Join us for essential insights on the Dr. Sev Talks Money Podcast. In this episode, Dr. Sev invites you to discover practical strategies to safeguard your finances and achieve lasting success. Learn how to navigate rising costs, build an emergency fund, and boost your income.
On every episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast, Dr. Sev and her guests explore the essentials of personal finance, the psychology behind financial decisions, life and business strategies, family dynamics related to money, and more. Discover actionable strategies to boost your confidence and improve your financial well-being through the inspiring success and recovery stories shared by Dr. Sev and her guests.
As part of her direct client services, Dr. Sev helps busy women take command of their basic personal finances so they can reach their financial goals and gain peace of mind.
Dr. Sev encourages people to take control of their finances with a practical plan that’s tailored to their specific needs so they can reach their own financial goals.
Here is one way you can support the podcast and YouTube channel: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/DrSevTalksMoney
Another way is by purchasing our Journal and Budget Tracker: https://a.co/d/eHSutSl
Website: https://www.sevtalksmoney.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrSeverineBryan–SevTalksMoney
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/severinebryan/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sevtalksmoney/
—
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/drsevtalksmoney/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/drsevtalksmoney/support
Dr. Sev
Now, I want to start off by asking you a question. If you were to lose your source of income, or if your income were reduced, would you adjust your lifestyle? If you think about it, many of us have had adjustments to our income, or adjustments to how much we have to spend on our lifestyle. And we may not have made any adjustments of that lifestyle. Now, what do I mean by that cost of living is rising, and salaries are not going up at the same rate. So that means we have the same money to spend on the same things. But those same things cost us more money. So again, the question is, with reduced income, and that’s in quotes, because your income is the same, but the income has to cover the same things at a higher rate. So would you adjust your lifestyle? Have you adjusted your lifestyle. These next five months are some of the most dangerous to our finances. Halloween in October, Thanksgiving in November, Christmas, Hanukkah and other holidays in December, New Year’s in January and Valentine’s Day in February. So guess what? It behooves us to plan for financial success, and minimize the possibility for financial disasters.
On today’s episode, we are discussing simple, practical and realistic ways to minimize financial disasters, and more than anything, plan for financial success. Now, these tips that I’m going to be sharing, they may help us to examine our money practices, and possibly help us to establish sound money habits. And no matter what your income level, these things can be impactful. And here’s another thing to consider before we dive into the material, when we focus on status, it is likely to have a spending more than we should, because we want to keep up with what our parents were doing. I think about athletes and performers, actors, actresses, who make millions, what are broke now or will be broke, I don’t want that for you and me, I want us to establish good financial habits that will make our money work for us. Because as I said before, we are making the same, but it has to go a little bit further. So how can we be creative.
Contrarily. When we focus on wealth, we won’t be as concerned about the exterior, such as what society says we have to really be careful about letting society dictate the hall when where and why of our money, we’re likely to focus on long term when we think wealth. So when we think status, we’re thinking spending, how can we keep up with the Joneses? How can we keep up with our parents, but when we’re thinking wealth, we’re more likely to be thinking long term, and how we can preserve our assets.
We really should examine our relationship with money. But that’s a topic for another day, it requires a deep dive into our money mindset. And we won’t cover that so much today. But I’ll say this, have you thought of why you spend the way you do? What are your money triggers. Think about why you spend how you spend and see if there’s something there that’s causing you to spend in a way that you really don’t want to doesn’t really align with your goal. But you end up spending that way. Anyway. One of the things I want you to think about as I go through this is, are we boring to protect our lifestyle? Are we boring? Because we have no choice? Or are we boring to live according to what we think society dictates. I think of it as living paycheck plus to PayCheck Plus, not even paycheck to paycheck anymore PayCheck Plus to PayCheck Plus, meaning we borrow to supplement our paycheck each month. Now there are people who genuinely need to supplement their paycheck for various reasons. So this is not a knock on anybody. This is designed to get us thinking about how we approach our finances, and the little tweaks we can make to impact our bottom line. Do we really need to live paycheck to paycheck? Do we need to spend on that credit card without a plan to pay it back? Or without knowing that our paycheck will cover it? Or the savings will cover it? Are we spending on that credit card to get points because that money is set aside and we know we’re going to use it to pay.
These are things we have to ask ourselves because how big is something that can derail us? Some of the times we do things when thinking because it’s habitual. And I’m going to talk a little bit about that in a little bit. It’s a ritual to go grocery shopping every week. But do you need to? Okay, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself. As I said before, the cost of everything is going up. But salaries are pretty much staying stagnant, or they are not moving at all, either staying stagnant, or because of the cost of living, we are using that same salary to cover more. So again, there’s a need for us to be creative.
Think about those college days, I don’t know about you. But I was able to make $1 into 10 $10.50. Because I had to be creative. I didn’t have a source of anything. I had a little side job, but I had to be creative, to make what I had work for me. But now that we have our jobs, we tell ourselves, I deserve to buy what I want, I work hard, I’m making money, I have a job, I need to buy what I want. But we also deserve peace of mind. We also deserve a financial future. Our 80 90 year old self deserves a little bit of peace of mind. So how can we preserve our assets, minimize your expenses, yet still enjoy our lives? Because this is not about deprivation? This is not about giving up everything. This is about balance? And how can we make what we have worked for us? I’m saying no to a lot of things these days.
Because I am thinking carefully about whether I am doing them out of habit, and what kind of return on investments, they’re going to bring me. Because let’s face it, I have limited resources. And I need to ensure the expenditures that I am making the spends that I’m making is worth it, I need to make sure they’re worth it. And if you’re like me, you have limited resources. So you have to think carefully about how you can make your assets, make your income work harder for you know, many times we go to events without having a strategy or a plan for what we want to gain from that event. Are you spending money to go to events, to do things to attend parties to attend different things? Without thinking, What is my strategy? What is my plan? What can I gain from this event, because again, habits will cause us to go to these things to do these things without having a plan in mind.
So what I want to do now is I want to share a few strategies, or few categories. And a couple of things that we can do to help us make the most of our money in those categories. Holidays. I mentioned before that these next five months are dangerous for us because all of the different things that are happening. So let’s talk about holidays. If you are big on gift giving, there’s nothing wrong with that, however, are you planning for your gift giving. Because if you don’t plan is likely to derail your budget. At work, you’re thinking I need to give somebody a work, I need to give my coworkers I need to give my boss a gift, I need to give my family members a gift. And if you give my neighbor a gift, and you’re thinking about all of these people, but did you plan for it. So if you don’t plan, it can derail your budget. So here’s some things that you could possibly do to help you manage your holiday spend, you can have a family gift exchange. That way you’re buying one gift for one member of your family, you can do the same on the job suggest gift exchange set dollar limits, no more than $50 No more than $100. And buy based on that now you’re buying for one person. Another thing you can do is a Gift Tree. You know how you go into the bank at Christmas time and you see those trees with the tags on it to help those who are in need.
You can have a family Gift Tree all year round. It could be for Christmas, for birthdays, for whatever holiday for whatever celebration you have, create a gift tree. And then you can put tags on those trees. And you select one gift. Each person is allowed to select one tag and buy based on that. You can create dollar limits around that whatever strategy you want to create. Because again, some of us feel like we need to buy the most expensive gifts because we have we’re making the six figures and seven figures we need to buy the most expensive gifts.
And as I say there are athletes who made millions that are broke. Okay, your actors who made millions and are broke. So it doesn’t matter how much money you make. You still need to plan and strategize about ways that you can cut back on your expenses. Because again, the cost of living is going up up, okay, so unless you’re getting a raise every month, a big raise every year, you may want to think about how you can minimize your expenses, how can you curtail the expenses. So again, the family gift exchange set dollar limits will give tree. Think about some creative ways you can celebrate your family, you can celebrate your coworkers, you can celebrate your neighbors, and still keep it under your budget.
So you want to have a line item in your budget for holidays. And you want to do the same thing for birthdays. It doesn’t have to be the most expensive things. We buy things sometimes. And two years later, those people don’t even remember who gave it to them. They don’t even remember where the gift is. Because we’re so used to buying things we’re so used to collecting things, we don’t place the value on those things that we should. So again, be creative and making a special. What can you special for a birthday, for example, that doesn’t involve a lot of money. You do want to spend $10,000 on a birthday party for our one year old. And then when they get ready to go to maybe private school or college, you’re scrambling for money to pay for that, you know, so again, no knocking if you want to spend 10,000 on a birthday party, but how much of a detriment is that to your child’s education? Because are you doing them a disservice by spending all this money on things to impress folks who don’t care about you. Meanwhile, the things that’s really important, your education, their health, all of that is not given as much priority, because guess what? Their health. Nobody sees that. Right? But the big car, the bigger house, the fancy party, everybody sees that. I mean, look at that, as I have money, you have money, you’re doing well, because those things are external to them. But the things that are internal, making sure our kids have the education, making sure they have the tutoring, making sure they have the drum lessons, the piano lessons, the ballet lessons, all those things that help them to be well rounded, those things people might not see as much.
So things to consider, again, it’s your money, do what you want. But these are things that you want to consider as you think about birthdays and holidays and how you spend your money. And again, thinking of not only losing now, but living in the future, right? Here’s another thing that you may want to consider household expenses. And that includes food I mentioned before, are you a habitual shopper, where every Friday, when you get off work, you go grocery shopping, you don’t think about what it is you need, you don’t think about if you need to go grocery shopping is just a habit for every Friday evening or every Saturday to go grocery shopping, and how much of that food is wasted. Because we don’t give thought to the things that we’re purchasing. We don’t give thought to the fact that we have things in the back of the fridge, it’s falling, we don’t give thought to the fact that we have three of that same thing that we just buy another one up that’s sitting in the pantry. So we have to be careful, again, be strategic with the money that we have with assets that we have, how can we make them stretch even further? Right? Another thing to consider is, Are you a person who eat out a lot? Again, nothing wrong with that. But is it in your budget.
If you have a group of girlfriends or group of girlfriends who always go out to eat maybe every weekend, maybe one of the things you can do is do a potluck at each person’s house for one weekend, per month, because that’s the way to save some money, right? Because think about it, the prices of food is increasing in the restaurant. And the service and the quality are decreasing. I don’t know about you, but when I go to restaurants, it’s not the same these days, the food, the price is going up. Everything needs a tip. Even if you just call in an order to walk in to pick it up. They’re asking for a tip. You know, everything is increasing. So how can we again, be creative? One of the things you can do if you’re a husband and wife couple, you can be creative. Get some candles, get your good dishes, create an ambiance and eat at home, fix something really nice and eat at home. You’re saving money you’re saving the tip you’re saving wear and tear on your car. You’re saving time because you’re not driving to go sit at a restaurant waiting 30 minutes to be seated. But you’re still having fun you’re still having you’re still enjoying that meal. Even if maybe you want to buy half of that meal, maybe part of it from the restaurant and fix the rest or something what’s just some ways to be creative and save some money. You don’t want to, again, deprive yourself. But at the same time, it’s about balance. Do you pack lunch? Do you eat out for every day, let’s say you spent $10. Well, I’m being conservative, very conservative here. But let’s say you spend $10, every day out for lunch, and maybe another $5, for snack with 15. And maybe the $5 for the coffee, that’s maybe $20, right? per day, at five days, that’s $100.04 weeks, that’s $400, half of that, even just half of that into a high yield savings account, or opening a CD, with some of that can gain you some extra income, some extra money, okay? Because you eat that lunch, and you buy that stuff. And it doesn’t even last you for the afternoon, because it’s filled with butter and sugar and all the things that are not even good for us. Because we know when we cook at home, we know what’s in it. Okay?
So just something to consider when it comes to eating out and groceries. And consider packing lunch, even one day per week. Now let’s talk about gas, the price of gas, it goes up and comes down, it goes up comes down. But for the most part, it stays up, right? Do you plan your shopping trips. And that’s another thing you can do what I do, because I’m Anna, like that, I make a list of where I’m going and how I can go without doubling back. So I can save money on gas. So that’s something for you to consider, again, keeping in mind that this is planning financial success, and minimizing the possibility of a financial disaster. Because companies are not trying to give us raises. Okay. All right.
So let’s talk about personal care. A lot of us, we go we get our nails done, we get our makeup done. Again, nothing wrong with that. But is it a habit to do? Can you think of a way to maybe minimize that expense? My daughter is very good with makeup. So she does her own makeup. And she did her friend’s makeup. When when they had special occasion like prom and all of that she did her friend’s makeup. So instead of them going to somewhere to get them to pay to do their makeup. She took care of that. Can you maybe forego your nails? Once per month? Can you go to a beauty school and get your nails done or you get your hair washed? or different things like that? I have done that for years saved a lot of money. Again, if we’re not newscaster, actor who really need to get our makeup and all of that professionally done. Is this a need or a want? It may make you feel better. But how does it make your pocketbook feel? Just something to consider?
Okay, now let’s talk about our living situation. Are you living by yourself in a 456 bedroom house? Now if you can afford it, and you have room to save, kudos, right. But for many of us because of the landscape right now around real estate, we’re paying a lot more money than we would if we had bought our houses maybe five years ago, right for those who are new to buying a house. So what are some things that we can do there, we can consider downsizing, that’s something we don’t like to do. Because here in the United States of America, we like big houses. Okay, so we don’t like to think about downsizing. But that’s something that we could do. Or you could move to an area that’s not as expensive, just not as fancy. So you could pay less, or even get a family member, a trusted friend and live together for a year while both of you save money. We like our spaces. We like our privacy. And so many of us won’t consider that. Okay, and that’s fine. But I’m giving you these ideas, something to think about. Because the purpose, again, is how can we maximize what we have right now? Because we’re not getting a lot more of anything. All right. So next thing I want you to think about is vehicles. Can you trade in your vehicle for one that is less expensive to maintain? That’s something to consider? Are you taking care of your vehicles? Are you maintaining them so that they are less likely to break down?
We don’t want to only talk about minimizing expenses here. We want to look at other areas that we can evaluate in our financial success planning. So one of the things we want to talk about is emergency funds. Here it is we have to stretch the little income that we have, right? So how can we stretch the income and now you’re telling me seven that I need to have an emergency fund? Where am I going to find money for that? Well, we start with $1 I love giving teaching people to start with $1 Because not only When you’re saving, you are creating a muscle. And that muscle is the habitual muscle of saving. Okay, you’re creating the saving habit. So start with $1. Start with five, I share all the time that when I started building my emergency fund after my divorce, I started with $25 Out of every paycheck 25. As of today, I have a multiple five figure emergency fund. So it is very doable. Start where you are. Don’t wait until you have $100 150 $200. To save. Start with what you have.
Now, when it comes to retirement, nobody wants to live under a bridge when you’re 60 70 years old. So how can we prepare, again, starting small, starting with making sure at least that you can match have get your employers match. If we can get our employers match, then at least we know we’re getting free money, right? So they match us 100% on everything we save up to say 3%. And if we save 3%, and they’re matching us 100%. That means we’re saving 6%. Okay, that’s nothing to sneeze at. And it could be that you start with retirement saving with half a percent, or 1%. Okay, of your income. So whatever just just starting, because you cannot beat the compounding effect of money. You just cannot, you cannot beat the compounding effect of money.
I share all the time about my emergency fund, I share about my net worth and share about my retirement funds or my investment funds. That’s what I have is because of compounding, and I started late, okay, so if you’re listening to me, and you’re in your 20s, and 30s, now’s the time to start, even if you’re in your 50s and 60s, you can still start. Okay. Alright, so the last thing I want to share is increasing income. Yes, we want to minimize expenses, we want to be creative with our expenses. But sometimes, no matter what we do, we still need more money. Okay. So I would ask that you consider looking at ways that you can increase your income, ask for a raise, it’s one of the quickest ways to document your accomplishments and ask for a raise.
Another thing that you can do is look at side gigs. I share on this channel all the time I drove for Uber or for Lyft. I did different things, I did different, different things that I can’t think of right now, in order to increase my income so that I could pay down nearly $40,000 in student loans. And that’s been over 2018, October 2018. On to now I was able to pay down nearly 40,000 in student loans. So there are things that we can do to be creative. Is there something that you are good at doing that you could possibly make some money from? And with all the things that we’re talking about here, again, is how are all can we plan for financial success so we can avert financial disasters.
We had the government shutdown that was looming a few weeks ago, and there are people who are panicking, okay, because they may not have made preparation. And there are people who, because of circumstances, they couldn’t have made preparation. But there are things they can still do in the confines of where they are like, as I said, be creative. When you go shopping, make a list of the things that you want, make menu first, and then make a list from the menu of what it is that you are wanting to buy for dinner for that week for lunch for that week. You know, what are the things that you can do in the confines of what you have to make it work for you.
So I want to share a list of things that I shared with a group that I challenged to save $5 per week outside of the regular savings outside of your regular practices to save five hours per week, for the next eight weeks. Some of the things I told him to do cancel on you subscriptions, carry a reusable water bottle, instead of buying water from the snack machine. carry one type of each snack when you go to work. A salty snack, a savory snack, a sweet snack, that way you’re not going to the machine and paying $1.50 for each of those snack because based on your craving, right. So if you cover all your cravings, you have one of each that you can use and save yourself money because when you buy in the store in bulk you’re saving money. Pack your lunch at least one day per week for a goal buying fancy coffee at least one day per week. By Are your favorite drink in bulk and take one to work everyday, instead of going to the snack machine, use coupons, check your store sales paper and purchase items you need that are on sale. Try a generic brand, sell something you’re not using.
We love to stockpile. There are some of us that have stuff in storage. We’re paying storage for those things. They’ve been sitting there for years. And then we still pay in storage. Why don’t we sell those things? Why don’t we get rid of it. Take on an extra side gig. take public transportation one day each week, instead of driving your car, you will save not only on gas, but on parking fees. If you’re living in an area that facilitates that, on plug devices, we’re not in use, review your bank and credit card statement for charges. You may not have authorized how many times I’ve heard people say, Wow, I just looked at my statement. And for for six months, they’ve been charging me $5 or $10. For six months, six times five is 30 $10.06 times 10 is $60. That’s a lot of money. They were you’re spending that you’re not getting any return on it. So evaluate your credit card statements, your bank statements and make sure your charges you did not authorize, make sure there are charges on there that you still want to have on those statements for gold buying prepackaged food, and set aside an hour on the weekend to chop and prepare vegetables and fruits.
And one that I didn’t put on my list to them is if you have fruits and vegetables that are that you’re not using right now, instead of throwing them out, you may want to prepare them and save them in the freezer. So you can use them later. Because we waste a lot of money by throwing away food. So I hope this has been helpful for somebody, at least one point that that’s been helpful, because again, we don’t think about a lot of the things we do we just do them because it’s part of our to do list or it’s part of our thing that we do per week or whatever. And we don’t really think about how we can change our habits, or how we can change the things we’re doing so that we can save some money.
One of the things I want to offer right now is if you are wanting to work with someone to find some practical ways to look at your budget, because these are general things for everybody. But if you want to be specific about your finances, and things that you want to look at on your finances, I invite you to book a free 15 minute consultation with me. And we can talk a little bit about some of the things that you may want to the goals that you’re wanting to achieve and how I could possibly help you with that.
