Jill Russo Foster

Tips for Successful Personal Finances

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Simplifying Long Term Goals

Did you set up your automated saving deposits from your paycheck?

The next step is to automated your other savings goal.  What do you want to accomplish / have in your life?  Maybe your are saving for a home, car, saving to pay for college, retirement.  The choice is yours.  You need a plan to achieve your goals.

Set up a smart goal – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.  For example, I want to save $20,000 for the down payment of a new home by 2025.  Breaking that down, that’s $20K in 4 years or $5K a year or $96.15 per week.  Break it down into small manageable steps so it’s not overwhelming. Set up a automatic transfer for the amount you need. Then sit back and watch your savings grow to realize your goal.

Just like you automated your savings yesterday, automate the finance part of your long term goals.  I would suggest that you have a separate savings account for each of your goal, that way you can measure your progress and know exactly where you stand at all times.

It’s that simple to start on a path to achieve your goals.

Simplifying By Automating

Another way we simplified our finances was to automate our savings.

Each pay period (after the direct deposit), we contribute to our emergency savings.  We have done this through an automatic transfer from our checking (where the direct deposit occurs) to our savings.  A specific amount of money is moved from the checking to the saving each and every payday.   No more I’ll save after I pay my bills.  You know this story, there is never anything leftover to save.  So get in the habit of paying yourself first and then you will start to see you saving grow.  This was great with the pandemic and less income coming in, we had our savings to fall back on.

You can do this too.  You can set it up through you bank and set up an automated transfer or you can have your paycheck split between two accounts (checking and savings).  Either way works.  Bottom line, you need to have a savings account for whatever life throws at you.  Start your automated savings today.  You won’t be sorry.

Simplifying With No Fees

Yesterday, I discussed consolidation out accounts.  Today, let’s talk about the benefits of this move.  Yes, there is a hidden benefit.

By having all our accounts at two organizations, it makes our checking account free – no monthly maintenance fee, no paper statement fee, no fee for bank checks, no fee for ATM use (even with ATM’s at other locations).  Consolidating accounts makes our lives easier and no removes the possibility of any fees too!

This is added benefit!

Hopefully, your are not paying any banking fees associated with your bank accounts.

Simplifying Our Finances

We simplified our accounts.  First, we transferred accounts so that we have less organizations to keep track of.  We not have rolled over retirement accounts to once institution.  One statement with all the accounts on it for each of us.  Simple!  Less to keep track of monthly and at tax time.

We have consolidated some debt to zero percent credit cards to get the balances paid off faster with all the payment going to the principle.  We carefully chose the zero balance offor the longest time frame and no fees.  Once it was done, we divided the balance by the number of months at zero percent interest and that is our monthly payment.  Each and every month that payment will be made to have the total balance paid in full without any interest.

Okay, this did take sometime to research, but it will be well worth it in the long run.  Now that it’s done, it simple to make one payment each month.

How many institutions do you have accounts with?

Simplifying Our Mail

Are you overwhelmed with mail?  If you are like we use to be, we got a tone of physical mail.  It’s taken a while, but we have reduce our paper mail more than 50%.

Step 1 for us was to eliminate unwanted mail.  We called each and every catalogue that arrived to ask to be taken off the mailing list.  It wasn’t as time consuming as you are thinking.  WE created a pile and when we had time we made the calls – thinking wait for an oil change, waiting at a doctor’s office, etc.

Step 2 for us was to call the ones we wanted to ask that they not share our name.  You are probably thinking that the privacy act does this and it does to some extent, not as much as I wanted.  They are share you information with affiliates.

Step 3, in addition, we have signed up for these organization that reduce your mail:

Less mail simplifies our lives in many ways – less paper to shred / recycle, no more piles of mail to go through and not more temptation to buy what we don’t need.

 

Simplifying Our Meals

I cannot imagine an easier way to plan meals than being a part of a CSA.  This was a huge incentive towards simplify our lives.

For us, we get an email two days before the pick up of the items of the week.   This gives me time to shop for groceries, check out new recipes and plan the weeks meals.  This makes my life easier as it takes the guess work out of what’s for dinner and as an added bonus gives us plenty to take for lunch and snacks.

I am able to plan the week based on the CSA items and sales / specials from the local grocery store.  This is a big money saver for us.

No more, saying what’s for dinner and ordering take out.  This not only helps our budget, but it’s a time saver too.   For most people, food (groceries, eating out, take out, beverages, etc.) is the biggest part of your budget.  Meal planning helps us to plug the holes in the budget easily.

Simplified By Joined A CSA

One of my goals has been to eat healthier.  We have made many changes over the years by eliminating chemicals and not so healthy ingredients in foods we buy.  This year I took it a step further to simplify my life.  We joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) co-op.  You pay a fee to the farmer upfront and you get a share of the crops.  Not only are you helping local farmers, but you gain from this.

If you know me, I want organic, non-GMO vegetables.  We found Deep Roots Farm NY is just prefect for us.  We now get a half share of whatever the farm has to offer.  Yes, we are eating more vegetables.  We are trying vegetables that we never have before.  I am spending time looking up .ecipes and that’s fun for me.

From a simplification point, I don’t have to buy vegetables in the grocery store anymore.  We are getting organic vegetables at a fraction of the cost.  Our half share comes out to $20 per week.  That’s a bargain compared to what I used to spend and it’s simple.  Every Wednesday, we pick up a shopping back full of vegetables and it couldn’t be simpler.

My Journey To Simplify

After having time to reflect these past few months, I have come to the conclusion that I want to simplify my life.  I have too much going on and don’t want to run around at this hectic pace anymore.  If I have learned anything these past few months, it’s to slow down.  I have enjoyed our daily walks in the neighborhood, meeting new neighbors and just seeing the beauty of the area.  These little simple things are making me happy. 

What I realized is that I want more free time to do what we want when we want and not be guided by a to do list a mile long and what people expect of us.  So with that said, join me for the month of July and see what changes I am making.  Some changes will be with finances in mind, others will be my lifestyle. Stay tuned to find out more.

Tell me what you have done and that may inspire me to do the same.  Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter so see everything.

Saving Money On Your Electric Bill

Are you finding that your electric bill is going up?  With the past few months of being at home, ours has.  So I was bound and determined to reduce ours.

We have started to unplug electronics all the time.  We shut the strip on the TV when not is use.  We unplug the computer and accessories when we are not using them.  We have cleaned the back of the fridge to make it run more efficiently.  We are doing air drying with the dishwasher cycle.  We wash as much laundry as possible in cold water.

What are you doing?

For more suggestions, check out this article.

What Have You Learned?

This year has been like no other year.  I like so many of you have been at home for months, only going out to buy groceries and to work.

I have had a lot of time to access my life to see what is working and what isn’t during this time of staying at home.  Here are some of the questions, I have pondered:

  1. Do I have enough of an emergency fund?  My answer was we were okay for a few months but need to build this up.
  2. Do I really need to buy this? I came to the conclusion that I spend too much on things.  That is changing.
  3. What really matters?  I really miss the interaction with family and friends.  Yes, there are internet platforms, but it’s not the same for me.
  4. Do I want to keep writing this newsletter?  Still pondering this, but leaning to less often.
  5. What has to change in my life going forward?  Still working on this one.

I was also able to accomplish some projects that I have wanted to do for a while.  I completed a big scanning project that I have been trying to do for 10 years.  We replaced some grass in front of the house with new plants.  The biggest accomplishment we have achieved is that we are walking every day for 45 to 60 minutes.

What have you learned / done during this stay at home period?