#230 – Spring cleaning for your finances: 7 money moves to make right now

Hey friends, welcome back to the Money Boss Parent Podcast. I am your host Anna Sergunina. And I'm thrilled to say that Spring is finally here. So that means we have warmer weather, sunnier days and more chances to overspend on our budget. While Yeah, during the winter, it's easy for us to stick to the budget because we are all cozied up indoors. But as seasons change, and I hope it is happening for you, wherever you are, so does our spending habits and everything else we do with our finances? What is the solution you might be wondering, it is time for us to talk about financial spring cleaning. I really love this time of the year. And I thought this conversation should happen sooner or later. So you might be wondering, what did we actually do one way, spring clean or finances well, just like how we clean and rain damp our homes. And by the way, I've started my own personal spring cleaning and at home and this past weekend have been working on cleaning out Liam's closet, and to look into all the clothes that are too small for him to wear, and just kind of starting to think about what he needs and what all has to go. So that's the first step. So throwing out the old junk, deep cleaning, maybe you starting to plant the flowers. That's the project for me in the next couple of weeks. And also starting to think about finances. So I am really gearing up for end of q1 to kind of do this complete revamp for my own finances. And that's why I wanted to talk to you about today. So I'm going to dive into some key steps that you can take scrubbing your finances, and that is including revisiting your New Year's resolutions, we kind of forgotten about those decluttering our financial junk drawer, I will share with you what that is. And a fun one, booking your 2025 vacation in 2024. So I want you to get ready. Before we jump in, make sure that you follow me on Instagram. And that's the most active channel that I am on at money boss parents. And if you there, follow me and send me an e DM with the word h y essay. And I'll talk more about it in the episode as well. But that would allow me to send you my favorite top five lists of savings accounts, high yield savings accounts, hy essay that you can open right now to spring up your savings. So grab your favorite cleaning supplies, a list and a pen. And let's get ready to clean up our finances. Alright, my friends. So here's my list of seven items that you can work through. And please do not run away because I said seven. All of these things are very doable. By the way, one of the practices that I have adopted for myself, and that day is actually coming up for me every month. And I call that a personal day. So yes, really, I am purposely scheduling on my calendar a day for personal things. I've learned this idea from a client a couple of years ago, we were talking about something in the meeting and then he mentions Oh, yes, I remember he were talking about my money dates. You know, I'm a big proponent and having frequent money dates to kind of check in with your finances periodically. And he says I do something similar. So pick whatever day you want of the month, he he mentioned that he likes to have his at the beginning of the month. And he also associated with his birthday. So I was like I love that idea because my birthday is on the fourth of the month. And that's a really like early time in the month and I can have that day off. So 2024 is when I really started putting that into practice. So fourth of every month, I have a day off. I don't have a particular agenda, what I'm doing but very first thing is looking and adjusting and having that money date with myself. So I just want to throw that out there to you. First couple of months of the year. It didn't quite happen for me to have a full day and that's okay. I gave myself a grace. I did what I could, I only had a half a day's but it's really coming together for me for this next quarter. So I invite you to have this time on your calendar and when I mentioned that I have seven items for you to work on. It may seem like it's a lot but it's not. Let's dive in. Okay, my number one for you is to remind you to visit you your New Year's resolutions. It seems like New Year's were just like, ages ago. And all of that stuff that we talked about and the lists and the goals that we put for ourselves that kind of been sort of on the back burner. So pull that out, take out a list of financial goals that you've set for yourself, if you have it all together, or if you're like me, I actually practice what I call 90 Day runs. So I have a journal that's 13 weeks, so just about 90 days, and at the beginning of that journal, there's a section where I can outline what it is that I'm working in a particular quarter, I feel like 90 days or a quarter is long enough, yet it's short enough for for you to kind of just get in the swing of things. That's just how I make it happen. I'm recommending for you to go back and look at what you actually wanted this year to look like. What kind of savings were you anticipating to do? What kind of income goals did you put for yourself? What other goals that you have? Did you maybe have an idea of buying a house or selling a house, saving more in your retirement accounts, paying off that debt being better with spending and I'm it these are very general goals, I would hope that you actually have a list that has a specific number and a date attached to it. So get that list out. And let's take a look, I find it really inspiring to look at these things periodically. Because if you don't do it now, and you let another quarter go by, that's going to be half the year gone. And at that point, you're going to be really discouraged since it's going to be more like oh, this is going to be another year when I don't get to accomplish these things on my list. So pull it out, take a look and give yourself another refresher. Alright, number two on my list is to clean out your financial junk drawer. Alright, let's be honest, we all have that. In our house Yuri typically is the one who is manning the mail, he is the one goes to the mailbox, we have a little fan fancy box in our garage, where he grabs all the mail opens it up and kind of organizes this. And what he does is that he puts it in my little folder. And I go from there. Sometimes I forget to look at that folder for a while. And so one of those things that you can do quarterly, right or every so often is to look in that junk drawer and see what do you have open your mail, if you haven't opened the statements that may have come in, take a look at the balances on those statements. Maybe it's credit card balances, maybe it's your investment account balances, what is going on, maybe it's bills that you need to pay, and you haven't really paid attention, open it up. If it needs to be thrown away, put it in trashcan, if it needs to, it's if it's personal financial information, I would recommend that you shred. But I find that doing that kind of like first easy thing. And maybe you're one of those people that actually just opens up the mail that takes care of whatever needs to be done as it comes in. I've really never been able to kind of manage that. And I do the same thing actually at work. I mean, if something urgent Of course, I opened it up, but I kind of find like a time block to just like put my head to it and work through it. So just a reminder, clean up that financial junk drawer. Alright, number three, one of my favorite conversations. It has been for the last I don't know a year for sure, maybe even more than the year at this point. Invest in the high yield savings accounts. You will not believe how many clients I still have that even though we've talked about this. Even though we've shown them, we're still lucky to have interest rates to where they are I know you might be thinking, well, the mortgages are too expensive.

I get it, too. Right now we're talking about savings. So don't keep balances of monies in your checking account or savings accounts. They're not paying you 5% or more. This is currently what we can get. So I want you to think about your savings account and how you can get a higher interest rate on that account. If you are on Instagram, find me I'm at the money boss parent and sent me a DM with the word h y essay, which stands for high yield savings account. And I'll send you a list of my top favorite accounts that you can open right now all of them are FDIC insured. It's easy. They're connected to your checking account. If you need the money, you just do the transfer and it's done. Alright my friends, I want you to make more money. So what else can I help you with that? Let's take let's get you a high yield savings account in this next quarter. All right, my number four item is for you to look at your insurance policies. This is one of those kind of like low hanging fruits that maybe you find we'll find statements In your junk drawer that kind of been sitting in, you've neglected it. I often, those are the kinds of letters that I often just put aside because there's pretty thick and like, Okay, I do know, the policies are fine. But take a look open those statements. What is your coverage look like? Has the premium increased? Are you paying those premiums monthly? Do you pay them quarterly or yearly, maybe there's a way for you to get a little bit a little bit of a discount. If you adjusted it. Does the coverage look? Okay? Now here in California, where I'm at, a lot of companies have been not renewed, of renewing clients policies, and pulling out of the market. So it is extremely important for you to pay attention to your insurance policies, and what am I talking about? I'm talking about homeowners, I'm talking about your auto insurance policy, I'm talking about your umbrella if you have one. So take a look at what's going on. Maybe it's time for you to have a discussion with your insurance agent and ask some of these questions if you don't understand what that policy is listing for you. And it's interesting, that interesting statistic that according to progressive, if you go through revamping, and looking at your policies, you can save on average of like 7%, if you shop around if you kind of tweak your coverage. So I can't guarantee that that's the exact amount of savings you're going to realize. But I do guarantee you that when you look through what you've got, and familiarize yourself what's happening, you might be surprised what could come out of it. Alright, number five, cleaning up your budget, I could not leave this one alone, especially because like, spring is such an exciting time. We're all out and about. We want to go places we want to spend money, we want to enjoy life. So all of that is awesome. And I want you to do that. However, how do we sort of stay within the guidelines of what our income is, what our expenses could be, and what can we really have and those discretionary dollars, like one of the things that I really want to spend money on this quarter, in the spring is maybe buying some more new clothes for Liam, we have a vacation coming up. So those kinds of things is what is going to pile up, I want you to read, I want to remind you that I am a big proponent of using tracking tool such as monarch money that allows you to kind of keep your spending in place and collect information about where everything is going passively for you. So when you are in the midst of making this decision, like or looking at stuff, you have the data at your fingertips, you open it up on your phone, or crank up a browser and go to whatever it is that you're using. So monarch money is my latest one. I've been using it for since December of last year. And there's a couple more I like I'll link up a few ideas for you in the show notes of what you can explore depending on like what your style is of how involved you want to be with the data. But take a look you you will not regret this this one step I think is going to make a ton of difference. Alright, number six. I constantly think about this believe it and every time I look at my credit card statement, I'm like, alright, what had some subscriptions that are coming through every month, and I hope that you actually have that practice to is looking at your credit card statements and seeing what is being charged. So I want you to look at all the recurring transactions and get rid of of the unwanted subscriptions, like how many variations of TV services dunion, you have Netflix, you have Hulu, or you have prime, Amazon prime plus, maybe you have YouTube TV, do you really need to have all of those, like how many is enough. So take a look. Because at the end, it does add up, there are applications and services that allow you to kind of have them scan, what is all the subscriptions you have, and they can help you cancel those automatically. So one that I like a is called Rocket money. And I'll link it in the show notes as well. They do have some other features like very similar to what monarch money does or what mint used to do, where you would track your spending and kind of do that budgeting piece. But I really liked them for just like kind of clean up look through all the transactions they already paying, you know this much. In this category of subscriptions. Do you really need all of them and then you can kind of like just click click, click and decide, Alright, I'm gonna do that. There's something magical about this exercise. You may be thinking like, well, I'm saving 20 bucks or whatever is Netflix. 2299 Yeah, I get that but it's just feels good and it's the right thing to do. It's like one of those questions will Why are we wasting our hard earned money? So I don't want you to do that. Alright. My last one but not least, is the fun part. And I really love this idea. I got to get better at this personally. But why don't you think about what kind of vacation you want to take next year, not this year, because we're like coming up on vacations here pretty soon. And I hope you have the plan. But next year. So like setting up a plan of what you're going to do next year allows you and here are some ideas what it really does. Maybe this is just the initial thinking phase. But it allows you to kind of plan your savings and it gives you options to go research, look at the flights, look at the hotels, look at the other lodging, look at what excursions are available. And be on the lookout for promotions, it's like all of this is like given yourself a little bit of time ahead of time to do some of this research. So into maybe at the end of the day, you'll change your mind. And like I said, That's not where I eventually want to go. So book your next year's vacation now or at least start doing some of this research. And as we kind of look back at the list that I just mentioned, perhaps this for you can start to fit in additional savings, maybe your budget will allow for that. So I am excited for that I have I've come close to doing something like this. This year for like booking Liam's spring and summer camps. I had a time and I felt really good. Like once I got it all down and that's it, like started to come together pretty quick. In January. I was like, Okay, I gotta get on the top of it. And so it feels good. It feels exciting. It feels awesome to share this with you. So my friends, you've got your list of items to work on. Reach out if you have any questions and I wish you a very Happy spring. And let's get those finances in order because more stuff and more fun is coming out for us. Until next time. Remember you are the bosses of your own money.