The Silent Money Killers Making You Broke

Discover the common financial pitfalls that could be draining your bank account and learn practical steps to take control of your financial future. In this episode, we explore the importance of having a financial plan, starting your retirement savings early, and building an emergency fund. Get actionable tips to stop wasting money, start investing, and secure your financial freedom. Download our one-pager for a quick reference on the six costly money traps. Share this video to help others improve their financial health. 

Follow me on Socials:
Facebook : https://facebook.com/hermoneycoach
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hermoneycoach

Transcript

 today we're diving into something that's probably costing you a ton of money right now, and you might not even know it. Let me tell you a little story about my friend Mary. She makes well over six figures income. She has a fancy car, designed her clothes, but guess what? She's completely broke. Dead broke, like eating Ramen noodles broke.

I hear this similar story over and over again. It's happening to many of us as well. Many of us are falling into these massive money traps without even realizing it. I'm not talking about your daily latte habit, although that's probably not helping.

I'm talking about the exact same costly mistakes that I see destroying people's wealth every single day. Not having a financial plan. We're talking about not starting to invest for retirement early enough.

The I'll invest later deal doesn't work, and we're talking about the trap of not building an emergency fund. Your credit cards are not an emergency fund. They're not there to help you get out of emergency. Actually, they will cause it to be worse. What's really at stake with these six costly traps, your financial freedom, your retirement dreams, and mostly your peace of mind. The worst part is every day you wait to fix these mistakes, they're costing you money.

Let's start with the first, not in order of magnitude six. Costly money trap. Not having a financial plan. You need one.

Statistics say that 12 to 18% of our income is just vanishing into thin air, but there's a solution. And the solution's easy. It's have a plan. I want to motivate you to create your own financial plan and stop letting money control you. It is time to flip that script and take control of your financial future.

So do not fall into the trap of not having a financial plan. Would you hop into your car blindfolded and drive across country with no GPS, no map, just you know, vibe vibing your way through and hoping for the best? Of course not, but that could be exactly what you are doing with your money right now.

The average person is literally throwing away to the tune of about one paycheck every six months. This isn't Amazon splurges. This isn't. Dinner's out. I'm talking about the silent money killer of simply not having a plan, not having a budget. People hate the word budget, so let's call it a spending plan.

A lot of us run amuck with various subscriptions that we don't even know we have and that we don't even use, and. Endless random Amazon purchases that we don't need. These all add up to thousands and thousands of dollars each year, but the solution is simple. It's just having a plan. And statistics say that people that have a budget or a spending plan are building wealth three times faster than the rest of us.

So just by tracking your expenses, literally just watching where your money goes, you can put an extra 500 plus dollars into your pocket every single month. Look, I get it. Planning sounds boring about as fun as watching paint dry. But let me ask you, would you spend 20 minutes a month to double your wealth? Here's what you can do right now to get started. Grab your phone, open your banking app. Look at your last five purchases. This is all I'm talking about is being intentional. Looking at what you're spending, do those last five purchases move you towards your financial goals?

Or did they just happen and they don't mean anything? These can be a good picture on what your spending is like. This can give you an idea if your spending is intentional, or maybe this is an area you wanna improve and maybe you wanna get out of this costly trap and create a financial plan. Stop letting your money control you, flip the script and take control by creating a plan.

Okay. Costly trap number two, not investing early for retirement earlier is always better. This lesson is gonna motivate you to stop leaving money on the table and start building for your dream future.

What if you had hundreds of thousands of dollars just right in front of you and you're walking right past it? Here's the thing. If you're in your twenties, thirties, and you're not saving for retirement yet, that's exactly what you are doing. If you wait until your forties and beyond to start saving for retirement, you're not just losing a little bit of money.

You're literally cutting your retirement nest egg in half. Let's go through some math and let's let these numbers really sink in. If you start putting away 200 bucks a month, that's like two fancy dinner dates. At age 25, you'll have over $600,000 at retirement. If you wait till 35, that same $25 will be about half that much.

So you could be leaving, let's say, $300,000 on the table, and don't take these math as exact numbers, but just illustrative

and what the trick here is, is the power of time. It's not necessarily about how much you're investing for your retirement, it's how long you invest. Time is a financial superpower, and every year you wait to start investing in retirement. You are weakening that superpower.

So one easy action you can start today if you're not already doing it, is to set up an automatic transfer from your paycheck. To your retirement fund, you won't see it. It will just go directly there and you won't miss a thing. So start today, not tomorrow, not next month today, because every single day you wait is literally costing you your future.

Now, lesson number three is a biggie. The third costly money trap is not having an emergency fund. You must have an emergency fund. Credit cards are not your emergency fund. From this lesson, you can shift from financial anxiety to unshakeable peace of mind knowing you have. And you have money set aside for when something happens, and it's not, if something happens, it's when, because life gets lifey.

And don't be someone who says, I've got credit cards. I'm fine. Those were what my friend Sarah said to me right before her entire financial world turned upside down. In just 30 days, and trust me, what happened to her can happen to any of us. Because here's the scary truth about emergencies. They don't schedule an appointment.

They don't plan ahead. They don't ask if you're ready. They just show up. So what happened to my friend Sarah, was it started with her car making a weird noise. No biggie, right? That weird noise became a $3,000. Transmission repair and then. The next week, her dog swallows something he shouldn't have. That was a $1,500 vet bill.

And then to top everything off her company announced layoffs. And guess who is on the list now? Let me hit you up with some numbers that will make your heart skip. 60% of Americans, that's more than half of us get slammed when an unexpected expense every year. And the average emergency costs $3,500, and that's just one emergency.

We look at Sarah and she had boom, boom, boom in a row. That 3,500 emergency on your credit card just became a $4,200 problem because of interest, and it could be more depending the interest rate on your card.

Here's what an emergency fund really is. It's not just savings. It's an personal insurance policy against life's chaos. Here's what you need at a minimum, a thousand dollars. For starters, the ultimate goal is to have three to six months of expenses. And you wanna keep it in a safe separate, high yield savings account, and you can start small. If a thousand bucks is too much, start with a hundred and then add another a hundred.

Whatever you can. Just keep building it because here's the truth about emergencies. It's not if they'll happen, it's when.

So pause right now and ask yourself, could I handle a $3,500 emergency right now today? And remember my friend Sarah, she now has six months of expenses saved because she never wants to feel that panic feeling again because the next emergency it's coming. The only question is, will we be ready?

Alright, friends, I have just covered the first three. Costly money traps that could be draining your bank account right now. And this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for part two and we'll dive into the next three equally Big money traps. Today we learned how missing a financial plan could cost you an entire paycheck every six months.

We talked about why waiting to invest is literally leaving money on the table, and we talked about the dire need to have an emergency fund. Remember, knowledge without action is just information. Take what you learned and start right now. Because the truth is the longer you wait, the more these traps are costing you. And I don't want that for you. To help you stay on track, I've created something special. Download the one pager that has the six costly money traps that you can refer to so you can remember what we talked about today, and you can get started on each of those money traps and alleviate them from your life. Please share this video with anyone you know who might be struggling with their spending. Remember, you have the power. Are to change your financial future, and I'm here cheering you on every step of the way.