip to Disneyland while I'm there too. But I'm going to be there for Mother's Day. That's what's happening in my world. It looks like it's about ready to rain outside right now. My cats are watching the seagulls fly by the windows. Well, Pickles is. Patrick is sleeping. And he loves to sit. I have this little bench that I got for storage and it rolls, but it I keep it over by the window. And when I'm at my desk, he loves to lay there and sleep. He's my buddy. Do you have a cat? Do you have a dog? Do you have a buddy? They are the best, aren't they? They are just the best. All right. So before we dive in, let's. Last week we talked about working out when you hate it. And the whole point was you don't have to love something to do it consistently. And guess what? Finances fall into the exact same category. Nobody wakes up thinking, wow, I can't wait to review my subscriptions today. But just like working out, when you ignore it, it gets worse. When you handle it, life gets easier. So this week, we're doing for our money what we did last week for our muscles. A simple reset. Here's a real talk moment, just a real moment. Let's just say it. Money stresses out everyone. And money stress is sneaky. It's not always I'm in financial trouble. Sometimes it's I think I'm paying for things I don't use. And while I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm remembering an email that I got from our mortgage saying your payment for your homeowner's insurance coming up. I have homeowner's insurance, so I need to check on that. Make a note. I'm gonna do it right while I'm talking to you. Check mortgage. Insurance. Why are they getting me insurance when I already have it? Freaking me out. Now I'm thinking about that. See? So financial trouble isn't mean you're in trouble. It means I'm paying for things I don't use. I should probably check that account. I don't even know what's auto-drafting anymore. That low-level feeling. Again, you know what I hate? Clutter, and that's financial clutter. And today we're cleaning it up. So, financial spring cleaning without the meltdown. This is based on a great idea. Treating your finances like your closet. We are not burning the house down. We are not reorganizing our entire life. What we are doing is small high-impact cleanups, just like that. I know I put that email in my follow-up folder, but I haven't followed up. And they're going to end up charging me for homeowner's insurance, and I've already paid for a year's worth of homeowner's insurance. That's an$800 error. And if I let that go, that matters. That's a small, high impact cleanup. I'm going to make a call, none of this is going to happen, and it's going to have a high impact, quick results, right? We need to find the leaks, aka subscriptions. Now, this is something, this is where everyone gets hit. Almost everyone. Streaming, apps, memberships, random things you signed up for at 10 p.m. and forgot about. You signed up for a subscription so that the first thing is free and then or cheaper and then you didn't stop. So here's your move. Search your email for the word subscription. Search your emails for renewal. And search your email for thank you for your payment. And just look at what pops up. No judgment here, just awareness. Then ask, would I sign up for this again today? If the answer is no, cancel it. Okay, cancel it. Now, on your iPhone, you're gonna go into your settings, and then you're going to go where your name is, the top, Marcy Backis. You're gonna click on that or whatever your name is, and you're gonna scroll down and you're gonna see subscriptions. You're gonna click on subscriptions and you're gonna review those darn subscriptions. Get rid of what you don't need. Okay, so that's how you do it on your iPhone. And ask yourself that question. Would I sign up for this again today? If the answer is no, cancel it, cancel it, cancel it. Okay, we're not spiraling here. Just log, okay, log in. This is this is for credit cards. For credit cards, log in, look at the balance, look at the interest rate. That's it. Because avoiding it doesn't make it better. It just makes it mysterious. And mysterious equals stressful. I'm very lucky at this point in my life. I no longer carry credit card balances. But if you do, the interest rates right now are off the chain. They are off the hook. They are bad. So look and see if you can qualify for a no-interest credit card. Maybe you get an introductory rate of six months, transfer your balances. Look at those types of things. But if you think you're getting a deal on something and you're holding a balance on a credit card, you're not. 29% interest is insane. But if you're not looking at it and you're making the minimum payments, that's mysterious and mysterious equals stress. So log in, look at the balance, look at the interest rate, stop using your credit cards for non-necessities. I understand sometimes gas is a necessity and you've got to do it. But do you realize you're paying? You already think gas is high. If you're paying 29% interest on your credit card, your gas is even more. So start looking at that and figuring it out. Don't ignore it. And no judgment here, honestly. There are many times in my life where I carried a balance on a credit card. I am grateful now not to have to. So take a look, figure it out, make some good money moves. Okay, simplifying your accounts. If you've got multiple bank accounts, random savings accounts, things you opened 15 years ago, it might be time to simplify. Because more accounts means you're less organized. Sometimes it means more places to ignore things. So here, let's just talk about that. Is is Chase, Bank of America, Wells, Fargo the places to go? No. Both of my kids have online banking companies that are banks that are doing things differently, doing things better. Look into that. Look into are you able to be a part of a credit union? Look into that. Credit cards have much, much lower interest. You maybe can move your, you know, get a credit card through the credit union and move that over there. Stop paying those high interest. But ignoring your finances doesn't make it better. It only leads you with stress. And you don't have to do it how your parents did it, but you need to do it. And you need to know what's going on in your life with your money. I don't want you to get in over your head. And if you're in over your head already, find ways to um simplify that. I'm going to tell you, use AI. Take the amount of debt you have, tell I, this is AI, this is what I have. Tell them what you want to do. Tell them to help you find a way to start paying things down, and it can do that. I'm going to be honest with you. My oldest child is not good with money. I handle the money. When Kyle gets paid, Kyle gives me the money. I keep it in an account. I keep an accounting of uh Excel spreadsheet as Kyle spends money and things that happen. I add and subtract from that spreadsheet and I send it to Kyle. Kyle has other issues and things to think about. Money is not good. And I as a parent, I'm happy to do that. Yes, it's Kyle's money when Kyle, but in order for Kyle to get money to do something, Kyle has to ask me. And it helps Kyle make better financial decisions. Kyle is not capable of making good decisions all the time on Kyle's own about money. Money comes, money goes. But when I have control of it, Kyle seems to be in a much better financial place. And it's fine for Kyle and it's fine for me. I don't mind doing it. Okay. Automate what you can. Automatic bill pay, automatic savings, automatic transfers. One of the things Kyle has at Kyle's job with the school district is the credit union or the union has set it up so that they can take so much out of Kyle's pay and then pay it to Kyle during the summer. So Kyle will get paychecks during the summer and not even notice that money missing. That's pretty a good way to do things. Because let's be honest, if it relies on memory, it's not happening. So anything that's automatic that can help you automatically do it. If you can set up bills, all of my bills are automatic except for our mortgage. I like to have control over that one. But, and that's a personal thing. Automatic savings, having money to drop into a savings account automatically, automatic transfers if you, you know, taking it from your checking and putting it into your savings. Again, if you're relying on memory, it's not going to happen. Check your beneficiaries. I know this is not the fun part, but it matters. Retirement accounts, insurance policy, who is listed? Because life changes, and sometimes this doesn't get updated. So update your wills, update any of those things. As a matter of fact, I have a will that needs to be updated and I need to get on that. Obviously, I have some work to do when I get off this podcast because I'm I am helping myself. Mainly it's to help myself. If I help you along the way, great. All right. Organize just a little. We are not becoming filing cabinet people overnight, but maybe one folder, one drawer, and one digital file. So for my files, I have a few file paper files, and I have a file in the front of it that says to do, to read, to file. So anything that I need to do that comes in the mail, this system you can also do on your computer. You can put a to-do to file and to read. So if it's something you want to read, you put if it's something you need to file, you put it in that. And so forth. So to do, to read, to file. And it can all be digital or paper. You can have these files on your in your I I have a lot of files in my mail. And one of them, and this is where that one went that I uh need to follow up in with my mortgage is action items. So any email that comes in that needs to have an action item to them, it goes there. That way it's not clogging up my mailbox. So organize yourself the best you can, what works for you. Make sure that you have things organized. I have everything organized on my computer as if it was paper files. So find a system that works for you and and and keep up with it. Create one on your desktop that says to do. Anything you need to do goes in there. Create another one to file. Things that need to be filed into other file folders goes there. And anything you want to read, put it in the to read. Keep it organized. That's it. Not a big deal. Super easy. All right. So what am I not doing anymore? I'm not avoiding my finance because it feels overwhelming. No. We're doing small things that make a big difference. Okay, so I'm not ignoring, and I and I I can ignore things. It's not because balances are too high for other reasons. I ignore things. You know, I don't like to see what the stock market's doing. I don't, there's a lot of things I ignore, and I will not do that anymore. You don't need to be perfect, have it all figured out, or become a financial genius. You just need to know what's going on with your finances. Woman, male, whoever's listening to this, you need to know what's going on with your finances. If you are a woman and your husband handles everything, you need to know. If you are a husband and your wife handles everything, you need to know. I handle everything now, and Craig knows what's going on. And we just got a paper from one of our accounts. Craig, let me know what the balance is. We share information. Now it wasn't always that way. When money was tight, this was a hard freaking conversation to have. I hated it. I felt guilty. I felt judged. I'm trying to run a household. I'm trying to keep the kids, blah, blah, blah. We're better at it now. All right. So you just need to know what's going on because clarity equals calm. And right now, a lot of people are walking around with unnecessary financial stress. I know you don't want to talk about gas prices, but they're high. You need to do things like, and I can say this because I don't have to drive. I've lived in California. I've had to drive everywhere. Condense your runs. Don't just run out and do something because you want to. That gas matters. Every mile you drive costs you something. And it costs you more now. Figure it out. Condense your errands. If you're going to work, stop on the way home. Don't get home and then go back out again. If you're going to go to the gym, go on your way home. Don't go back out again. Try to conserve gas. Try to conserve your home energy. Do things that help you save money. And just because things are messy, that doesn't mean things are broken. It just means you need to look into it and clean it up. Get that mop, mop up your finances. I'm going to give you a very simple challenge this week. Pick one of these, cancel two subscriptions, or check on your credit card balances, or set up an automatic payment, or organize one small area. Just do one of those. That's it. Not all of it, just one. I'll check in next week with you. All right. That's what's been on my mind this week is money. If this episode made you think, yeah, I probably should look at that, then it did its job. Share it with a friend and also a few mystery charges happening every other month. You know, that's another thing. I didn't talk about that, but look and make sure you're not being charged weird stuff. And remember, we're not trying to be perfect. We're just trying to feel a little bit more in control of our lives. I'll see you again next week on Inside Marcy's Mind. And who the heck knows what's going to be on my mind? I'm going to have my AI assistant put together a financial reset checklist, and I'm going to drop that down on my website. So go to go to Marcybacchusmedia.com, MarcyBacchusmedia.com, and you're going to find a financial reset checklist of everything we talked about here today. I love AI, it helps me out greatly. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.