How She Saved $1,000 Every 6 Months and Put It Toward Debt | 586

0:00Coach Michelle:When she paid it annually, she saved$1 ,000. She called both her agent and a couple others because she knew that in the end of the day, she just needed the best rate because it just made a big difference. She knew that every year it kind of creeps up. Okay, you wait till he's asleep. Replace it with a Reese's. Saving$1 ,000 every six months. Hey, by the way, that translates to$2 ,000 a year. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt free, but you don't want to live on beans and rice?

0:39Or you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? If you don't already know how to budget, or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. If you want to seem like you have your finances all together, or you're not on the same page with your spouse when it comes to finances. We know what you're doing probably isn't working. But guess what? You're in the right place. We're Shana and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners, and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019, helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and know exactly what to do with their money.

1:13In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know, plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation. We can help you no matter where you're at, whether you're the single mom who's never had$500 in her savings account or the millionaire who's paid off four real estate mortgages. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time.

1:40This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. Welcome back, Coach Michelle. You know, Coach Michelle has really taken off. We had a call, I think, last week and she was like, and Coach Michelle was helping me. And I was like, yes, Coach Michelle was helping you. And so Coach Michelle is back here from office hours, just came from office hours. Was it a lively bunch? Were they giving you a lot of trouble over there, Coach Michelle?

2:03Coach Michelle:They are the biggest troublemakers. I love them. They are so much fun. They are. I was just going to say they're a wonderful community of women. They're supporting each other, helping each other, just being so involved and giving each other tips and tricks. And they all listen to our podcast religiously. And so they're all pulling from different podcast episodes that they heard. Hey, did you hear this when they talked about this? I just think it's a wonderful way, like, you know, sometimes we're just stuck in our own way. So to be able to log on there and have other people speak to you and other things that they heard that you may have missed from the podcast, I think is really helpful.

2:36Absolutely.

2:36Coach Michelle:They love listening to what other people are working through because it's stuff that they can relate to, right? It's things that's happening in their own life. And so it's really nice to be part of that community. Yeah. Not only that, but nice to know you're not the only one that doesn't quite understand or has like a little problem here and there or we just talked to some to a woman that was on our podcast loved her she was wonderful but she's like how hard it was for her to pry the bill's debit card out of her husband's hands like he would not give it to her it's like this is relatable i don't know how many clients i've been like you okay you wait till he's asleep and then no replace it with the Reese's yeah like you know like the nice little just put something in his wallet that feels the same so he doesn't even know just kidding we don't we don't actually I want to do that.

3:21I'm just kidding. But I do want to say we're going to get into some fun lessons that like everyone listening can also get help because we're going to go through them. But go to budgetbesties.com forward slash office hours to figure out when you can hook up with Michelle and all of her friends because she has one evening session and the other ones are during the day so that everybody can hopefully get some help. I was just going to say we recently added a once a month evening session too. So make sure you look at that website. Again, that's budgetbesties.com forward slash office hours. super easy to remember so that way you can get plugged in.

3:51Absolutely. It'll be fun. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about this is, this is always a big one and it's kind of one that Vanessa usually like, um, tries to make sure that people re quote their auto insurance because it can really make a big difference in how much you're paying, especially if you're thinking about it annually. So tell us what happened with your fun friend and how she saved money.

4:11Coach Michelle:Well, she was doing so good. She was clipping a ride along right going through everything and making sure that she had the best rate for all sorts of things right but as she got to that car insurance she she knew that every year it kind of kind of creeps up and it'd been a while so she's like all right it's time to make that phone call and she did she called both her agent that she'd been working with and she called a couple others kind of played them against each other because she knew that But, you know, really, in the end of the day, she just needed the best rate because it just made a big difference.

4:45Coach Michelle:And she's also working through some debt. Right. And as she's working through some debt, she's trying to grab a little extra cash everywhere she can. And what she found was the best thing she could do for herself was actually to set aside that savings bucket for car insurance and pay it annually. Because when she paid it annually, she saved a thousand dollars. And that was huge. And she took that big chunk of savings and put it directly towards some debt that she was really trying to get rid of. And it was it was a huge win. And she came on to office hours to tell us. Right. And to encourage other people that, hey, you need to do this.

5:25Coach Michelle:It was worth the time. And she works she works like 12 hour shifts and she's working her tail off. Right. Just like so many people are. But she did go ahead and carve out like an hour or two. right because it takes a while to go and do that and it was just so worth it for her and and other people were you know hey wait hold on i'm gonna take notes because i want to do that too yeah i love how you said that she shared that it was worth the time because a lot of people i know we're busy guys we get it we're right there with you with all of our kids doing all the things but if you can carve aside that time and set it you know set it aside to make these phone calls it will be worth your time.

6:04Saving$1 ,000 every six months. Hey, by the way, that translates to$2 ,000 a year. That's not a small amount of money. That's a decent vacation, right? That you could be saving just by making those phone calls. And I also love how you said that she played them against each other because it's not personal. Even if your broker is your friend, this isn't anything personal. It is business and we need to save money. Yeah. And I do want to say that she also, So, you know, she paid off debt. So she saved whatever interest, whatever payments that she's having to put monthly for that. So it's like a double win.

6:39And so I like that she and this is what the annual bills, it starts to make it doable. If you think about, well, no, I can't come up with$3 ,000 in one month. But if I break that down every six months, I might be able to do it. And I can finally start to make those six, those payments six months at a time. And then I can save more money. And we all want to do that. And truly, you can start to do that with almost all, not all, but a lot of your bills, you will save money if you change it to annual. And so, but I think the first step really, Michelle, is seeing, is getting all of those bills listed, right?

7:10On your bills column, whether it's Audible or it's your insurance or whatever, get them all listed. That's when people are like, oh, I don't, how did my Verizon bill get to be$300 or whatever? And then we can start to actually pay attention and tack them one by one. And always the car insurance is going to be one of them. I think you made a really good point. And I want to go back on that because you said we do want to pay these things annually if we can because we save money. However, a lot of times we look at the number like$3 ,000 and we're like, oh, absolutely not. That will never happen for me.

7:39I will never be able to do something like that. But if you go to pay your auto insurance bill monthly, why don't we, if you have extra room in your budget, go ahead and start setting aside. Okay, when is my next premium due? Is it in a year? Is it six months? Start setting that aside. So you will be kind of making double payments, right? One going into savings bucket, one going to actually, you know, the company every month. But if you can start setting that aside and then you can pay it by annually and annually, you will get to the point where you can have that money to pay in full so you can have a benefit of saving$1 ,000 every six months.

8:14Right.

8:14Coach Michelle:And I think she really enjoyed the fact that she just pays it and it's done and she doesn't have to worry about it. Right. It's time to enter your coaching era because making good money should feel like making good money. Yeah. Imagine six months of private coaching where we'll tell you exactly what to do. No guesswork, no confusion, and absolutely no judgment. It's a done-for-you system that actually works. You don't know what you don't know, and that's not your fault. And that's why we're here. Financial coaching with us looks like two coaching sessions a month, personalized recaps, and after-hour support, you can text and email.

8:51So you're never stuck wondering what to do next. Together, we're going to build your budget, set up your system, and tackle any challenges that come up along the way, which, by the way, they always do. If what you're doing isn't working and you're tired of trying to figure it out on your own. Sign up for financial coaching at budgetbesties.com forward slash coaching before all of our spots fill up and we will help you go further faster. Six months from now, you'll wish you started today. I think also the thing that strikes me is when you said like, she just noticed it creeps up. All of your bills do that.

9:23I have a fun saying, like everybody, you know, it's up a dollar here, 35 cents, every single budget, every time we do their budget. I'm like, I'm so happy for them. I'm so happy that they just got more money because they were probably doing really, you know, it was really hard for, you know, T-Mobile or whoever, but, but I think it's important to keep an eye on that. And you're not going to do that unless you're actually updating your budget. The other thing I do want to say is when you're calling these people, there's, there's different strategies. And I think we could probably do a different episode for that.

9:49There's different strategies for each thing that you want to reduce. I do think with the insurance, you know, just paying it for six months will often save you money. I had a client that, and the reason I brought this up is you said it just kept inching. Somehow her student, her good student discount got taken off for her son. Like, oh, how? It's just, oh, you, like you didn't, you never called in to say you still wanted it. So we took it off or something, you know, something stupid like that's probably what happened. And then, and then also she realized like she didn't want to pay the replacement cost for some of the, for her kids' cars because they were, you know, not the best cars.

10:20So it's fine. Also, she didn't need renter insurance for, for those cars because everybody had a car in the house. So we could just borrow for a little bit if we need to. And so there's just different strategies that you can, you can do to get that bill reduced. And it's true for every bill that you have on there.

10:34Coach Michelle:Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So I have a question though. Yeah. Because your, this also is something that I've dealt with quite a bit extensively with a client. And it says that one of our fun friends had a family help spending that was happening. Maybe less, she was less aware of it. And then she started being intentional about it. So tell us a little bit about that. Well, you know, so many of these gals that join us have such a big heart, right? And they're trying to do so much. They're not just taking care of themselves and their husbands and their kids, but they're also taking care of maybe some siblings and maybe a parent and maybe a neighbor and maybe a cousin or, you know, whatever.

11:17Coach Michelle:And when I say taking care of, they're helping them financially, right? And I think a A lot of people have been in that position where they've helped family financially, whether it's a one-off situation or if it's something that was repeated. And what her dilemma was is she did not know what or how to put that into her budget because it started off as a one-off thing. But as time went on, it was more than one family member. And it was not just once. It was more and more. And it wasn't that they couldn't handle it. she and her family could handle helping. It was she just didn't know how to budget and also take care of her own personal.

11:59Coach Michelle:And so we kind of walked through some different ideas there so that she she could have eyes on it and do it intentionally and do it without worrying that it was also going to take away from something she and her husband were trying to. Talk about if you're if surprise unexpected expenses will derail your budget. Other people's unexpected expenses will definitely derail your budget. So that's definitely a problem. And I have a client too, and they just created a separate savings bucket for it. And so they just started putting money in there knowing that it was going to get spent and knowing that it was there and they could help when they wanted to help made them feel really good.

12:34It's like these things that pop up that are every six weeks or seven weeks or whatever. They're not consistent. But if you can make it consistent, even with inconsistent income or variable income, people say, well, I get paid this and never the same. Well, you have the ability to make it the same. You have the ability, you know, in this case, to set aside the same amount of money every single month for cases like that where she can buffer it and know that she's going to be able to provide and help them with the money that she has set aside intentionally on purpose. And she put it in a category instead of just it's here and there whenever and her heart is there.

13:08She wants to do this, but it wasn't in her budget. But by putting it in your budget, it just removes all the anxiety and the the unknown from it and just you know plug it in just like everything else

13:19Coach Michelle:yeah yeah just show it show it there and she was that's exactly what she did and she actually had one that was it was more of a monthly bill and so that's where we put it yeah i think he was helping out mom with the power bill and so she's like i just pay that i'm like well then then automate it put it in your bill section and then you don't have to worry about it yeah it's just gonna be taken care of yeah and what a good feeling for her to be able to know that she can Like you said, she can do it. And now she doesn't have to be stressed about it, doesn't have to mess with her so that she can just be happy that she's able to be generous like that.

13:51So absolutely fantastic. Like you said, all of those ladies have a big heart. We love them all. And so if you want to join them, go to budgetbesties.com forward slash office hours. Go hang out with Coach Michelle and all of her fun friends. And you can get your own questions answered or you can just be a lurker. That's OK. That's welcome. All right.

14:07Coach Michelle:We have a few of those. And that's fun. Hop on and say hi. That's all we want. It's awesome. Yes. Thank you, Michelle, for coming on Financial Coaching for Women. We will see you at the next Office Hour podcast. That's right. Thanks. If you make good money but have nothing to show for it, this quiz will help you figure out what's really going on with your money and what your next step should be. You'll get a personalized result and a simple action step to help you feel more organized and less stressed. Go to budgetbesties.com forward slash quiz and take the free quiz today. That's budgetbesties.com forward slash quiz to find out what's really going on with your money.