Today I share 15 things you need to start doing right now to stay on top of your financial health. Managing your money successfully is about more than just paying off debt, saving money, and sticking to a budget. These 15 tips are designed to help you see the big picture so you can manage your money with current and future goals in mind.
I will cover every aspect of personal finances today! Listen in for tips on everything from saving for retirement to monitoring automatic bill payments. This episode is all about practical advice that you can add to your financial wellness toolkit.
I designed this episode with these goals in mind…
[01:17] I want you to have a holistic approach to your financial health.
[02:00] I wanted to give you 15 things to think about and so you can go through and say: Am I doing this? How do I consider this? Where is this in terms of my tool kit and how I think about money?
Tune in to this episode of Money Files for 15 of my best tips to improve your overall financial health.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON 15 PRACTICAL THINGS YOU SHOULD BE DOING WITH YOUR FINANCES, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW JACKIE TURNED HER DREAMS INTO ACTIONS WITH A FINANCIAL COACH!
Transcript for “15 Practical Things You Should Be Doing With Your Finances”
Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. Today I want to do an episode of just like quick wins and quick tips for you as you think about your whole financial health. So sometimes we’re really focused on paying off debt. Sometimes we’re really focused on saving money, but I just wanted to talk to you about like some quick wins. Also some things that I’m like, everybody needs to know this. And I wrote down 15 things off the top of my head. I honestly could probably write down hundreds of things even as I was set to record this, I was like oh, and this and that and that. But I’m going to stick with the 15 things that I wrote down because I want you to have a holistic approach to your health, like your financial health. Whenever I’m working with clients as a coach, I know what’s top of mind for them and why they came to work with me but I also know that I want to help them see their blind spots and help them discover new things that they want to learn how to think about financially.
Because there’s going to be a day when you’re not just focused on paying off debt, you’re not going to be just focused on saving money. And some of my clients, to be honest with you, they come to me, they don’t even have debt, they have money saved. And so we’re just working on the mindset piece of managing finances. So there’s like a whole continuum when you think about having a healthy money mindset and having a healthy relationship with money. But I just wanted to give you, like I said 15 things to think about, to be able to go through and say like am I doing this? Have I considered this? Where is this in terms of like my toolkit and how I think about money? And I’m definitely thinking about the 15 things I’m sharing with you. You’ll hear that some of them are corporate based. So if you have a nine to five job, I know some of you listening to me have your own business and so maybe they don’t apply to you, but if you ever go back into the nine to five space, then they will apply to you then.
So the first thing I want you to know and to be aware of, with your employer, I want you to know the number of years it takes to be vested in your company’s retirement program. So I worked as a teacher in a charter school and the thing that I knew is that it took me three years to be vested into our 403 B because it was a nonprofit. We had a 403 B in terms of retirement. And when you talk about being vested, generally speaking, if you work for a company that gives you money, so they say like we’re going to match 3% or we’re going to contribute 3% to your retirement account, that money isn’t automatically yours.
Some companies you may be vested immediately, other companies you might be vested five years, but every single company has a different vesting period. So I want you to look in your HR documents when you get a new job, look in the HR documents when you look at the total proposition, like value proposition package that they give. Know the number of years it takes to be vested in their retirement plan and that’s just good information to know so you don’t leave money on the table. Like I’ve heard about people that let’s say maybe it takes them three years to be vested and they leave at two years and nine months. And so if they hadn’t been able to shift the amount of time that they could stay for another three months, they could have been taking thousands of dollars with them. So it’s good information to know the number of years it takes you to be vested.
It’s also good information to know because if you ever have to go back to work for that employer, you may automatically be vested because you have previous service and previous time with that employer. So that’s something that you can actually talk about. And so when I’m talking about money conversations, money conversations aren’t just about how much debt you’re in and how much money you have saved, it’s being able to have conversations with all types of numbers. And so in this case we’re talking about retirement and your total value proposition that the job is giving you.
Number two, when you change jobs, make sure that you roll over your retirement funds. And so I have worked in school systems and so even with the school systems that I’ve been in, I’ve made sure, like when I worked in St. Louis public schools, I took the money and I rolled it over when I went to my charter school and when I left my charter school, I rolled the money actually into a 401K account with a separate entity. But that’s because I wanted to make sure that my money wasn’t just sitting there and not being managed. So that’s maybe another topic for another day. But one of the things you don’t want to do is just a lot of people have 401K funds, 403 B funds, 457 funds that are sitting there. They’ve never called, they’ve never asked about it. They’ve left employers and so they don’t actually have all of their money in one place to be able to look at it or they don’t even know if they have money.
So if you are someone who you’ve had previous employers, maybe it’s 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, call the HR and get that information. See what paperwork, it’s generally a very short form that you need to fill out. They’ll cut a check and they’ll send that check to your new employer so you can put that money into your retirement account. So that also makes sure that you’re protecting it from having to pay taxes on it, etcetera. So when you change jobs, make sure you roll over your retirement funds. The third thing is when you get a raise, increase your retirement savings contributions. This is one of the things that I tried to do when I was working for my employers, when I was in the nine to five world. It’s like every single year I knew I got a raise and so I tried to increase the amount of money I was contributing to my 403 B at the time by 1 or 2% or 3% especially if you get a raise, like if they tell you you’re getting a 20% raise, if you increase your retirement by 5%, you’re not going to really know the difference of what a 20% raise is versus a 15% raise because you make that decision in advance. I just would say the reason I’m talking about you increasing your retirement contribution is because it’s going to be a gift that you give to yourself later on in the future.
And let me actually go to tip number four. So tip number four, which I debunk all the time and I had to debunk for myself, I learned this in my twenties, is that contributing the match isn’t the max amount you can contribute to your retirement. So I’m going to say that again, contributing the match at your company isn’t the max amount you can contribute to retirement. So I think my match at the time when I worked for the charter school was like 3% plus the company gave you another 3% contribution and then I contributed like 4% to my retirement. What I didn’t realize because I just always had heard, like people like oh yeah, make sure you know that you’re contributing the match and I never knew that I could contribute more. Don’t ask me how I didn’t know but for whatever reason I didn’t really know and I thought that I was doing the best at the time and I was doing the best with the information that I had. But what is actually true is that the IRS sets a retirement contribution limit every single year.
So the IRS limit at the time that I’m recording this is $22,500. So that’s the limit in 2023. In 2022 the limit was $20,500. In 2020 the limit was $19,500. So the IRS sets a limit at the beginning and every year that you can just type in IRS retirement contributions and you can Google the limits that are set there. So that’s actually the max that you can contribute to your retirement contribution. And I should put an asterisk on this that I’m talking about like 401k, 403 B, I’m not talking about other entities like a step IRA etcetera, like they have their own separate limits. But if you know this, it shifts how you want to contribute towards your retirement. I work with clients all the time and they may be contributing like 3% or 5%, like they’re not really aware of why they chose the number that they chose. Oftentimes I will hear them say like, well I know that I’m supposed to get the match or I’m supposed to contribute something but this is an easy opportunity for you to have ownership and to feel in control of your finances by looking at like your retirement contributions, by having a plan for your retirement contributions.
So if you listen to Ellie’s story and interview with me about her getting out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle while we were working together, one of the things that she was able to do was she was able to actually negotiate a higher salary. So she went from like a hundred, don’t quote me on this, I think, let’s say it’s $110,000 to like $135,000 annually. And so one of the things that she did was she decided that with her raise, she wanted to make sure that she was maxing out her retirement. She’s in her late twenties and it’s going to be like the best gift that she gives to her 60 year old self that she’s able to max out her retirement because of compound interest and the time value of money. But a way that we were able to calculate how much she wants to contribute to her retirement is we took that $22,500 and we divided it by her gross salary. So in case you’re like Keina, what’s my gross salary? You can remember your gross salary because it has more letters than net. So your gross salary is before taxes. So I always think about like you have more money before taxes than after taxes. Net has less letters and so you have less letters and you have less money in your net.
But with her we divided $22,500 divided by $135,000 and then you can just put it on your calculator, press the equal sign, you can multiply it by a hundred, move your decimal over two times, whatever you need to do but she needed to make sure she was contributing about 17% of her gross salary. So that’s what she did. She increased her contributions at the time. I want to say before that she was doing about 10% of her gross salary. So she increased it by about 7% and the gift that she’s giving herself is now every single time she gets a raise that money is like going to be extra money for her and she may have to adjust her contributions just based off the fact that the IRS will change the number year after year but it’s going to be a minimal shift because what’s also going to happen, she’s going to make more money and if you know anything about percentages in math, 17% of a larger number is going to be a larger amount either way. So like that’s the gift that she gave herself by, one increasing her retirement savings contributions when she got her raise. But then she also made sure that she wasn’t just matching, she made sure that she was fully contributing to her retirement.
And depending on where you are in terms of your other financial goals, you may be able to do that without batting an eye. For some of you, you’re going to want to stair step what that looks like. But if you have a plan to go to full contribution, then you’re going to get there because you simply have a plan for it. If you have no plan and you’re not paying attention to it, it’s going to be something that’s never on your radar. And so one of the things that I help my clients with in the five month coaching partnership is like I have a calculator for them to look at, like how does my salary, my net income change based off of my contribution amounts? So it just helps them be really informed and in control of how they’re thinking about their finances and also how they’re negotiating their salary. Because if they’re thinking about my goal is to get to fully contributing to my retirement, it’s going to make the number that they’re working towards, like they’re going to have a different meaning behind that number. They’re not just going for like, oh I want a $10,000 raise because it sounds like it’s more, like they might be thinking like I want a $40,000 raise because I want to be able to put $20,000 of that into retirement and then I know exactly what’s going to happen with the other $20,000 that I’ll get after taxes.
Number five, make sure you selected for the money that you are investing in your retirement for that to be invested and not just sitting in cash. So I’ve worked with clients before that they’ve contributed to their retirement but what they didn’t make sure that they did when they like onboarded with their company and whoever’s managing their retirement funds, maybe it’s like Transamerica, that’s the only one I can think of right now off the top of my head or like Hartford for instance is another company that generally works with organizations. They never made sure that the money they were investing in their retirement was not just sitting in cash. So just because you’ve selected to contribute 3% to your retirement doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s automatically invested in the market. It could just be sitting in cash. So that’s why it’s important, like look at your statements that come from your retirement contributions.
Call the company, like if you’re with Transamerica, call them and see like am I investing the money that I’m contributing to my retirement? If it’s sitting there in cash, it is not growing, it is just a savings account with a 0.0% interest rate. And so generally speaking, when you work with different companies that are big like that, Transamerica, etcetera, like they’ll have a representative, like an advisor of sorts that can help you think about what funds you want to be invested in. And so generally, like I remember we had target funds that you could select if you knew, my target retirement date is 2060, then they would put you in a 2060 retirement fund. But they can talk to you about how you want to invest in terms of the aggressiveness etcetera. But just make sure that you’re checking that you’re not just invested in nothing. And so you’re like, yeah, I’m investing in my retirement but really your money’s just sitting there in cash.
Number six. So we’re going to switch from retirement because those are the five things like lessons I’ve learned from working with clients, lessons I’ve learned from living life myself. So number six is we’re going to shift to credit cards. So one of the things I want you to know, just because you pay off your credit card statement each month doesn’t mean you’re good with money. You can clutch your pearls, you can be like Keina, I don’t know, are you coming for me? Boo, I’m not coming for you but I want you to know that just because you pay off your statement every month doesn’t mean that you’re good with money. And here’s why. If you are paying off your statement balance every single month, I’m very proud of you because that is the goal. But generally what I see is that people, they don’t have a line of sight for how much their balance should be. Their goal is to pay off the statement balance and then they notice that sometimes they have to dip into savings to pay off their credit card balance.
And that’s because like when you think about your credit card balance, there’s a cycle end date. So it could be your cycle ends on, July 10th and then everything that comes after July 10th that goes towards the next cycle. So if you pay your statement balance and it’s $2,000, you haven’t accounted for the new expenses that you’ve put on there. So you’re like, you’re paying off like last month’s expenses, you’re paying off the expenses from June 11th to July 10th. And so I want you ultimately to have control, I don’t care if you use credit cards. I’m not anti credit cards, but I want you to know what you’re putting on your credit card. So one of the things that, with some of my clients, what we work on to give them like ultimate awareness of what they’re putting on their credit cards is they go in and they pay off like the purchases they make each week on their credit card.
And they do that because then like they’re so used to looking at their bank account balance and knowing whether or not they have the money, it makes a connection in their brain to be like, oh, okay, here’s how much I spent on groceries or we had to take the car in and so like that’s impacting our expenses. Like they’re able to be more aware and to be more informed about where their money is going from week to week and day to day. So it’s not just about the statement balance, I want them to be in the mix of day-to-day because your credit card is kind of like fake money. And especially if you have like two credit cards or even three credit cards which you’re like, oh I couldn’t and I’m guilty of this. I couldn’t find that one because I left it on the bar in my house, because I was making a purchase on my computer.
So then you’re out and about and you have another credit card out and you’re using that for something else. And so you may not be paying attention to where your money is going because you’re just like in a swipe mode or you have one credit card connected to Uber Eats and then you have another credit card that’s connected to Amazon. Sometimes you just don’t pay attention to where your money is going. And so it’s not just about paying off the statement balance. A great opportunity is for you to also pay your credit card off week to week.
Number seven in terms of like awareness for yourself is check your bills that are on auto pay. Just because you have a bill on auto pay doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look to make sure that it was paid. You probably heard me talk about this on the podcast before, but my utilities are on auto pay and I want to say it was like my water bill or electric, it’s been several years ago now, but they had a system issue. For three months I wasn’t charged, so for three months they did not take any money out of my account. And because I have a budget, it was fine, like money was there, but I ended up having to call them and be like, hey, my bills on autopay, but you guys haven’t actually taken out the money out of my account. And so they hadn’t noticed, I had noticed because I pay attention to my bills and pay attention to auto pay, but they wanted of course all the money upfront.
So it’s just like a reminder to always be checking your bills. Sometimes what can happen and I’ve had this happen with clients or I can even give you an example in my life, my home security every maybe six months, they increase the price but they never ever, ever, ever send a notification that they’re increasing the price. It’s only by like 2 or $3 but I notice it and it’s my two or $3. And so if you’re not paying attention to it, now you have a bill that maybe started at $40 but then it’s $60 within the next two years simply because you’re not paying attention to it. And with my security company, if you call about it, they’ll grandfather you into an actual like amount and so they won’t fluctuate your bill. But it’s just like a simple thing to pay attention to and to know for yourself like, okay, these are the bills, here’s how much it’s supposed to be. Yes, that’s the amount that cleared. Because sometimes things can increase and you don’t know it or you’ve been charged the wrong amount.
So check all of your bills and your payments that are on auto pay to make sure that they’re coming out. Make sure that they’re the amount that you’ve actually decided you want to pay. And one of the other things that happened with one of my clients is like her credit card information changed and so because her credit card information changed, some of her bills weren’t paid because the company didn’t have those new amounts. So it’s just one of those things to have on your radar to check your bills that are on autopay.
Number eight, along the same lines make it a habit to check your pay stub. Every single pay stub may not be the same. It could be that it’s a couple cents off or whatever that is, but sometimes they can be hundreds of dollars off. I’ve had that happen with my clients. And so one, check like on payday, not because you’re stressed about money, but just check and make sure it’s the amount you think it is. And then if you notice that there’s something that’s different, check your pay stub, check the taxes, make sure that you have your health insurance coming out. Make sure the FSA money is coming out. Once again, this is about you being in control of your finances and this is just a simple way for you to be in control is that you’re checking your pay stub because you can ask questions when you check your pay stub.
If they say that you’re getting a bonus, check it. Make sure that it makes sense. If they say that your pay is being increased, check it. Make sure it makes sense. If they say there’s a shift in your healthcare and that your company’s going to start paying for things or maybe you need to pay more, just check your pay stub. My favorite time of the year to check the pay stub is definitely also at the beginning of the year because sometimes there are new laws that go into place or your company has shifted how much they’re paying in terms of health insurance or maybe you shifted how much you’re contributing to your FSA or your HSA, whatever that may look like. And so just check and make sure that your numbers make sense because if the numbers are different, it’s going to impact your budget. Alright, make it a habit. Check your pay stub.
Number nine, I had a client that recently just moved some money that she had into a high yield savings account. And that is one of the easiest things you can do to start saving money and actually add more money to it. Also, let me say this, if you have a high yield savings account, the goal is not for you to spend the interest that you’re gaining, like let the interest grow so you benefit from compound interest over time. But if you have your money at a regular bank, like a Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Chase, generally speaking, their interest rates are like 0.01%, which means that you’re not getting any money on the money that you have in your savings account. And so maybe you like having a savings account with your general bank because you want it there as a buffer.
I recommend keep a thousand dollars there, put the rest into a high yield savings account. And right now, because of the market that we’re in high yield savings account, they actually matter, like they have really great interest rates. And so the interest rates, at least at the time of this reporting, they’re like 4.5%. So in the example of putting a thousand dollars into a high yield savings account, you’ll earn $41 a year on that thousand dollars, whereas if you have it at a traditional bank where the interest rate’s like 0.01%, then you’re earning under a dollar on that same $1,000. So if you’re doing the work to save money, like open up a high yield savings account, I love Capital One because there are no fees. I have clients that use Ally, I have clients that have used like Goldman Sachs, but just you literally can Google high yield savings accounts and you can transfer the money that you have in savings already and transfer it over there.
If you’re like Keina, I don’t have any savings, you can start transferring $25 a paycheck over there, $50 a paycheck over there and start building your savings and just have it out of sight and out of mind. But know that you’re taking care of yourself in case you need money for a future expense. And let’s call this like tip 9A, if you are someone who maybe has trouble saving money and you save what’s left over at the end of the month, my pro tip there is decide how much you want to save a month. You could think about how much you want to save this year. Maybe you want to save a thousand dollars this year, which means you would need to save $83 a month. You can ask your HR department to separate your paycheck. So every single paycheck you could ask them to put $45 or $44, whatever you want. I know that’s a little bit more than $83, but you could ask them to automatically transfer it to your high yield savings account because your high yield savings account has a routing number, it has an account number. And so that money could just automatically go there and you wouldn’t even be thinking about it.
So number 10, the next thing I want you to do is please check and make sure that you’re not paying your bank fees. So this applies to business owners, it applies to personal finances. But what I find is some people are paying $15 a month or like $5 a month to have a checking or savings account. I personally don’t believe in paying anybody to hold my money. I am doing you the service of allowing you to hold my money so you can loan it out to different people. And so check and make sure that your bank doesn’t have fees. Look at your statement, ask them if there’s a way to get your fees waived. If they say no, find a different bank. I love credit unions and I’ve always been a part of a credit union probably because my parents are military, so we’ve had access to some great credit unions, but military people aren’t the only people that have access to credit unions. And so get connected to a credit union.
Do not pay to have your money at a bank, $15 a month for a fee, no. $5 a month for a fee no, because that’s your money. $5 a month, that’s $60 a year. That’s some kind of coffee you want somewhere. We are not paying $5 a month to have our money held by a bank. So Capital One is a company that you could use, a bank that you could use that they don’t have fees. So definitely check and make sure that you’re not paying banking fees.
Alright, number 11, that is just something that I want you to be aware of and a tip, is know that you can negotiate interest rates or shop around for interest rates. Like one of the benefits that I’ve always heard and taken advantage of with being with a credit union is that they generally have better interest rates and so they have better interest rates on credit cards, they have better interest rates on cards, loans, home loans and so I know when I was buying my house, I remember getting several different quotes from different companies and I took them back to my credit union and said like, can you match this rate? And so they ultimately ended up matching a rate and so you can do that with an auto loan as well and many different types of loans. But just know that you can negotiate interest rates. The interest rate you see is not the interest rate you have to pay, especially if you see somewhere that has a different interest rate or I just want you to even know that you can look at multiple entities to see who has the best interest rate.
Number 12, I want you to also know that you can negotiate your bills. And so one of the things I always talk to my clients about in one of the first couple calls when I’m in the five month coaching partnership is like I’m always paying attention to how much they’re paying for their cable, their internet, their auto insurance, their cell phone. I have a pretty good pulse on what people are paying because I work with so many different clients. And so what happens within that first month is like people start to call and negotiate their bills. You can do the same and you’re saving $20 here, you’re saving $30 here. It’s like you don’t realize how much money you could be saving if you’re not actually paying attention to those. I like to have it on my radar to look at my bills at least once a year. Like my home insurance is another one because I want to make sure that I’m getting the best rate. I don’t just want to be paying something because I’ve been paying it for five years and I’ve just never looked at it again. But you can negotiate your bills, especially if you get to like the customer service department, they can find an incentive for you so that you know you’re paying 30 or $40 a month for your internet and you’re not paying a hundred dollars a month just to have internet. So negotiate your bills.
And number 13, another opportunity for you to save money immediately is bundle your services and pay your premiums in six month terms. So this really applies to when I’m thinking about like home and auto insurance. So my home and auto insurance, I have bundled with my service provider and because I have it bundled, I have like a multi-line item discount. And in addition to that I also pay, well my home insurance is paid annually, but I pay my auto insurance in six month increments and I pay it in six month increments because it saves me money instead of having to pay it month to month. When I’m working with clients, if they’re not already paying their insurance in six months increments, like we work towards this and sometimes we work towards it by using money they have in savings and then we just save every single month. So then the next time they have a six month premium that’s due, they already have that money set aside. So bundle and pay your premiums in six month increments because it’s just another great way to save money and something that you can be taking advantage of, especially when you’re already paying for this service yourself.
Number 14, save for your annual expenses or like memberships. So I could talk about Christmas here, which could be an annual expense, but beyond Christmas, I want you to be thinking about like Costco memberships, Sam’s, your car registration, your property taxes, maybe you have an annual credit card fee. These are just things that you can think about now and start saving for them in advance. So one of my clients, she was like, oh my goodness, I’m already saving for my Costco membership that’s not due until like a year from now and my auto registration, it’s like the best feeling to know that when Costco asks you for their $60, you already have the money there. It’s not impacting what you’re spending on that month. The $60 gets to go to them and it’s because you’ve been preparing for it the last 12 months when you have to go get your car inspected and it’s $120 you’ve been preparing by putting $10 away a month.
And so that’s just a way to help like a quick win that you can use in your life to help you feel like your expenses are, they’re just flatlined. Like there’s nothing that makes you feel crazy about having to pay your Costco registration or your Costco membership because you’ve already thought about that. You can do this in your business as well. There are so many annual memberships in my business that I just think about and I plan for them in advance. I think about this as well. There’s one that I think I have to do like every three years or every two years and it’s like $400. And so if you have to find $400, maybe because you haven’t been preparing for it, it can feel expensive. But if you are planning for that in advance, that $400 is going to come out of your bank account and you’re not going to feel it.
Tax preparation could be another thing that you plan for, sometimes tax preparation could be $1,200 or even more. But if you plan for it, then that $1,200 doesn’t feel like it was $1,200. It feels like, oh, I already have the money because I’ve been saving a hundred dollars a month for the last 12 months. And lastly, something that I love to talk about with clients is when you are negotiating your salary and I want to think about this in two different ways, but when you’re thinking about negotiating your salary in particular, if you are thinking about moving, so if you are going from Maryland to Florida or Ohio to California, when you’re thinking about how much money you need, I want you to tap into what’s called a Cost of Living Adjustment calculator. And so you can just Google Cost of Living Adjustment calculator, CNN Money has one. And the reason that I want you to be thinking about this is because the cost of living in different places is just that, it’s different. And so with it being different, you may be really excited if you are making $60,000 a year in Ohio and then in California they say they’re going to pay you $80,000 a year.
But if you haven’t thought about the fact that like groceries are going to be more, your apartment is going to be more money or houses are going to be more money, you’re probably going to feel like you’re making less money in California than you were making in Ohio. And so when you are in a position where you’re switching jobs, really think about that cost of living adjustment calculator. It’s one of the things that I thought about when I moved from St. Louis to DC. When I was in St. Louis, I was paying $600 a month for rent and then when I got to DC my first apartment was about $1480, so $1,480 a month. That was a huge difference. I went from making like, I think I was like at $36,000 a year to making like $55,000 a year. And so although I was making more money, I was spending significantly more in rent. And so there was a shift in terms of like, oh, I had money available to pay down student loans, but it definitely felt different because I was spending so much more on my living expenses.
And so one of the things that I also thought about when I was moving and it was like I made a budget thinking about like what my new expenses would be, which helped me ultimately decide could I afford to live in DC on the salary that I was being offered. And remember I told you I was a teacher, so don’t come at me and be like Keina you need to negotiate and make six figures. But at 24, like that’s how much money I was making and I knew based off of my numbers and my calculations that I could afford to live in DC and pay my expenses like I needed to. So this is a longer episode, but I hope out of these like 15 tips you’ve taken one or two away to be like, oh, let me go check on this and implement it. Because when I’m thinking about helping you change your relationship with money, I want to, like I said, have a holistic approach. Have you thinking outside of just, oh my goodness, Keina, I’m in so much debt, or I can’t save money, and these are the practical things that I’m doing with clients and why they invest in coaching and why this service is one of the ones that like, oh my goodness, this is something that I can use over and over and over again in my life and it becomes like a priceless investment for you.
So if you’re ready to take this work deeper, you can go to my website or you can go to the link that I’m getting ready to share with you. It’s just www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and you can book a call with me. I would love to talk to you and hear about the challenges that you’re experiencing with your finances and help you with a plan for what we can work on in five months together. So thank you so much for tuning in and have a great week.
Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
