Learning how to manage your finances (and fast!) can make all the game-changing difference in your monetary life. I know what it feels like to:
- Experience the tension, anxiety, and overwhelming sense of doom that’s always hanging over your head when you’re in debt
- Lose income
- Wake up every day and wonder how in the world I’m going to make ends meet
- Lose a job
But I also know what it feels like to climb back out of that, get to the other side and have options.
How To Change and Manage Your Finances Fast!
Step one: Know your monthly net income.
Subtract your deductions, like:
- Social security taxes
- Regular taxes
- 401K
- Any other fees or deductions that come out of your income
When you’re creating a budget, you need to do this. Take your income or your take-home pay after these deductions, and that is your net income.
Step two: Download your statements.
Credit cards, debit cards, any and all bank card statements. This is a great place for you to start to look at, itemize and begin to categorize your monthly expenditures.
This one step alone is going to speed up the entire process. Not to mention, make it very obvious what things you’re unnecessarily spending money on.
Step three: Create a master list of all of your spending.
Use a pen and a piece of paper, Google doc or an app to list out all of your spending. Create categories for your spending, like:
- Entertainment
- Food
- Beauty
- Clothing
- Work-related
- Travel-related
- Home expenses
- Insurance
Now, because you’ll manage this master list according to category, it’s also going to be painfully obvious to you what areas you probably need to cut back on.
Step four: Create a list of monthly expenses where you can reduce or eliminate the cost.
When it comes to this step, it is GO time. The best place for you to start saving money is to figure out the areas where you’re spending money and don’t need to. It can be curtailed at a minimum or possibly even eliminated. Start, for example, by looking at your habits.
Do you have to buy makeup, purses and clothes that are so expensive or brand names?
Review everything that was on your credit card statements, like:
- Subscriptions
- Recurring charges
- Memberships you’re no longer using
- Any and all expenses you can cut out
Call the credit card companies / credit institutions and see if you can negotiate and get better plans, lower interest rates.
For your last and most crucial step, plus way more (imperative) detail on each step above, check out The Chalene Show episode below:
And don’t forget to subscribe to TCS where I’m constantly focused on making your life easier — from happiness to money to health to relationships to fitness!
