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Welcome to Money Talk for Real, a podcast where I talk about making money, spending money, and everything in between. I'm Nick. And in this episode, I'm just going to be very blunt with you, at least the best I can. I'm going to talk about the fastest way to clean up your finances. And I hope that you take away from this an action, something that you can do right now, today, not someday. If your finances feel messy, then this is probably for you. If your money's all over the place, you're not really sure what's going on, you just kind of want to reset everything, then please listen up because today I'm not going to give you theory. I'm going to give you the fastest way to actually clean up your finances. Not perfectly, not forever, but fast enough to feel in control again. Not the panic, right? Not the stress, not the anxiety. So if things are feeling chaotic right now, this is going to be your reset button. Let's get into this. Let's start right here. Your finances don't get messy overnight. Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself to realize that. They drift over time. You stop paying attention. Things start to stack up. Subscriptions start to pile on. Your spending gets a little loose. And before you know it, you're like, all right, well, I probably need to clean this up, right? Um, I would say that most people probably try to fix it by doing too much, to be honest. They try to create a complex type of budget. They try to track everything perfectly to a T. They try to change everything at once. They just go ham. They go extreme. They go rogue. And that's great. I love the motivation, but it doesn't typically last. You don't stick to it when you do it like that. So instead, I'm going to talk about a way to simplify this into a fast reset. Here's step one. You need a snapshot of your money. I've talked before about knowing your numbers. That is very important. But for the sake of quickly cleaning up your finances, you need a snapshot of your money right now. It doesn't need to be from last year. It does not need to be an estimate. You need a real snapshot today, right now. Here's what you do to get that. Check your bank account. Check your credit cards. List your bills. I'm talking pen to paper. If you want to do it digitally, that's fine. You can use the notes app on your phone, whatever. But check your account, first of all. Check your statement. That's where the truth lies. Check your credit cards. That's where the truth lies. How much money did you put on there? What did that money go to? What are the spending categories? List your bills. You may forget about some until you go looking at them and write them down. And then look at your recent spending. You're asking one question: what's actually happening with my money? You need to understand that. No judgment, just clarity. Be honest with yourself. Chaos comes from not knowing. The stress comes from not knowing. The unknown is where the anxiety comes from. And getting clarity and understanding can fix that. Cut the obvious stuff out. Here's where we're going to move fast. We're not optimizing, we're cutting obvious waste. This is kind of your, I guess you could say, the why am I even paying for this type of list? You might be like, oh duh, why didn't I cancel that a long time ago? Look for things like subscriptions that you don't use. I know you have some. I have some probably. We all do. Get rid of those. Look for duplicate services. Maybe this is in the form of streaming apps. Do you really need five different streamings? Or can you compromise not watching a show for a couple months? Do you have duplicate music apps? Do you need to pay for Pandora and Apple Music and Spotify? Maybe not. Look for random charges, little things that are $7 here, $12 there. Things that you maybe forgot about, anything you forgot about, really, should make this list. And cancel it immediately, right now. Don't wait. Don't overthink it. You will be fine. Life goes on. You'll still live a good life. This alone, for a lot of people, can free up a lot of money right now, almost instantly, today. Next thing I would say is pause your spending. Not forever, but just for now. This is where you can create some momentum. For the next three days, the next five days, or even a week. Pause unnecessary spending. Mentally put a block on that. And it will be work. You're so used to being in the routine of spending money. Make a conscious effort not to. Just pause on it. Again, not forever. We're just doing this temporarily. Pausing your spending could mean no random Amazon purchases. Maybe you don't eat out this week. Or at least don't eat out constantly, depending on how much you're currently spending money on food away from the home. No impulse purchases. Nothing just unnecessary, guys. We got to stop this. This does two things. Number one, it stops the bleeding. And it also shows you how much control you actually have if you just make a conscious effort mentally to do this. Most people never even test this. And when they do, they realize, well, I guess I really didn't need half the stuff I was buying anyway. It's kind of a mental reset. And it can help you going forward. Again, just being in the mindset and being aware of it, you realize, oh crap, I've been buying a bunch of junk that's sitting in the closet that I don't use. And then by doing that, you naturally are going to create a buffer. Even if it's small, even if it's $100, even if it's $250, it might be $500. But you're creating a buffer, a little gap, a little margin. This is your, I'm not completely screwed if something happens type of fund. Because without that buffer, everything expensive or every expense in general, I guess, is going to feel like a problem. With a buffer, though, you can breathe a little bit. You see the world differently. You can think. This is where things start to feel different. You literally feel it in your body physically. You feel the weight going away. Next thing I would say is try to simplify your money flow. Clean up the structure. You don't need a complicated system. You just need a clear one. A clear system, a clear structure. Here's a simple setup. The money comes in, get your bills handled. Those are non-negotiable. You have to pay that. Then your spending, put a limit on yourself. I can't make that determination for you because I don't know your financial situation. But the spending needs to have some sort of limit on it. And then your savings needs to get something. Every month, something needs to be going into the savings. That's it. That's the system. Pay your bills, put a limit on your spending, put a little bit in savings. If your system is too complex, you probably won't follow it. We all have to be realistic. We all have to, you know, we live in reality. We have to live. Simple is going to be repeatable. And if it's repeatable, you'll see results. Probably a lot quicker than what you think. So pick on pick one thing that you can fix long term. And some people mess up here. They try to fix everything at once, and that's why it's not repeatable. You don't want to stick to it. But instead, just pick one thing. Maybe the thing you pick is eating out too much. Maybe the thing you pick is the subscriptions. Maybe the thing you pick is impulse spending, no savings habit. Whatever it is, pick one thing and focus on that. Baby steps here, one thing at a time. Because fixing one major leak can change everything. Literally. I mean, it can absolutely can. The momentum will beat the perfection every time. So if your finances feel messy right now, just remember you don't need to fix everything overnight. You need to see what's going on. You need to cut out the obvious stuff. Maybe pause the chaos a little bit, pause the stress, pause the anxiety, breathe a little bit, build a little bit of a cushion, a little bit of a buffer, a little gap, something that you can follow and have and simplify your system to where you can actually follow that. You do that and you'll be back to feeling better, probably faster than you think. If you have a financial question or if you are concerned about your financial situation, I would love to discuss it and run through it on this show. You can send it in, you can record it and just talk into your phone or your computer directly through the website. Just let me know your income, how much you make, what your what your payments are, etc. And I will go through it on this show. You can absolutely remain anonymous. If you don't feel like submitting it uh in the audio version, you can fill it out, type it out on a form on the website. You can do that at money talkforreal.com. Click on the debt help link. That's money talkforreal.com slash debt help. Money talkforreal.com slash D E B T H E L P. Kind of a shorter episode. Thank you for listening. Leave a five star review. If you have questions, please reach out to me. I'll talk to you on the next episode. Take care. This is Money Talk for Real.