5 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Finances RIGHT NOW! | Ep. 32

Most people aren't struggling with money because they don't earn enough — they're struggling because no one ever gave them a clear, ordered list of what to actually do about it.

Rahul brings the perspective of someone who manages hundreds of millions in daily business investment and still uses the same line-item system at home. Van brings the honest, lived experience of someone who's navigated real debt, tight budgets, and the emotional weight that money quietly carries.

In this episode, they lay out five practical steps — from tracking where every dollar goes, to understanding the behavioral root behind your spending, to grasping the true long-term value of money in a way that will make you think twice before your next impulse purchase.

What makes it land isn't just the framework — it's the moment they connect financial discipline to something deeper: the idea that how you steward what you have now is practice for what comes next.

If your finances have felt like a problem without a clear entry point, this conversation gives you one.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're married to your expenses and lifestyle and you don't want to change that, but you will go work harder or work a second generation affordable. What folks want to do is increase their income and not decrease their expenses.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

But don't be paid if you don't have a budget for it.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Don't buy it if you don't buy it. I I love that. A dollar is always worth more today if you simply don't spend it on consumables and you actually put it to work for you. If you wait 24 to 48 hours, there are certain things that we've thought, okay, we're gonna buy it now. Let's just wait. And I waited a couple of days, and the design is completely gone. So knowing the value of money is very, very critical.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Hi guys, welcome back to the Palay Plays podcast where we talk about faith, family, finance with along with tools, tips, and methods on how to overcome some of the life's hardship and to live your best life. Today we're actually going through five things that we can do to improve our finances right now. So I'm gonna turn to my financial expert, my husband.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Hi, everybody. Um I guess it does need expertise to manage her all her financial activities. Um, but um, we actually put this in order. So we thought that it would be helpful to bring out some very practical things that you can do to help your financials today. And it's gonna go from the least important to the most important. Um, and you know, that's how we just ordered it, what we think is the is the right way. And it's just five practical, simple steps. So the first one is um know where your money is going, right? And that's line item management. And what we will do is we'll actually um include our the budget template that we use for our own family, and it could be for individuals or families. We'll include it with this podcast, it'll be in the comments. But um, I think it's it amazes me how many folks actually choose just not to do this. And uh there's many reasons why folks don't do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

I think oftentimes people want some big complicated like answer on how to manage money, and it's really this basic thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

It's simple and it's basic. You know, um I I'm in investments, I'm an investor, and I manage about $700 million of business every on a daily basis. Um, and we do it the same exact way. We look at line items, we look at where the money's coming in, where is the money's going out. I mean, it's maybe more sophisticated software that we use, but reality is that the behind the scenes, it's literally doing exactly what we do with our personal finances. And how you steward what you have in your hands today really will determine how you will behave or how you'll be able to handle it when you actually have more. Reality is I never learned to have more unless I was able to, until I was able to learn how to manage the lower the least. And that's actually very scriptural, that's very biblical. God says that what will you do with more, right? I can't give you more unless you actually know what to do with the little. So so when I when we talk about line item management, what we're really talking about is individually, let's just say you're spending money on dining out. What is that amount? Can you tell me what you're doing that for last week, the week before? And um, a lot of folks, if you're saying, well, it's anywhere from you know $100 to $200, if your range is over 50%, then that's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Because what you're saying, then you're not, you're probably mentally tracking, and that's not very reliable. And trust me, because I've told my husband I've I'm tracking, I'm tracking in my head.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah, when she says it's anywhere from 100 to 200, that means it's gonna be end up at 400 to 800. Like, I'm not gonna go, I can't just go and increase my income by you know X percentage every single day. Like, that's a difficult thing. So we really need to understand where the money's going. And the issue with our society is that you can easily access credit cards. So the truth is, what folks do is if they are not tracking and they're not making as much, they're really putting it on debt. They're actually borrowing money to live their everyday expenses, and that's not healthy because then you're big in a deeper hole, which you have to cover. Like no one's gonna just come in and cover up this debt that you that you dig for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, I actually thought um a couple of years ago you were telling me that you guys needed like at your work, you were needing to cut something. Right. Right. And you ended up what did you end up doing? Um, you went back and canceled subscriptions.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

And you saved how much?

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Contracts. It was like six hundred thousand or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

And you had a line item for that.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

It has to be line item. Yeah. You will never know unless you actually do a line item. And the next next step, so the first step is know where your money's going because the first and the second go hand in hand. So before I get into the next one, and and again, if you just joined, just so you are aware, we're going in order of importance. So from least all the way to the most. And before I get into the next one, here's what I would say: here are some practical tools that we use to actually track our spending. Because reality is it's easy to know how much your mortgage or rent is. That's one fixed number. But dining out might be a series of activities and events and habits, right? So we use this app called Fudget. Okay. We don't condone for Fudget, as a matter of fact, it's not the best app. But um, but reality is we use F U D G E T, Fudget. It is very helpful because the moment I spend on, you know, dining out, I literally input it right away. And then at the end of the month, I take that number and I put it on the Excel sheet. It's exactly the same as the template that's attached to this to this podcast. Um what else do you use? You actually write it on a notepad.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

I've tried different methods. Yeah. I did, I like to write it down.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

You like to write it down? I like to write it down. And then add it on.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

But you know, the thing is I I have so I like to write it down because I visually see it. And then, but for my personal expenses, I use my wallet on my phone. And so it just tells me all my expenses that month.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Okay. Great. That's awesome. And and so I'm not using like different and today it's with AI, a lot of this is very easy. The other day I did a lot of I did two companies' taxes by by just taking the bank statements and putting it into AI. So it was very helpful. Um, but I would highly suggest line item management. And the next one is simil related. So if you're not doing the first one that we just mentioned, know where your money's going. The second one will be really hard to do, which is understand the behavior or the belief behind every single line item. So, what do I mean by that? If you're paying a mortgage or rent, know what drove that decision. Was it lifestyle? Was it family? Well, whatever it was, right? Same thing with eating out, same thing with coffee, drinking coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. So I was spending a lot of money drinking coffee out. It was, you know, four bucks per visit, three visits a week, 12 bucks. That's easily 50 bucks to 60, 70 bucks. And I started evaluating why I was doing that, and I realized the habit was really a um, not necessarily a social thing. It was driven by a lifestyle. Like I was looking for this coffee drinking lifestyle, and I realized I could probably achieve the same thing by making the same coffee at home, and I save myself anywhere from 200 to 300%. And I'm not talking about Folgers, I'm talking about actually pretty decent coffee, right? Um, so I'm talking crap about a lot of name brands right now. So please forgive me if you're a name brand watching this. Um, but this root cause of money-related behavior is very important. And the reason why I say that is because that's literally when you're cutting expenses, it's not, you can't just cut behavior unless you tackle the root issue. Right? So you should add something here.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Well, what is the what what do you think the the root issue is when it comes to trying to change spending behaviors?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Well, for me, majority of the time it's lifestyle, right? I can use myself as an example. It's keeping up with the Joneses, right? Like, what does that mean? That means that all my friends are going out three times a week. I need to live it up as well. Right? That that's a key one.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

The other is these ideas, like you know You know what's hard though, that I think even when you're when we're doing our budget, because I feel like like I'm looking at our budget for this month, right? Yeah, and where we miss and I'm like, uh, we're like over because it spent X at something unplanned. Yeah. Like it's not unpl it's unplanned, and it's the convenience.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Like I'm buying this, I'm doing this right now because it's convenient.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

And I wonder if it's worth creating a line item for that.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Well, it's called miscellaneous. That should cover, you know, something that you go out of. Something that you go out of, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

And in businesses, it's called eating, it's like when I, for instance, I pack snacks for the kids. Yeah. Okay, and we go to the field trip, yeah, and they ate their snacks on the way up there, yeah. And then we're there, and now they're hungry.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yep. And you have to spend fifty bucks. I think that's miscellaneous. Here's the issue is that a lot of folks, if your budget is so tight where you cannot have $50 at miscellaneous, then you're tackling the wrong line items.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

What does that mean by that? If you're having a hard time where your budget is so tight and you cannot spend fifty dollars extra for because something happened, then you need to go back and look at all the big line items and and try to solve them. Try to bring them down. Okay. Because what it really means is you've already gone out of your skis. So you're saying that you're already spending too much, that's what I'm saying, compared to your income, or your budget is just unrealistic.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Right. If you're saying you cannot spend $25 extra because something happened out of your control, then then I think you are either being unrealistic with your budget or you are um you're you're you're just already spending too much.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah, and I think you know, we're we've gone a long way.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

And so we have space for unplanned.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

But we've done all this, like we've been there.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Like we have space for unplanned inconveniences things, right? And and it doesn't like stress us out. But there was a time in our life where we're like, no, like we it has to be strict. Yeah. It had it there was no room for that five dollar coffee. Yeah. You know, and we we we stood by it. And I think because of those practices, it got us to where we are.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

That's exactly right. And you were kind of getting into the next step, but like the the next one, which is number three. But what she's saying is very important. Because if in number two you're realizing, well, I I let's just say it's a home and you got it because at the time it made a lot of sense and you're paying a lot of rent. Okay. But now you're you're realizing your lifestyle is different and you can live without certain amenities, maybe, right? And that could save some rent. I think that's a good reality to come to. What it what it's not okay is you're trying to make it make ends meet on a very tight budget, right? Yeah. A lot of times what folks want to do is increase their income and not decrease their expenses. So, what that means to me when I work with folks that are trying to do that, um, and not everybody, but most of the time it really is you're married to your expenses and lifestyle, and you don't want to change that, but you will go work harder or work a second job to afford it. And your expenses is dictating your livelihood now. Right? Yeah. That has happened to us with credit cards, where we had so much credit card debt we didn't have a choice but to work for two full-time jobs and do all these things to be able to meet these obligations. Right? And the best way to solve a credit card debt is one, stop using it. And we'll stop there and we can do another podcast about how to handle credit card debt. But like that's that's the best thing, that's the first best thing I've learned is one, stop using it.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Right. Um, and you know, one of the things that I would add over here is ask for help. Ask for help from God. Ask for help from from your spouse, ask for help from somebody that you know that is doing well financially. Cause um because reality is what you don't know, you don't know. And I think this is this is finance. I'll give you some statistics about finance. It's uh surprising that I didn't. Oh, actually, I'll mention it later. But like um in the Bible, the finances is mentioned over 2,300 verses talks about finances. Over 2,300 verses. And why is God so focused on money when he doesn't need any of it? It's because he knows it dictates our lifestyle, it dictates who what we do and how we go about our life every day. So it's really important. Um, the next one, the next one is once you have once you know your your root behavior, and perhaps you have come to a decision where you're like, okay, I need to change something, and I need to maybe change some of my expenses or reduce it and maybe even increase my income. Right? This is the place where our decisions need to come, right? And and and reality is it's okay to renegotiate. It's okay to call your car loan company and see if you can get a better rate, right? And you can there's online tools that will help you figure this out now. You don't have to go run your credit with five banks and figure this out. It's okay to cancel your subscriptions. You can only watch one TV channel at a time, anyways. Right? Like this, there's like um you uh one of the things that I do is I actually completely unsubscribe from unsubscribe from marketing emails. Because if I don't get it, then don't they don't even exist. No sale exists because I don't get it.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

You're not even giving yourself the opportunity to tempt it.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

To be tempted, exactly. Like, why go to a bar if you don't want to drink? Don't even go there, right? Like similar concept. Uh using swaps. We recently did that where you're not using, like, let's just say you want to save some money and cost of beef is super high. Maybe instead of eating it three days a week, go down to two and then buy something that's a little bit cheaper than beef, right? Using substitutes.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

I mean, for us too, is we've been doing um just because it's such a good deal, like oysters on Fridays.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

At Whole Foods. Yeah. Yeah, dollar oysters at Whole Foods on Fridays. And if you're a Whole Foods uh executive, feel free to sponsor us. We love Whole Foods. Um, and then and then here's one thing that really helps me with impulse buying. If you really are tempted to buy something and and you know it it's probably impulsive, and maybe if you don't know if it's impulsive, one way to test it is to wait 24 to 48 hours. If you wait 24 to 48 hours, there's certain things that we've thought, okay, we're gonna buy it now. Let's just wait. And I waited a couple of days and the desire's completely gone.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

But don't be it if you don't have a budget for it.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Don't buy it if you don't buy it. I I love that. Don't buy it until you have money for it.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Like until I mean, because I mean, our audience, I'm assuming we we all have our different walks of where our financial situation is, right? And so if you are if you're in that stage in your life where you're like, I really just want some like financial freedom, I want to get rid of my debt, you it does require self-control, like self-discipline. And if you are if if you're making good money and just know that well, if you're making good money and you don't know how to manage it, you're learning how to manage it and having a budget, having a line item, don't throw it all away, you know. Um and then if you have more freedom, then it's okay. It's not like you have to you don't have to live super strict. We did it, we had to, right? Yeah, but we don't have to anymore. And so we but we get it. I think we needed that time in our lives to be to have that self-discipline.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

And and once you have, let's just say, a healthy heart or an approach when it comes to expenses, because we've really been talking about expenses mostly, right? Because and that's what we have learned. We've learned that once you know that you have cleaned up your home, got your home in order when it comes to expenses, and you can manage it, okay. Then what we what we typically do till this day is we, in order to increase our income, because that's the best time to increase your income, because now you've cut down your expenses, you have a good rhythm going, you have good healthy habits, you're not stopping at Starbucks nine, 10, 20 times a month. And now it's a good time to increase your income. Because now increasing income is like icing on the cake. And the first thing, and this is very biblical, first thing you do is look at what's in your hands. We have gone from living in a one-bedroom condo paying almost three grand a month, and this was 10 years ago, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

One bedroom condo? You mean our studio?

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Studio wasn't even one bedroom. It was like everything, every people came over, they saw my bed and they saw the dining table. But like you we went from there to actually living in a two-bedroom paying way lower, less than half, because we decided to actually sublease the second bedroom. Like we looked at really quickened up, like they're looking really quickened up our savings, and we're saving for a home. Um, even today, we look at okay, how can we, you know, add income to already what we have? Yeah, don't go overboard. I went overboard last year. I was doing Turo, Airbnb, doing all these things, and then I felt like I didn't have time to do you.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Didn't need to do all those things.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

I didn't need to do all those things. But long story short is to find a healthy balance and look at what's in your hands. Um, because that is very biblical.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, and knowing that like if you are seeking God on how to reduce your debt or to increase your income, he has he has the answers for you. He'll give he'll give it to you in your in your heart, and you'll just want to do. And he'll also, if you know you have the fruit of the spirit, you can you can do it. Yeah. Um when you seek him first.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

That's right. Okay. Um, all right. So let me just recap. So the three that we mentioned here is know where your money's going, okay. Um, figure out the root cause of the behavior, right? That's in your heart. Three is renegotiate, cancel, look at what's your hand, what in what's in your hands. And uh to to increase your income, look at what's in your hands. And the number four is um very important, improve yourself. And that's all I would say is to improve yourself. Learn something new, make yourself valuable. You know, I believe that your income is really a true, sometimes a true reflection of the value that you bring into the marketplace. So the better that you can make yourself, the better that you can actually put a value on yourself, right? And you become more valuable. So learn these new tools. Like some people are so anti AI right now, but reality is if you use AI as your servant and make it work for you, you can be very efficient. Um, and then I'll get jump right to the fifth one, which is understand the true value of money. And this is key because. Because this is the most important piece that I have learned in finances. True value of money. Okay, what does that mean? Well, a $2 cup of coffee, if coffee was even $2 today, at 9% earnings per year, would be worth $62 in 30 years. Now, if I looked at the coffee shop and said and it was a sign that says $62 cup of coffee, come in now. Would I ever go in? No.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

I think that's so crazy to me. Like I'm imagining, okay, that means our kids are grown adults, and I'm saying, hey, grandma's coming over. Does anybody want coffee? And they're like, oh yeah, can you grab me some coffee? And I'm spending $64 on each car.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Per piece. Exactly. A dollar is always worth more today if you simply don't spend it on consumables and you actually put it to work for you. So knowing the value of money is very, very critical. And the only way to make money be way more valuable than actually sitting in a bank is to actually sew it into God's kingdom. Okay, invest it, meaning that you give. And we'll do an entire podcast on giving next week. But but what we do is we give in terms of we donate money to God first, to his the things that he doesn't need money, but like he puts in our heart the causes that he likes and wants us to put in or invest in. And the second thing we do is we actually save or put it to work as far as investments go. Before we pay the credit card, before we pay the mortgage, and we pay everything in importance. So house first, cars second, credit cards, if we have any student debt, and so forth. Everything is in order of importance. Point being is that we give to God first, and then the second thing is we actually invest in our own selves for a second.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I like that word. Um like invest. Yes. And like sewing. I mean, just before our this podcast started, was we were talking to our director, and I said, you know, I didn't realize how much I don't like shopping for clothes because to me it seems like it just gonna eventually end up in the donation bag.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Like I wear it, I'm tired of it, and then donation bag. Like it doesn't do anything. And then he mentioned a friend of ours, a pastor friend of ours, and that he likes to spend he likes to spend money on very like quality, expensive clothes, because then he can resell it.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

And um, and that just that's the point. Like you want to get something.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

You want to use investing versus consuming.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Versus consuming.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Right. So hope you received something out of this. This was a little bit lengthy, but I hope it's helpful. There's five tips on helping you improve your finances right now. Thanks for joining us. Please share, share, share, and we'll see you next week.