If you are struggling with the best ways to handle your money,
then today's video is for you.
We are going to dive into these steps to
take in order to handle our money more wisely.
I am Tiffany Thomas with wealthy tiffany.com
and I achieved financial freedom and became a millionaire.
If you're looking to do one or both of those things, make sure and hit
that like button and hit the subscribe button, and we are going to
dive right in.
All right, getting a handle on our money is very important because we
are going to have money throughout our entire lives.
So the better we are at handling it, now, the better we are going to
be later on, I'm going to cover the steps we should be following to
handle our money as wisely as possible.
And then I will share the steps that I use to handle my money.
The first thing that we want to address is our money mindset.
And you may not think this is very important, but it really is.
We really need to have an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity
money mindset.
It is going to make a huge difference in our finances, because if we
are constantly thinking, we are always going to be broke or we are
always going to be living paycheck to paycheck, we will never have any
extra, then that is exactly what is going to happen.
But if we can switch our mindset to an abundance mindset and start to
think, oh, you know what?
I can have some extra money this month.
I will put money in my emergency fund.
I will be able to pay all of my bills and have extra.
Then that is what is going to happen.
We have to believe that first.
There is plenty of money to go around.
If you are making more money, it does not mean that someone else needs
to make less money.
So be really clear on your money mindset and know that you can build
your wealth.
You can make more money.
And if there are mistakes you've made in the past, that is in the
past, forgive yourself, let it go and know that you can make
improvements going forward.
The second part of handling our money wisely is to know what is coming
in and what is going out.
One of the ways that I like to do this is by using a free app it's
called personal capital.
You can hook all of your financial accounts to personal capital so
that you can see your full financial picture in one place very
quickly.
So you don't have to write down all of your expenses every time you
swipe your credit card or an expense comes out of your checking
account.
You can have easy access to that by hooking all of your checking and
your savings accounts to personal capital plus any credit cards that
you have, or your mortgage, or your 401k, everything that you can
think of, you can put all of those money items, those financial
accounts into personal capital, it just links it.
And it will automatically populate everything that you've spent money
on.
Or if you have money that has come in and it will show you all of that
in one place.
And that is where we need to start.
We need to know where we are currently with our finances so that we
can make improvements along the way.
If personal capital is something you're interested in, I will leave a
referral link below in the description.
You can click on that and set up a free account.
And if you're not interested in that, make sure you are using a
spreadsheet or a Google sheet or writing down your expenses so that
you know exactly what's coming in and what is going out.
Once we can see that picture, we know what our three largest expenses
are.
And those three expenses are the first items that we wanna focus on
reducing, because those will make the biggest difference.
It'll move that needle forward so much faster.
For example, if you can save $500 on rent each month versus saving $10
on your internet bill, the $500 is going to make the biggest
difference.
So figure out which three are your largest expenses, and then come up
with different ideas on how to reduce those expenses.
Also by seeing everything that we're spending our money on, we can
make sure that we are paying our bills on time so that we are not
paying any extra fees like anything in interest or an extra late
payment.
We can make sure and keep those expenses as low as possible.
And that way we can have money to put toward an emergency fund, paying
off debt or investing.
We don't wanna be wasting any of our money.
And as soon as you do have money coming in, I would make sure that
that is allocated where you want it to go.
For example, I like paying my tithing first and paying myself first.
Those two items have made such a big difference in my life.
We wanna make sure that we are having that giving attitude and not
just hoarding all of our money.
And we wanna make sure that we pay ourselves first instead of paying
all of our bills and then realizing we have nothing left over and
toward the end of the video, I will talk about exactly how I do this.
When you are paying yourself first, that is going toward an emergency
fund.
If you don't have one set up yet, I would definitely set up an
emergency fund.
Once you have that set up, you can work on paying off your high
interest debt.
I would say that would be anything 8% or over.
So figure out a payment plan for each of those debts that you have.
And if you want more info about that, I have another video.
I'll leave a link above and below.
So once we are saving for the short term for that emergency fund,
paying off our high interest debt, we want to then start to think
about the long term.
We want to invest our money.
And there are a few different options for this, one is education.
We can invest in ourselves.
We can build skills so that we can make even more money.
We can invest in real estate.
I like investing in real estate.
I have a whole playlist about real estate investing.
You can also invest in the stock market.
I like doing that as well, or even in your own business or someone
else's business, depending on where you are on your path currently,
you may need to really build up your education.
You may need to be gaining those skills so that you can increase your
income and have money to invest in other things.
And then here is the step that a lot of people leave out.
If we are handling our money wisely, then we enjoy having money and
not spending money.
We live in such a world of instant gratification that a lot of people
just think, oh, I need to spend money.
I need to buy this thing and get it delivered overnight.
But really a lot of those items that people are spending money on,
they end up donating or giving them away later.
So really try to focus on the long term and get rid of that instant
gratification mindset.
If we can get used to having money, instead of just spending money, we
are going to live a lot wealthier life because we won't always just
think, oh, I have extra money in my checking.
I need to go spend it.
No, we'll think, oh, I have extra money in my checking account.
That's amazing.
And I'm going to leave it there until a really great investment comes
up or maybe an emergency happens, but we need to get used to having
that feeling of enjoying having money.
But the more that we can embrace enjoying having money rather than
spending money, the more wealthier we are going to be, and the better
stewards we will be over our money.
The next step in handling our money wisely is by using credit
properly.
We do want to build up our credit score so that we can buy those most
expensive items for the least amount.
We want to use that credit, leverage that money and have the lowest
interest rate possible.
And the better credit score we have, the easier that is going to be.
We want to make sure that we are opening up credit cards and using
them properly, paying them off in full every single month before we
pay any interest.
And if you are curious to know how I have never paid any credit card
interest, I do have a video for you.
I'll leave a link above and below, and we do want to have other lines
of credit so that we can build up our credit score even further.
And if you want to know more about building up your credit score, you
can check out this video right up here.
The next item in handling our money wisely is to set financial goals.
We don't want to just be living paycheck to paycheck and never working
toward anything.
So set some really specific, fun, financial goals that you can work
toward.
That is going to make a really big difference in how you are handling
your money.
Because if you are working towards something, every time you spend
money, you're going to think about your financial goal.
For example, if you want to take a trip to Italy, let's say, and you
are saving up for that.
Then when you are tempted to go out to eat, then you will think, oh,
you know what?
I could go out to eat tonight, or I could eat the groceries that I
have at home and put that money toward my Italy fund.
And maybe you've heard this before, one good habit leads to another.
So if we are focusing on some really important financial goals, then
most likely we are going to focus on other areas that are important to
us as well.
And when we are setting those goals, we wanna make sure that we have a
plan of action to achieve those goals.
And we are embracing those personality traits that are going along
with our financial goal.
For example, if we say that we want to become a millionaire by 40,
then we can think, all right, well, what would a person do if they
were a millionaire at age 40, would they be buying so many clothes or
going out to eat so often?
Probably not.
They're going to put that money in some sort of investment.
They're going to grow their wealth and not just spend money all of the
time.
Comment below and tell me one money tip that has helped you handle
your money more wisely.
And now I wanna share a little bit on how I handle my money.
Like I mentioned before, when I have money coming in, I pay my tithing
and I pay myself first.
And by that, I mean, I make sure that I have the certain amount that I
want in my savings account for my emergency fund.
And I have a separate bank account that I keep my emergency fund in.
I use ally A L L Y because they have a pretty high interest rate on
their savings account and it's gone up quite a bit recently.
So I think it's at 2% now, but since that money is just sitting in a
savings account, I wanna make sure that it's earning as much interest
as possible.
I also have all of my bills on auto pay, but I like to know exactly
how much I have in my checking account.
So every single month I will update my checkbook register, which is
online.
I made just a Google sheet for it, but I will enter in all of the
different bills that I have and all of the rental income that is
coming in and any other charges or income amounts that I have.
So I will make sure that is all up to date.
And then I like to keep a small buffer in my checking account.
I don't like to keep a lot of money in there because it is not earning
me any money whatsoever.
So after I update my checkbook register, I can see the exact amount
that will be in my checking account, once all of my bills have been
paid.
So whatever extra money I have over my buffer amount that I want to
keep in my checking account,
I will do a transfer over to ally into my savings account.
And that way I can make sure that I have my full amount for my
emergency fund.
And then if I am saving for
something else,
I can make sure that I have that amount as well in the savings
account.
And a nice thing about ally besides the high interest rate is that
they have these different buckets that you can set up.
It's all in one savings account, but if you are saving up for a trip
to Italy, then you can have an Italy bucket
and then you can have your
emergency fund bucket, and I have a taxes bucket.
So you can create all of these different buckets so that you know
exactly what it is you are saving for and the exact amount that you
have saved for that particular item.
And then if I have extra in there, I will transfer it over to my
brokerage account usually, or possibly my Roth IRA, and I will get
that money invested.
And another thing that I did not mention, so one of my bills that I
have set up is an automatic transfer into Vanguard that
automatically purchases my favorite index fund.
And if you wanna know what that is, I have a video for you.
I'll leave a link above and below,
but I have that certain amount set up every single month so that I
continue to dollar cost average,
which means I am buying the market when it is high or
when it is low or when it is average.
I just have that auto investment set up so that I make sure I am
still investing a portion of my money.
And then if I have even more money that I want to invest, I can go
ahead and do that.
Or I can save up for a down payment on another house, or I
can save up to pay off my last mortgage, whatever it is that I wanna
work towards.
And I always keep an eye on my credit score in case I do want to
purchase another house.
I wanna have a really high credit score.
And I use credit karma to do that.
I will leave a referral link below for credit karma in the
description.
It is a free app, which gives you a pretty good estimated credit
score.
And it shows you when your credit cards have been paid off
or when a debt has completely gone away.
And it gives you suggestions on how you can improve your
credit score.
So I like using credit karma to keep an eye on my credit score.
And I am checking personal capital pretty much every day
because I like keeping an eye on my money.
I wanna know if I get charged a late fee for something accidentally
and I can take care of it right away.
And just to give you an example,
I had canceled a certain subscription that I had signed up for and
they charged me again.
And I saw that on personal capital.
So I was able to contact them immediately and get that charge
refunded.
So it didn't even show up on my credit card statement.
And that is the simplified version of how I handle my money.
Hopefully these tips will help you handle your money more wisely.
And if you found this video helpful, please hit that like button and
share it
with someone else who would like to hear this information
and to the subscribe button to subscribe to my YouTube channel,
and to the little bell to get notified on when I post new videos.
And if you wanna see even more content from me,
make sure and check out the videos on the side of the screen.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next video.