Getting your finances back on track can be challenging and stressful. Depending on whether you were working throughout your marriage or you were a stay at home parent, your strategies may look a bit different. So, where do you start?
I am not a financial planner by any stretch of the word, but I did manage to get myself out of some sticky financial situations and start to rebuild my savings by reading a lot and by listening to sound advice from professionals. The first thing to take a look at is debt. It doesn’t matter who the financial specialist is, one thing they all agree on is getting the debt down, especially the high-interest debt like credit cards. If you have credit card debt and are paying minimum payments each month, it is going to take a very long time to pay that off because you are not even tackling the principal. In other words, if you made purchases of $1000 on a credit card with 19% annual interest and make a payment of say, $40, the amount of payment applied to your principal is only $24.17. This means $15.83 of your payment is going to interest! Additionally, it will take you 33 months (that’s 2.8 years!) to pay this off, and you will actually be paying an additional $283.11 for those purchases. Here is a great card interest calculator to help you determine your payments and hopefully motivate you to get those cards paid off.
I hear you! It sounds easy, but it is not easy to pay credit cards off with a limited income and expenses that will not stop. Start by researching credit cards and see what offers are out there for lower interest cards. I get offers in the mail, and in my email almost daily, I bet you do too. If you have one of your cards that offers a lower interest rate for transferring balances, see if you can transfer your higher interest rate balances to the lower rate card. You can also call and try to negotiate a lower rate with the credit card company. I played this game pretty well. If I received an offer to transfer balance at 0% for 6 months, I jumped on it and did my best to make payments every two weeks so I could get the balance down as quickly as possible. It makes a HUGE difference if you are not paying the interest because you are actually paying the principal. Once you get it paid down, do not make the same mistakes again.
If you are having trouble getting out of debt due to your income, why not try to do a little side hustle? Make Extra Money at Home had some great tips on how to get some extra money on the side. There are so many great opportunities now with the online sales and marketing boom. Always consider if there is a sizable investment required before jumping into anything to be sure it is going to be worth it and if you are truly going to put the time and energy into it. Maybe start with something flexible like Shipt where you shop for others and make a little money in your free time? Or deliver some food to people with Grub Hub. These a just a couple of quick ideas, but there are many ways you can get a little extra income to take the pressure off financially.
We would love to hear some ideas on how you are transforming your finances and of course, your success stories to help encourage others.
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