Jill Russo Foster

Tips for Successful Personal Finances

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2020 A Year For The Records Books – Part 1

2020 has been a year unlike any other – from job loss / furloughs to pandemics to hurricanes.  All of this has signaled changes in our lives, not only in what we do (or don’t do), how we live and how it affects our finances.  We must learn to adapt our finances to changing times.

For many this is a year that you started (or continue) to accumulate debt.  Not a good thing!

Let’s first talk about all the ways that you may be accumulating debt:

Not having an emergency fund.  You have heard me preach over the years about having a savings account for life’s what ifs.  This was the year that many of us needed to fall back on our emergency savings as jobs were lost / furloughed and the unemployment system was overwhelmed, and payment were delayed.  Your emergency savings was the way to get you through in these uncertain times.

Adapting to change (the new normal). As your life changes, so should your finances.  Meaning that if you have job loss / less income coming in, you need to tighten your belt and cutback on your expenses.  Answer these two questions.  Think what can I get for free that I have been paying for?  Think what can I reduce or eliminate in my monthly expenses?  Want more information, check out my past newsletter, Budgeting By The Numbers.

Eating out / take out.  Food is one of the biggest expenses in a family’s budget.  Typically, when I coach a family, it the food that is an issue with their spending.  How much is it costing you to eat out, pick up take out, grab a beverage versus bringing and cooking at home?  Track this and see where your family stands.

Reimbursable costs.  In these uncertain times, you may have more medical than other years.  Make sure to utilize all your options such as FSA and HSA accounts, in network providers, etc.  I was speaking with someone who hadn’t submitted any expenses to her FSA account.  She potentially could be leaving a lot of money on the table by not timely submitting her expenses for reimbursement.  

Check out next week’s newsletter for part 2.

 

Simplifying By Making Choices

This stay at home time, we have made changes to our routine.  Bills are still coming in and some are higher, but income stayed the same or was even reduced.  Something had to change.

For our electric bill that went up (even more now with summer air conditioning), we unplugged.  Think shutting the strips on the TV ‘s when not in use, unplugging the computers and printers when not is use, unplugging the kitchen appliances, and more.  By doing this we have reduce our bill by about $15 a month.  AARP has an article on lowering your electric bill during summer.

Previously, we have reduced our cable bill, by reducing it to basic TV service and internet.  Now we add whatever paid service that works for us – and only one at a time.  We have smart TV’s and can access programming through the internet apps that are free.  We use our local library’s digital collection for free.  Right now, we are using Sling TV for other channels.  In total, we spend about $110 a month total, by reducing the cord.  Hopefully, one day we can totally cut the cord!

We have also not renewed most magazine subscriptions and cancelled memberships.  For our warehouse club, I had to go into our profile and uncheck automatic renewal.  If you do this, remember to check that you are not being automatically being changed when you shouldn’t be.

Simplifying Home Improvements

If you have followed my blog, you know that we do projects around our home all the time.  We typically a yearly list to do.

With more time on our hands and being a homeowner, means there is always a project / improvement that needs to be done, some by us and others by professionals.

Our first project this year was to replace the grass between the road and sidewalk with plants. Delivery trucks parking on the sidewalk and the salt from the winter storms always made this grassy area a mess.  Our hosta plants needed to be split, so this solved the problem.  We removed the grass and placed weed block down, added the plants and completed it with mulch.  No cost to us, just labor over two weekends.

Next, we starting to replace fence panels. We are still doing this ourselves, by replacing a panels or two when we have a few hours and the weather cooperates.  We’ll do what we can and at a slow pace.  It sounds easier than it is, because it’s not only replacing the panel, we need to breakdown and transport the old panel to the town’s transfer waste station.

As you know, home improvement projects and maintenance are easier to do now versus having a major emergency home improvement project later.

Simplifying By Reducing

With more time on my hands, I got to thinking about what I could reduce or eliminate to save money.  Honestly, I always think about this.  For me, it comes down to spend that money now on something or save it for later.

What items do I purchase that I could use another option?  Here are some of the things I have changed in our house:

  • Swapped out a magnetic white board monthly calendar for buying a yearly calendar.
  • Used my cell phone sharable calendar instead of the paper planner.
  • Changed from plastic containers to glass jars and from plastic bags to silicone reusable bags.
  • Using essential oils to make my own cleaners versus buying individual cleaners for parts of my home.

How much can you save by making small changes?

Simplifying Our Entertainment

Being home meant more time on my hands.  For me, this could lead to more spending and I (or my budget) wasn’t going to allow that.

For us, we have reduced our cable TV to basic and have one streaming service.  That’s all we have and I wasn’t going to pay for any more.

We have kept ourselves entertained with free stuff.  We have watched movies on the channels that we have.  I was able to watch the movie Hidden Figures that I had wanted to.  I highly recommend it if you haven’t watched it.  We explored a variety of free services. We have always used Hoopla from the library for free movies. We’ve toured places what we haven’t been to, such as virtual tours of museums and national parks.  I’ve read many books that I was planning on reading that I never got to.  We broke out our board games and played for entertainment.  We have explorer new locations for our daily walks.  All this without spending a penny.

If we can do this, you can too.

Simplifying By Opting Out Of Mail

This was another biggy for us.  Way too much mail.  This needed to be simplified.

I do want all my bills in a paper format.  Personally, I keep them to see what’ happening – so I want this mail.

But I didn’t want a lot of the other mail – catalogues and magazines.  It seemed to me that if I made a purchase from a company then I would not only get that company’s catalogue list but on other’s too.  I am not going to kid you, this was a lot of effort to get off mailing lists.  You can visit my resources page to find that companies that you can opt out from.  But I took it s step further and called all of the catalogues and requested that I be removed from there list.  Yes, it’s time consuming but it has worked.  We simplified by eliminating these catalogues thus reducing that amount of mail that comes, reducing the temptation to make a unwanted purchase and saving trees.

As for magazines, we didn’t renew our subscriptions and let them run out.  I wasn’t finding the time to read them, so they were piling up creating clutter (not a good feeling).  Now, if I want to read a magazine I can check out the magazine through my local library and read it online.  RB Digital from the library works for us.  Again, we reduced that amount of mail that was coming in, reducing the clutter from the unread issues and saving money by not paying for the subscriptions and savings the paper.

We receive less mail now.  In fact, there are days with no mail at all.

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.

Financial Literacy Month – Tip #28

ATM Fees

Here’s the tip from December 15 – Money Drains month:

These are a total waste of money. Think about your plans ahead of time and be prepared. There is no need to have to go to an ATM that will cost you a fee. Plan ahead for what you will need. If you find you need more money than you have on you, then think about what you want to buy. Do you really need it or could you live without it?

To purchase a copy of either of my books Thrive In Five: Take Charge of Your Finances in 5 Minutes a Day or 111 Ways To Save

#JillRussoFoster  #30WaysToSave

Financial Literacy Month – Tip #27

Credit Card Interest

Here’s the tip from December 10 – Money Drains month:

This is the biggest waste out there – paying interest on your credit cards. A perfect situation would be to never pay a penny in interest charges. But this is the real world and sometimes it cannot be avoided.

If you learn nothing else from this book, get your finances in order and develop good money habits. That includes getting rid of debt and only charging what you can afford to pay off monthly.

To purchase a copy of either of my books Thrive In Five: Take Charge of Your Finances in 5 Minutes a Day or 111 Ways To Save

#JillRussoFoster  #30WaysToSave