Using Control Center

Using the control center to help reduce debt. Knowing the numbers and when bill are due will help in the debt reduction cause.

Article Link:

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/how-to-pay-off-more-debt-using-budget by Brianna McGurran

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Charles McDonald: 0:03

Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, a retired accountant turned truck driver, I reduce my debt in a relatively short period of time, debt reduction to achieve financial freedom takes commitment, confidence determination. Using control center, using the control center to help reduce debt, knowing the numbers and when bills are due, will help in the debt reduction cause. What is a control center? Well, if you haven't been following, or if you're new, it's another word for budget. I call it the control center, because that's where you can control your personal finances. And that goes along with doing your tracking. You do your tracking to create a report to get the information to put into your control center. And what you do once that's all done, no I hadn't have I didn't dive in, haven't talked about it. But you use that information, you have to update it on a regular basis, every time you get done after the update and you're tracking, whether it's weekly, or every pay period, or whatever the case is, you update your control center. So you can see at a glance what's going on. Now I personally break my control center down and at the very top is my income. So I put that in on a regular basis, usually every pay period. And then I update everything else, just see how my spendings doing. And my math, imagine what my budgeted numbers are my control numbers, which would be column B, the numbers that you've over time has defined on a monthly basis is what you're expected or should be spending on a regular basis. Now, that's easy for loans, mortgages, car loans, when you just put in a minimum payment. And it should always come to zero. But things you have to watch out for groceries, gas, for the automobiles, maybe daycare or child care, maybe diapers depends on your stage of life. Maybe you are putting too much into your retirement account and you're getting behind in other places. How's your debt Dawn, he can look at a glance, when you update it. How's your credit card debt doing? Because you should have a running balance of your credit card debt within your control center. And how much have you put into your savings? What's your savings balance? Is it going up over time? Or is it stagnant, or maybe going down because you take money out, but the control center is there. If you look and view it to give you information of what is going on and your personal finances. So let's break it down a little bit more. Let's start with housing. We know every month we pay our mortgage. So that always comes to zero, which is good, it should if you didn't pay it. And that's where it's important to know how much is due. And when it's due on your monthly bills and your monthly bills are what make up your needs. The things that you pay for on a monthly basis that you have to pay no matter what. And how are you doing on that? Did you miss or make a late payment on your mortgage or auto loans? But we're focused on housing? Is there anything in your housing it's this assume it's the middle of the month now? Is there anything left there they have yet to pay for? Maybe some of your utilities are due and towards the end of the month? Maybe some of them are due in the middle of a month or do throughout the month? So you have to be aware of how much you owe and when is it due? And when you update your control center. You can look at the detail of your housing and see which utilities have I not paid for yet? Should I have already paid them done? Am I late on making a payment? So it should be one of those if you're around the middle of the month and you're not sure when your bills are due? Maybe it's going to Secretary Third month you've done this. But if you're not sure when things are due, that's when you should investigate, you should look to see, well, when do I did pay at the previous month? Okay, well, I hadn't paid into that. When is it due, maybe I paid it late in the month, and maybe it was due early in a month. So let's get caught up on making timely payments on all your needs. Not only will that help you, with your planning on reducing your debt, but it will also improve your credit score, which would get you cheaper insurance over time, because those with bad credit, your scores are gonna have higher insurance rates, one for that reason, that's if you're perfect everywhere else, like you're a perfect driver. And you'd ever make any claims and make claims. But if you got bad credit score, you still got to pay a higher rate. So get that under control. So that's how you use your control center. And over time, you'll have a general idea, my housing costs is about $1,200 a month with my mortgage, or about $500 a month without my mortgage, and it's due spattered throughout the month, I paid some my utilities the first week of the month with the mortgage payment, I pay some of them in the middle of the month, I pay some and late in the month, I pay all my credit card bills, as scattered throughout the month, I pay for my car insurance on a monthly basis. And it's roughly in the middle of the month I have my car loans are due towards the end of the month, all my bills are scattered throughout the month, but you got to know how much is due. And when it's due. And when it's coming up? Is it gonna be due before your next pay day? Or is it going to be due after you get paid, because you have to look forward up to two weeks. So you have control of your personal finances. So you're not scraping around and trying to figure out how you're gonna pay for some when it comes due, you're gonna know that in advance, and it's gonna take a lot of stress I alive because you can rest assure one I'm gonna get paid on this day. And these bills are due after that I have one bill due for that before that, but I have enough money in my checking account, if I limit my grocery shopping to$300 from now other than and only put $20 a gas and have in the vehicle between now and then, and be able to pay that bill. That's called planning. And you need to plan your life. He need the plan your personal finances, so that you get all your needs and things that you have to pay under control. So that once you know that, you'll be able to say I got an extra$300, I can put it in my savings account. And you got to increase your emergency fund. And the more you're able to do that without having to take the money back out of the savings account to pay a bill that you forgot about because you shouldn't not forget about anything. over a three or four month period of time, you should have all your bills, identify and your control center. And you should know what's coming due. Now, yes, there may be some bills, you pay quarterly, maybe some bills, you pay semiannual. But you gotta think, what are they look back through your checking account and see what's happened. And I'll check out all the months is there any bills in there that are kind of foreign to you, and identify them and maybe it's something that you need to start planning for the value of your control center, be able to plan ahead, know how much money you have, know how much money you have to lay out that bills are coming due. So you can limit your some of your spending, whether it's gas for the car, or groceries or dining out or food deliveries. You can cut back somewhere. Let's talk about cutting back if you have your control center, and maybe you're paying everything timely and everything's looking good, but you're still not able to save any money. You're still spending more than you make on a monthly basis, he can tell that by what's your total income, and what last year total expenses, what's the net number at the bottom of your control center, when you get through a complete month, is it still a negative number, if it is, that means you're still using credit to pay for something, he have to stop doing that. Or that means that you had to transfer money out of your savings account to cover a bill, then you may be the week later you put it back, you have timing issues. That's why you need to have a minimum balance of at least 300 to $600, that in your checking account that you try not to use. So if you have one of those timing issues, you might have enough in the checking account that temporary cover it and then you get the next pay, you're paying yourself back. And you really do that. So now you're still backup your six or $300 minimum in your checking account. But what's causing that the cause of that is you have too many needs that you're paying for based on the income you currently have. So what you need to do is go through your control center, and look at all the needs that you're paying for. Maybe under housing, you have cable TV, have internet, it have five streaming services, why do you have five streaming services and still paying for cable, I've talked about this in the past, you have to maximize the use of your internet service by streaming, get rid of that expensive cable TV, you can get streaming services to pretty much cover all that. And it's gonna save you a bundle of money. But you got to limit the number of streaming services you have, you can't have three or four streaming services where you're looking at the same thing where you're have the same channels that you're watching. But maybe you have streaming service a because the has this channel that you like to watch, maybe has streaming service B because a doesn't have B's channel and B don't have A's channel. And see it's the same thing. You have to cut something else, you have to make a lifestyle choice here. What can you do away with and live without an order to save some money to get your debt under control. Because if you got four or five strings, services, you're wasting money, it should be no more than three, I say two, but I allow up to three to at the maximum, maybe one that your kids watch some shows on and one for that you watch some shows on that's not covered on the other one. Try to do away with duplicates, don't pay for multiple services, for the same thing. That's called using your common sense and spending your money wisely. You work hard for your money, quit giving it away. And if you quit giving it away, it's gonna help increase your savings, your emergency fund, and it's gonna help eventually reduce your debt within over time, it's gone to speed up and get faster throughout the process. But that's what the control center is gonna do for you is going to allow you to look at things and say, Hmm, well, I need natural gas through a house, I need electric, I need my cell phone service. But on your cell phone service, do you have an extra phone do you don't use the next year a couple lines you're paying for that you're no longer using. Maybe your kids went to college and got their own phone service and they left their old phone there and you have a couple of lines, update your service and get rid of those extra lines you're no longer using as long as you can get the similar service for what you need at a lesser price and you can save some money. That's our goal here. So that's what we're using to look at the detail and your control center and see whether things there they can live without. Are there things there that you no longer yours may be under memberships or entertainment, you have a gym membership, maybe a couple other memberships that you no longer use and cancel them. Why are you paying for something you're no longer using? Cancel it. Same thing goes with virus anti virus on your software for your computers, maybe you're paying for two or three of them, and you only use them one, because you can use one for multiple computers. And maybe as you got a new computer, he just bought a new service. So you're paying for multiple, get rid of them and keep one. That is how you use your control center. You can also use it on your debt. If you set up your debt and put in a beginning balance, payment charges, the beginning balance plus charges, less payments, ending balance. If you set it up that way, for each credit card, when you look at your control center and you go to your credit cards, you can add a glance see, if you use then your credit cards for up in that period in the month, you can see if you made any payments, you can see if you're made the minimum payment, you can see if the minimum payment being made timely. And you'll know your ending balance because you do the math. And I'll do the ending balance for you. It's a little bit more of a pain in the butt because you have to look at your credit card statement online, put in additions, as charges him put in your payments, your subtractions as payments, which you know because the payments you should know about because you pay them from your checking account. But you need to update additions, the additions may only be interest that the credit card company is charging you but you have to account for it, he can see how much it's really costing you over time by carrying that balance. So that's why we need to get our debt under control and get our finances on their current tool. They all go hand in hand with each other. And you'll be glad you did so and your tracking software, he should be able to generate a report that gives you the same information for your credit cards. I'll be back in one moment with my final thoughts are the articles that I referred to in my episodes, have a link in my show notes. If you're interested in checking out the software that I personally use to get my demo control, it's in my show notes under shop financial, you need to copy and paste the link. And it'll take you to the website. Any questions, you can just contact me through that particular website. If you value this podcast and would like to make a contribution, I had a contribution link in my show notes also give whatever you feel is appropriate for the information I am providing. I thank everyone for listening to my podcast. So for those of you trying to pay off your debt, when you have a budget, and sticking to your budget can help you reach your goals faster, and can help you identify how much money you have available to transfer into savings because you know which bills have been paid. You know how much money you have coming in, you know which bills are gonna come due. So you know, you have a little bit of extra, really not extra, but you have some money available to put in your savings to increase your emergency fund. Remember, while you're paying off your debt, your emergency fund is a minimum of $1,000 up to a maximum of 3000. And then when you have the maximum amount in there, you take out the difference between the minimum and the maximum and you apply that to one of your debt. And you do that when most of all your monthly needs are paid up. And you don't have anything coming due for at least a few days. If not a week or two. Maybe you have a pay period where everything's paid. You have a full paycheck coming in and you have most of that is either gonna go to groceries, gas for the vehicles, and some odds and ends around the house but you don't apply it to your savings because you know your needs are satisfied By satisfied, and nothing is coming due, that's the important and knowing what's going on, that all your needs are paid, all your monthly payments have been made. And you have this little bit extra that you can set aside and build up their emergency fund, so that you can one day apply it to one of your debt. And this is gonna be a slow process at the beginning. But over time as you debt starts coming down, and going away, that process is gonna speed up, because the first day you pay off, that's one less minimum payment, you have to make the second one, that's two less minimum payments, you make the third one, that's three less minimum payments you made. So you'll be able to rebuild your savings faster. So you'll be able to apply sooner, and you get your data under control. So the benefits of using a budget as a budget gives you a clearer understanding of where your money goes each month. And it can help you identify spending patterns and areas where you can cut back. That helps you pinpoint how much income you can safely devote to debt repayment. Remember, we're not the vote and we're devoting the minimum payment, and then we're building up our emergency fund until we have enough and then we're applying that to our debt. We're not saying we're going to apply$500 extra a month to our debt. I did that for years and never rarely made much progress avoids something would happen because I didn't have a big enough emergency fund. And I always was something that I would need to use a credit card again. And even though I was getting paid down, and something would happen and not have to charge something. But I had the the available funds on the credit to do it, thank God because I kept paying it down. But that's not how you get out of debt. If you follow my debt reduction plan, that's how you're gonna get out that it'd be able to see how much income you can report towards an emergency fund is crucial to keep an emergency fund intact, while eliminate debt so you don't go into additional debt if an unexpected expense arises. Budgeting helps you set aside a reasonable percentage of income for fun and non essential expenses, which can help you prevent your debt from being unduly stringent and the motivating, that would be your entertainment category. I really don't talk about that because that's up to how serious are you getting out of debt, I'm serious about getting my debt under control as soon as possible. So I can build up my emergency fund. So I can build up that extra cash. So that can do what I want later. Maybe it's a two or three years down the road. But that's too or that's five to 10 years sooner than if I don't do anything. And basically if you do a budget, adjust your expenses for you have a hard time making a budget work or finding enough to pay down your debt. You need to make some changes, maybe you can cancel some subscription services or limiting takeout. To reduce your non essential spending, be able to rent, renegotiate cell phone contracts, cable bills, insurance policy and make them more affordable. Cable bills should go away. It should be internet service and a streaming service. You don't really really negotiate your cell phone, you just call them up and Tom you got to change if you're not locked in. That's the beauty of being month to month if you're not locked in, you can call them out and say Ah, I got this other service here I can get the same exact service for $30 less a month and see if they'll match it. That's part of the process you do over time is you got to keep up with everything you're paying for can you get the same service at a cheaper price from another provider? Or maybe your service provider is given a special that they don't tell you about because they don't tell existing customers about ways they can say money because they like the most they can get out. But if you call them up and say my bill is getting too high I have and Tom will paying for it can what can you do? I'm gonna either change providers are going to cut back drastically. Your phone survey or cable or cable TV service I'm referring to you should not be pay an extra for your local channels, he needs to cut that right out by an antenna, it's a one time expense, and you begin an antenna. Unless you live way out in the country, we can't get any TV stations through an antenna. But you be surprised by an antenna, I've set it up, I get all my local channels free, I quit paying for it, and well, then I got rid of it. So I stream to streaming services is everything I need. And I still can't find anything in a watch. But that's beside the point. But I watch everything on that live TV or through my streaming services. And more than happy been doing it for 10 years now, roughly. And I save a lot of money. By doing that, you can do the same thing with your cell phone service you can do same thing with your insurance. And insurance agent, maybe you have to up your coverage. But yet don't mean you have to pay more. bundle your home in your auto together to get a cheaper rate if you long as you got good auto insurance, and good driving records, do what you can to reduce your bending art, whether it's for entertainment, non essential items, or for essential items, but you got to know what your essential payments are every amount about when they're due. So you can plan to make sure you have the available funds there to make timely payments. So you have a great credit score. And that's all and that works. It and you're debt under control, reducing your debt and getting your personal finance as a whole under control. And you shouldn't be scared of it. Because it's up to you to control your money. And if you can get your money working for you, instead of you working for your money. You'll be glad you did so