About Wealth Building Wednesday: Every Wednesday I’m going to give financial tips for families. Financial freedom is the third pillar of family life. Our family has been happy to learn from getting out of debt, starting and 10x-ing a side income, and budgeting consistently for over six years. We’ve not only survived recent joblessness but are thriving as well.
My goal for you is that you can see the wisdom in consolidating your finances to eliminate debt and increasing your earning potential. I also want to show you how we’ve learned to spend less and earn more and help you do the same.
Two of my favorite money guru’s are Dave Ramsey, who wrote The Total Money Makeover, and Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad. From them and others, I’ve learned that both living leaner and growing your income are vital skills to live financially free.
Happy Wednesday! And a very happy day it is over here for us! We’ve had a lot of rain recently and last night got a beautiful thunderstorm. We took the kids to a park and watched the lightning after getting a giant box of cookies from one of our favorite places called Crumbl. It’s been a great week for us!
Three months ago, we had a comparatively rough week when I lost my job. But the financial principles we’ll be talking about on Wednesdays are exactly what helped make that one of the best experiences for us.
Today I want to give a little advice about budgeting. I don’t think budgeting alone works very well. Think about when it’s hot; you can only take off so many clothes before you get into trouble!
Budgeting is similar in that you can only cut so many costs before you start to become too restricted to live well.
You have to find ways to increase your income, but budgeting wisely is the first step in doing that.
Last night I saw the beginning of a YouTube video that was titled:
$100,000 Salary = BROKE (here’s why)
I thought this was interesting because I had recently set a goal to increase our income to around that number, so I clicked. What I found surprised me.
The monthly budget shown in the video included, among other things, the following:
$530 Car Payment
$440 Health Insurance Premium
$400 Retirement Contribution
$390 Student Loan
$150 Cell Phone Bill
$120 Car Insurance
Some of these numbers may be a little inaccurate, but they are all far too much! As my wife and I reviewed our finances last year, we were able to eliminate our car payment and all other debts. Our cell phone bill is around $50 for both of us, car insurance costs $53 a month total for two cars, and our new health insurance is just $38 per month.
I don’t want to brag; I want to encourage you with our example that it is possible to cut costs on many expenses that a lot of people think are necessary. Someone once told me something like the following with regards to budgets:
“When you’re an adult you just have to get a car loan at some point.”
No! This is incredibly false and limited thinking.
Because we have cut costs where we were spending unnecessarily, we were well prepared to thrive, even after I lost my job three months ago.
You can cut down costs and doing so in just a few areas can make a huge difference! More to come on this and other financial ideas next Wednesday. I’m excited to help you find ways to save money, earn an extra $250 per month and more as we did, and become financially free!
Actionable Advice: Take a look at your budgets and find just one expense that you can cut down. If you’re in the U.S., check out Ting for your phone service. They use the same towers as Spring and T-Mobile, but cost less than half as much!
Tomorrow we’ll be talking about the next pillar of family life, which is health! I’m excited to share some details of what I learned losing 25 pounds in just six weeks!