June 2, 2024 • 37 mins
Tracking all income and expenses is a must for reducing debt. Knowing the ratios income to debt is helpful in know what debt is needed to be reduced.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:01):
Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, a retired accountant
turned truck driver, I reduce mydebt in a relatively short
period of time, debt reductionto achieve financial freedom
takes commitment, confidence,determination.
Tracking and ratios tracking allincome and expenses is a must
(00:25):
for reducing debt. Knowing thatratios, income to debt is
helpful to know what debt isneeded to be reduced. Also, in
this episode, I'm gonna includesome common things people pay
for that is quietly costing youmoney, and maybe you you're
(00:48):
aware of it, but you don't doanything about it type of
expenses, that will help youreduce some of your spending, so
that you can apply more of it ofyour savings what you save to
paying down your debt.
Let's get started with theratios first, because I talked
(01:09):
about it in the last episode.
And try trying to understand ifyou have a debt problem or not,
I talked about basically oneratio, your home ratio, your
mortgage to income ratio, and ifyou have an escrow that also
includes your real estate taxes,and your insurance, that ratio,
(01:33):
that percentage should besomewhere between 25 and 35%.
When you include all yourhousehold expenses, such as
utilities, so a little bit ofmaintenance and some other
expenses, the internet service,then that ratio is probably
gonna be somewhere between 38 to45%. I just want to stress at
(01:58):
this point,if one of your categories, now I
break categories down byhousing, transportation, food,
entertainment, savings and debtto the general overview there,
if one of your categories, ifyour income to debt ratio is too
high, and one of thosecategories, then what happened,
(02:22):
then what you have to do isadjust another core category,
make sure it's lower thanaverage, to offset the one
that's too high. So if youbought a home that way, cost you
way too much or overbought yourhome, then you have to give up
something else. And that's mostlikely going to be
(02:45):
transportation, you can have 50%of your income going to your
home and 50% of your incomegoing to your transportation.
Now you have no money left overto pay for anything, such as
food, clothing, gas, utilities,and those type of things. So we
have to balance everything out.
(03:10):
So if you're high in one area,you need to be a little bit
lower, you need to be low in oneor two other areas. So if you
want to learn I'm just gonnagive based off my memory, and I
may not be exactly right, yourhousing, which includes your
real estate, and your insuranceshould be somewhere between 25
(03:33):
to 35% of your income. If youwant to learn how to compute the
things that your gross income,and that would be your monthly
payment. Your debt is yourmonthly payment divided by the
same gross income.
That'd be monthly gross income.
(03:53):
If you want to know exactly allthe percentages and rate, what
these ratios should be justGoogle income, the debt ratios,
and you'll find plenty of themout there. Your transportation
should be somewhere betweeneight to 20% range or less. Your
food is like five to 8% of yourincome. Your clothing is like
(04:19):
two to 5% of your income. Yoursavings and debt are always keep
saying see and 10% but it'sgonna be way more than that if
you have a lot of credit carddebt because you need to pay us
down. So 10 to 20% of your grossincome is going to go to either
in your savings account or yoursavings for your emergency fund
(04:42):
or paying down debt. If you'refollowing my debt reduction
plan. We know we're going to putit in a savings account and and
build it up over time and thenuse a big chunk of it to apply
it to one of your debts or maybemultiple whichever one's home.
Money can pay off with thatamount of money. So it's
(05:02):
important to know these things.
Now, tracking is this manuallykeeping track of all the money
coming in to your checkingaccount and all the money going
out of your checking account.
But it's more than just yourchecking account. It also
includes every one of yourcredit cards, because you're
(05:25):
using your credit cards to buythings. So that's money that
you're spending, whether youactually pay for today, or pay
for tomorrow on a credit card,it's the same thing. One of the
ways you can tell if you'reoverspending based on your
(05:47):
income is when you do yourcontrol center, and you only use
money deposited in your checkingaccount as your income, and you
list all your expenses. And ifyour expenses is more than your
income, you're living too much,and how you're doing that you're
using credit cards way too muchto buy things or pay for things,
(06:10):
whether it's something it's aneed, or something is a one at
doesn't matter, you're justusing credit cards to pay for
stuff, and that's got a start,stop. If you want to pay down
and get out of debt, the easiestway to increase your wealth is
to get rid of your debt, thenyou can say more money, the more
(06:33):
money you say, he then you caninvest it, and more you can get
invested over a longer period oftime, the more money you're
gonna have. And I like to callthat getting your money working
for you, instead of you workingfor your money. When you're
working for your money, you'reactually working for the banks
(06:55):
and credit card companies. Andthat's not going to do you much
good and building any type ofwealth, no matter, even if
you're just looking to 200,000or 100,000. In your lifetime.
Paying the banks and creditcards is not gonna do you any
good over the long run. So whenI'm gonna talk about the
(07:18):
tracking software that I use,you can do this manually, you
can do it on a spreadsheet, youcan do it. And through an app
that does the tracking thebudgeting and everything for you
do you need a budget is an appthat works fairly good, I
personally don't use it. ButI've watched a lot of their
video YouTube videos, and itseems to be a nice program, I
(07:41):
don't want to spend that kind ofmoney, I don't want 14 or $15 a
month going out. That's asubscription that I'm doing away
with. And I'm trying to savethat money. So I'm trying to
reduce my spending as much aspossible. And I did that when I
was trying to get out of debt.
(08:03):
Now I'm trying to maintain thatreduced level of spending, so I
can accumulate more and makemore investments. And that's how
I'm building my wealth, it takestime. And you're gonna do it.
The tracking program I use iscalled count about.com. Count
about they don't pay me, they'renot promoting it. I'm just
(08:27):
saying that's what I use, it'sfairly easy to learn. If you
used any other type of trackingsoftware, whether it was Quicken
or mint, or whatever, mints nolonger I guess, and you're
trying to reduce this softwareonly cost $9.95 a year, and you
(08:49):
pay for it once a year. So it'sreally inexpensive, and it does
a lot for you. You can set upyour checking account, savings
account, multiple savingsaccount, he can put in all your
credit cards that you owe onthat you're using or not that
you're trying to pay off this isleave it at that. And he can put
(09:11):
it all in there and it's easy touse and get set up. You can also
go into categories and arrangethem the way you want them by
just what I did was I justrenamed them like put a one like
housing was a transportation isB so on and so forth. So that
(09:34):
when I print out a report bycategory that comes out in the
same order that I have mycontrol center or budget setup,
and you can do that in thisprogram. Now once you're if
you're just getting started, andtoday is the third of the month,
(09:58):
so it's a new month.
So we want to go back at least30 days, in this case, the first
of the previous month. Once wehave the tracking program, we
download it, we got it there, weset up our checking account, and
then we'll add a one a openingbalance. So you go back to the
first day of the previous month,you do this online, and you look
(10:21):
what was the balance in yourchecking account at that time in
that your opening balance, thenyou enter everything that went
into and out of the checkingaccount from that, first of the
previous month, up to thecurrent date, which were the
third, we're at the third of themonth, as you do that this is
(10:44):
the slow time that what takesyou the most amount of time to
do because one, you're stillfiguring out the program, and to
he got to do a lot of typing toget things set up. So Lee, you
go in and you enter atransaction the first time,
let's say it's your paycheck,put in the name of your
(11:06):
employer, you put in the day,you put in $1 amount, and you
hit enter, you get all theinformation in the you got to
put in a category, income wageor salary, and you hit enter and
it's there. If you get paid thesame amount, or if you get paid,
say, every Friday, or every twoweeks on a regular basis, he can
(11:28):
now that you got to then or onceyou can go in and create a
reoccurring transaction. And youjust go to that playing, you
click on the Edit button, thelittle wheel here will click on
it and you can select createrecurring entry. And it will ask
you things like how often doesthis happen is that weekly, bi
(11:54):
weekly, monthly, whatever youmake the appropriate selections,
and it will then the next time.
So if it's weekly, the next weekat that same time, it's going to
automatically post for you, hecan do that with everything you
enter that you pay every singlemonth. Now, as you're going down
through this, it may not workfor you until you get to real
(12:20):
time the current month, let'ssay. But you can go ahead and
set things up as you go, you mayhave to go back in there later.
And change some dates and fix itup by I can't remember how I did
it. But that I just want to tellyou or you can just go through
and enter everything for thecurrent the previous month, get
(12:44):
all your income because it'spaid weekly, and it may be
different. And then once you gotit in there first time, next
time you start typing, it'sgonna pop up and you can select
it. So that makes things go alittle faster, you can change
the date and then you put in thecorrect dollar amount. And then
if your monthly expenses such asutilities and mortgage and loan
(13:06):
payments, those a once a month,you can set up the reoccurring
as you enter it the first timebecause it won't be until the
previous month or the currentmonth you're in before it comes
due. And at all it's gonna makethe default date the same date
that you paid it in thatprevious model. So if you paid
(13:27):
the bill on the fifth of a monthas a new set up, a reoccurring
entry is gone, the next month isgonna show up on the fifth of
the month. Now one of theselections you can make, when
you're setting this up isautomatically posts which puts
it directly into your roster, orto be reviewed, I recommend to
(13:49):
be reviewed that way you canbecause there's a different tab
that you go to.
And you can look at it and youcan change the date in the
dollar amount if you have to.
And it's much easier before youpost it. That way nothing is
getting put in there that you'renot aware of you know that you
forget about maybe over time.
(14:13):
And then when you go to try toreconcile your your online to
your online statements, dollaramounts of match because all
these miscellaneous things beenposted for you and you've
forgotten the numbers aredifferent. So always review it
before it goes post don't everpost it directly into your
register. So with you once youget them all in there, and then
(14:39):
to the current month, the stepwould be to create a report by
category for the previous month.
And that's gonna then be whatyou use for setting up your
first budget or your firstcontrol center. But before you
do that, we need to think aboutwhat our budget is gonna look
(15:00):
like because we want to set upour categories list to match it
pretty close. Because most ofthe programs I ever use, the
category list always prints outin alphabetical order. While
your life is not in alphabeticalorder, because we want our, our
control center to be by segmentor by department is say, We want
(15:25):
housing, transportation, food,little bit clothing, savings and
debt, or you can just havesavings, but savings and debt
can go they gather,entertainment, whatever else you
can think of, he wants to try tokeep the number of categories
(15:45):
down to a minimum as much aspossible. Your housing includes
all your mortgage payments, ifwe got multiple mortgage
payments, all your utilities,which includes your internet,
and also includes your cellphone bill, I put the phone with
housing, because in the oldendays, it was a hard line to the
(16:05):
home, and the phone was only inthe house, I'm sticking with
that type of thinking, for myhousing. Transportation is your
automobile expenses, if you havemore than two, you can set up
auto a name the model make ofthe auto, and it would be your
(16:26):
mortgage, your loan payment,your gas,
maintenance, and oil changesstuff like that for each auto
individually, so that we knowhow much that particular auto
automobile cost us for themonth, if you just lump it all
(16:46):
into one big number. That month,the work also but if you can
break it out, that works good.
That way you can see how muchcar A is costing you versus how
much car B or who's driving morewho's driving less, or whatever
the case would be. Becausethat's one of the ways you can
cut back on spending is reducedthe amount of driving you do
(17:07):
because gasoline is a not socheap expenditure nowadays, food
you want to break that down bygroceries deliveries dining out,
how do you get your foodand you want to track it by the
ways you get your foods if youhave food delivered to your
(17:29):
home, or if you go out and eatout dining out. Or if you go to
grocery store and buy food andand do it yourself, do all your
own cooking. He wants to breakit out by those type of
categories. So you can see howmuch each one has cost and
entertainment would be whateveryou do for entertainment, cable
(17:51):
TV streaming, you know, footballor sports, subscriptions, all
that kind of stuff. Break itdown by again, like you did with
your food, you know, cablestreaming, whatever however you
do, whatever you do forentertainment, that is list all
(18:13):
the debt that's not anywhereelse, because your mortgage debt
is with your housing, your carloans with your transportation.
So this would be personal debt,credit card debt, anything else
that you can't put somewhereelse. And of course, your
savings is going to be in thatsame category. There's a
(18:35):
clothing one, it's he can dothat by person in your household
if you want. But it should be afairly small number unless
you're a fashion designer,whatever make your I don't know,
but it shouldn't be a very largenumber. He wants to go into your
categories we're talking aboutthe tracking program now. You
(18:57):
want to go in your categoriesand make group them together by
each one of these sections thatI just talked about. housing,
transportation, food,entertainment, savings and debt,
(19:18):
clothing and you want to groupeverything that's related to the
same thing together so likehousing, I want in because you'd
have mortgage loan that's an appand it would have natural gas
that's and you know alleverything's in alphabetic
order. So you go through andfind each individual item and
(19:40):
you code it to where you want itto go grouped together. So the
housing I put a transportation Idid be in need get the idea. Now
I did the mortgage was a one thefirst mortgage a second mortgage
is a two utilities was aa three, a four, a five. So that
can give you you know, aninfinite number of different
(20:04):
categories you can grouptogether. And then if you do
that for about everything thatyou use, because when you do
your report, it's only gonnaprint out the, in the items that
have money on them, it's notgoing to print out zero balances
unless you select that option,but don't select that option.
And then that way, if you haveeverything set up that way, when
(20:27):
you print it out, all yourhousing is going to be together
or in then right underneaththat, like all the A's will be
in a one, a two, or B in order.
And then all the B's will be inorder and then all of a C's etc.
And when you set up your controlcenter or your budget, you can
(20:47):
set up the exactly the same way.
So down and future months, whenyou print things out, it's going
to be in similar order and isgoing to be close and easy for
you to update. That's the goalhere more spending a little more
time up front, setting things upand getting everything set up.
So that later on, it's going totake a whole lot less time to
(21:11):
update things. And that way,you'll stay at it and you'll
have good information. Andthat's the goal here we're
trying to create goodinformation that we can then use
to help us control our spendingor reduce our spending. And now
the other way to pay your debtpaid off faster is to increase
(21:34):
your income. However you want todo that, you can do that. Not
much I can talk about on that.
But this depends on your field,career field and demand and what
the employment situation wouldbe. That is what we do. If you
decide to use a program that haseverything included that does
(21:59):
tracking and does your budgetingit does this it does that. And
I'll tell you pay this off, paythat off, you pay in this the
two subscriptions for the samething.
If you're gonna use one of thoseapps, I'm not saying not to I'm
just saying you have to learnhow to use it. So you need to go
(22:21):
and watch all their YouTubevideos, instruction videos. And
that's you need a budget why anda be a have a lot of YouTube
videos that the one lady talksfrom experience. When she first
started, she did this and thenshe learned how to do this, he
(22:42):
start with the basic, learn howto use it and and watch the next
level up and keep going. Itdoesn't do any good to watch him
straight all the way throughbecause you can't create a
budget if you don't have anyinformation in the program. So
you first got to learn how toenter the information, then you
(23:04):
got to learn what to do with theinformation. And then you got to
learn what to do with thatinformation and how you can use
it to your advantage.
So it's a learning process thatmay take a few days, a few weeks
or longer.
The more information that youcan put in at the beginning,
(23:28):
that's why I say go back to theprevious month and put in the
whole month information and thenput in the home up to your
current date. That way, you havea whole 30 days worth of
information. That's basicallyone financial cycle of your life
that you can pick up on most allyour expenses. Remember, when
(23:52):
you're setting up a budget, thatif you only have one month, it
may not include some things.
Maybe you pay your car insurancetwice a year or quarterly, you
might have things you pay once aquarter, and that was in that
particular month. So maybe thinkyou got paid twice a year. And
it wasn't one of those months.
Maybe you got some pay once ayear and it wasn't that month.
(24:17):
So it's gone to take a whilebefore you pick up everything
unless you know, I know I pay myinsurance quarterly I paid it a
couple months ago. This go putthat in this put it in your
system and set the date for thenext time it's due and if you
know the dollar amount, you knowif you don't know the dollar
(24:38):
amount, just what did you paythe last time put that dollar
amount in? Because something isbetter than nothing. So over
time, you're going to pick upeverything that flows through
your checking account,everything that's going on with
your credit cards. Now remember,putting in 30 days worth your
(24:59):
credit card.
Spending might seem like a bignumber or a lot of entry, but
you got to do it. Because yougot to see where you're spending
your money. And don't import itdirectly in from the credit
cards, account that you have,manually enter it, manually
(25:21):
enter everything into yourchecking account, your savings
account, and all your creditcards, that's gonna help you
become aware of what's going onin your life. If you just
transpose if you just importedin, it may not get in the right
categories, it may, he mayoverlook it, you may forget
about it. It may be the numberswill match, you know your
(25:45):
numbers there to the bank, buthow long is that gonna happen
manually and are things thatmakes you way more aware of
what's going on in your life.
And this again, knowing yourratios, the last episode I
talked about, in all your debt,payment statements together,
putting them your mortgage, yourcar, your personal loan, that's
(26:08):
gonna help you, that's gonnahelp you down the line and keep
it in that order, stick them inthe folder, keep them because
you got to figure out yourincome to debt ratio by each one
of those categories. Because ifyou have a 48% income to debt
ratio on your mortgage,somewhere else, you have to give
(26:31):
up because you don't have thatkind of money. You can't have
over 100%.
And if you do, that's probablywhy you're living paycheck to
paycheck, and you're robbingPeter to pay Paul. And you're
wondering why what's going on inyour life. While that's going
(26:51):
on, you've spent too much money,you have too much debt. And each
of these areas in your headdoesn't give you enough room to
pay for everyday life, thingslike food and gas, and whatever.
I'll be back in one moment withmy final thoughts. If you're
interested, and there's softwarethat I use personally, to reduce
(27:15):
my debt, I have a link in myshow notes, shop financial.com,
copy and paste it. And it willtake you to the website. If you
are looking for any spreadsheetsor other information that I talk
about from time to time, I havelinks and my show notes. And I
always have links to thearticles I refer to and my show
(27:36):
notes, plus other things likethe happy draft.org, which is a
another organization that helpsyou with your debt. So feel free
to go on my show notes and linkand check out whatever I'm
putting out there, I appreciateit very much. If you would like
to make a contribution to helpkeep this alive, then I would
(27:57):
gladly accept that, say my shownotes. Thank you very much. Now
as you're entering yourtransaction for those first 30
days, I want you to be aware ofwhat's going on. That's why
you're manually entering whatyour pain and where your money
is going. So there is I have alink in my show notes 30
(28:19):
expenses that quietly eat awayat your budget. And I thought
this was quite interesting,because it's true. You know,
every nickel and dime adds up todollars and every dollars apps
up to hundreds and every $100adds up to 1000s over the period
of your lifetime. So the form ofthe first ones you have to be
(28:41):
aware is overlapping orunderutilized insurance
policies. Often people anotherwhere they're paying for
overlapping coverages acrossdifferent policies such as
travel insurance benefits thatmight already be covered under
certain premium credit cards. Sobe aware of what you're paying
for on your insurance, and whereyou can cut back. So if you have
(29:05):
car insurance, that includesyou're gonna include coverage if
you would rent a car, don't payfor auto insurance at the car
rental place. Make sure you knowwhat's in your insurance policy.
And if you have a question,that's what your agent is for
financial and investmentsdescriptions, I never really
(29:28):
thought of this. Many sign upfor these services with the
intention of using them to makeinformed financial decisions.
Yet the daily demands of lifemeans that these subscriptions
go on utilize and we're talkingabout you subscribe to
investments or financialresearch services and tools so
(29:51):
that you can make your owninvestments, but then you get
busy in life. And either youdon't use them or you forget
aboutAnd you're still paying for him
is a big one. ATM fees bankfees, while they seem nominal on
a per item basis can accumulateto a substantial amount of money
over time. I don't use an ATMthat's gonna charge me a fee
(30:15):
period. In fact, I hardly usethe ATM anymore at all. But if
I'm going to use an ATM, I go tomy bank where I they're not
going to charge me a fee. It'seven though it's 250 to $5. If
you hit it 10 times a month,that's $25 plus. So ATM fees,
try to cut those out as muchimpossible bank maintenance
(30:38):
fees. If you're paying amaintenance fee for your
checking account, you're at thewrong bank, or go to your bank
and find out if they have adifferent account. thing a
different one they offer whereyou don't have to pay a
maintenance fee. Maybe theyrequire a minimum balance of 300
(30:59):
or $500. I don't know. But youneed to avoid paying monthly
maintenance fee on your checkingaccount. I hadn't paid any
maintenance monthly can liechecking account for years
overdraft fees Well, period, youdon't want to spend more money
you have because the bank isgonna charge you $35 per
(31:20):
transaction if you overdraw. Soavoid that at all costs. Now I
know some of you are reallystruggling, and you can't help
but some of these fees you'regetting nailed with, well, you
got to get your life undercontrol is all I can say and try
to stop using these things. Andpaying the bank banks makes
(31:43):
millions of dollars a year. Andwhile omelets the interests are
paying very little. Okay, cableTV cable has gotten more
expensive. So if you're gonnafeel it, so review, if it's
worth cutting the cord, andeliminating that expense, which
can be hundreds a month ofdollars that you can say if I've
(32:04):
been saying that for years,according to a study from all
connect the cable patches cancost as much as $299.95 per
month. Without fees or internetservice. That is way too much
money. You can now stream abouteverything you watch, much less
(32:25):
than $300 a month. I can tellyou that right now. But what you
got to watch out for when you'restreaming is again the
overlapping or unused streamingservice. So if you have multiple
streaming service, are theyoverlapping? Meaning? Do they
have the same channels on them?
(32:48):
And you're paying for the secondone because there's that one
channel you want that the firstone didn't have?
Well, all the other channels thesame Why didn't you cancel the
first one because they'regenerally a month to month
service. So no use to pay fortwo or have them multiple things
(33:09):
on overlapping services or havefive or 10 different streaming
services. He got to minimizethat to no more than three per
month and move them around. Okaygetting brand name prescription
drugs, used generic drugs,unused gym memberships, unused
(33:31):
anything. Not only gymmemberships, but unused. If you
have if you're still paying forInternet security from old
computer that you got rid of andyou bought a new computer and
you got a new subscription,you're paying for two
subscriptions you why you onlyneed one same way with gym
(33:53):
memberships and Paul's purchasesThink Before You Buy, don't buy
anything you really don't needor want. So that's all I have to
say there but impulse buys couldcost you a lot of money and
everything at the gift your godthe grocery store for instance,
at the checkout county if youbuy a couple candy bars every
(34:15):
time you do that, you know stuffup around the cash register that
all is impulse buy and they putit there for a reason. So people
buy it because if they put itsomewhere else nobody would buy
it. Food delivery fees.
So they can cost between two to$5 per order bit can be higher
for longer distance or peakhours. Convenient charges same
(34:39):
thing. I never have fooddeliver. If I order a pizza I go
pick it up. I don't pay for anydelivery fees, especially Uber
DoorDash all those that gets waytoo expensive. That's the most
expensive way you can buy food.
Convenience charges, said Becautious, too.
(35:00):
With takeout or other deliverieswhich come with fees on top of
the standard delivery fees canthat's why it's expensive to
have it delivered. pre made foodyou go to the grocery store all
pre made food, pre made meals,we it's a frozen meal and you
buy it and then you can justwarming up and it's cooked for
(35:21):
you don't buy that's the mostexpensive way anything that's
pre made or cut down awatermelon caught the pieces or
whatever the case is, that's themost expensive way to buy your
food from a grocery store.
Mobile services from majorcarrier said instead of
purchasing the $1,000 smartphoneand switch from regular switch
(35:41):
from a regular postpaid phoneservice to a prepaid phone,
Straight Talk wireless asaffordable prepaid phones and no
contract plans for as low as $25a lie. So instead of buying a
smartphone that costs a lot andthen finance it through the
carrier, where you're lockedinto a two or three year
(36:04):
contract, they're saying don'tdo that is to go to Target
Walmart and get a prepaid phone,where you pay for the month
ahead, or so much talk time. Andthen try to use it sparingly. To
reduce your cell phone costs,your phone cost fitness apps,
(36:25):
any apps that you don't use on aregular basis, don't you don't
want to be paying for anything.
Credit card finance charges, ifyou can't pay off a credit card,
I know that's gonna cost youmoney. But I think that's why
people were trying to pay offtheir debt. So they already know
(36:45):
that credit card transactionfees, you may be paying that at
some businesses where theycharge you that and wasting food
throwing food away instead ofeating it. So over buying food
from the grocery store, and thenended up throwing it away before
you can use it because it wasspoiled or went bad. So those
(37:06):
are ways to reduce yourspending. But so as you're
entering your transactions forthat first month, you want to
look for duplications that youpay the same place for two
different times in the samemonth. And do your research,
find out why that happened andget rid of one that's gonna help
(37:29):
you reduce your spending. Stickwith it, and you'll be glad you
did. So
Hello, I'm your host, Mr. Chuck, a retired accountant
turned truck driver, I reduce mydebt in a relatively short
period of time, debt reductionto achieve financial freedom
takes commitment, confidence,determination.
Tracking and ratios tracking allincome and expenses is a must
(00:25):
for reducing debt. Knowing thatratios, income to debt is
helpful to know what debt isneeded to be reduced. Also, in
this episode, I'm gonna includesome common things people pay
for that is quietly costing youmoney, and maybe you you're
(00:48):
aware of it, but you don't doanything about it type of
expenses, that will help youreduce some of your spending, so
that you can apply more of it ofyour savings what you save to
paying down your debt.
Let's get started with theratios first, because I talked
(01:09):
about it in the last episode.
And try trying to understand ifyou have a debt problem or not,
I talked about basically oneratio, your home ratio, your
mortgage to income ratio, and ifyou have an escrow that also
includes your real estate taxes,and your insurance, that ratio,
(01:33):
that percentage should besomewhere between 25 and 35%.
When you include all yourhousehold expenses, such as
utilities, so a little bit ofmaintenance and some other
expenses, the internet service,then that ratio is probably
gonna be somewhere between 38 to45%. I just want to stress at
(01:58):
this point,if one of your categories, now I
break categories down byhousing, transportation, food,
entertainment, savings and debtto the general overview there,
if one of your categories, ifyour income to debt ratio is too
high, and one of thosecategories, then what happened,
(02:22):
then what you have to do isadjust another core category,
make sure it's lower thanaverage, to offset the one
that's too high. So if youbought a home that way, cost you
way too much or overbought yourhome, then you have to give up
something else. And that's mostlikely going to be
(02:45):
transportation, you can have 50%of your income going to your
home and 50% of your incomegoing to your transportation.
Now you have no money left overto pay for anything, such as
food, clothing, gas, utilities,and those type of things. So we
have to balance everything out.
(03:10):
So if you're high in one area,you need to be a little bit
lower, you need to be low in oneor two other areas. So if you
want to learn I'm just gonnagive based off my memory, and I
may not be exactly right, yourhousing, which includes your
real estate, and your insuranceshould be somewhere between 25
(03:33):
to 35% of your income. If youwant to learn how to compute the
things that your gross income,and that would be your monthly
payment. Your debt is yourmonthly payment divided by the
same gross income.
That'd be monthly gross income.
(03:53):
If you want to know exactly allthe percentages and rate, what
these ratios should be justGoogle income, the debt ratios,
and you'll find plenty of themout there. Your transportation
should be somewhere betweeneight to 20% range or less. Your
food is like five to 8% of yourincome. Your clothing is like
(04:19):
two to 5% of your income. Yoursavings and debt are always keep
saying see and 10% but it'sgonna be way more than that if
you have a lot of credit carddebt because you need to pay us
down. So 10 to 20% of your grossincome is going to go to either
in your savings account or yoursavings for your emergency fund
(04:42):
or paying down debt. If you'refollowing my debt reduction
plan. We know we're going to putit in a savings account and and
build it up over time and thenuse a big chunk of it to apply
it to one of your debts or maybemultiple whichever one's home.
Money can pay off with thatamount of money. So it's
(05:02):
important to know these things.
Now, tracking is this manuallykeeping track of all the money
coming in to your checkingaccount and all the money going
out of your checking account.
But it's more than just yourchecking account. It also
includes every one of yourcredit cards, because you're
(05:25):
using your credit cards to buythings. So that's money that
you're spending, whether youactually pay for today, or pay
for tomorrow on a credit card,it's the same thing. One of the
ways you can tell if you'reoverspending based on your
(05:47):
income is when you do yourcontrol center, and you only use
money deposited in your checkingaccount as your income, and you
list all your expenses. And ifyour expenses is more than your
income, you're living too much,and how you're doing that you're
using credit cards way too muchto buy things or pay for things,
(06:10):
whether it's something it's aneed, or something is a one at
doesn't matter, you're justusing credit cards to pay for
stuff, and that's got a start,stop. If you want to pay down
and get out of debt, the easiestway to increase your wealth is
to get rid of your debt, thenyou can say more money, the more
(06:33):
money you say, he then you caninvest it, and more you can get
invested over a longer period oftime, the more money you're
gonna have. And I like to callthat getting your money working
for you, instead of you workingfor your money. When you're
working for your money, you'reactually working for the banks
(06:55):
and credit card companies. Andthat's not going to do you much
good and building any type ofwealth, no matter, even if
you're just looking to 200,000or 100,000. In your lifetime.
Paying the banks and creditcards is not gonna do you any
good over the long run. So whenI'm gonna talk about the
(07:18):
tracking software that I use,you can do this manually, you
can do it on a spreadsheet, youcan do it. And through an app
that does the tracking thebudgeting and everything for you
do you need a budget is an appthat works fairly good, I
personally don't use it. ButI've watched a lot of their
video YouTube videos, and itseems to be a nice program, I
(07:41):
don't want to spend that kind ofmoney, I don't want 14 or $15 a
month going out. That's asubscription that I'm doing away
with. And I'm trying to savethat money. So I'm trying to
reduce my spending as much aspossible. And I did that when I
was trying to get out of debt.
(08:03):
Now I'm trying to maintain thatreduced level of spending, so I
can accumulate more and makemore investments. And that's how
I'm building my wealth, it takestime. And you're gonna do it.
The tracking program I use iscalled count about.com. Count
about they don't pay me, they'renot promoting it. I'm just
(08:27):
saying that's what I use, it'sfairly easy to learn. If you
used any other type of trackingsoftware, whether it was Quicken
or mint, or whatever, mints nolonger I guess, and you're
trying to reduce this softwareonly cost $9.95 a year, and you
(08:49):
pay for it once a year. So it'sreally inexpensive, and it does
a lot for you. You can set upyour checking account, savings
account, multiple savingsaccount, he can put in all your
credit cards that you owe onthat you're using or not that
you're trying to pay off this isleave it at that. And he can put
(09:11):
it all in there and it's easy touse and get set up. You can also
go into categories and arrangethem the way you want them by
just what I did was I justrenamed them like put a one like
housing was a transportation isB so on and so forth. So that
(09:34):
when I print out a report bycategory that comes out in the
same order that I have mycontrol center or budget setup,
and you can do that in thisprogram. Now once you're if
you're just getting started, andtoday is the third of the month,
(09:58):
so it's a new month.
So we want to go back at least30 days, in this case, the first
of the previous month. Once wehave the tracking program, we
download it, we got it there, weset up our checking account, and
then we'll add a one a openingbalance. So you go back to the
first day of the previous month,you do this online, and you look
(10:21):
what was the balance in yourchecking account at that time in
that your opening balance, thenyou enter everything that went
into and out of the checkingaccount from that, first of the
previous month, up to thecurrent date, which were the
third, we're at the third of themonth, as you do that this is
(10:44):
the slow time that what takesyou the most amount of time to
do because one, you're stillfiguring out the program, and to
he got to do a lot of typing toget things set up. So Lee, you
go in and you enter atransaction the first time,
let's say it's your paycheck,put in the name of your
(11:06):
employer, you put in the day,you put in $1 amount, and you
hit enter, you get all theinformation in the you got to
put in a category, income wageor salary, and you hit enter and
it's there. If you get paid thesame amount, or if you get paid,
say, every Friday, or every twoweeks on a regular basis, he can
(11:28):
now that you got to then or onceyou can go in and create a
reoccurring transaction. And youjust go to that playing, you
click on the Edit button, thelittle wheel here will click on
it and you can select createrecurring entry. And it will ask
you things like how often doesthis happen is that weekly, bi
(11:54):
weekly, monthly, whatever youmake the appropriate selections,
and it will then the next time.
So if it's weekly, the next weekat that same time, it's going to
automatically post for you, hecan do that with everything you
enter that you pay every singlemonth. Now, as you're going down
through this, it may not workfor you until you get to real
(12:20):
time the current month, let'ssay. But you can go ahead and
set things up as you go, you mayhave to go back in there later.
And change some dates and fix itup by I can't remember how I did
it. But that I just want to tellyou or you can just go through
and enter everything for thecurrent the previous month, get
(12:44):
all your income because it'spaid weekly, and it may be
different. And then once you gotit in there first time, next
time you start typing, it'sgonna pop up and you can select
it. So that makes things go alittle faster, you can change
the date and then you put in thecorrect dollar amount. And then
if your monthly expenses such asutilities and mortgage and loan
(13:06):
payments, those a once a month,you can set up the reoccurring
as you enter it the first timebecause it won't be until the
previous month or the currentmonth you're in before it comes
due. And at all it's gonna makethe default date the same date
that you paid it in thatprevious model. So if you paid
(13:27):
the bill on the fifth of a monthas a new set up, a reoccurring
entry is gone, the next month isgonna show up on the fifth of
the month. Now one of theselections you can make, when
you're setting this up isautomatically posts which puts
it directly into your roster, orto be reviewed, I recommend to
(13:49):
be reviewed that way you canbecause there's a different tab
that you go to.
And you can look at it and youcan change the date in the
dollar amount if you have to.
And it's much easier before youpost it. That way nothing is
getting put in there that you'renot aware of you know that you
forget about maybe over time.
(14:13):
And then when you go to try toreconcile your your online to
your online statements, dollaramounts of match because all
these miscellaneous things beenposted for you and you've
forgotten the numbers aredifferent. So always review it
before it goes post don't everpost it directly into your
register. So with you once youget them all in there, and then
(14:39):
to the current month, the stepwould be to create a report by
category for the previous month.
And that's gonna then be whatyou use for setting up your
first budget or your firstcontrol center. But before you
do that, we need to think aboutwhat our budget is gonna look
(15:00):
like because we want to set upour categories list to match it
pretty close. Because most ofthe programs I ever use, the
category list always prints outin alphabetical order. While
your life is not in alphabeticalorder, because we want our, our
control center to be by segmentor by department is say, We want
(15:25):
housing, transportation, food,little bit clothing, savings and
debt, or you can just havesavings, but savings and debt
can go they gather,entertainment, whatever else you
can think of, he wants to try tokeep the number of categories
(15:45):
down to a minimum as much aspossible. Your housing includes
all your mortgage payments, ifwe got multiple mortgage
payments, all your utilities,which includes your internet,
and also includes your cellphone bill, I put the phone with
housing, because in the oldendays, it was a hard line to the
(16:05):
home, and the phone was only inthe house, I'm sticking with
that type of thinking, for myhousing. Transportation is your
automobile expenses, if you havemore than two, you can set up
auto a name the model make ofthe auto, and it would be your
(16:26):
mortgage, your loan payment,your gas,
maintenance, and oil changesstuff like that for each auto
individually, so that we knowhow much that particular auto
automobile cost us for themonth, if you just lump it all
(16:46):
into one big number. That month,the work also but if you can
break it out, that works good.
That way you can see how muchcar A is costing you versus how
much car B or who's driving morewho's driving less, or whatever
the case would be. Becausethat's one of the ways you can
cut back on spending is reducedthe amount of driving you do
(17:07):
because gasoline is a not socheap expenditure nowadays, food
you want to break that down bygroceries deliveries dining out,
how do you get your foodand you want to track it by the
ways you get your foods if youhave food delivered to your
(17:29):
home, or if you go out and eatout dining out. Or if you go to
grocery store and buy food andand do it yourself, do all your
own cooking. He wants to breakit out by those type of
categories. So you can see howmuch each one has cost and
entertainment would be whateveryou do for entertainment, cable
(17:51):
TV streaming, you know, footballor sports, subscriptions, all
that kind of stuff. Break itdown by again, like you did with
your food, you know, cablestreaming, whatever however you
do, whatever you do forentertainment, that is list all
(18:13):
the debt that's not anywhereelse, because your mortgage debt
is with your housing, your carloans with your transportation.
So this would be personal debt,credit card debt, anything else
that you can't put somewhereelse. And of course, your
savings is going to be in thatsame category. There's a
(18:35):
clothing one, it's he can dothat by person in your household
if you want. But it should be afairly small number unless
you're a fashion designer,whatever make your I don't know,
but it shouldn't be a very largenumber. He wants to go into your
categories we're talking aboutthe tracking program now. You
(18:57):
want to go in your categoriesand make group them together by
each one of these sections thatI just talked about. housing,
transportation, food,entertainment, savings and debt,
(19:18):
clothing and you want to groupeverything that's related to the
same thing together so likehousing, I want in because you'd
have mortgage loan that's an appand it would have natural gas
that's and you know alleverything's in alphabetic
order. So you go through andfind each individual item and
(19:40):
you code it to where you want itto go grouped together. So the
housing I put a transportation Idid be in need get the idea. Now
I did the mortgage was a one thefirst mortgage a second mortgage
is a two utilities was aa three, a four, a five. So that
can give you you know, aninfinite number of different
(20:04):
categories you can grouptogether. And then if you do
that for about everything thatyou use, because when you do
your report, it's only gonnaprint out the, in the items that
have money on them, it's notgoing to print out zero balances
unless you select that option,but don't select that option.
And then that way, if you haveeverything set up that way, when
(20:27):
you print it out, all yourhousing is going to be together
or in then right underneaththat, like all the A's will be
in a one, a two, or B in order.
And then all the B's will be inorder and then all of a C's etc.
And when you set up your controlcenter or your budget, you can
(20:47):
set up the exactly the same way.
So down and future months, whenyou print things out, it's going
to be in similar order and isgoing to be close and easy for
you to update. That's the goalhere more spending a little more
time up front, setting things upand getting everything set up.
So that later on, it's going totake a whole lot less time to
(21:11):
update things. And that way,you'll stay at it and you'll
have good information. Andthat's the goal here we're
trying to create goodinformation that we can then use
to help us control our spendingor reduce our spending. And now
the other way to pay your debtpaid off faster is to increase
(21:34):
your income. However you want todo that, you can do that. Not
much I can talk about on that.
But this depends on your field,career field and demand and what
the employment situation wouldbe. That is what we do. If you
decide to use a program that haseverything included that does
(21:59):
tracking and does your budgetingit does this it does that. And
I'll tell you pay this off, paythat off, you pay in this the
two subscriptions for the samething.
If you're gonna use one of thoseapps, I'm not saying not to I'm
just saying you have to learnhow to use it. So you need to go
(22:21):
and watch all their YouTubevideos, instruction videos. And
that's you need a budget why anda be a have a lot of YouTube
videos that the one lady talksfrom experience. When she first
started, she did this and thenshe learned how to do this, he
(22:42):
start with the basic, learn howto use it and and watch the next
level up and keep going. Itdoesn't do any good to watch him
straight all the way throughbecause you can't create a
budget if you don't have anyinformation in the program. So
you first got to learn how toenter the information, then you
(23:04):
got to learn what to do with theinformation. And then you got to
learn what to do with thatinformation and how you can use
it to your advantage.
So it's a learning process thatmay take a few days, a few weeks
or longer.
The more information that youcan put in at the beginning,
(23:28):
that's why I say go back to theprevious month and put in the
whole month information and thenput in the home up to your
current date. That way, you havea whole 30 days worth of
information. That's basicallyone financial cycle of your life
that you can pick up on most allyour expenses. Remember, when
(23:52):
you're setting up a budget, thatif you only have one month, it
may not include some things.
Maybe you pay your car insurancetwice a year or quarterly, you
might have things you pay once aquarter, and that was in that
particular month. So maybe thinkyou got paid twice a year. And
it wasn't one of those months.
Maybe you got some pay once ayear and it wasn't that month.
(24:17):
So it's gone to take a whilebefore you pick up everything
unless you know, I know I pay myinsurance quarterly I paid it a
couple months ago. This go putthat in this put it in your
system and set the date for thenext time it's due and if you
know the dollar amount, you knowif you don't know the dollar
(24:38):
amount, just what did you paythe last time put that dollar
amount in? Because something isbetter than nothing. So over
time, you're going to pick upeverything that flows through
your checking account,everything that's going on with
your credit cards. Now remember,putting in 30 days worth your
(24:59):
credit card.
Spending might seem like a bignumber or a lot of entry, but
you got to do it. Because yougot to see where you're spending
your money. And don't import itdirectly in from the credit
cards, account that you have,manually enter it, manually
(25:21):
enter everything into yourchecking account, your savings
account, and all your creditcards, that's gonna help you
become aware of what's going onin your life. If you just
transpose if you just importedin, it may not get in the right
categories, it may, he mayoverlook it, you may forget
about it. It may be the numberswill match, you know your
(25:45):
numbers there to the bank, buthow long is that gonna happen
manually and are things thatmakes you way more aware of
what's going on in your life.
And this again, knowing yourratios, the last episode I
talked about, in all your debt,payment statements together,
putting them your mortgage, yourcar, your personal loan, that's
(26:08):
gonna help you, that's gonnahelp you down the line and keep
it in that order, stick them inthe folder, keep them because
you got to figure out yourincome to debt ratio by each one
of those categories. Because ifyou have a 48% income to debt
ratio on your mortgage,somewhere else, you have to give
(26:31):
up because you don't have thatkind of money. You can't have
over 100%.
And if you do, that's probablywhy you're living paycheck to
paycheck, and you're robbingPeter to pay Paul. And you're
wondering why what's going on inyour life. While that's going
(26:51):
on, you've spent too much money,you have too much debt. And each
of these areas in your headdoesn't give you enough room to
pay for everyday life, thingslike food and gas, and whatever.
I'll be back in one moment withmy final thoughts. If you're
interested, and there's softwarethat I use personally, to reduce
(27:15):
my debt, I have a link in myshow notes, shop financial.com,
copy and paste it. And it willtake you to the website. If you
are looking for any spreadsheetsor other information that I talk
about from time to time, I havelinks and my show notes. And I
always have links to thearticles I refer to and my show
(27:36):
notes, plus other things likethe happy draft.org, which is a
another organization that helpsyou with your debt. So feel free
to go on my show notes and linkand check out whatever I'm
putting out there, I appreciateit very much. If you would like
to make a contribution to helpkeep this alive, then I would
(27:57):
gladly accept that, say my shownotes. Thank you very much. Now
as you're entering yourtransaction for those first 30
days, I want you to be aware ofwhat's going on. That's why
you're manually entering whatyour pain and where your money
is going. So there is I have alink in my show notes 30
(28:19):
expenses that quietly eat awayat your budget. And I thought
this was quite interesting,because it's true. You know,
every nickel and dime adds up todollars and every dollars apps
up to hundreds and every $100adds up to 1000s over the period
of your lifetime. So the form ofthe first ones you have to be
(28:41):
aware is overlapping orunderutilized insurance
policies. Often people anotherwhere they're paying for
overlapping coverages acrossdifferent policies such as
travel insurance benefits thatmight already be covered under
certain premium credit cards. Sobe aware of what you're paying
for on your insurance, and whereyou can cut back. So if you have
(29:05):
car insurance, that includesyou're gonna include coverage if
you would rent a car, don't payfor auto insurance at the car
rental place. Make sure you knowwhat's in your insurance policy.
And if you have a question,that's what your agent is for
financial and investmentsdescriptions, I never really
(29:28):
thought of this. Many sign upfor these services with the
intention of using them to makeinformed financial decisions.
Yet the daily demands of lifemeans that these subscriptions
go on utilize and we're talkingabout you subscribe to
investments or financialresearch services and tools so
(29:51):
that you can make your owninvestments, but then you get
busy in life. And either youdon't use them or you forget
aboutAnd you're still paying for him
is a big one. ATM fees bankfees, while they seem nominal on
a per item basis can accumulateto a substantial amount of money
over time. I don't use an ATMthat's gonna charge me a fee
(30:15):
period. In fact, I hardly usethe ATM anymore at all. But if
I'm going to use an ATM, I go tomy bank where I they're not
going to charge me a fee. It'seven though it's 250 to $5. If
you hit it 10 times a month,that's $25 plus. So ATM fees,
try to cut those out as muchimpossible bank maintenance
(30:38):
fees. If you're paying amaintenance fee for your
checking account, you're at thewrong bank, or go to your bank
and find out if they have adifferent account. thing a
different one they offer whereyou don't have to pay a
maintenance fee. Maybe theyrequire a minimum balance of 300
(30:59):
or $500. I don't know. But youneed to avoid paying monthly
maintenance fee on your checkingaccount. I hadn't paid any
maintenance monthly can liechecking account for years
overdraft fees Well, period, youdon't want to spend more money
you have because the bank isgonna charge you $35 per
(31:20):
transaction if you overdraw. Soavoid that at all costs. Now I
know some of you are reallystruggling, and you can't help
but some of these fees you'regetting nailed with, well, you
got to get your life undercontrol is all I can say and try
to stop using these things. Andpaying the bank banks makes
(31:43):
millions of dollars a year. Andwhile omelets the interests are
paying very little. Okay, cableTV cable has gotten more
expensive. So if you're gonnafeel it, so review, if it's
worth cutting the cord, andeliminating that expense, which
can be hundreds a month ofdollars that you can say if I've
(32:04):
been saying that for years,according to a study from all
connect the cable patches cancost as much as $299.95 per
month. Without fees or internetservice. That is way too much
money. You can now stream abouteverything you watch, much less
(32:25):
than $300 a month. I can tellyou that right now. But what you
got to watch out for when you'restreaming is again the
overlapping or unused streamingservice. So if you have multiple
streaming service, are theyoverlapping? Meaning? Do they
have the same channels on them?
(32:48):
And you're paying for the secondone because there's that one
channel you want that the firstone didn't have?
Well, all the other channels thesame Why didn't you cancel the
first one because they'regenerally a month to month
service. So no use to pay fortwo or have them multiple things
(33:09):
on overlapping services or havefive or 10 different streaming
services. He got to minimizethat to no more than three per
month and move them around. Okaygetting brand name prescription
drugs, used generic drugs,unused gym memberships, unused
(33:31):
anything. Not only gymmemberships, but unused. If you
have if you're still paying forInternet security from old
computer that you got rid of andyou bought a new computer and
you got a new subscription,you're paying for two
subscriptions you why you onlyneed one same way with gym
(33:53):
memberships and Paul's purchasesThink Before You Buy, don't buy
anything you really don't needor want. So that's all I have to
say there but impulse buys couldcost you a lot of money and
everything at the gift your godthe grocery store for instance,
at the checkout county if youbuy a couple candy bars every
(34:15):
time you do that, you know stuffup around the cash register that
all is impulse buy and they putit there for a reason. So people
buy it because if they put itsomewhere else nobody would buy
it. Food delivery fees.
So they can cost between two to$5 per order bit can be higher
for longer distance or peakhours. Convenient charges same
(34:39):
thing. I never have fooddeliver. If I order a pizza I go
pick it up. I don't pay for anydelivery fees, especially Uber
DoorDash all those that gets waytoo expensive. That's the most
expensive way you can buy food.
Convenience charges, said Becautious, too.
(35:00):
With takeout or other deliverieswhich come with fees on top of
the standard delivery fees canthat's why it's expensive to
have it delivered. pre made foodyou go to the grocery store all
pre made food, pre made meals,we it's a frozen meal and you
buy it and then you can justwarming up and it's cooked for
(35:21):
you don't buy that's the mostexpensive way anything that's
pre made or cut down awatermelon caught the pieces or
whatever the case is, that's themost expensive way to buy your
food from a grocery store.
Mobile services from majorcarrier said instead of
purchasing the $1,000 smartphoneand switch from regular switch
(35:41):
from a regular postpaid phoneservice to a prepaid phone,
Straight Talk wireless asaffordable prepaid phones and no
contract plans for as low as $25a lie. So instead of buying a
smartphone that costs a lot andthen finance it through the
carrier, where you're lockedinto a two or three year
(36:04):
contract, they're saying don'tdo that is to go to Target
Walmart and get a prepaid phone,where you pay for the month
ahead, or so much talk time. Andthen try to use it sparingly. To
reduce your cell phone costs,your phone cost fitness apps,
(36:25):
any apps that you don't use on aregular basis, don't you don't
want to be paying for anything.
Credit card finance charges, ifyou can't pay off a credit card,
I know that's gonna cost youmoney. But I think that's why
people were trying to pay offtheir debt. So they already know
(36:45):
that credit card transactionfees, you may be paying that at
some businesses where theycharge you that and wasting food
throwing food away instead ofeating it. So over buying food
from the grocery store, and thenended up throwing it away before
you can use it because it wasspoiled or went bad. So those
(37:06):
are ways to reduce yourspending. But so as you're
entering your transactions forthat first month, you want to
look for duplications that youpay the same place for two
different times in the samemonth. And do your research,
find out why that happened andget rid of one that's gonna help
(37:29):
you reduce your spending. Stickwith it, and you'll be glad you
did. So
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