today we're gonna be looking at five bad money habits that you need to break this
year and you can do this but I've had a nail-biting habit for as long as I can
remember and I know how hard it can be to break a bad habit but from trying to
beat this thing for so many years the first step was becoming aware that I was
doing it so half the time when I was biting my nails I didn't realize that I
was biting them and in my case it took someone else letting me know when I was
biting them to help me realize that I was biting my nails so with any of these
five bad money habits we're gonna be highlighting today first we need to
focus on becoming aware when we're actually participating in them and that
will make it much easier to slay these dragons and also in this video we're
mentioning a couple different companies and we are affiliate partners with some
of them so you can help support the channel by using the links down in the
description below you decide to check them out a little bit further it'll
never cost you anything more and sometimes we actually negotiate a better
deal for you as well all right with all that out of the way let's get started
right so first on the list is a man minimum on your credit card balance now
most credit cards only require you to make a minimum payment each month as you
can probably know which is typically a really small and fixed them out you know
sometimes twenty twenty-five dollars and we have a big balance it might be 50 or
100 and this is actually a small percentage of your balance normally from
one to three percent and so paying this minimum is tempting you know especially
if money is tight but when you do this you are linking the time that it's gonna
take you to pay off the debt and you're increasing the amount of total interest
that you're gonna pay so that hundred-dollar pair of shoes that you
bought might ultimately end up costing you like three or four hundred dollars
so this year let's focus on breaking that bad habit and getting in the habit
of making payments in full if at all possible that is the way you want to use
a credit card that is a way the financially savvy used credit cards they
make the full payment they pay the entire balance off every month that is a
way to properly use a credit card now I've been in a situation just like you
might be in where you don't have enough money to pay the balance in full and for
whatever reason you've racked up some credit card debt and you can't pay the
full thing off that's very normal that's very common but that's a situation that
we want to get out of as soon as possible and if you're in a situation
where you don't have enough money coming in to make financial progress in that
area I did another video about twelve side hustles that actually pay pretty
well that you can check out and find some ways to pull in some extra cash to
help you get those credit cards paid off now one last bonus tip to consider with
this is if you're paying a really high interest rate on your credit cards
you're paying 20 percent of paying 25 percent something like that you can
get a much lower rate by doing a balance transfer to a new credit card
now just like everything there are some credit cards that have much better
balance transfer deals than others and so we'll have a link down in the
description below with some of our favorite offers and so you can check
that out alright but don't do the step unless you are actually working on
paying off this credit card debt because it just will be of little benefit to you
if you aren't actively working on getting that debt paid off alright
number two on the list is paying for stuff that you don't actually need and I
created a separate video that covers 11 things you should stop spending money on
these should check out if you haven't but the reality is is that so many of us
are wasting so much money on stuff that we aren't actually using and it really
really begins to add up so if you have a gym membership that you're not using and
I know you think you might go but if you're actually not then just save the
money until you actually you're ready to go again and if
it's a Netflix subscription the you never user Hulu or even if it's buying
stuff from the grocery store that you aren't actually eating all of this
begins to add up and it actually becomes a whole lot of money alright the third
bad habit to break this year is having no idea where your money's going now
with technology these days there's absolutely no excuse not to know what's
going on with your money it's so much easier in real time to see what's going
off their money than it ever has been before and yet at the same time so many
of us are just completely clueless about what's going on with their money now
there's a free tool that I use called Personal Capital which helps you see
where your money's going and a whole bunch more gives a big-picture overview
helps you see your net worth like all kinds of cool stuff and best of all it's
completely free to use and using an app like this is a great way to kind of get
started and see what's going on with your money and I created a separate
video on this app which I'll have linked up above if you want to check it out and
find out more details about it but regardless of how you do this let's make
it a point this year to actually figure out what's going on with your money
alright number four on the list is not making savings automatic now one of the
secrets of financially wise people is it don't rely on their willpower to make
good money decisions in fact I've never met a single person who has saved a ton
of money or saved a lot for retirement or anything else who did it just by
remembering to save money each week that just doesn't work for most people now
what does work is making it automatic and this is the secret that all the
financially wise people know they know that I need to create a system that's
gonna save for me automatically and I don't have to think about it and my
willpower is out of the picture and again this is one of those things that
being alive in the 21st century has actually made this really simple because
you and I can create a system that automatically saves for us with no
effort on our part now there are a lot of different ways you can do this you
can set something up like this with many banks where they automatically pull a
certain amount out of your checking account in your savings account each a
month or something like that and that works great and if you are looking to do
some investing with this there's an app that I've been using that does this
automatically for me and I'll have a link to a video above where we kind of
go into that in more detail as well but regardless of how you do it you need to
create some sort of system that is saving for you and investing for you
automatically all right number five on the list is not
giving cheerfully now this comes out of 2 Corinthians 9 which is a great
chapter about giving if you haven't read it go check it out read it and this is
2 Corinthians 9:6-7 now I say that he who so sparingly will also
reap sparingly and he who sews bountifully will also reap bountifully
you know each one must do just as he purposed in his heart not grudgingly or
under compulsion for God loves a cheerful Giver
now there's a lot of things that stand out to me here but one of the big ones
is that this verse specifically says not to give under compulsion now an example
of that would be is if you see this video you hear me talking about this you
suddenly feel guilty and then you run out and give that isn't the goal and my
job here is to help remind you of how blessed you and I are and how much God
has actually given us and if we can see things through that lens it really makes
it a lot easier to give cheerfully know there was another video I created about
five ways to be more generous which are kind of like five things that I've
learned that have helped me grow in this and helped me really have a lot of joy
in giving and so I would recommend checking that video out if you're
struggling with any of that but at the end of the day it's really clear that
God wants us to be cheerful givers and so we should be enjoying it it should be
fun we should be experiencing what Jesus said that it's more blessed to give than
to receive you know and I think when we start
counting our blessings and we start realizing how good we have it all the
blessings we have it's a lot easier to be in a position where we can give
cheerfully and honor God with our giving all right so I would love to know what
else that you would add to this list so let me know down in the comments below
and so if you're new to the channel what we do here is we talk about some of the
practical tips on how to manage your money wisely and then we also talk about
some of the biblical perspective on this and we tie these pieces together so if
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connected and hear from us as we create more stuff and if you haven't already we
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check that out as well so that's all for today I hope you have
an awesome day and I will see you in the next video adios