7 Simple Money Matters You Can Handle in Half an Hour or Less

Finances can be daunting. I get it. Figuring out budgets and spending plans can be both time consuming and intimidating. So lets start small. Today I'm going to give you seven simple tasks. Each can be done in half an hour, some less. Do one a week. Start small. Do it on your lunch break. Make the time. Your financial health matters. So here we go - seven simple things you can do to help get your financial house in order. 

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This is the podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I am using that word rebuild, specifically, because we're designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life. What does starting over, what do you mean by that?

Well, for me, that meant divorce after a 20 year marriage. On the other hand, for my sister, that meant the unexpected death of her spouse. Those are two very, very different situations.

But the common denominator was when all your plans for the future, all your hopes, all your dreams, what you thought your life was going to look like has just totally gone up in smoke. Your day to day life is completely different.

And it does, it really feels like you're starting over. If that's you, first, from the bottom of my heart, I truly want to tell you, I'm sorry. I know what that feels like.

I know that it's overwhelming and it's itchy. But I'm here to offer hope. I'm here to offer encouragement.

I'm here to tell you, it gets better. I know from experience, and there are countless women who have come out on the other side better for it. The whole point of this podcast is, how do you get from point A to point B?

How do you get from everything falling apart to rebuilding a stable, amazing life? What does that look like? That's what we're here to talk about.

So if you'll remember, in the very beginning, I said there were five areas I focused on when I rebuilt my life. I focused on my spiritual health, I focused on my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and growth and goals.

And I said every episode would concentrate on one of those areas. So today, we're going to talk about financial health. And I've said it before, financial health is so important.

Money affects you every day of your life, like especially once you become an adult. Maybe when you're a kid, you're oblivious and that's great.

But as an adult, there's not a day that you don't spend making money, spending money, worrying about money. Money affects us so much. However, for it to be such a big thing, and a huge source of stress and anxiety, we don't talk about it.

And I feel like that's a disservice to just our community and society. And as a people group, we should talk about it more. And for some reason, money is taboo.

It's one of those things that you just kind of don't talk about. Nobody wants anybody else to know how much money they make, or the details about their financial situation.

And I understand the privacy, but we should talk about money and financial matters more, because they affect us so greatly.

And winning with money, and being good with money, and figuring out how to manage your money, is going to reduce your stress and anxiety, and help you build an amazing life. This is a really key factor in building an amazing life.

If you're constantly stressed about money, which that is a major stressor for a lot of people, learning how to get on top of it, instead of just ignoring it, learning how to get on top of it matters. It's kind of like putting off cleaning your room.

It's messy, it kind of bothers you, but you put it off, and you finally clean it, and it's nice and neat, and you're like, oh my gosh, this feels so good. That's how getting on top of your finances is. It's really easy to ignore.

It's really easy to put off. But when you tackle it, you're gonna feel so much better, and your anxiety and your stress is gonna come down a lot. So many people, this is a major stressor for.

So I know that you can get on top of your finances, and I know it because I did it, and I'm not special, I'm not unique, and I was able to do it, so I know you can do it.

All right, so today, what we're gonna talk about when it comes to money, I feel like so often, we get intimidated to sit down and deal with our finances, because it feels like an intimidating topic, and it feels like it's gonna take a ton of time.

So what I've done for today's episode is come up with seven things that you can do that will take an hour or less. A lot of them are like 10 minutes, you know?

So if you're at work, you're on your lunch break, you're eating your sandwich, this is little things you can do to help get your financial house in order. They're either gonna save you money, they're gonna help keep you financially organized.

They're all very, very different tasks. But if you tackle one a week, you know, just something small, you're gonna end up better off financially for it. And sometimes when we can put it in bite sized pieces, that is easier to digest.

If I can do something little, that's good, right? And then sometimes when we get positive results, it builds momentum and encourages us to keep going. So I feel like it's really important to break down tasks and make them simple and easy to do.

So I've come up with seven really simple things that you can tackle to help with your financial service. So let's break down the situation, all right? Easy to do, let's not put it off.

Pick one thing on the list, maybe one a week. Simple, you'll be better off for it, okay? All right, number one.

Number one, I feel like is the most important. It's number one for a reason. Set up automatic transfers to your savings account.

What does that look like? What do I mean by that? So most people, and I understand there are some that don't fall into this category, but the majority of people get paid on a reoccurring basis.

You get a deposit monthly, you get a deposit every other week. However, you get paid on payday. So if I get paid on Thursday, right, then maybe I would set it up for Friday, because I never want the automatic withdrawal to hit before my paycheck.

But within 24 hours of when your payment hits, so whether you get paid monthly or every other week, set it up so that automatically, you don't have to think about it, you don't have to go in there and do it, it deducts from your checking account how

much ever you want to put and moves it to your savings account. So you could say $200, you could say $100. You know, but pay yourself first. This is a financial principle.

I believe all the financial gurus agree with this, you have to pay yourself first, right?

So if your paycheck hits every other Thursday, you can set it up so that every Friday morning, early in the morning, probably before you ever wake up, it's going to deduct from your checking account and move from your checking account to your savings

account, whatever amount you want. So, like I said, $100, $200, whatever, will just automatically be transferred. You don't have to think about it. You could probably set this up on your bank's app, okay?

So you should have the app for your bank on your phone. Look and see if you can set up automatic transfers. And yes, even if you get paid every other week, you can set it up like that.

If you cannot figure out how to do it from the app, please call or chat with an online customer service representative. Every modern bank and credit union can set this up for you. It is simple, it is easy to do.

And you don't have to say, you know, the second Thursday of the month, because sometimes that switches if you're paid bi-weekly. It's not always the second, you know, Thursday of the month. You can set it up based on how you get paid.

So, you can set it up that every other week, it would do that. You know, you set up the first one, then it knows every other one. And so, it follows the pattern of your paycheck.

If you get paid always on the first, if you, you know, get Social Security, and that hits once a month, you could set it up based on that. I mean, this is flexible enough, everybody can do it. This is how you pay yourself first.

This matters, this is important. If you don't do anything else on this list, please do this one, okay? Set up automatic savings for yourself.

This is how you take care of yourself. And as your savings account grows, your financial stress and anxiety will reduce. Because you'll know that even if the car breaks down, you have the money to cover it.

That having a financial safety net is the best thing that you can do for yourself. And the only way you can do that is by starting right now and moving this money and setting it aside, all right? So if you have time to do one thing, do that.

It doesn't take long to set up. It's a super simple and easy process. Please set this up.

I promise you it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes and probably significantly less time than that. All right, after you've done that, number two, this is kind of a no-brainer, check your credit report. How do you check your credit report?

Well, I did a whole thing, a whole podcast on credit report, and I broke down what affected your credit report and all that kind of stuff. So you can go back and listen to that.

But if you need to check your credit report and you've never checked it before, there's a couple things you can do. You can go to www.annualcreditreport.com and sign up. They have to give you your credit report.

It does not cost money. This is a free thing. There are three main credit reporting bureaus in America.

We have Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. They all report slightly differently. Overall, they should be very similar, but they're slightly different.

Another easy thing, what I use is Credit Karma. It doesn't have all three, it only has two. But it gives me a good idea of what is on my credit report.

And I know if there's anything that shows up. So when I got divorced, there was a lot of negative stuff on my credit report. There, my credit was horrible when I got divorced.

It was bad. Like I couldn't, I had no credit. It was really bad.

And I built it back up. But I had to look and see what was on there. And some things, I couldn't get taken off.

You know, my ex-husband stopped paying our mortgage, and that, my name was on that. So there was no way I could dispute that. That was my fault.

My name was on it. But there were other things that maybe I could dispute. Credit cards that were taken out that I was unaware of.

So look and see what's on your credit report. Knowledge is power. You need to know, if you plan to switch housing, if you're going to move, your credit is going to get checked.

Whether you're going to rent or buy, your credit will be pulled. A lot of times for a job, if you're thinking and I am possibly getting a new job, not every job, but more and more jobs now are doing a credit check.

It's just part of the hiring process. So many things, it's important to know what your credit score is, and if you can dispute something, if you have to just wait for it to fall off. I had to wait for some things to fall off.

But knowledge is power, and this affects a lot of what you do. It affects us sometimes in ways that I feel like it shouldn't, but it's important to know your credit score and work on it.

Because if you have any major purchases in your future, if you have so many things, like I said, if you're moving, it even can affect your insurance rating and how much you pay for that. It's so many areas of your life.

Knowledge is power, so just get your credit report. Like I said, I use Credit Karma. It's an app.

It was just simple. And then I can monitor it, and I get an email or a notification if my credit score changes because it fluctuates a little bit. As, you know, the months go on, different little things happen.

That's how I stay on top of it. If you have not, if you're not aware of what your credit score is and what goes into your report, please check it out, okay? It's really important.

You can either do Credit Karma, or you can go to www.annualcreditreport.com and apply to get your credit report. It's important, know what's on there, all right? All right, number three.

This is, I get why we put this off, but it can make such a big difference. Call your cell phone carrier and see if there's a new promotion going on that could reduce your bill.

Seriously, it doesn't work every time, but a 15-minute phone call could reduce your bill by $25 to $50 a month, and then that's worth it, right? I would also call about your internet provider. My internet provider is through my cable company.

I don't get TV cable, but they are my provider for my internet. But there's a few other providers for internet. And so just like cell phone carriers, internet carriers are a little bit more competitive.

A lot of times, they want to keep you and retain you as a customer. So they're like, well, we do have this new promotion going on right now. So for the next 12 months, and they put you in a different promotion.

Not always, it's not guaranteed. I've saved $50 a month doing that. But if you're on your lunch break, and you just have a little bit of time, and you want to get your financial house in order, maybe call your cell phone carrier.

Maybe call your internet provider and just see. It could be 15 minutes well spent. All right, number four is kind of like it.

But this one to me is the most unappealing one on the list. It's the one I always put off the most. Call about auto insurance.

Auto insurance rates fluctuate drastically. So my daughter had auto insurance. I thought she had pretty good auto insurance, but she was talking to her friends.

She's like, my insurance is so expensive. It's more expensive than all my friends. This is crazy.

She got her insurance rate cut by almost $200 a month. It was insane. Now, I don't think most people have that drastic, and I kind of think she changed her coverage.

I'm not all up in her financial business, but it was a major, major savings for her. Okay? This is the least fun one to do, I will admit.

But sometimes, like Mark Twain says, you got to eat the frog, you know? You just got to go ahead and do the thing. So call around, get online, look at insurance rates, and see if you can't save money.

Because a lot of times you can, and it's not the funnest thing to do, but it pays big. And if you could save $100 a month, that would be worth it, right? So I encourage you to do it, or you could be like my daughter and save a lot more than that.

All right, what else to do? Okay, number five, this one's going to sound silly. It's going to sound so silly, and it takes so little time to do, but it really saves me money.

Download your grocery store apps, please. Go on those apps and make sure that you are registered and signed up and it's tied to your phone number. I'm going to tell you why.

I shop at Kroger, okay? You may shop somewhere else, download your app for your grocery store. But because I shop at Kroger, they have digital coupons.

So, you know, when you check out, if you're familiar with Kroger, you put in your phone number when you check out.

And I had always just done that for the field points, like, okay, I'll get a kickback on gas, you know, once a month or something like that.

Well, when you put in your phone number, if you've downloaded the app and you've signed up in the app with all your information, and that's tied to your phone number as well, any digital coupons you save are tied to that phone number when you put it

in, and they come off. I tend to save about 20% every shopping trip. I shop once a week for groceries. So if on average, my normal grocery bill is $200 a week, that's a lot of groceries.

We don't always spend that much, but $200 a week, if I save 20%, that's $40. What is that a month? That's $160 a month, just because I'm downloading digital coupons.

The other really cool thing is I do use paper coupons, but the majority of the paper coupons I use are the ones that Kroger sends me, because once you've signed up online, they have your address, not just your phone number.

They send you coupons based on what you buy, because they know what you're purchasing. They have all that information. So they're really tailored to you.

So then I totally use them, because those are things I buy. I also download the Walmart app. I download Publix.

We have a Publix really close to us. Publix will run really good sales. So I check their sales every two weeks.

Their sales tend to run for two weeks. And if they have something that's a buy one, get one free that I use a lot, I will make a trip to Publix to pick that up, if it's a really good deal.

So downloading that's not only do you get the coupon deal, you also see what's on sale. So if pork chops are on sale, you think, you know what? I'm going to make big pork chops this week.

You can tailor what you're choosing to buy and purchase based on what's on sale, and that's going to save you as well.

So if you kind of decide to meal plan around the things that are on sale or the things you have coupons for, you're going to have more savings. But downloading an app, that sounds so silly. Like, okay, downloading my grocery app.

But if it saves you $160 a month, well, okay, yeah, that was 10 minutes well spent, right? Right. Okay, so that was number five.

Number six. Oh, this one's fun. This of all the ones on the list, this is the most fun.

Oh, you're going to love this one. See if you have unclaimed assets. So I did this.

I got online. The website is missingmoney.com. So www.missingmoney.com.

I did this. And oh, my word, I was so surprised. I had like $57, I believe, in missing money that was tied to my name.

So this is how the process works. When you go, there is a field. You put in your last name, your first name.

You can put in a city, and you can put in a state. I didn't put in the city. I've lived in the same state my whole adult life.

So I did look under my previous last name and my current last name, because I had my previous last name for more than 20 years. So was it under that name? And that's where my missing money was, was under my previous last name.

And it wasn't much. It was 50-something dollars. Some people have a lot.

You can have maybe over $1,000. You don't know until you go and check it out. My sister had, I think, $20.

My mom had like $20. Nothing was major life-changing, but some people have major money there. You don't know unless you look.

I did put in my state, because if you don't put in your state, it searches all the states, and then the list of results is just too big. So if you've moved a lot, I would look each state, you know, one by one. You can do multiple searches.

So the way the process worked was, I claimed what it looked like was me, right? So I looked it up and I'm like, oh, yeah, that was me. And that is tied to the address I looked at there and all that.

So I clicked on it. And then when you ask for a few more verifications as you go through the process, like I'm trying to claim this money.

And then it gets sent somewhere where they, somebody verifies, is this really the person who's looking to claim it? They do another verification, not just you clicking it, right? And they send you an email.

Yes, it was verified. We agree, this is you, and this is your funds. And they put a check in the mail.

It's really simple. You don't pay anything. Don't put your credit card information anywhere.

It doesn't require anything like that. But it's really fun. And then you start looking for people you know.

So I looked up my parents, and I realized they had money. So I was like, hey, mom, go to this website, check this out, because it wasn't much, but it was enough that like, hey, claim that, right?

So if you just have extra time, this is something to do. missingmoney.com and see if you have unclaimed money. Not everybody does, but sometimes you have a lot.

Maybe you moved and you weren't able to get it. So check that out. That is a good one.

So that's number six. Number seven, the last thing that I recommend you do if you have a little bit of time on your hands and you want to get your financial house in order and do some financial planning, get your account with Social Security.

So go to ssa.gov, www.ssa.gov. That's Social Security Administration. That's what that stands for.

You can sign up for an account. So you put in the information, they got to verify it. That's why it might take 10, 15 minutes.

But then you know what potentially you'll get in Social Security. Now, it might change. You're still working.

You're still adding funds. And some of that may change. But as you're planning for your financial future, and you're saying, okay, I've got this much of my 401k.

I think that I'll be saving this much more. How much can I expect from Social Security? Maybe it's more than you anticipate.

Maybe it's less. And your Social Security amount changes based on the age you are when you sign up to start withdrawals. So at 62, you're going to get less, and if you wait to 70, to sign up, right?

So everything, it's so many moving parts. There's a lot of variables. I don't claim to be an expert because I'm not.

But when you sign up for an account, you can read all the articles. You know what your exact Social Security number, what funds that's tied to you. And that's really important for you to know as you plan for your financial future.

So if you're planning and starting to try to get your financial house in order, this is a good thing to know.

Just like it's important to know your credit report, it's important to know what your Social Security benefits might be when you go to claim them, all right? So those are seven things. Each one individually isn't going to take that long to do.

The most time-consuming one will be looking into different auto insurance, but it's worth it, right?

Totally, these things are either going to save you money, they're going to give you knowledge about your financial outcome, they're going to make you money. These things are going to help get your financial house in order, okay?

Tap for one a week, it's a simple thing to do. Please do the savings account one first. That's the one I recommend the most.

If you do nothing else, set up automatic transfers to your savings account. These are seven simple things that you can do that aren't time consuming, that aren't overwhelming.

Oh my gosh, when you think about everything to get your financial house in order, it just feels so overwhelming. I get that. Just tackle one a week, something simple, and see if you don't feel like you are gaining momentum in your financial health.

That you are doing better, that you're feeling more stable and more secure. I know you can do it. Please reach out to me.

Find me online. You can find me at www.workingonamazing.com. You can find me on social media.

I have an account on most all of the platforms, but I will say I do hang out on Facebook the most. It's just a page called Working on Amazing. You can send me a direct message.

You can reach out to me. I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear how you're tackling your financial health, what you're doing to get on top of things.

What would you recommend somebody to do if you said, hey, here's something really simple. You should do this to get on top of your finances. Maybe I left something big off the list.

I would love, love, love to hear from you. So reach out to me. I look forward to hearing from you, and I do look forward to talking to you next time.

Bye.